Kathy, the Advocacy
Coordinator of the Southern Tier Office of Social Ministry located in Elmira,
New York, and I partnered on a number of public witness activities during the
years I was a church pastor there. One
day she called to say there was a Nuclear Disarmament Conference scheduled at
Riverside Church in New York City and she wanted to know if I would like to go
with her. She didn’t have to ask twice.
Not long before her call I
read Once to Every Man, the memoir of
William Sloane Coffin who was the Senior Minister at Riverside. It was one of those books I could not put
down, and I read it in two days.
Subsequent to reading the memoir I got a copy of another Coffin book, Courage to Love, and eagerly soaked up
every word of it, as well. I wasn’t going to pass up a
chance to spend two days with someone I found so inspiring.
It was about a four-hour drive
from Elmira to New York, and I had arranged to stay overnight at the apartment
of a member of Riverside, a Ms. Goossen, who volunteered to make accommodations
available for a conference attendee.
Kathy, being from Queens, was booked in with relatives. We found the street where Ms. Goossen lived, and Kathy dropped me off.
When I checked the address of
her building I quickly saw there was no such street number, and as Kathy drove
off, I wasn’t sure what to do. It was
dark as I picked up my suitcase and began walking, a bit aimlessly, trying to
decide how I might find Ms. Goossen’s apartment. This was shortly after the Bernard Goetz
incident in which Goetz shot one or more young men who aggressively asked him
for money on the New York subway. As I
walked along Broadway a man asked me for money, I said no, and he was very
apologetic as he backed away.
One thought I had was to try
and find Riverside Church and maybe spend the night there, but after walking a
few blocks I went into a bar and found a phone booth. Fortunately, there was a phone book chained
to the booth, and even more fortunately, Ms. Goossen was listed. I saw her address, called to say I was late
arriving, and walked back to her street.
The address I originally was given had a couple of the digits transposed,
causing the confusion.
The next morning I stood on
the street until Kathy arrived to drive us to the church, and we went there
without further trouble.
The first workshop I attended
featured Rev. Coffin and Professor Seymour Melman of Columbia University
speaking about the concept of Economic Conversion, which in essence meant
finding a new purpose or product for a munitions factory rather than simply
closing it down, thus saving the jobs of the employees.
Following the discussion, I
went up to Rev. Coffin, introduced myself, and asked him to inscribe my copy of
his book. He opened the cover, saw where
I had put my name, wrote “To” in front of it, then wrote, “God Bless! Bill C”
Bill C was very visible throughout
the whole conference, so I was pleased about that. At a plenary session in the huge sanctuary
Pete Seeger led some singing, and I remember Rev. Coffin introducing others who
were present. When he mentioned a young
man there who was facing consequences for refusing to register with Select
Service, he said, “We try to raise our children to be people of conscience, so
it seems to me we should stand by them in their moments of conscience.”
There were speakers and
workshops on a variety of topics, not all directly related to nuclear
disarmament, but equally inspiring nonetheless.
I recall one discussion about a call to boycott Campbell’s Soup because
of the poor conditions experienced by produce pickers that supplied the company. At one point I found a corner in the church
and spent some time making notes for my sermon on the following Sunday. I figured I never would preach at Riverside
Church, but I could at least prepare a sermon there.
Following a final workshop I
was supposed to meet Kathy in the main lobby outside the sanctuary so we could
head for home. It was a Saturday afternoon,
there was a big wedding about to begin in the sanctuary, many people from the
conference were milling about, and the elevator opened. Among the people leaving the elevator there
was a pigeon, walking out with everyone as if he were just going about his
business in a normal way. None of his fellow passengers seemed to notice or
care as he disappeared into the crowd.
Needless to say, after
spending time at the conference, being with Rev. Coffin and so many others
dedicated to matters of peace and social justice, I was renewed in my
commitment to raise the issues that Kathy and I highlighted in our witness
together in Elmira.
Little did I know it would
lead me to my further work with the Quakers, and to a few other even closer
encounters with William Sloane Coffin, and with his successor Rev. Dr. James
Forbes, along the way.
