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The End of
an Era Programs Sermons Special Events |
JUDSON MEMORIAL CHURCH Text of presentation on Sunday, July 23, 2000 Presenters: Elly Dickason, Jerry Dickason, Alice Garrard, David Johnson Elly The sermon, if you will, this morning is really an extended reading of the New Testimony. Alice, Dave, Jerry, and I are simply the readers of stories told by the people who actually lived and worked at Judson House. What you will hear are snippets from chapters of Remembering Judson House, the book Judson hopes to publish this fall. We have given today’s presentation the title of "passion play" because the events that took place here are nothing if not passionate. Jerry and I feel very privileged to have been able to unearth a history that might have disappeared with the building. Our reading of the excerpts will be broken up into two sections. When we started planning this service, we had so much material it would have taken an hour to read. Actually, we wanted to read the whole book to you. And you might well have sat here, and forgotten about time, as you became absorbed in the fascinating lives—funny, amazing, heartbreaking—that were lived here. In the briefest of overviews, here are the main occupants of the building:
1948. to present: Judson staff members as well as several programs Jerry 1921 - Judson Health Center Every week that first year, the Center conducted thirteen diagnostic and medical clinics, four dental clinics, five oral hygiene clinics, and two nutrition classes. During the first year there were no field workers to make home visits except for the occasional house calls made by members of the staff. The Center was completely unbudgeted that first year, and the expenses were covered by the funds Dr. Eleanor Campbell, founder of the clinic, was able to secure from month to month. Much of the money came from her own inheritance. David 1934 – Seymour Hacker, full-time student I found out about Judson House because my brother, Alan, moved there in 1932 or 1933 and immediately became part of the Judson community. n In the next year, in 1934, I took a room at Judson House, right across the hall from my brother’s. The rent was $2 a week. Elly 1936 - Eleanor Campbell, director of Judson Health Center – radio address A nurse made a follow-up visit of instruction in one of our homes. There were seven children, each more malnourished than the other. The two-year-old was almost crippled by rickets, and a little baby was in wretched condition. They were seven child failures. This baby had been brought to the clinic and the nurse had gone to teach the mother how to prepare the formula ordered by the doctor. As the nurse left, she turned to see the mother pouring the formula down the sink. When she asked why, the mother answered: "My husband, he say I got seven children, you got none, I know more than you do." Jerry 1947 – Robert Boyd, manager of Judson Student House In the summer of 1947 I arrived in New York City to begin teaching organic chemistry at New York University. I had not yet found an apartment. One day, as I was walking down Washington Square South and passed Judson Church, down the steps came a young woman who had been one of my students at Antioch College in Ohio. After our initial surprise, she said, "Well, come in and meet my mother. She is secretary to the church minister, Rev. Elbert Tingley." The Baptist City Society was looking for a manager for Judson House who would also keep an eye on the students. I was interviewed by the Judson Council, and they took a liking to me. Actually, they were desperately looking for somebody and hired the first sucker that came along! It was absolutely the most fantastic combination of events for me to have landed there. David 1948 – Dean Wright, minister to students When I asked the New York Baptist City Society if they could offer me a part-time position, Mrs. Russell had this grand idea of starting a program to work with Baptist students at NYU, and took it to the Judson Council. They said this is great, go ahead. Margaret was on her way to New York at the time. Mrs. Russell interviewed her and I got the job. Alice 1953 - Bernice Lemley, participant in the Urban Institute The Judson House staff had their priorities in order: "Find a job. Then we’ll talk about God." No longer would my benefactors hand me jobs. I had to find them on my own. They would protect me while I learned but the assignment was mine. I hadn’t a clue about how one finds a job in the city. Like a cold plunge in alpine rapids, nothing awakens a dead spirit quite as abruptly as the necessity to survive where nothing and nobody looks or sounds familiar. Jerry 1958 - Bernard Mayes, from England, assistant minister for students Unexpectedly, it was food rather than love affairs that occupied the minds of most students. They seemed able to eat anything and everything at all