The first question, I guess is, how are you today?
 

To make a long story short, he did, move into a nice house in Silver Spring. The community was a private community, it wasn't exactly in town but it was north of there a little bit. A nice middle class society, which was interesting in more ways then one. To make it brief, only one neighbor had an objection. He talked to him. Dick went to talk to him, and he said, "Frankly it's not you, it's the idea, and I'm not used to it. And I'm not sure I can get used to it." He did [move in], and after he had lived there a year or two years, and finally he moved into, bought a house in Washington, DC. This man came to him and said, " You changed my opinion." And everything really was fine, in that sense it worked out well. At this same time the Civil Rights Movement was beginning. We were active. Am I giving you too much?
 

Now, you have to understand that Carville, which is on the banks of the Mississippi, was in rural Louisiana. Man, it was rural Louisiana! And I don't want to spend too much time there, but I learned a whole new aspect...First of all, the little village near there was called St. Gabriel. And, in St. Gabriel our children and others in the hospital, the Leprosarium or hospital, went to their school, our school, and the bus picked up all the white kids, then a second bus came and picked up all the black kids. They went to their school, Sunshine. It was interesting. It bothered me, but there was little we could do about it. Looking back on that, times were changing. Already in the little village of St. Gabriel, and remember it was about twenty miles down river from Baton Rouge which is still has it's problems, the atmosphere was different. So that often when we went to Baton Rouge on Friday evenings, routinely there was about halfway there, in a field, there would be a meeting of the Klan, the Klu Klux Klan. In robes, burning crosses, and having their rally, weekly. One thing that you didn't know, one didn't know, was who belonged to the Klan, and who didn't. There were a few that I suspected, but the were some close friends of ours that very well might have been. I don't know. The fact was, we went through his. I mentioned that because it's important, I'd hadn't had an introduction into the South then.

And the interesting part about living there was, not only, getting to know both sides, but there we also the French the Cajuns, the Cajuns were themselves by this time part of Louisiana, certainly in New Orleans. But there was a whole different atmosphere. I could go on and on about rural Louisiana's and how, though white, the French extraction still had their, well, it was a different culture. I'm talking about rural Louisiana now, living in the Bijou's. People go in there, and live in the Bijou's, you never see them. They come out about a year, once a year, or twice to get supplies and they can live. What they do, I don't know to this day. But it was an interesting cross-cultural relationship.
 

One time, in route, we went through Memphis, Tennessee. We had heard on the radio that Martin Luther King was coming to that town that day. So we went out of our way to go meet, in this black neighborhood, and wait for in that black neighborhood, him cause you knew where his path was going to be. People were gathering, interestingly, all black, I didn't see a white face there excepting ours. We stood in front of a store that had a windowsill. And my youngest son then was about six to eight somewhere, six or seven. And here came Martin Luther King, and others of that movement. I don't know who all was in it, but I'm sure Jessie Jackson was, and I think that Farmer was, and others. But...they came right down there was an old Negro, that when he saw my little son was, the crowd was in the way of him seeing. He took him up, lifted him and set him on this window and said it was so, "you can see my King!" I think it was a very electric and very moving. I don't think Joe knew, realized what he was doing, but it was a very wonderful thing...So I did see Martin Luther King. Near Selma, Alabama, where the President, congressman, and John Lewis passed, we knew it well because we went through there all the time going to and from New Orleans, and on the way to Baton Rouge. We were there, in Philadelphia soon after the three Civil Rights workers, I've forgotten there names now, but were killed, near Philadelphia. And to spend the night there was kind of interesting, to say the least. It was somewhat eerie....

Back to the statement I made a while ago about later on, after the Peace Core, before I was there, the action of the Peace Core, I'm sorry, the Public Health Service. Dick Smith, bold Afro-American, was sent there to work in that movement. He, very interestingly, (go away cat, your starting to bother me)... he had some very interesting experiences. Some of them quite frightening. As a matter of fact, somebody put him in the trunk of their car, to carry him out of a place in Mississippi. A place I knew well, I'd stopped to get gasoline there many times, it was about the only place we could get it. I'd known the town, eaten there many, many times in route because in happened to be eating time. So I know exactly where he was and when it happened, after the fact. There were other things like this, but we did make a difference in the South. And I did know Selma, very, very much before and after, uh I've forgotten his name too, the one who really went into the...
 

He owned this farm, and when my daughter asked, "Grandpa will you build us a house?" He said, "Yes." So we got seven acres of the piece of farm up here. And he and I, with a lot of help, he was the builder, I was the gopher. But we built this house, with a lot of help, personal help, and family help, as well as contracting and so forth. We finally were able to finish this house. As a result, before we finished it, we knew we were gonna be here before the school [year] had finished, and so my wife, we were living in Bethesda, brought the kids up here to start them in school. Robert then, our youngest son, was in the fifth grade, our daughter was starting a year earlier into middle school. And that's how we got to Frederick County. And that's when the story begins.
 

