A month or so, ago, I asked Barbara Anderson, by way of email, a question about the Bethel libraries, in particular, the one(s) to which the writers had access. I had hoped, based on her experience and perspective, she would jump in on one of our threads where the library topic had been raised. I didn’t know until several days ago that she and Joe had been away on vacation. Well, she emailed me an answer about those libraries which I thought to be very interesting. I asked her permission to share it all of with you, which she granted. I also decided to create a thread of its own – this one. As an aside, one of the posters to the original thread had made mention of a secret room. Barbara addresses this as well. Len Miller.
As to inf ormation about t he libraries in Bethel , I’ll try to answer your questions. However, I don’t think I can validate that there was a “secret” room which was used to hide Watch Tower literature that the organization doesn’t want people to see.
When I was in Bethel, the Writing Library was located on the 8th floor of the 25 Columbia Heights office building . It was under the control of librarian and senior writer, Gene Smalley, and his secretary/assistant, Sarah Hall. My office was also on the 8th floor, at the East River end of the building.
A lobby and elevators located in the center of each floor in the building divided all the floors in half. The library was located in the central part at the other end of the 8th floor with staffs’ private offices located around the library. I recall that there were about eight to ten offices of average size on each side of the library, along with Klein's very large office on one side.
To me, the Writing Department's library seemed huge, but I have no idea how many books there were and the area they all occupied.
The use of the library was confined to the Writing, Art, and Graphics departments -- which all fell under the control of Writing. Any Bethelites not connected with these departments, and wishing to use the library for research, needed special permission to do so. Otherwise it was off-limits.
Special tours could be arranged by staff to bring friends and relatives into the Writing Department and staff guides could show them the library. During the nearly four years when I was in that department, I brought in quite a number of visitors and showed them interesting items on the shelves and told them how the department operated. There was no prohibition against taking pictures that I can remember. In fact, many visitors in my tours took pictures.
To the best of my knowledge, every Watch Tower Society publication could be found in the Writing Department's library. In addition, there were hundreds of books not published by the Society. There were Bible commentaries galore, and shelves upon shelves of old and new books on religion, Bible history, and archeology. There were also books about current events.
One of the assignments from my overseer, Karl Adams, was to list every publication which J. F. Rutherford had written. This I was able to do because I had also had access to every book the Society published. Karl wanted a fresh look at the number and names of Rutherford’s books and so I did not use some previously published list.
All of my assignments involved the Society’s publications in some way or the other, so how could I have done my job if all of the books were not available for me to see.
To believe that there was some secret room where Watch Tower secret books were hidden is not something I can accept. Since I was researching for the compilation of a history book, I was given unlimited opportunity to go anywhere in the Bethel complex and talk to anybody about the Society’s history, so there’s no reason to suppose that there were hidden and secret books. If there were, I believe I would have found them or heard about them in those three years of research. During my detective-like investigation of the Society’s history, I found material no one knew of before, so why would the Governing Body and the Writing departments try to hide material from me?
I remember a storage closet located at the end of the 8th floor near my office, which contained only "apostate" books. That was open to the Writing staff. All the publications we are familiar with that are in opposition to Jehovah's Witnesses could be found there. At the time, I was too busy to read any of them. Also, I might add, I was not interested in them because I believed they were filled with lies about “Jehovah’s organization.”
Located all around the Bethel homes were smaller libraries such as you would find in many Kingdom Halls. Inside, there usually were a few chairs, lamp tables and a couch. The shelves would generally contain all seven volumes of the Reprints of the Watchtower journals from 1879-1919; many Bible translations, and miscellaneous Watchtower Society books. There were other books that Gene thought could be of some importance and which Bethelites might need for personal research.
In all my Writing Department tenure, I never heard of a hidden library, but I knew of a private archival storage area that only Gene and his secretary/assistant frequented. I don't know where it was located because I didn’t think to ask and because it was none of my business. It probably was behind one of the closed office doors on the 8th or 9th floor of the building. In such a room, Gene and his assistant stored old Society correspondence and duplicate copies of some very old Society publications which Gene would use to replace excessively worn copies found on the library shelves.
