Sharing My Story

(Journal entry May 20, 2006)
This morning I got up a little before 5 AM and
got ready to leave and started out of Green Valley
by about 6 AM. Stopped in Phoenix and got gas.
Then I stopped in Flagstaff and got gas and ate
a bite of lunch about 11 AM. Then drove up to
Tuba City (on US Highway 160) and stopped
at a dinosaur trackway (footprint) site and
was given a paid guided tour by an American
Indian young woman named Jennifer and
her 1 1/2 year old son Eli. It is a very extensive
site covering several acres on Hopi Indian
Reservation lands. The tracks are fully exposed
to erosion, the elements and human traffic.
Many of the tracks are very worn. Jennifer
mentioned that further up the road in a place
called the “Paper Route” there are human
footprints mixed among the dinosaur tracks.
I didn’t have time to check that site out,
but this is probably where Jeremy Auldeney,
Paul O. Rosnau, Edwin Back, and Norman Davis
did their two-part CRSQ (September 1997,
December 1997) Report. The tracks looked
like small to medium sized theropod (3 toed)
and there were several trails of 3 or 4 prints
(left-right stride). This is worth checking out
again. I traveled to Blanding, Utah, but was
too late to get to the Dinosaur Museum (I was
still on Arizona time). I traveled on to
Monticello and stayed at a reserved motel
room and ate at a local Subway.

Everyone,

Rather than starting a new Bio thread today
I'll hold off until I return. I am going to a
Dinosaur bone dig in northwest Colorado
for the next week. I will report on it when I return.

Dino Don

Over the past decade I have continued to follow
current events and politics. I listened to such
conservative radio talk show hosts like Rush
Limbaugh take on the mainstream liberal media.
While like all of us Rush is not perfect, but he
seems to have been more correct than not on
his analysis and commentary. While Bill Clinton
had great personal charm I did not enjoy his
presidency (and am still amazed that he was
elected in the first place). I thought that his
administration was extremely scandel ridden
and corrupt.

While I voted for him I have not had the deep
enthusiasm for George W. Bush that many
fellow Christian believers have. However
Bush seems to have been the right man to
lead this country against the terrorism.
September 11, 2001 has to go down as a
“day of infamy” closely akin to Pearl Harbor.
I recall watching a televised newscast that
fateful morning that showed a plane crashing
into one of the World Trade Towers. I informed
a lady in our office about this with the preamble
“I am not kidding this has really happened” and
a short time later another plane hit the other
tower and then both towers came crashing down.
Before this I had no comprehension that an jet
airliner could have such destructive force on a
skyscraper. This horrific and criminal action
certainly got this nation’s attention to the
threat of Islamic terrorism. In my thinking
the worldwide terrorist threat is similar to
the Cold War nuclear threat posed by the
Soviet Union and the Axis military threat
during World War II.

At this time I am at the end of my personal
reminiscences about current events and
politics. Over the past two months I have
gone from my earliest recollections and
proceeded to travel forward in time.
Now I need to go back and search for
common threads in my life and thinking.
As mentioned previously this is raw
material that can be edited, changed,
re-written into a more stylistically
precise form. But the important thing
is that I have gotten this out of my mind
and down on paper (or digital internet
media). These thoughts and events that
are uniquely mine are no longer locked
away in my mind. They can now been
preserved for the benefit of those in
coming generations.

In the fall of 1988 as the SMCC Pro-life Committee
was getting off to a start I realized several things.
This was a moment in history where I wanted to
step up to the plate and get involved. Perhaps in
some small way it was the same feeling that millions
of American men experienced in late 1941 after the
Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. This was a
chapter of my life that was a long time in coming
since that fateful day in 1971 when I stood in front
of the pro-life display table in the campus student
union building. The teachings of Francis Schaeffer
(who I attended a lecture by him at Biola University
shortly before his death in 1984) as well as other
factors made a definie impact on my thinking.

Perhaps at this time I began to see life like chapters
in a book. While I thought that pro-life activities
were not necessarily something that I be in
permanently I wanted the experience of putting
my shoulder to the plow in this effort to deal with
one of the great moral issues of our time.
In 1993 while living in South Pasadena one of my
housemates at the time, Dean Stuckenschmidt,
another former Campus Crusade staffer, and I
got involved in another political campaign. This
time we voluteered to help in a race for the
California State Assembly.