times. We had a common refrigerator into which they stuffed open cans, open bags, and open bottles. People took whatever they wanted. Some of the cans looked so poisonously old that I feared for my charges’ health, and I put up a notice "Open cans must not be left to rot." The following morning I found that someone had scrawled a swastika on the message. Americans, I was told, object to words like "must." Even in matters of life and death, one should say "please." It was another lesson in American values. Judson had broken through my priggish, prudish upbringing and was determined to teach me about life as it was meant to be lived in the Village. David 1958 - Bud Scott, associate minister for the arts In my second year at Union, Judson hired me to work as a missionary to the artistic community about the church. The idea was that if the natives would not come to church, the church would go to them. I was to hang out and be the church in their midst. It was to be a travail de présence, an expression popular with French priests right after World War II. I was not sure what it meant exactly, but I soon began spending time in the streets, cafés, galleries, and bars of the Village. The Beat Generation was in its embryonic, formative stage, and spontaneous poetry readings in the local cafés were starting to spring up. Jerry 1959 - Allan Kaprow, artist I set to work filling the little basement room with an environmental maze of chicken wire, colored lights, bunched-up newspaper, straw, cloth, fake and real apples, and much litter (Apple Shrine). The show was an obvious firetrap but Howard never lifted a finger. One Sunday morning when I was working, he stopped by to invite me to hear a sermon he and Bud had planned for that day’s service. The talk was unusual. Its central theme was the role of the arts in everyday life. I do not recall which of the two was speaking, but the gist was, "In the past the artist went to the Church for spiritual instruction. Now the Church must go to the artist." Elly 1959 - Phyllis Yampolsky, artist How Bud Scott came to my loft at Little West 12th Street to look at my paintings, I don’t remember, and neither does he. Before I met Bud, I had been going up to the galleries whose exhibits appealed to me and asked them to come see my work. I should probably have brought slides, but I may not have known that. I don’t remember the style of the rejections except the one from André Emmerich, the owner of the gallery who exhibited Hofmann. Perhaps he was amazed at my innocence; perhaps he took my request to be amazing chutzpah. In either case, he came to my studio. He looked, smiled gently, and said: "In a few years, come again." I never went back. But Bud Scott looked and said simply, "OK." I became one of the six members of the first group of Judson Gallery artists. David 1959 - Claes Oldenburg, artist Another person was involved in the gallery who does not get enough credit, and that is Dick Tyler. It seemed as if he fit in perfectly with the mystical atmosphere that some people connected with this project had created. One has to think a bit about this. From the Judson side there was a desire to establish some kind of religious feeling in the secular surroundings, as expressed by Bud Scott. On the other hand, there was in the secular a kind of reaching out for the transcendent, which dominated in the 1960s. Dick was one of the people who was most tuned into that. He was perfect for the gallery in that sense. He stayed with the gallery for many years. He had a pushcart from which he sold books and tracts that he printed—a very interesting artist who has received absolutely no attention. Alice 1959 - Beverly Waite, house mother In 1959 my husband, Ralph, left his ministry in Garden City, New York, to become an actor. He talked with Howard Moody about the job replacing Betty Murphy as manager of Judson Student House. Howard interviewed me, and I got the job I wasn’t looking for. We moved our three little girls and all our belongings to what would be our home for the next nine years. Our oldest daughter, Sharon, developed leukemia and died in 1964. I’ll never forget Howard Moody’s supportive presence during her illness and after her death, nor the truly memorable memorial he orchestrated for her. Howard read a letter Sharon had written to her dear friend Jennie Franklin, who was serving in Mississippi that terrible summer. Elly 1960 - Beverly Bach Cassel, participant in the Urban Institute When I arrived at Judson House, Allan Kaprow was installing something called a Happening. After dinner I went over to see what he was doing. The Judson Gallery was being turned into a sort of maze that was filled with wadded newspapers and fresh Red Delicious apples that smelled good and apple-ish as we kicked them around amid the rustle of the newspapers during the night of the opening. Jerry 1960 - Larry Keeter, participant in the Urban Institute