WESTWARD HO
CHRONICLES
(1967 – 2010)

          In the fall of 1967, I left Atlanta, Georgia, where I was living with my natural father and my wife, Anne, and headed west.  Anne had never really wanted to be married in the first place; our rather short-termed marriage ended on a very friendly note and we have remained good friends to this date.   Our brief nuptial arrangement was essentially Anne’s way of “beating her only sibling, a sister, to the altar,” and in fact she has never remarried nor has her sister following that marriage of ours that was only a diversion for her sister’s secret elopement that had occurred on the same weekend of our marriage.

          The actual separation began sometime in the early spring of 1967 when I had arrived home, only to find an employment manual lying on our bed for the Playboy Club of Atlanta.  Ann was in the bathroom when I had made this surprise discovery and I called out to her saying, “Does this manual mean that you're going to become a bunny?”  At that time in my life, I had often dreamt of becoming involved in politics and in the latter 60s and living in Atlanta, Georgia, it just would have been almost impossible for anyone running for public office to ever be elected if one's spouse was a working member of the local bunny club, as in those days most Georgians were, for the most part, very conservative, no matter whether they were Democrats or Republicans, especially in that defining area of family values.  I had already decided that Ann would never be a truly domestic woman as she showed no interest in knowing how to cook, clean house, even giving the proper orders for dress shirts at the laundry and dry cleaners and had once clearly stated to me, that considering that she had absolutely no desire to bear children, bur that she would have children only if I had insisted.  I am sure that you would understand that I would want any child of mine to be equally wanted by their mother.

          Based on my understanding that Ann was simply not domestic in any sense of the word, I suggested that we ought to divorce since this marriage was not going to be at all good in terms of either of our life’s expectations.  I just didn’t want to spoil a good friendship.  I loved Ann and had insisted that we should at least remain as good friends as we had always been since first meeting.  She was so sincere as was demonstrated by her having returned her diamond engagement ring voluntarily, and I returned that diamond ring to the jeweler from which it was purchased and was given a complete and full return with no questions asked.  It was that money that permitted me to head out west later that spring.  I had gotten an ATΩ brother from the Georgia State University chapter to join me on this westward adventure.

          I had decided to make a visit to every ATΩ fraternity house west of the Mississippi.  I did however in the case of the ATO fraternity that was located at the University of the South, better known as Suwannee, made one exception to being west of the Mississippi.  We had arrived just in time for dinner that was served to us by the kitchen help while we all were sitting at one very large dining table.  I had decided to visit this particular chapter at Suwannee even though it was not west of the Mississippi, simply because it was where our founder had attended Divinity school and became an Episcopal minister.

          Our nest stop was Houston, Texas where I had sort of encountered a very unusual conference on the subject of an intercultural personality.  We had just happened to stay the guest motel of this conference.  When I had left our room the very next day I was inspecting a table full of literature, when a woman that was seated behind the table, had asked me what school was I representing. I had naturally told her that I was from the University of Miami, where my major was after all, psychology.  I proceeded to register for this conference.  There are some four distinct memories related to this intercultural personality conference.

          The first of the four memories that I have, was the chance meeting of a Rice professor, I believe that his name was Whitehead, that had apparently liked me well enough to invite to his home for dinner and to be introduced to his available daughter.  I was treated like royalty and felt a mutual respect that is more reserved for long-time friends.

          The next memory that I have was listening to a memorable introduction to his topic of Intercultural Personality Traits by one of the noted presenters.  I remember him saying that perhaps one of the better distinctions that may differentiate personality between different cultures might be the utterance of a man or woman having just completed a sexual act.  He said that the Italian man is very apt to say something like, “Mamma Mia! That was something else to never forget!”  He went on to say that the Frenchman was every bit as dramatic and emotional as the Italian man, but is more likely to say something like, “magnifique somptuosité: that has got to be perfectionniste!”  And next he turned to the rather drab Englishman; “I do say, what were you doing down there?”  And lastly he suggested that the American woman is more apt to say, “Was I any good?”  I am quite sure that is was his last two examples that had gotten such a roaring and invigorated loud laugh from this educated audience.