A local businessman, Bill Hoge was running
for the position. Dean and I did volunteer office work,
placing yard signs and some precinct walking.
Hoge won the general election that year
and two years later ran again and won
that election also. Perhaps the major
thing I learned about that election was the
balancing act a political candidate has to
perform to weld together numerous and
disparate constituent supporter groups in
order to win an election. Once while in his
office I remember some folks coming in the
help with the campaign. Their main issue of
was anti-gun control and the freedom to bear arms.

As a conservative I was interested in a number
of issues, but on top of my list were abortion
and other pro-life matters. Bill Hoge had to tie
these different concerns together in a team to
help him win the election. For two elections he
did a good job of doing just that. I enjoyed
working for a campaign that won the election!
(Bill Hoge was in the California Assembly during
1993-1994 and 1995-1996.)

Terry Beh, the original chairman of the committee
left the area in the around 1991. He was a staff
member of Focus on the Family and moved with
the organization from Southern California to their
new headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
One of the other committee members, Stephanie
Makris was elected to become the next chair person.
The emphasis and mandate of the committee at this
point was to devise a plan to education the SMCC
church body concerning the issue of abortion and
how it affects our society. Besides to Pro-Life
literature table plans were developed to give
presentations to the entire SMCC congregation.
Several of the committee members (including
myself) attended seminars put on by a medical
Bio-Ethics group gave instruction on how to
present the pro-life issues to church memberships.
During that time a very graphic video depicting an
abortion was available called “Hard Truth”. This
video was not pretty and it did not sanitize the
surgical procedure that often ends up dismembering
the unborn child as it is being excavated from the
womb. On Pro Life Sunday we gave a presentation
to each of the three morning church services and
showed the “Hard Truth” video (1991). We also
had literature to give out to interested members
and attenders. As I remember Pastor Anderson
was involved in making the topic of abortion a
focal point in his sermon that day and on other
occasions. After this event we felt the committee
had basically discharged its mandate. While
continuing education was certainly an issue
(abortion did not go away) the emotional energy
used to move the committee toward its objectives
was largely spent. This was the high point of the
SMCC Pro-Life Committee. Shortly after this
Stephanie moved from the area and the Pro-Life
Committee was combined with a more comprehensive
Social Concerns Committee.

My involvement in the pro-Life movement after
that included partipations in Life Chains, other
Walks for Life and the monthly picket of a
denominationally supported large hospital
in the area that performed abortions. Interestingly
enough I met a young man at those pickets named
Kevin Yong that would a short time later become
important in another part of my life

The ProLife Committee at SMCC started
in the fall of 1988. Operation Rescue came
to California in the winter of 1989. This was
a decisive moment on what level of commitment
the church pro-life committee members wanted
to go. Operation Rescue not only protested in
front of abortion clinics but also used other and
more high risk tactics. The other major tactic was
to block access to the abortion clinic. The bodies
of Operation Rescue volunteers were literally used
to bar the entrances to abortion clinics. This often
gave those women who came to get an abortion
another opportunity to reconsider their decision.
However, this also summoned the real possibilty
of the OR volunteers being arrested for trespassing
and or being physically assaulted by clinic guards.
This maneuver was called “risking arrest.”
I personally did not “risk arrest.” Perhaps I was
too much of a chicken! This was a decision that
you needed to not make with a snap jugdment.

My friend Terry got very involved in OR and did
risk arrest and was arrested. Terry, several others
in the committee including myself partipated in
the first Operation Rescue demonstration in the
Los Angeles area (February 1989). This was a
dramatic event with a large group of OR volunteers
and a counter group of pro-aborts (as we called
the opposition) and a large contingent of the LAPD
(both foot and horse mounted units) to keep the
demonstration peaceful. At that occasion blocking
the abortion clinic entrance was not done but on
later demonstrations it was.

Several months later another abortion clinic protest
was done (I was ill at the time) and the entrance
was blocked and the police used force to break the
blockage. Several of the OR volunteers were injured
and a number of arrests were made.
Some of my friends were jailed. While in the LA City
jail several of the other inmates asked my friends
why they were in jail. They answered that they had
been blocking the entrances of abortion clinics to
prevent abortions from happening. The other inmates
could hard believe what they heard and actually treated
the jailed OR volunteers with a certain respect.
Some of my friends actually did extended jail time
in prison for their roles in trying to prevent
abortions taking place.

This was an exciting time realizing that there
was real danger but we were willing to take a
stand for what we believed.

The activism that the committee initially displayed
consisted of prayer, supporting local pro-life crisis
pregnancy clinics and picketing of abortion clinics.
Supporting of crisis pregnancy clinics came in the
form of some of the committee members donating
various items that clinics used in their work such
as baby clothes and other articles and also volunteering
time to help with sundry office and maintenance tasks
at the clinic. These clinics were havens where young
pregnant women could come to find out was was
happening in their bodies in connection with their
unborn child and were given the alternatives on how
to cope with their circumstances. The alternatives
were primarily to keep the child or to find a home
for the baby after birth. Abortion was not an option
that was presented.

