A Page 4-Saturday, November 10,.1979-The Michigan Daily l 41, r 4+ 11gan Ott I Ninety Years of Editorial Freedom Vol. LXXXX, No. 57 News Phone: 764-0552 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan How deep is our malaise? F TWO IS COMPANY and three is a crowd, the list of Democrats hoping to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 1981 is getting just a little bit cramped. In what could easily be the worst two days of Jimmy Carter's presidency, not one, but two Democrats made it official that they want the president's job. The casualty of what promises to be a rough-and-tumble primary will not be either of the three politicos who will take turns carving up the other. Nor will the party itself be in much disrepair, since Democrats have hiistorically loved to disagree, then kiss and make up in the off-years. i No,. the true victims of this battle royal will be the innocent by-standers on the sidelines-the American people. One candidate tells us we are mired in 'malaise", the other candidate tells us that such is not the case, that we are mherely "sinking into crisis." Then a third candidate rebuffs both ex- planations, and tells us that our problem is we are "a sleeping giant that needs to be awakened." 'So which is it? Are we truly bogged down in this mysterious force called "malaise," this undefinable substance that must be something akin to nMayonaise, sticky, quicksand-like, impeding our forward motion? Or is it that we are "sinking into crisis," sort ofacesspool of national problems, which is distinguishable from malaise in that "sinking" implies water, which has a higher viscosity than malaise? Or, could it be that neither is true, that we have only been sleeping all this time. like the giant in the fairy tale, surrounded by a sea of lilliputins, and that all we need is a gentle jostle to wake us from our slumber? Either way, no matter which of the three sides win, it would appear that the American people will come out of the 1980 primaries either malaised, sunk, or sound asleep. No matter who wins, it seems we lose. It is time for the American people to stand up to this kind of vicious maligning and verbal slander. Americans consider themselves quite free of malaise, qite adept at swim- ming out of our crises, and quite wide awake, thank you. So if Jimmy and Jerry and Teddy want to drag each other through the mud for the next eight months, criticizing each other's ineptitude and personal integrity, so be it. That, un- forunately, is what politics is all about. But all the American people ask is that when the politicians talk about the problems in the country, just leave us out of it. We don't really want to be disturbed. By Elizabeth Gatov AP Photo' Recalling Jonestown: To Hell and back Another group of hostages AMERICA WAS plagued by two crises in Iran this week. The first one, the students' takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran enters its seventh day today, but there seems to be no rest in sight. Mediation efforts continue between PLO representatives and backers of the Khomeini dictator- ship as the nation watches with restrained agony. It is the second crisis, though, which may be less urgent now, but which threatens to expand into another edition of the latest national catastrophe-the energy -problem. While U.S. negotiators and the public were waiting to find how their helpless countrymen were faring under cap- tivity, Iranian officials notified some American oil companies that they will receive almost ten per cent less oil than they expected from Iran for the rest of the year. This heavy cutoff once again under- scores the, country's decade-long vulnerability to foreign oil reserves. Once delivered, the news triggered signs of deep concern among Carter administration officials, and within the business community. The stock market trailed off again, anticipating higher oil and gas prices in the near future. The news was not really that sur- prising. In recent months, Ayatollah has stepped up its anti-American propaganda even in the face of sincere efforts by U.S. diplomats to repair relations between the two former allies. Yet there was always the hope that the clergy-dominated government would privately maintain its economic and even political connections with the ahted 'Americans. That hope has now been dashed, and the future of Iranian- American relations looks extremely bleak, regardless of what happens to the hostages. How ironic it is that this disturbing news is overshadowed by other events in that turmoil-ridden modern Islamic Republic. The eventual impact, however, cannot be ignored for the winter is slowly creeping in, and fuel and home-heating oil prices are expec- ted to climb to new record levels. Already Congress and the ad-. ministration-anticipating the dread- ful season-have allocated millions of dollars to ease the pain. That will help, 'but probably not enough. And with the 1980 election hovering over both bran- ches' heads, their hands will be tied and more relief will not be easy to get. The only sure relief is spelled F-R-E- E-D-O-M, freedom from the mercy of foreign oil powers, most notably the OPEC heavyweights. For too long, the United States has had to. pay exor- bitant fees to fund the greedy pocket- books of the sheiks in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia while the poor families in Maine and New Hampshire give up their lives' savings. To rip the chains of OPEC bondage, the U.S. will have to continue on its course toward development of synthetic fuels, solar energy and more fuel-efficient automobiles. And of course, conser- vation would help. One productive step was canned, ironically, when President Carter can- celled a two-day trip to Canada to stay in touch on the fate of the 60 hostages. A main item on his agenda with our northern