BRUNO BETTELHEIM: Dr. Bettelheim was one of America's leading child psychologists whose academic connection was the University of Chicago.  His greatest work was with autistic children with whom he had strongly suggested a one on one relationship with their therapist whose greatest psychological tool was nothing more than the employment of and simply the use of unconditional love.

MARGARET MEAD: Dr. Mead should have no need for an introduction and I feel so fortunate to have had just a few minutes of exchange.  I believe that I was so totally star-struck, that I have no specific memories of what we had exchanged with one another.  What I specifically do remember it being so struck by her walking stick that had been given to her by one of the Native cultures that she had once studied.  As a result of having encountered her walking stick, I had always wanted to have a significant walking stick of my own.  That finally came to fruition when I was 66 and ordered a specially designed stick that of a carved white bear standing atop the cherry wood stick and is best known by our local New Mexico Native Americans as the “Hon” which is one of their more powerful healer.  This striking Hon stick is a representation of my own Native initiation as a Medicine Man and I carry it with me with the same passion as that of Margaret Mead

          After Texas headed for the coast of California and follow that coastline all the way up to Washington State.  I then headed for Denver crisscrossing all of the upper Northwestern states.  I had made this file portion of my trip west without my passenger as he had departed my company when I reached California.  Then it is up the coast of California to Berkeley University across the bay from San Francisco.  It was rather shocking to discover the old ATO house that was in ruin and simply open to the public, which by the way, had sort of ransacked the house; what was notably missing was a large dining table that had apparently been disassembled for firewood.  After California I had traveled through Oregon State to Washington.  From Seattle I headed west to Spokane and then down to Pullman.  It was in Pullman and I had a mild altercation to my Buick Skylark convertible when I was making a protected left turn some oncoming car had ignored the red light and only slightly damaged my left fender.  I did not care to stick around and have it repaired their and because the front driving lights were not affected I moved on to Idaho and Montana.  From Montana I headed south to Wyoming and that each of the Northwestern states I've visited the ATO houses at their respective universities.

I had reached Denver just when the ATΩ's are having a fall conclave at the Downtown Athletic Club.  It was following this meeting that one of the local alumni leadership had suggested that I might give a hand in establishing a chapter at the University of New Mexico.

          In any case, my rather extensive trip that covered all the American western states had a two-fold purpose in my own mind at that time.  First, I was searching the possibilities for a seminary or graduate school to continue my academic studies in sociology and/or religion, and secondly; I had decided to pay a personal visit to every chapter in the West of my college fraternity, Alpha Tau Omega (ATΩ).  It was actually towards the end of this adventurous journey throughout the west, and while in Denver, Colorado, that my ultimate fate was sort of set into real-time motion.  I had attended a regional conclave of ATΩ the weekend just before Thanksgiving of that year, and it was at this regional conclave that the local Province Chief and several other ATΩ alumni brothers approached me and asked if I would be interested in helping them establish a chapter of our beloved fraternity, ATΩ at the University of New Mexico.  I had the good fortune to have previously established a rather favorable reputation within the fraternity because I had the dubious distinction of having founded the first and only chapter of ATΩ in the state of Georgia in the 20^th Century; all four of the previously existing Georgia chapters had been established during the late 1800’s and they were at the more notable universities like the University of Georgia, Emory and Georgia Tech Universities.  There had been some noted local resistance at establishing a chapter at the less-notable Georgia State University in downtown Atlanta, because it just wasn’t considered as equally prestigious as the other four notable Georgia universities where ATΩ has then existed.  But of course I was always playing the consummate devil’s advocate for just about any reasonable cause in the spirit of always “doing the right thing.”

These Denver based brothers had indicated that there was already a transferred ATΩ brother, Dana Wright, attending UNM at that time, but that he was having some difficulty in getting anything off the ground.  They were all confident that with my previous experience and success, I should have far less difficulty establishing a chapter of ATΩ.

