90th Anniversary Reflections
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Thanks to the AFSC
From: Catherine Cameron in Chapel Hill, NC
I grew up on a dairy farm in the high,
beautiful hills of central New York, the
youngest of eight children. My parents were
faithful members of the Smyrna Baptist Church.
My mother’s life was influenced by her Quaker
grandmother, Mary Anthony Knowles Hunt who, at
age 25, was acknowledged by her meeting as
having a “gift in ministry”. This call guided
her and inspired an adventure-filled life.
(Mary lived from 1816-1901 and my mother, from
1884-1975).
In my life as a student, teacher, mother,
grandmother, friend, neighbor, Methodist
minister’s wife, I have been aware of and
influenced by Quaker values evident in my
childhood home. One aspect of this was my
mother’s quiet determined giving during my
growing-up years to the American Friends
Service Committee from the meager funds she
could call her own.
In 1950 I married Angus McKay Cameron. We met
in a church in Brooklyn—at a “work day” for
painting the new minister’s apartment. Two
experiences sparked an immediate interest and
connection between us. First—I was attending
Union Theological Seminary where he had studied
the year before, and second, we both had
recently participated in an AFSC project—I in
Students-In-Industry in Philadelphia in 1946
and he, in a building project in the rural
community of Carollton, Georgia in 1947.
Sharing about those projects gave us a lot of
important information about each other right
away!
Now we are both 81 years old and live in a
retirement community which includes a number of
Quakers, and where we are part of an
“extension” of the Chapel Hill Quaker meeting.
We are in one of the most dedicated, most
vibrant groups on campus, “Elders for Peace”.
I’m grateful for the effective work of AFSC
that continues to bring peoples of the earth
together—the projects you initiate and the ones
where you strengthen the hands of
others.
A long romance
From: Rolf and Florence Beier in San Mateo, CA
We are indebted to the AFSC for almost
sixty years of loving relationship and
dedication to peace. When Rolf returned from
the U.S. Prisoner of War camp in 1947, he
volunteered for the AFSC relief efforts in his
home town of Freiburg. Rolf was then invited
by the AFSC in 1948 as one of the first
students to come from Germany to the U.S. for
an international student seminar and a year of
college. One of the 19 students at that
six-week seminar in the mountains of New Mexico
was Florence Ilfeld, a Stanford sophomore. We
maintained our summer romance and were married
in September, 1949.
In our 59th year of marriage we look back at
many opportunities to support the AFSC, beside
other volunteering for peace efforts such as
Beyond War and community mediation. We are
grateful to the AFSC for its profound effect on
our lives.
Rolf and Florence Beier
Your '70 environmental project is now Project HOUSE
From: Marjorie Campaigne in Rochester, NY
I was an environmental activist in the
1970's and somehow came upon one of your
efforts that was a way of measuring and
reducing one's environmental footprint, before
there was such a term. I revised it and called
it Project HOUSE - Household Opportunity to
Upgrade and Save the Environment. I was about a
10-12 page typewritten document, and I still
have a few copies.
When I became a member of our local Sierra
Club's Energy and Climate Change committee, I
thought that Project HOUSE had more relevance
today than ever. I decided to make it 21st
century-friendly by making it down-loadable
from a website, and into a website of its own.
See www.ProjectHOUSE.vpweb.com. It has links to
hundreds of other websites, plus it's own
resources.
Thank you for the inspiration for this
effort!
Mexico and the Friends
From: Anne Dhu McLucas in Eugene, OR
I don't even remember now why I chose to go that summer of 1961 to Mexico with the AFSC, but t was a summer that has lasted in my memory ever since and has helped define how I would and could deal with people of other cultures throughout my life. We were half Americans, half Mexican and South Americans, assigned to a tiny village in the shadow of the two big volcanoes. Our stated mission was to build a school, but the materials never arrived, so as a group, using the consensus method so well-practiced by our Quaker leaders, we figured out what else we could do to help. We planted trees, found out how to kill the bugs that were destroying crops, gave them a sewing machine (this required long discussion--was it right to give it?)--and generally made ourselves useful, as well as the objects of much humor, as we bashed our way through village dances, a flu epidemic (with our one out-of-the-way outhouse), and various other adventures. But how wonderful we all felt--and what good friends we were with each other and the villagers by the end. I have always wanted to go back to San Francisco Tepeyecac to see what has become of it. Luckily, I kow what has become of the AFSC--here's to 90 more years of helping the world!
summer working in mexico
From: emily goldblatt in boston, ma
I worked in a small village in Mexico the
summer between my junior and senior years at
Barnard College. We were a small group of
students from the U.S., and one from Mexico and
one from Guatemala.
I gave smallpox vaccinations to people in the
village and other volunteers helped children
with reading and worked on digging a ditch to
bring water to the village.
The law student from Guatemala became a friend
whom I have seen just this past summer in
Guatemala, now a lawyer and professor of law. I
have visited him and his family in Guatemala in
the past and when they were in exile in
Nicaragua after he had had threats on his life
at home.
Although we were in a remote village, I looked
forward to the times we attended the Friends'
meeting in Mexico City as the people were an
ecumenical group, many mixed marriages of all
kinds and very welcoming to people coming to
the meeting.
My experiences with the AFSC led me to send my
son to Farm and Wilderness Camps in Vermont
which he enjoyed.