During our first two years in Evanston, we were living above a store and wondering how we could supplement my annual minister's salary of just $2200. No car, pension or living allowances were provided. Edith suggested that in view of my former status as a writer and performer of legerdemain, I should try to secure a limited number of dates on the national celebrity lecture platform. After a rocky start, I finally became one of the three major speakers on this subject, limiting myself to 35 dates a year, across the country. This solved our dilemma about being able to remain in the ministry, my main dedication.

Unitarians were often considered outside the pale by many traditional lay persons and clergy, so it was a cause for some eye-lifting when I was the first Unitarian made president of the interfaith Evanston Ministerial Association. Two ministers, a Lutheran and a high Anglican, resigned over this. After a six year pastorate I resigned my church position out of sheer fatigue, not yet having learned to delegate the many tasks a quickly growing church entails. We were now ready either to enlarge our sanctuary or construct a new edifice that the congregation required. That was left to my successor, the gifted Dr. Homer Jack. He accomplished this goal. Today, it is one of the largest Unitarian Universalist churches in mid North America.

For my sabbatical year, in 1948-49, I was designated Asiatic Correspondent for the Chicago Sun-Times and represented the Christian Register on a trip around the world. I interviewed and photographed the prime ministers of Japan, China, Thailand and India, the governors of Hong Kong and Singapore, and the president and three former presidents of the Philippines.

During two hours with Marshal Li Chi-shen, exiled in Hong Kong (Chiang Kai-shek's nemesis) I squeezed out of him information that he was conspiring with the vice-president of China, Li Tsung-jen, to overthrow the government of Generalisimo Chiang and install a union administration with the Communists. This revealed threat was a world scoop. If the split were known, the already rocky Kuomintang administration would fall because the U. S. would stop its China Aid program propping it up. That is exactly what happened, i.e., China's government collapsed. The Communists won the war and took over. Chiang fled to Taiwan with his administration.

  Harvard Square Library Home Page