About 11, 9, 10 years ago now, we weren't involved but many people were, one of them being one of our local policeman, with whom I've spoken to since, recently. There was a Klan, a Ku Klux Klan was holding a rally, and a march through the streets of Thurmont. They first asked for permission, and they were not given the permit. For which they went to court, and it cost the city about 60, 70 thousand dollars. Which was a big burden to this little town. And that was then. As a result, here about, 3 almost going on 3 and a half years ago now- there is a lot that went on between, but I must add that it's not a secret that the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan lives in Rocky Ridge, it's also no secret that he went to Thurmont schools. Went to high school at Catoctin High, I don't know if he graduated or not, I've never met the man, but that flavor is still here...Now, shall I go on with the rest of this, because you asked about the organization?
 

Well this was 9:30 to 10:00 at night, something I would never do is call the principal, but I thought that it was time to let him know. And I did, and apologized for calling him that late at night. I said, "We need to talk." He said "I can't see you until after 8:10 in the morning." Which is when he reads the, 8:05 I guess he said was, but he said he meets the students out front then he reads the orders of the day on the microphone and so forth. So I was there at 8:00, waiting. And didn't notice that it was about 8:20 or so and he came in. and he said, "I'm sorry I kept you waiting, but come in my office." And we went into his office, and he closed the door. He said, "The reason I was late" and I hadn't realized that he was late, "was because we had a stand off this morning out there, and I had to get that settled." Now I don't mean to go into too much detail. The, do you want more detail?
 

Well, go back 3 years and then from now, today. After this event had happened at school. The Ministerium did decide that they would support this. And we called a meeting. He (the Minister) called the meeting, and we, we started anyone else in the community, members of the ministerium or their representative, and then a few others from the community went to that meeting, which we've been holding monthly, more or less monthly, ever since. And the purpose of the meeting was not to just counter the Klan meeting which was coming up June 8, 1996. They were having a meeting, I mean a rally, downtown, and had already been accommodated by the City Council to use the City Park. We decided that we ought to have a counter meeting on the same day, and we would like to use Memorial Park, downtown. Well this permission was granted, but it was on a one time basis because they don't give permits to use the Memorial Park, it's open to everybody from sunrise to sunset through out the year. And anybody can go there, so they could not, didn't feel it could be legally so, plus the fact that they didn't want to be sued again. They would not permit it the second year. So the first year we had a large turn out, and I'm happy to say, since my son attended the rally at both places, including the Klan's as well as the other. And some of his friends were Afro-Americans and, one of them even asked for an application blank, and they laughed at him. But the kid who was, young man I should say, who had been accused of trying to run over this boy, was there in his outfit, in his cap and so forth, later on my daughter also went over, she looked at him, they were in the same class, and she said, "Don't you feel kind of silly dressed like that?" That kind of embarrassed him. There is a story to this, and I'm not necessarily going to go on with that, but it had some influence on him too, that was good. And to the event on that day, according to my son's calculations, they had less then 20 [people], this included 1 busload of skinheads they'd bused in from Baltimore. So they had less then 20 people there.

The press came immediately, and they got all there.... and they left, both their meeting and our meeting. So the press never got a story about this.

We had a meeting going on for the whole time, 4 hours, 6 hours what ever it was, active participation of members in community, what's his name...Trout sang, the local hero of opera. You know we have an opera singer here, whose family is still here and he visited his home. He sang two songs that day, it was actually thrilling. We had a radio personality and his choir that came and sang, we had a multiplicity of people and performances, and activity the whole time, and food. We served over 600 people that day. To make a comparison, that's why I say "Bum rap for a city the get", when that many people turned out, and goodness knows how many more people didn't turn out that felt either way. That we don't know, that's always the part that's troubling, as well as a relief, because if push came to shove, I'm sure, that the people here would support the openness policy.

Well to make a long story short, we had our monthly meeting there after. And, Mt. Saint Mary's participated very active in them. The Catholic Church, the Methodist Church, the Church of the Brethren, actively the United Church of Christ, the United Churches of Christ, and the Lutheran Church, others were all active in this. Very active. And, we had a second meeting on June 8th incidently the next year, and June 13th the last year, this year which is 1998. And our meeting, approximately monthly now, is not just to plan for that event because we want to keep activity through out the community. And that to start with, have a name, we came up with something we wanted to call it- "Thurmont United in Love." Since that time it's grown to the point where we've dropped the "Thurmont" and it's now just "United in Love," for very good reasons. Because the wider community of the area including Frederick, including, uh...
 

[Tape Stops]

[Tape Starts]
 

[Tape Stops]