Walks for Life were held to raised money for the
clinic(s) where members of the church as well as
the committee could participate in. Each people
invovled was encouraged to raise so much money
for each mile walked to be given to the clinic.
The Walks for Life also served to raise the
awareness of the issue in the minds of the larger
public as the participants often carried signs or
wore T-shirt displaying pro-life messages. Many
church members and attenders including Pastor
Anderson participated in these marches. There
were times the marches passed in front of abortion
clinics. I personally was encouraged by the large
involvement and helped to promote the marches.
These public demonstrations were often hot,
sweaty and personally satisfying— somewhat
like precinct walking but the stakes were greater.
However there were other levels of commitment
to pro-life involvement.

Group prayer was an important element of the
pro-life committee and praying for the issue of
abortion stretched unused spiritual muscles.
Prayer for Christians often involves giving God
a laundry list of personal needs such as praying
for the recovery of sick loved ones and friends.
Sincere prayer involves personal repentance from
sin as well as praying for needs/petitions. The
Bible teaches for effective prayer repenance
needs to precede supplication. Perhaps the
difficult thing in personal as well as group
prayer is persistance on a theme/request
that God doesn’t seem to want to give an
answer for. As a committee we spend much
time praying about the issue.
Perhaps at more than any other time we came
to realize through these times of prayer that
the issue of abortion like so many other
societal/cultural problems facing us were
at their root spiritual issues. The issue of
abortion stems largely out of the promiscuous
sexuality that has pervaded 20th century
Western culture. It comes from the desire
to have the good things of monogamous
marriage without the responsiblities such
as fidelity and duty to raise the children
that are often the product of illicit sexual unions.

If birth control fails before conception happens
then abortion is available to get rid of the
unwanted baby. The baby is seen as an
inconvenience (or embarrassment) to the
mother, the father (who usually doesn’t
have a say in the matter or is strongly
counseling abortion) and her/his family.
The vast majority of abortions are not
for the hard cases like rape, incest or
the life of the mother, but because the
unborn child is viewed as an inconvenience.
While this may sound hard-nosed we are
talking a life and death situation for that
unborn baby.

The pastor (Richard Anderson) and elders of Sierra Madre
Congregational Church thought that a committee needed
to be organized (or resuscitated) to deal with Pro-life issues.
One of the single men I was friends with named Terry Beh
(a member of the Singles group) was asked to chair the
committee. I also volunteered to be on the committee
as well as several others. Like all good church committees
this one brainstormed as to it goals and purposes. Under
Terry’s leadership the committee emphasized prayer and
co-ordinating with prolife activities outside the church.
Another major goal was to educate the congregation on
the topic of abortion. The first steps toward education
was to develop a pro-life table that was manned by
memebers of the committtee stationed in front of the
church that gave out literature on abortion and other
life issues (I helped to man the table on a number of
occassions). This education goal, however, was not s
ystematically planned and implemented until several
years later.

The issue of abortion within a local church context
is not as cut and dried as one might think in terms
of attitudes displayed by the church congregation
(members and attenders). Attitudes within a local
church body range from indifference to “let’s not
rock the boat” to how will the community view the
church and its stand about this controversial issue(?)
to being concerned but not wanting to do anything
about it to various degrees of involvement and activism.
For example the pro-life literature table elicited
response from strong support to indifference (“I wish
these people would go away”).

In January 1987 I started attending the Sierra
Madre Congregational Church in Sierra Madre,
California. This church was the first denominational
church I had attended (though the church at that
time was not officially afflilated with any
Congregational denomination.) There I attended
a Singles Group and became acquainted with a
number of the members. I meet several men
about my own age who were interested in
politics and especially pro-life issues.

Several years before the church had a pro-life
committee but for unknown reasons (perhaps
lack of leadership) it was discontinued. During
the late 1980s and early 1990s the conservative
evangelical Christian participation within the
pro-life movement began to grow as many
church goers became more concerned about
the abortion issue.

Operation Rescue founded
by Randall Terry in 1986 was a “radical”
movement that challenged Christians to
get out of their comfort zone and take to
the streets to protest abortion on demand.
This was no longer a Roman Catholic issue.
In the late 1960s it was radical leftists who
were marching against the War in Vietnam.
In the late 1980s conservative Christians
were taking to the streets to protest abortion
on demand. How times had changed!