          I agreed without much hesitation that I would at least seriously investigate the situation for myself and meet with this Dana Wright upon my imminent arrival in Albuquerque, which was conveniently on my way to Deming to pay a visit to my parent’s newly built home.  It was an interesting, unexpected, but this timely offer in that the only potential connection that I might have had anywhere in the western part of the United States just happened to be in fact in that perceived desert-like state of New Mexico.

It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving that I had arrived in Albuquerque and had my Thanksgiving dinner at a motel diner room on Eastern Central Avenue.  That day will always be remembered well since it was the only time in my entire life that I have ever had to eat a Thanksgiving Dinner alone, sitting at a rather sterile Formica countertop in the café of a motel on the famous Route 66 (East Central Avenue in Albuquerque). I met with this fraternity brother, Dana Wright, the very next day and we became instant friends, and I immediately committed myself to this unanticipated but certainly familiar mission.  I then made my expected visit to Deming, and after several weeks at my parents’ new home and church, I returned to Albuquerque for the beginning of the spring academic semester.  I even attended some graduate classes that spring while laying the initial groundwork for the new ATΩ chapter.

My parents had established a good relationship with Ike Smalley, the state senator from the electoral district that included Deming, New Mexico.  He was at that time the President Pro Tem of the state Senate and ultimately held that post longer than any other state senator.  It was Ike Smalley that had sponsored all of the state’s construction industry laws and had suggested to me that I take the licensing exam for the general contractor license, if for no other reason but to learn what was on the exam.  He explained that I could learn what was on it by taking it the first time, and still be able to repeat the exam at a later date for serious.  As it turned out I had passed the exam the very first time that I had taken it.

          After having passed the exam and with my new license in hand, I was seeking for a piece of property on which I could build some apartments as a source of personal income.  It was Harold Lukens, another ATΩ alumni brother who was also a licensed real estate broker, which had put me onto a piece of property that was under foreclosure.  The property was already zoned R-3, which was a multi-resident zoning that could be used for the apartments I wanted to build.  So, I had bulldozed the old one family residence that was in such bad repair as it was no lost in the value of the property.  I then built a six-plex that was the maximum size with off street parking that the R-3 zoning would permit.  A complex consisted of six one-bedroom furnished apartments and I had moved in to apartment numbered one. It was about a year or two later that I bought the property across the street from this six unit complex and was able to build four additional units.

          After settling down in those first years in Albuquerque I started to regularly visit for several years Guaymas and San Carlos in old Mexico.  It was in San Carlos, where there was an American art colony, that I met three of the residents artists, Bert Rutherford, Elizabeth Armour and Nadja Baranowski.  It was Bert Rutherford had been selected as the artist for the summer Olympics in LA to design the American eagle.  Bert had once entered an art competition in California and actually won the overall award for his entry.  It was his unusual use of recycled aluminum cans that consisted of a crack egg from which there arose a chick with a surprised look on his face.  And there also fell from the egg a second yoke that had obviously never developed into the twin chick.  This undeveloped chick had the appearance of an easy-over fried egg.  Bert’s unique casting of his egg and chick was to bury in casting sand his piece of artwork that was carved with Styrofoam that would totally dissolve when the mouton aluminum was poured into the sand mold.

          Elizabeth Armour was sort of a traditional artist that would do original portraits as well as copperplate etchings.  We had connected because I had noted that most of the children in her etching reproductions had no faces and when I had asked her why such a fine artist that is well known for her portraits left a faces off of her subjects; she replied, “If I were to put a face on them then I would deny the purchaser of one of my etchings the opportunity of identifying the children as being someone that they have direct knowledge of.  One of the first pieces that I bought from her was entitled, “Summer of 42” and there was a girl riding one of those old bikes with big wheels on a shoreline.  I have a sister who is 10 years older than I am in the reality that I was born in the year 42, I always see this young girl as my own sister.