neighbors will be to fight the energy shortage together, a move un- doubtedly that would ease the crisis. Without these and other necessary initiatives, OPEC will continue to dominate our oil future. Those unfor- tunate 60 Americans in Teheran are not the only hostages. So are the American people. Almost one year ago, on November 18, 1978, more than 1100 men, women, and children perished in the grisly mass murder/suicide of the People's Temple in Jonestown, Guyana. Elizabeth Gatov, a lecturer and writer on social trends, has come to know two people-Tim and Grace Stoen-who operated at the top of the People's Temple and who survived the jungle holocaust by leaving the chur- ch before it was consumed in madness. The following is Gatov's unique insight into the People's Temple phenomenon, through the eyes of the Stoens. Tim's story ap- pears today, and Grace's story will appear on this page tomorrow. Tim Stoen and Grace Grech stood proudly before the Rev. Jim Jones in the sunny, pastoral seclusion of the Peoples Temple in Redwood Valley, California. It was July, 1970, their wedding day, a blissful day marred by only one event: When Tim's mother, a devout fundamentalist Baptist, looked at the Rev. Jones she believed she saw the Anti- Christ, the Devil. After the ser- vice, she slumped to the floor in a faint and had to be carried out. The Jim Jones who Tim Stoen looked upon that day was quite the opposite: He was the closest thing on earth to the Jesus Tim had been raised to worship. But Grace worshipped only Tim; to Jones she was indif- ferent. Then 19, she had aban- doned her Roman Catholic faith a year earlier, and now Tim Stoen was her religion. She was awed by his educated mind, his lawyer's diplomas, the in- teresting friends he kept and the aura he exuded of having been raise "with a silver spoon in his mouth." GRACE LIKED THAT. The daughter of working class paren- ts of Mexican descent, she felt her own life had been narrow and barren. Growing up, her sense of self-esteem had been so low, despite the physical evudence in the mirror, that she was sure no man would ever ask her to marry him. And then, in 1969, she had met Tim Stoen. It was at an anti-war rally in her hometown, San Fran- cisco, and they had struck up a conversation, had coffee together, visited Tim's law office in the city and his apartment in Berkeley, where bright, fascinating friends constantly trooped in and out. "I felt like Alice in Won- derland. It was another world," says Grace. Tim, 31, single, Republican and uneasy over the social inequities of the time, was equally struck by Grace. It was not only her beauty, her warm, dark eyes and glossy black hair, but the fac' that one so young and innoce. clearly had a mind of her own. He loved her healthy skepticism, a nualitv almost totally lacking in a union of opposites that would, over the next eight years, unravel in the midst of a mounting horror that would shock the entire world. The stories of Tim and Grace Stoen, and of their ill-fated child, John Victor, are part and parcel of the tragedy of Peoples Temple. TIM'S STORY "I AM A theological conser- vativeand a socialradical," Tim Stoen said to Jim Jones at their first meeting on August 8, 1967. At the time, Tim knew little about Jones, and even less about his church. Tim was applying for a one-year job to organize the newly formed Legal Services program of Mendocino County, where Jones had his church, and Jones sat on the Board of Direc- to rs. '. Jones liked the description Stoen had given; it fit his own philosophy. And so during the en- suing months, after Tim was hired by the county, Jones gradually began to cultivate this bright young attorney with a social conscience by little acts of generosity such as sending chur- ch members over to clean up the cluttered offices where Tim was working. But though Tim saw Jones once a month on routine county business, and though he admired Jones' principles and the dedication of his congregation, he did not begin attending services at Peoples Temple until two years later, after he had set up private practice in San Francisco and met the young and beautiful Grace Grech. Though other religious ac- tivists in Berkley, Tim was per- suaded early in 1969 to make the two-and-a-half hour drive to Redwood Valley in Mendocino County and attend a Sunday ser- vice at Jones' church. The drive soon became a weekly affair, with Tim urging other friends to accompany him: Only Grace, out of love for him, did so regularly. Tim, even at the time, was a man of native eloquence. He en- joyed owning a Porsche and vaguely planning a political career. But like other progressive lawyers of the time, he was profoundly guilt-ridden about his elitist life, about the fact that he could enjoy the luxuries of the professional class in an unjust world of war, racism and capitalist exploitation. He saw in Jim Jones a man with a practical as well as a mystical program that might redress these wrongs. Jones' requirement that his followers live a simple life, share with one another and renounce material possessions resembled the way Christ's disciples lived, and it tugged at Tim's desire to do something "pure." HE BELIEVES, TOO, that he had a need to live within a struc- tured system, a clear moral universe such as that his Baptist mother had raised him in. "Whether it's Calvinism or a political system like Marxism," says Tim today, "it attracts people like me who are uncom- fortable with the ambiguity inherent in relying mainly on Part I wood Valley, where he tool a new job as County Counsel, a position that made him extremely valuable to Jones who, even then, was searching for respectability and access to the community's social and business leaders. Three . months later, Tim married Grace and they began what they believed would be an idyllic, idealistic