Current events/Politics Bio Blog here
are a few thoughts.

One, these are the thoughts of a rather average
citizen not an astute journalist or a hit bitten political
observer/activist. My involvement was not terribly
unique or spectacular in the sense that there were
other people doing the same things and more.
These events were a part of my life and thinking
as I was going through them, but they did not
consume my life or thinking. Other mostly
unrelated activites continued at the same time
—life goes on.

Two, I have mostly given my thoughts or
intellectual perceptions of different events
that I was involved in. However, besides making
an intellectual decision there were strong emotions
involved. Certainly a sense of patriotism, a love
of one’s country and wanting to see justice and
right prevail where a sense of injustice was preceived.
Wanting to see President Reagan succeed in his
strategy to dismantle the Soviet Union with its evil,
tyrannical and bloody history had a strong visceral,
emotional appeal. In the next few posts I will
discuss my pro-life involvement. A revulsion over
abortion and the slaughter of innocent human life
were strong emotional reactions to helped
propel activism.

Three, the spiritual dimension was recognized
as a vital component to activism. The Bible
mentions that we do not struggle against flesh
and blood (other humans) but against evil spiritual
forces (Ephesians 6:12). The issue of prayer
(individual, in small groups and corporate) for
these issues lay at the heart of dealing with them.
Just protesting or having a political involvement
would be largely ineffective without recognizing
the larger spiritual dimension and beseeching
(and confessing our own shortcomings) the One
who ultimately controls the outcome.

In summary, I thought through the issues
and reacted to them emotionally. Also I
recognized them within a spiritual framework
involving the fallness of man and evil supernatuaral
forces than needed to be dealt with on a
supernatural level. These things propelled my
activism in whatever issue.

In May 2004 Ronald Reagan passed into history.
I remember shedding tears for him a truly
great man who was used by Providence to
achieve great and good things for his country
and the world. Not since the death of former
President Eisenhower in 1969 had I felt this
way about a national leader.

While Reagan did great things during his
Presidency one thing that he was long on rhetoric
and short on results was the abortion issue. Pro-life
advocates and abortion foes had supported Reagan
during both of his campaigns. He did restrict Federal
funding for abortion but the abhorrent Roe v. Wade
Supreme Court ruling was as firmly entrenched in
our legal system when Reagan took his first oath
of office (1981) as when he left the presidency in
1989. Perhaps his strongest attempt to get at this
Supreme Court ruling was his failed nomination of
Robert Bork to the court in 1987. The pro abortion
forces were too strong in the media and congress
to allow Bork on the Court.

Reagan suffered perhaps the greatest opposition
for his policies of any President of this century.
When the Iran-Contra controversy erupted which
was probably the lowest ebb of the his presidency
Reagan confronted it head on. Unlike Richard
Nixon in the early 1970s who denied complicity
in the Watergate scandel, Reagan seeing possible
wrongdoing came on television and basically
apologized to the American people (for his
ignorance) and promised an investigation and
justice for any possible criminal actions. He fessed
up, took the heat and ultimately rode out the
storm without having to resign his office or
be impeached.

While it was painful to watch Reagan confess
to probable wrong doing by his administration
he did the right thing by confronting the situation
forerightly and doing something about it before
it got out of control.

Reagan was not just interested in fixing the
economy he was also commited to defeating
and dismantling the Soviet communist system.
Peter Schweitzer’s remarkable book “Reagan’s War”
documents how this Hollywood actor turned President
believed that the Soviet Union could not just be
contained—a policy all the former Presidents had
pursued but could actually be destroyed without World War.

Reagan’s speeches announcing how he looked forward
to the day that would “leave Marxism-Leninism on the
ash heap of history.” These were great words of
encouragement to conservatives like myself.
His speech calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire”
sent liberals in the media, academia and elsewhere
into fits of pious rage.

However, as William F. Buckley, Jr. (I believe) rightly
observed at the time a nation that has ruthlessly
conquered numerous countries, refined totalitarianism
and murdered millions of its own citizens could perfectly
be called an “evil empire.” If the the Soviet Union did
not fit that description than what nation would?

Schweitzer in his book details Reagan’s strategy to
dismantle the Soviet Union. By the time of Reagan’s
1987 speech in Berlin calling on “Mr. Gorbachev,
Tear Down This Wall” the disintegration of the
Soviet Union was rapidly progressing. This has to be
Reagan’s greatest legacy, helping to rid the world of
this colossal affront to God and the human spirit.
He provided the stimulus to lay the bloody and
horrendous legacy of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev
and Brezhnev to rest. When so many “experts”
in this country thought Soviet communism was
an inevitable and a permanent part of the
international landscape Reagan defied
conventional wisdom.