          It was some years later when I had taken John to San Carlos, we found Elizabeth very depressed and not producing any of her artwork because her husband had recently died.  I offered to buy any number of prints that she may have available, and fortunately she did have some.  What was the highlight of this visit was her returning from her closet with two originals that were used in making the two corresponding etchings.  She had related to us that she was saving these for her children, but she really thought that I would appreciate the more.  And in fact, these two originals and their corresponding etchings hang in my bedroom right now and I do, indeed, appreciate them with an unlimited amount of love and always will.  What a wonderful gift as well as such a wonderful and loving complement!

          The third artist was Nadja Baranowski and her expertise was miniatures, mostly of landscapes or other indigenous items found around San Carlos.  Nadja had become a good friend that actually came and lived with me in Albuquerque for about a year.  I had also met her mother whose name was also Nadja and was sometimes affectionately called “Nadja Sr.”  Her mother had always appreciated me as a caretaker of her daughter, mostly because I'd given her place to live when she had decided to leave Mexico.  Nadja has lived with me as a nonpaying guest and what I remember most about Nadja being around me was her fundamental Christian concern for my homosexuality.  I was apparently a goodly part of her prayer sessions with God.  Of course, her God never did cure me despite being repeatedly addressed by Nadja.

          When I had visited San Carlos and Guaymas, it was often for the purpose of scuba diving and hunting for seashells.  What I had brought back from San Carlos was some pieces of beautiful red coral that was flat and multi-branched.  I still have several those pieces that I had framed and hanging in my guest bath off of the entry way to this home that referred to as San Damiano.  There was also some unusual shells found only in that area the world, which was known as the Sea of Cortez or even the Gulf of California.  The other thing about visiting San Carlos was the great seafood and most particularly the wonderful shrimp that would come in daily on the fishing boats; of course, only during their season which was easily identified by the presence of an “R” in the spelling of the various months, i.e. JanuaRy, FebuRaRy, MaRch and ApRil.  These months are also a good time to get away from the cold weather.  It may interest you to know that even though I had lived much of my life in Florida, it wasn't until I moved to New Mexico that I had been certified for scuba diving.

It was about this time that I had also assisted the fraternity in their own building project on South campus.  One of the original buildings for ATΩ was a library that was actually later named, Joseph L. Walker Memorial Library.  It was about this same period of time that my parents and I had a most unusual visitor:

DR. GEORGE M. LAMSA, PH.D.: There is absolutely no question in my mind that my having Dr. Lamsa as a personal houseguest only a couple years before his death was most definitely the highlight of my life to that point in time.  Dr. Lamsa had expressed that second to his first passion of translating the Bible properly was his desire to meet up with Dr. Gilbert N. Holloway sometime before his death.  As much as my stepfather was so honored with his presence in Albuquerque, New Mexico for no other reason than to meet my stepfather, I’ve got to believe that the invisible forces of the universe had arranged this is totally unexpected meeting for my own personal benefit as this man’s knowledge about Jesus and his time on earth was and still remains superior in all aspects to any of the other biblical scholars of our times.  If I had not learned of the reality of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) from my gifted stepfather, there is no way that I would have easily understood my experience of the effortless absorption of such vast knowledge for just being in this man’s rather all-awesome presence.  What I had learned from this man’s unspoken intellect as well as his spoken words combined with my own unique genetic memory has afforded me a truly unique and more realistic sense of understanding and knowledge of the one and only man, Jesus of Nazareth.  I can’t imagine being the Father of the Age of Reality, without having had this very unusual encounter with a man that actually spoke the very same language as that of Jesus of Nazareth.  I am eternally grateful for this almost totally unrealistic and magical encounter with THE biblical scholar of the 20^th Century.  I wish to pay an extraordinary tribute to this unusual man, George Lamsa.

          George M. Lamsa, (August 5, 1892 – September 22, 1975)  was a native Assyrian, that became a renowned scholar of the scriptures, lecturer and author.  A F.R.S.A. that was born August 5, 1892, in a civilization with customs, manners, and language almost identical to those in the time of Jesus. His native tongue was full of similar idioms and parables, untouched by the outside world in 1900 years.