My first night at Judson House was a bit of a culture shock. I got little sleep because diagonally across the street behind Judson House was a girlie show with loud bump-and-grind music playing late into the night. In those days there were three or four strip joints on West Third between Thompson Street and Sixth Avenue. Eventually the coffee shops would put these clubs out of business. Howard Moody enjoyed telling us about the mystified doormen to these joints who used to peek inside the coffee shops, asking whether they had naked ladies in there to attract such good business! David 1961 – Al Carmines, associate minister In 1970 my apartment was renovated. I went to California, and after two months returned home to New York. I opened the door to my apartment, and it was like opening a door into space. The first thing that happened was that I fell. Bruce Mailman had built platforms, catwalks, all around the edge of the place, and I now had a sunken living room, which Bruce said was very chic. This huge, sunken space was surrounded by cubes that were covered with gray industrial carpeting. My grand piano was in this space. When I opened the door to the bathroom, there was a sunken tub. I was used to taking a bath in a regular tub. I was never good with my feet—I was never a dancer. I fell into the tub every time I took a bath. I stopped taking baths because I could not get in and I could not get out. Jerry 1964 - Ed Brewer, church music director The bedroom of my apartment, aside from providing direct access to the garden and being the location of several maturing gallons of apple wine I made one year, became a workshop in which I built my first harpsichord. The space I worked in was desperately cramped, and the only available power saw was in the community center at the church. I made endless trips to the saw to shave a hair’s width from one part or another to ensure a proper fit. The most intoxicating and toxic part of building the harpsichord was in the finishing, when I sprayed a lacquer base paint with all the lack of ventilation a basement room affords. Twenty minutes into the job I was close to legally intoxicated. It was on this instrument that I played my debut recital in the Meeting Room at the church in 1966. The apple wine, by the way, tasted more like vinegar than wine, and it produced a most god-awful hangover I can remember to this day. David 1964 – Tom Roderick, full-time student During my year at the Student House, Yoko Ono and Anthony Cox, her husband at the time, did an art project at Judson, which they called The Stone. The art project involved taking off your clothes and crawling into a big black cloth bag. You could see out but people could not see you inside the bag. I do not remember any great insights I gained from the activity. However, when my parents came to New York City from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, to see how I was getting along, they experienced Yoko’s art. They received a special dispensation: they did not have to take off their clothes, only their shoes, before crawling into the bag. Far from being scandalized by the experience, they loved it and talked about it for years afterward. BREAK FOR SONG, "Those Were the Days" Alice 1964 – Julie Kurnitz, frequent visitor to Judson House Inevitably, in a house in Greenwich Village with lots of young people and lots of bedrooms, early in that brief magical time after the pill and before AIDS, when promiscuity carried no retribution, there were constant and endless romantic and sexual encounters. The morning after one wild party, I remember waking up early in someone’s room and, through some trick of the light and the Venetian blind, seeing the cars passing on Thompson Street refracted or reflected onto the strip of ceiling over the window. Later, having breakfast in the kitchen, I told someone about this strange phenomenon of physics, not realizing I was also giving away what I had been doing, where, and with whom. David 1965 - Michael Johnson, participant in the Urban Institute What little contact I had with Al Carmines I will always remember. Shortly after the project started I returned from work one day to see a large delivery truck in front of Judson House, with Al talking to the driver. They were trying to figure out how to get Al’s baby grand Steinway, which he had shipped from his home in Virginia, up the steps and into his apartment. With the help of too many people, we got the piano inside Al’s place. We laid it down on the floor without its legs and pedals. Pretty soon the apartment was filled with the summer residents and some of Al’s friends. Al, with a terrific smile on his face, sat down on the floor and began to play. Someone went out for beer. Al started playing Broadway tunes and then asked for requests. He ended by singing Beale Street Mama. I may have left so as to give others a chance to get in, but it was probably