life together. It never even began to happen. Almost from the moment of their marriage, Tim had an all- consuming mistress-the church. He loved the sacrifice: He gave up all his valued possessions but for a few books; he bought his clothes at the Salvation Army, he would happily have given up his salary to the church, as other members did, but for Grace's refusal. Andperhaps most important, he gave up all sense of family privacy. "Grace and I never lived alone, from day one," he: says. "We were expected to give our livesfor others. There were always other people living in the house." LIKE OTHERS in the Temple, both Tim and Grace in effect worked two jobs one on the out- side and one for the Temple. Tim worked long and hard hours as County Cpunsel, then long past midnight on the Temple's legal affairs, keeping Jones out of trouble and, later, patiently ex- ploring the legal means to tran- sfer Temple funds into Panamanian bank accounts as the Temple made plans to move to Guyana. He rarely went to bed before 3 a. m. "Grace and I never developed a relationship because we never had a chance to go off and do things," he recalls. "One time we went to the beach for a day (one of the two days of their marriage that they spent alone), but there were so many conflicts in our lives. Grace wanted to leave the church but she didn't want to leave me. I didn't believe in the right of a family or an exclusive relationship unless everybody could have it." Tim's great value to Jones as a legal expert with a high standing in the community, combined with his nearly blind faith ineJones, served to protect him from some of the harsher realities of the Peoples Temple, to which others, including Grace, were beginning to react to. The faked faith healings that Jones perfor- med, for instance, Tim accepted on faith, even notarizing statements from participants that they hae been healed. "If these people say they are healed," he puzzled to himself, "who am I to say they are not? There have been so many mirac- les in the past, so many things that can't be explained logically" As for the meetings of the Planning Commission, a kind of Temple board of directors on which both he and Grace were members, Tim rarely attended them, being excused for various k".. 00".o_ U m hre it UNBEKNOWNST to Grace, Timagreed just months after the birth to sign a document that- Jones had prepared stating what he knew to be a lie: that John Vic- tor had been fathered by Jim Jones. Jones explained that he needed something to hold over Tim's head as a threat against- the possibilitysthat he might one day defect. Tim says he agreed to: sign the document because he wanted to placate Jones and assure him of his devotion, and because as a lawyer he knew the document would not stand up in- court in any case. Though Tim loved his son, and today fondly recalls holding him as a baby and rocking him to sleep, he had less and less time for either the boy or Grace. Though their marriage lasted for several more years, held together by the son, it was not as man and wife. It ended officially in 1976 when Tim moved back to San Fran- cisco to take a new job with the District Attorney's office and Grace, whom he rarely saw anymore, suddenly left the chur- ch' and disappeared. Tim didn't even know she had left unit four days later, and John Victor had long since been removed to a communal home run by the Ten- mple., Tim's move to San Francisco was, at least in part, a confir- ' mation of Jone's early fears that he might eventually leave the church. Unquestioning loyalty, guilt and a need to believe in someone as a higher power to replace the authoritarian figure of his youth had kept Tim in line for seven years. But the constant beratings he had suffered for his love for his son had opened a crack in the armor. Tim had delighted in being a father, even though the opportunities were rare. His love for John Victor had become so evident that Jones and others on the Planning Commission punished him for it incessantly. Jones told him that kindness, compassion and parental love were weaknesses to be dispised. Children were to be brought up communally, by strict socialist principles, in order that they not be contaminated by tle defects of their parents. By early 1976, John Victor, had been placed with a fulltime surrogate parents in a communal home, and this and other events secretly gnawed at Tim, Finally, an incident occurred which severed him from Jones as completely as a head from its body by the guillotine. At the end of an all night Plan- ning Commission session, one of the few he attended, Jones ac- cused Tim of being a homosexual. He demanded that Tim admit as much. "DAMN IT, JIM, I am not a homosexual," Tim screamed. "I'm not-going to call myself one. I remember the fine and beautiful moments I've had with women and nobody can take those thoughts away from me. The accusation struck Tim in an emotional explosion of revulsion against Jones. It began the spark'which consumed his already flawed faith and fired his determination to leave. Lbt Michigan 19 at-IV EDITORIAL STAFF Sue Warnr.r..................IT-IN-CIEF Richard Berke, Julie Rovern .........MANAGING EDITORS Michael Arkush, Keith Richburg.,...EDITORIAL DIRECTORS Brian Blanchard.....................UNIVERSITY EDITOR Judy Rakowsky..............................CITY EDITOR Shlle Wolson .................PERSONNEL DIRECTOR Amy Saltzman........................EATURES EITOR Leoar Rpr.n.,I.in.. ' g---------PI.'IAI P1UbiIFCdTS BUSINESS STAFF LISA CULBERSON....................Business Manager ARLENE SARYAN..........................ales Manager BETH WARREN.........................Oislay Manager ROSEMARY WICKOWSKI..............Operations Manager BETH BASSLER.......................Classified Manager STAN BERKMAN...............National Advertising Manager