Until World War I, his people living in that part of ancient biblical lands which today is known as Kurdistan, in the basin of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, retained the simple nomadic life, as in the days of the Patriarchs.

Only at the beginning of the 20th century did this isolated segment of the once great Assyrian Empire learn of the discovery of America and the Reformation that had begun in Germany.

Likewise, until that same time, this ancient culture of early Christians was unknown to the western world, and the Aramaic (Syriac) language was thought to be dead. But in this so called "Cradle of Civilization," ancient biblical customs and Semitic culture, cut off from the world, were preserved.

Lamsa's primary training as a boy was to tend the lambs. But, as the first-born son in his family, while yet an infant, he was dedicated to God by his devout mother. Years after her death, when Lamsa was 12, her vow was renewed by native tribesmen when an ox was killed and its blood rubbed on his head. This vow to God, Lamsa claims, has always been part of him. "God's Hand," he affirms, "has been steadfastly on my shoulder, guiding me in His work."

Lamsa's formal studies began under the priests and deacons of the ancient Church of the East. Later he graduated with the highest honors ever bestowed from the Archbishop of Canterbury's Colleges in Iran and in Turkey, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Lamsa was never married, but dedicated his life to God's Calling."

At the beginning of World War I, when Turkey started invasions, Lamsa left and went to South America. Living was hard during those years; he knew only three words in Spanish -- water, work and bread. As best he could he existed in the British Merchant Marine for a time, then worked on railroads, in mines, and later in printing shops, a trade he had learned in college.

After arriving in the united States, in his early 20's, Lamsa worked as a printer by day, and by night went to school. He later studied at the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, and at Dropsie College in Philadelphia.

It was through his struggles with the idioms of English, during these years, that Lamsa gradually launched into his life's work of translating the Scriptures from Aramaic (Syriac) into English. Yet many years were to pass before the world received his translations.

First as a lecturer in churches and seminaries, in halls and auditoriums, before statesmen, theologians, groups of artists, actors and others, Lamsa received recognition as a poet-philosopher, and as an authority on all phases of Eastern civilization.

It was his own inner compulsion, and the urgings of hundreds who heard him, that drove him forward, and brought about, after 30 years of labor, research and study, his translation of the Holy Bible from a branch of the ancient Aramaic language, used by Christians from earliest times; it is a known fact that Jesus and his followers spoke Aramaic.

There were times when he was temporarily stopped in his translations, when the idioms in the manuscripts would not be given correct English meaning.

Lamsa relates, "Often I would lie on the bed with the script before my eyes (he has a photographic memory which retains chapter after chapter of biblical passages), and suddenly the translation would come, the English words would fall into place.

"I discovered that the words in the Bible contain power, that they are charged with the Holy Spirit. Everything comes and passes away, but God's Truth endures forever."

It was Lamsa's firm belief that his translations will bring people nearer to the Word of God, and will facilitate understanding between East and West.

Now, back to my own real world that was progressing quite comfortably in Albuquerque.  One of the other interesting realities of that period of time was when my parents temporarily moved to Albuquerque so that my stepfather, Dr. Gilbert Holloway could have his own talk show on KOB radio.  It was his talk show on KOB radio that had attracted some interesting guest, one of which was the governor of New Mexico, Bruce King, who also ended up in my home for a visit.  My stepfather soon got the bug to get back on the road as the Albuquerque market just wasn't large enough for his unusual talents.