I had access to the contents of the off-limits archival room but only through a formal request. All I had to do was ask to see an item and it was checked out to me within a few hours. Here are some examples of what was kept inside:
- any or all of the letters that C. T. Russell wrote on a particular subject
- the Russells’ divorce court trial transcript
- C. T. Russell’s appeals of the divorce and other papers to do with those events
- Rutherford’s and the Society’s private papers related to the Watch Tower directors’ sedition trial which took place in June, 1918
- anything to do with the Photo-Drama of Creation.
In the Russell and Rutherford era it was common for the Bible Students to publish one-page, newspaper size tracts, which were then handed to people outside of conventions, etc. Some of these papers strongly resembled newspapers or large advertisements which, I believe, was the Society’s intent, in order that people would be more inclined to accept that free copy. I have a copy of one which, at first glance, appears to be a union newspaper, but upon closer examination, it was announcing the Kingdom as the hope of mankind -- not of any union. During those years, there were many of these produced and the Writing Department kept the original, yellowed, and fragile copies in the Writing Department’s archival room rather than on some library bookshelf.
Writing staff member, Ciro Aulicino, was there to provide us with any books we wanted for research from the huge downtown New York City Public Library. He went there every Wednesday to fill our orders.
Don Kommers, of the Building Office, kept a warehouse storage area which contained huge quantities of old Society literature and other material associated with the Witness work. That unfinished room was located on an otherwise empty and unfinished floor of the 30 Columbia Heights building. There, I saw plenty of raw wooden shelves that held many, many sets of WT Reprints; sets of Millennial Dawn and Studies in the Scriptures; sets of the Rutherford "Rainbow" series books; Russell and Rutherford wax records; old record players, and anything else connected with the early activities of the religion.
There was a large basket filled with "Cross and Crown" pins; plus other miscellaneous items that the Bible Students wore, or used. These included little books which they would fill with names and birth dates of other Bible Students. They also included cards with Bible texts that they would send to each other.
Kommers was Vern Wisegarver’s assistant. Vern managed the Building Office. That office, amongst other things, oversaw the upkeep of the interior of both Columbia Heights buildings. During the course of going to estate sales and warehouses during furniture auctions, Kommers and his assistants would bring back to his storage area any old WT literature they would find. Estates, which Watch Tower was beneficiary, supplied plenty of old literature that went into Watch Tower trucks to be brought back and stored in that room.
Kommers once showed me a 2” x 2” (that’s teeny) Bible that he claimed belonged to Russell and that he obtained during one of his ventures. He also told me he had a large private collection of personal Russell and Rutherford letters.
A memorable experience
I once went into a small room located on the Writing Department's floor which had thousands of file folders containing the submitted final copy of each author's last draft of material that ended up printed in WT literature. Attached to each manuscript was the source material.
In that room there also was this huge (wide, not tall) metal file cabinet. One of its drawers contained quotes from letters that were from those who claimed to be of the anointed. Before the publishing of the book, Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose, a request had gone out from the Society to every congregation in the US. Whether it went around the world, I don't know. The letter asked for the names and addresses of the most loyal of the older "anointed" ones. If that person was a pioneer, better yet. These "old" faithful folks were asked to send to the Society any of their experiences which demonstrated their loyalty, etc., as Witnesses throughout their years of service. Some of these people even lived when Russell was around and the Society certainly wanted to hear all C. T. Russell experiences.
Thrilled is not adequate to describe the feelings, expressed by these people, that they would actually get such an invitation. They responded by the thousands. The letters (many of them were very lengthy) were cut up according to experience and all of them were found in that cabinet. The manila file folders which contained the experiences were broken down into subjects. Each experience, by being cut from the original letter, had no identification on it, so the name of the letter writer was reattached. It must have been a huge undertaking to do this work.
These experiences made up the ones found in the Divine Purpose book and the 1975 Yearbook. For what it's worth, Karl Adams wrote the 1975 Yearbook. John Wischuck was the author of the Divine Purpose book. I was told that Divine Purpose had so many errors in it, that's why they came out with Jehovah's Witnesses — Proclaimers of God's Kingdom.
In conclusion and making an educated guess, I think that during a personal tour, given by some long-time Writing Dept. staff member to friends or family, when the group walked by the archives room maintained by Gene Smalley, probably a remark was made by the tour-guide about the “secret room” filled with old, never-seen material. This is the only explanation I can think of for claims made by some Witnesses of such a "secret" room existing.
Barbara Anderson