Did any of you know someone at Bethel named Floyd Cormican?
Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
by Dogpatch 501 Replies latest jw friends
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fjtoth
Buckster,
Yes, I knew Floyd Cormican when I was at Bethel, but only casually. I have JW relatives in the congregation where Floyd's mother-in-law was a member before she died about 5 years ago. Floyd and his wife Laura were still at Brooklyn Bethel at that time.
Frank
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wschroeder
Jim Petrie played and sang in a small group that was always a hit at local parties.
Remember his signature song that had the line "You Stepped On My Aorta And You Smashed That Sucker Flat!". -
buckster
Thanks Frank. He was related to my Dad. Just wondering really.
Going to Bethel was something held up with high honor before us as kids and having a relative to point to was great firepower for my Dad.
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TJ - iAmCleared2Land
Remember his signature song that had the line "You Stepped On My Aorta And You Smashed That Sucker Flat!".
A jaded reference to life as a JW, perhaps?
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wschroeder
A jaded reference to life as a JW, perhaps?
Jim Petrie was a tall, smart, good looking guy, with a large contigent of groupie sisters that imagined they would be the one I suppose. It was kind of fitting that he had his own cry in your beer "love" song. A song, which in my estimation as a musician, was cleverly done. He was the whole package as a yet single Bethelite. -
TMS
"Well, Minimus - as fas as Davis went, at least he did not put you to sleep like Al Schroeder did. We actually did look forward to the half a day we had him. My favorite quotation was his rant on "worldly JWs who pursue this system of things...he went on and on about swimming pools, good jobs, big houses, Cadillacs, fancy clothes, trophy wives with a "sport jitney sports car"...having kids, and still they came to the meetings and acted like real JWs."
On Schroeder - Can you believe it? Old Schroeder actually had his 10 or 12 year old boy Judah Ben come into the class and give us a little upbuilding testimony on how much he loved the door to door service. After he was gone, Al Sr. gave us a self-serving lecture on how to "raise up a boy in the way of Jehovah".
People privately talked afterward on how ordinary Bethelites were not allowed to marry and have kids, not even to date or talk to the single women around. Let alone have his own apartment off-site in Pittsburgh and the use of a big Buick that belonged to the WTS. He also made a big show about tossing a baseball back and forth with the poor kid before and after class - it was so obviously phony that I really felt sorry for the little guy."
James,
You have a good memory. I attended that KM School March 1970 in Pittsburgh. I wonder if Judah Ben Schroeder ever looks back and realizes that bit of "quality time" with daddy was staged for the benefit of the students. It was so obvious. Class had just ended and all the brothers were walking to their cars practically in the "line of fire" of Albert and Judah Ben Schroeder playing baseball catch already dressed in casual clothes. They could easily have gone to a park or waited ten minutes until all the KMS students had dispersed.
In our class, we had a class clown, an extremely self-assured congregation servant from California. Brother Obnoxious had his hand up on every question. Brother Schroeder took particular delight in telling him he was wrong, which he was most of the time. Brother California particularly annoyed Randall Davis, who was single, by repeatedly mentioning during every break period that Bro. Davis needed to "find himself a good woman and get hitched." Davis was in charge of recommending any of us for special privileges. I'm almost certain this brother was not earmarked for greatness.
James, did you go on the tour of Pittsburgh by any chance? One of the local brothers had an old city bus he used to take us to Russell's grave, the old Bible house and all the local sights. I recall one self-righteous brother who stayed on the bus, reading his Bible. He said he wasn't there to "sight-see". When we went into a former Watchtower building that was now a church, Brother California yelled real loud: "God damn this church!". Our tour guide quickly got us out of the building. Later Brother California again, spotted Muhammad Ali with a small entourage walking the streets of Pittsburgh. He lowered his window and shouted: "Hey Cassius!" Ali waved at all of us with a big smile.
tms
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Tom Cabeen
Warren,
Jim Petrie was another of my best friends. He was my assistant when I was operating Cottrell 16, and later he was a Floor Overseer in the Pressroom, like Randy. We were all very close. The song you remember was "You Done Stomped on my Heart", which was a sort of silly country/bluegrass standard written by Mason Williams (he also wrote "Classical Gas"). We first heard it on The Smother's Brothers Show in the sixties. Here is a video of John Denver singing the song. You will recognize the famous line "stomped on my aorta": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHeYhE-k7kw (sorry, I still don't know how to properly insert a link on this board.)
Jim and I used to play guitars (with me sometimes on my 5-string banjo) in our rooms and at Pressroom parties. We also played with two other guys, Kory Tideman (pronounced TEED a mun), a very talented musician who played mandolin, and Kenner Dull, who played guitar. We had a lot of fun together. At the time, bluegrass was hot and we were heavily influenced by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's recently-released two-album set called "Will the Circle be Unbroken" One time we tried to learn to play that song ("Circle") by sitting back to back in a circle (four of us), with our arms sort crossed, each of us plucking one instrument with our right hand, and fingering another instrument with our left hand. For example, I would sit with Jim on my left and Kory on my right, and Kenner behind me. I would hold my banjo to my left and pick it while Jim fingered it. Meanwhile, Kory would hold his mandolin to his left and pick it with his right hand, while I fingered it with my left. It was crazy and we never had enough time to get it down well enough to perform in public, but we had a lot of laughs practicing it.
Jim and the other two guys played at Gloria and my wedding. We also played at the first Bethel Family Night. I was the MC. It was Dan Sydlik's brainchild. I have some pictures of the guys at both occasions, but don't know how to post them here. If I find out how to do it, maybe I will scan and post a couple of pictures.
Tom -
AnneB
we were heavily influenced by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's recently-released two-album set called "Will the Circle be Unbroken" One time we tried to learn to play that song ("Circle") by sitting back to back in a circle (four of us), with our arms sort crossed, each of us plucking one instrument with our right hand, and fingering another instrument with our left hand. For example, I would sit with Jim on my left and Kory on my right, and Kenner behind me. I would hold my banjo to my left and pick it while Jim fingered it. Meanwhile, Kory would hold his mandolin to his left and pick it with his right hand, while I fingered it with my left.
Dissonance at its JW best.
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lrkr
I remember Abrahamson. He was a smart guy- you had to think fast just to keep up with his talks. Later he was made, basically, the CFO of Bethel. Treasurers office was still GB (Swingle at the time) but that was mostly a figurehead position. Abrahamson's office was in control of accounting, etc. He swept through and revolutionized they way things were handled. He even took down some old kingdoms inside Bethel. One great move was making phone service affordable to Bethelites. To do that, he had to take down the "Communications" fiefdom. (Before that the rates that Bethel would charge Bethelites were outrageous- you really couldn't make phone calls)
He died recently. My thought was- there was a good man who will not be replaced quickly. I'm sure the financial departments he turned around are back to being fiefdoms performing their work in a really backwards way.