As It was in the early fall of 1983 after having graduated from University Oklahoma with my Ph.D. that I contacted Dr. Greg Franchine at the Student Heath Center on the UNM campus.  Greg was the chairman of the Student Mental Health Center, and I had suggested that we might have lunch so that I could make him a proposition.  Interestingly, we had first met when I was establishing the ATΩ chapter at UNM back in 1968 and he was an active undergraduate brother in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) fraternity and part of the Inter-Fraternity Council (IFC), if I can remember correctly.  At this luncheon, I disclosed that I was gay and interested in becoming part of his staff as perhaps the first openly gay therapist at UNM.  “What an uncanny bit of timing this is, and to think that we have know each other so long,” was his pleasant response.  He said that he had just recently met with the Gay and Lesbian Student Union and had assured them that he would make a concerted effort to insure that the Student Mental Health facilities would become a little more “gay-friendly” under his watchful eye.  He was pleasantly surprised to discover my sexual orientation and said that I would be just the sort of gay individual that he would feel comfortable having as part of his professional staff.  Within the week following our lunch together he had planned a meeting with the other psychotherapists, and with their blessings he said he would immediately have me come aboard.  The meeting with the other staff members went very well, and I had my own office the following week.  As it turned out, most of my clients weren’t from the gay community, but my noted presence on the Mental Health staff demonstratively sent the message that the gay community was welcomed with open arms.

          It was towards the end of January 1989 that I decided to leave Cedar Crest and my most-beloved San Damiano and had headed westerly once again to what I thought was going to be my final destination in my life’s most unusual journey.  I sincerely thought I was leaving not only the home but also my life as I had known it.  My projection at that time of my perceived imminent demise was that I would go to Mendocino, California and spend the remainder of my limited days on earth just recording my various memoirs.  I had an exceptionally close friend from junior high way back in Miami, Denis Henn, who then had a rather comfortable vacation home just outside Mendocino.  Denis had once generously offered me its unlimited use anytime I might want or have the need to get away.  And it was time, I though, to take him up on his more than generous offer. 

While waiting to depart San Francisco, I met John Howell on the 10^th of April, 1989 and made one of those instantaneous connections. We immediately had gold wedding bands engraved that very night of that day that we first met and exchanged them at the Moonraker Restaurant in Pacifica, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  I had chosen that particular restaurant because my mother had taken me there several years prior; so I chose that restaurant simply because my mother had just died, and John and I actually was seated in the same booth that my mother, stepfather and I had sat on that previous visit.

John even joined me in New Mexico just following my mother’s funeral in Deming.  Of an amusing note: when John had called his mother in Indiana to inform her about his new boyfriend, she caringly suggested, “You don’t even know this man.  He might take you off in that New Mexico desert and kill you!”  To which John had replied, “Well, Mom, here’s his telephone number in Albuquerque just in case you should want to reach me and find out if I’m OK.”

John and I mutually decided to give our newfound relationship a try while remaining in San Francisco, and we ended up living in a Twin Peaks area apartment that had a great view of the downtown area as well as the Bay Bridge.  It was there that I reintroduced myself to the wonderful world of orchids and bought a modest number from both the well-known San Francisco Flower Market and a couple of orchid dealers in the Bay area.  We fell most definitely short of finishing our year’s lease because of the extremely high costs in California of both renting and feeding ourselves.  And, after all, I already had this beautiful home that I had so serendipitously abandoned back in Cedar Crest, New Mexico affectionately known as the Land of Enchantment. Fortunately, my family hadn’t sold off San Damiano as I had intended as well as encouraged upon my initial departure.  I still hadn’t fully abandoned the notion that I was probably going to be dead in short order and thus, my personal and romantic commitment to John was to sort of to enjoy what time I had left with a wonderful man that I highly respected for his artistic talents, accompanied by the fact that he didn’t smoke or drink alcohol and lead a totally non-substance abuse lifestyle--a most noted exceptional find in the gay community, then as well as now!

The remainder of my westward ho memories are all wrapped up in other chapters to follow.  Most notably will be my most bigoted of experiences with the American Orchid Society (Orchid Hell Chronicles) which had most certainly contributed the most negative of any of the other experiences that had led to my serious reviewing of the most negative of the contributions of Christianity to myself as well as to the rest of the world.  The most egregious error of the Christian Church was that awful proclamation that HIV/AIDS was the wrath of God on the gay world for their having violated his laws with their lifestyle. There was most fortunately some equally positive experiences with my being in New Mexico, the most notably of which can be read in the three chapters that are entitled, San Damiano Chronicles, Age of Reality Chronicles and the Spiritual Maturity Chronicles.