Reagan correctly asseted his chances to be
a successful president on his ability to fix
the US economy. He learned that cutting
high taxes would free up more money in the
private sector to invest in new jobs.
President Kennedy had done this in the
early 1960s which made that decade one
of the most properous in US history.
This “Supply Side” economics was
advocated by Arthur Laffer among others
and was something National Review was in
favor of. However Reagan encountered
great Congressional and media opposition
for he wanted to increase defense spending
at the same time. Through negotiation and
the force of his personality Reagan’s tax cuts
were passed. He also was able to see defense
spending increased.

Several things happened the economy did
improve dramatically, inflation
was cut but the deficit increased greatly.
This was something that the average American
could handle and allowed Reagan to earn a
second term as President in his 1984 landslide
victory against an old fashioned establishment
Democratic liberal.

Bill Clinton in someways was a Democratic Reagan.
His election mantra in 1992 was “It’s the economy, stupid.”
In order to get elected (and re-elected) he needed
to convince the voters that he was better able to fix
the economy than his opponents.

Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 as President
was like a dream come true for political
conservatives. It seemed like the country
had finally caught to where Barry Goldwater
was in 1964. So much of what Goldwater
had espounded was repeated by Reagan.
Perhaps the difference between Goldwater
and Reagan was more in style and personality.
While Goldwater was perceived as being
hardnosed and blunt Reagan was more of
a bridge builder with winsome and, yes,
charismatic appeal.

The US was in a different position in 1980
than it was in 1964. In 1964 the economy
was strong and employment was good.
In 1980 both high inflation and high
unemployment gave Reagan a real
challenge during his first several years
in office and this wasn’t even counting
the threats from overseas from an
expanding Soviet communism.

As mentioned previously Barry Goldwater’s
memoir “With No Apologies” was written
in 1979 and was in large measure a
complaint on the US decline in the
international arena during the previous
40 or so years under both Republican
and Democratic presidents. The question
was could this this movie actor governor
from California halt this decline?

I had high but guarded hopes for Ronald Reagan.

John triumphed over his other Republican primary
opponents probably because of his wealth of volunteer
support. However the general election against George
Brown, Jr. proved a different story. The 36th California
Congressional District at that time was heavily
Democratic. The 1980 election proved to be bitter-sweet.
While Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter for President,
John Paul Stark failed in his attempt to unseat George
Brown, Jr.

My CCC collegue and friend John Paul Stark would go
on to run against George Brown in 1982 and 1984. In
1982 I helped in the primary election (and to a lesser
extent the general election) with more precinct walking.
I had moved out of the area in the summer of 1982 and
was not involved in his 1984 effort. Both times the
Democratic registered voter edge proved insurmountable
to John’s best efforts. George Brown, Jr. , liberal Democrat
continued in Congress until he died in July 1999.

In November 1979 Iranian militants stormed the US
Embassy in Tehran, Iran and held more than 50
American hostages for over a year. This
unprecedented action caused unusual reaction
in this country. Several staff at Arrowhead Springs
(the headquarters of Campus Crusade) took it on
themselves to inititate a daily prayer tme at
noon to pray for the release of the hostages.
Certainly no international event up until that
time affected the average US citizen (and
certainly Christians) as strongly since the
assasination of President Kennedy or possibly
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It seemed
as if our government was powerless to do
anything about such a gross breach of
international law.

Another CCC staff member, the former director
of the Personnel Department John Paul Stark
(also with his wife Donna and were members
of my church at that time) decided to enter
the political arena. John started running for
the Republican nomination for the US
Congressional seat in the San Bernardino
area held by liberal Democrat George Brown, Jr.
John felt very strongly about wanting to see
change in the direction out country was taking.
During the spring of 1980 along with many
other CCC staff members (and other interested
Christians) I volunteered to help in his primary
campaign. I did a lot of “precinct walking.”
Precinct walking is when the campaign volunteer
has a neighborhood list of residents who are
registered to his party. (At that time California
had a closed primary). That volunteer(s) actually
go from door to door and gives free campaign
literature for their candidate to the resident or
places it on their door knob as “door hangers”
packets. I trudged many sweaty blocks as a precinct
walker putting literal shoe leather to my beliefs.

(During this 1980 election I had the privilege of
personally attending a speech given by former
President Ford. My basic response what there
sure were a lot of secret service agents!)