because I could not contain my joy. Elly 1965 - Sandy Padilla, full-time student During my second year in the house, I bought a Lambretta scooter, which I kept in back of Judson House. I remember an incident involving that scooter. As I was coming around the corner of Washington Square South onto Thompson Street, Jimmy Waring stepped into the street without looking. I turned wide to avoid him and my scooter went over. I hit my head on the street. I also hit Jimmy Waring's pinky finger, and he went back into the church and passed out. Jimmy Waring was a dancer and choreographer well known in the avant-garde dancing world. It turned out I had a concussion and was sent back to my room to rest. When I lay on my bed, the ceiling above the bed collapsed and pounds of heavy plaster fell directly on my head. Jerry 1965 - Arthur Levin, manager of many programs Howard and I went about planning for the opening of a runaway house. This meant first ending the student residence program. We then started preparing the house for its new function. At the end of the school year in 1968, the last students moved out and we began to prepare for the crisis center’s opening. The project hired Nancy Katchel to work with me and we hired a few more COs as well. Howard and I visited the police commissioner of New York City to inform the police department of what we were doing and to plea for some flexibility so that we would be able to work. We wanted to be able to assure runaways that they were in a safe place when they came to Judson House. Our commitment to the police department was that we would work to resolve whatever problem had caused the runaways to leave home. Alice 1967 - Nye Ffarrabas, formerly Bici Forbes, artist Charlotte Moorman performed Nam June Paik’s Violin for One, raising a violin slowly, slowly, high over her head, and bringing it down with full force to smash on the table. Just as she completed her excruciating five-minute swing, Saul Gottlieb jumped up, shouting that this was shameful and wasteful, depriving some hypothetical kid on the Lower East Side of music lessons, and so on. He charged at Charlotte to grab her arm and prevent the smashing, but she had already reached the apex and was starting the descent like some overcoiled spring. There was no way she could stop as Gottlieb’s head was suddenly thrust into the path of the fiddle. Dow n the violin came, creasing his forehead with a pretty nasty gash before it hit the table and exploded into splinters. David 1967 - Ralph Ortiz, artist I do not know how many artists thought of Judson as a church or were even conscious that they were on church grounds. I was, and at first I felt awkward and self-conscious, as if GOD’s eyes would be more sharply focused on me. I wondered if my art would be a desecration on church grounds. I was young enough also to imagine, in my naiveté or perhaps wishful understanding of the Bible, that in some way our art would serve a spiritual purpose. My wondering was all resolved when a small voice spoke in the quiet of my mind during a prayer meditation of mine at Judson Church. The message was clear and simple in its compassion: "Welcome Prodigal Sons and Daughters, Welcome." Jerry 1968 - Aaron Crespi, runaway I guess I slept on my aunt Lee’s couch for a week or two and then she sent me over to Judson House, at that time a runaway house. When I arrived, it was run by Arthur Levin with a "staff" of a couple of conscientious objectors. I guess the idea was to get some of the thousands of kids off the street for a few days or weeks and then contact their parents in Iowa or Wisconsin or Queens, and do what then I don’t know, send them home, I suppose. Robbie was a tall, skinny gay kid from South Carolina, home was not an option. One black kid, I think from Harlem, I don’t remember his name, would show up after electroshock "therapy," shaking and weak, stunned out of his senses. We would bring him upstairs, sit with him on his bed, man, what are they trying to burn out of you? Don’t go back, stay here. David 1968 - John Tungate, custodian The fire department wanted to inspect the subbasement, which was one and a half stories below ground level. It could be reached by a long staircase from the street. The firemen that came were all big men, dressed up in their big, heavy fireman's coats and hats, and carrying big flashlights, big axes, and all sorts of other big heavy tools and equipment. The first big fireman started down the wooden stairs, then the second, then the third. By the time the seventh fireman got to the top step, the first fireman had not quite reached the bottom of the very long flight of wooden stairs. There were now seven big firemen on the wooden stairs to the subbasement. Suddenly there was a groaning sound followed by a loud crack, and seven fire hats disappeared into a jumble of arms and legs, boots, and pieces of broken, rotten stair treads at the bottom of the Judson House stairwell! There were several brief loud swearwords, and then it became quiet. Elly 1969 - Joan Muyskens, secretary to Al Carmines One of the attractions of performing at the Judson Poets Theater was getting to go to Al Carmines’s famous opening and closing night parties. One of my duties was to go over to his apartment half an hour or so before the show ended, straighten up a bit, pop a canned ham in the oven, pour bags of pretzels and chips into bowls, and put out various other finger foods (all of which would be consumed within the first twenty minutes of the party). At the exact time the curtain would come down, I’d put frozen strawberries and peaches in two large punch bowls and begin opening bottles of champagne, which Al would then use to make a very lethal punch. Bowl after bowl after bowl of this punch would be consumed by the hundred or more people squished into Al’s apartment. Alice 1973 - Arlene Carmen, office administrator for Judson Church (by Abigail Hastings) Arlene’s knowledge of cooking was not vast, but somewhere she picked up the conviction that for a good chicken soup you have to use the feet. Arlene set her mind to making chicken soup for a sick friend. She knew she had to start with a live chicken. Fresh poultry—really fresh—was available for many years from a dim if noisy shop further down on Thompson Street. Arlene went and picked out two chickens, had them killed and plucked, and brought them back to her small kitchen to make a soup of healing properties, fortified no doubt by the inclusion of those feet. Sources that are normally highly reliable confirm that Arlene was so grossed out by the innards that she threw everything away and let her friend remain sick. Jerry 1973 - Roland Wiggins, custodian In September 1982 I moved into the apartment in Judson House where Joan Muyskens and Cesar and two other fellows had lived before me. Arlene preferred me to live in the house for security reasons. Cesar had had this sideline, where he made liquor in the bathtub. On Saturday night he would take a table from the church and set up outside on the corner of Thompson and West Third and sell the stuff. I had never seen a bathtub that was so white and spotless. Elly 1982 - Lee Hancock, associate minister Weekdays were heavy with the traffic of the church and its various ministries. Weekends were rife with the presence of what Roland Wiggins poetically termed the "bridge and tunnel crowd from ‘Bohoken.’" Thompson Street was the shortest distance between two points: the beer store and Washington Square Park. The smell of vomit, urine, and beer on Sunday morning always created a unique context for church,. especially during those hot summer days when worship was held in the garden. Roland, always a firm believer in the virtues of water, would throw gallons of it—hot, sudsy, and cut with ammonia—over the steps and into the stairwells to neutralize the souvenirs of Saturday night revelries. David 1982 - Mark Rubinsky, husband of Lee Hancock, on moving into Al Carmines’s old apartment It was now time to demolish the runway. We were finally making headway, and the top came off. It was like opening a treasure chest. Would we find a time capsule of keepsakes? Maybe some old playbills? Would you have guessed all of the construction debris from the renovation? How about a pair of dirty socks, some underwear, and half a Blimpie sandwich still in its bag (no, we did not open the bag but it felt rather intact). At least we now knew why things always smelled sour and gritty, like an overflowing ashtray the morning after a good party. Jerry 1994 – Paul Chapman, director of the Employment Projec Every week we see people without work, people who want to change jobs, people in their twenties who cannot figure out how to get the required experience no one will give them, people in their fifties who have been either downsized or replaced by younger, cheaper workers. People describe their crises at home. It is hard to get started in the morning. The children are embarrassed. The bills are piling up. The spouse is getting impatient and irritable. They is no longer health insurance. Friends do not want to hear about it. Where did I go wrong? David 1995 - Andrew Frantz , Sunday School director Listen and you will hear the voices of those long since departed who call out to us from the archives. Hear the laughter of children. Men’s groups. Women’s groups. A cacophony of sound from the thousands of words spoken in hundreds of committee meetings: Congregational Life, Social Concerns, Buildings, Finance, Personnel, the Board, Ordination, Sunday School. Through the reflective meditation of a study group, the belligerent wailing of drunks on the stoop, or the soulful blues wafting through the walls of Roland Wiggins’s apartment, Judson House served as a repository for much of Judson’s song. |
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