The beginning

[Commander Birdsong]

bump

cool thread...

 

[Free Being Me]

Bump

 

[Peyton]

Challenge - I am so sorry to read about what you survived. I am currently researching the very early years of Scientology, and especially the Phoenix group, including Bobby and Freddie Sutton. I am hoping that you would be willing to speak with me about him and that time in your life. Please let me know if you are willing to talk - Big Thanks!

The whole thing started in 1950. I had a friend named Bobby Sutton, who at that time, was working as a record distributor and he had a small label of his own. His label was called Torch recordings. Bobby and I were friends from High school, and we had mutual friends from other areas, namely the Musician's Club. When I was 16 I would go to the Club , hide my schoolbooks behind the Bar, and usually rehearse with a "sit in" band. Also played a ton of cards, drank lots of beer, took Benzedrine, and smoked pot. A lot for 1946, eh?
Bobby travelled a lot with his business, and Hollywood was one of his beats. He had run across this guy named L.Ron Hubbard, whom Bobby said was running around Hollywood in a turban and white robe, claiming to be a fortune teller. So in 1950 Bobby came to me with a book called Dianetics, Modern Science of Mental Health, and said Look what Ron has written! It's amazing! You've got to read it! Shortly after that, another of my friends, a trumpet player named Vernon Crank, also read the book and they both headed off to Phoenix. I was excited about the theory of engrams, and I knew that I had some. I had been fondled by two of my cousins when I was about 5 years old. They sat me up on the hood of a tractor, and tried to run their fingers into the legs of my panties. Then the janitor at Elementary school on 3 occasions did the same. He offered candy and tried to get into my panties. After that, our neighbors, an older couple named Spivey, invited me over to play and Mr Spivey was in bed. Ms Spivey was right there in the room. They wanted to play "Nurse". Mr Spivey threw the covers back and exposed his ugly self, and took my hand and placed it on him. I was about 8 years old by then, so I just ran. Later in life, I was raped by a dude named Charlie Dragna that I had never met before an acquaintance took me over to his apartment. I was a Virgin even though I was 17 years old then. A few years later I was raped by Jimmy Piersall when he gave me a ride home from work. I was 20 years old. I reported that one, and found out that he had several reports against him. Oh well. Shortly after that, my employer threw me against a wall and raped me. So you can understand that when I read DMSMH that I thought Great! That's for me! I want to change my life.
I called the local bookstore and asked them if they had sold DMSMH to anyone else and my friend clerk at the bookstore gave me the name of a local optometrist who had bought it. I called him up, we "got in com", and soon began to co-audit on Bk 1. My first session with him I ran birth, and the menstral cramps that I had suffered horribly from, went away.
Sorry. I hate to type. It wears me out. So it will have to wait for another time.

Chalenge

 

[phenomanon]

Sure. I am losing a lot of memories . Especially names are evading me, but I'll tell you what I can. Bobby and Freddie were close friends, especially Bobby, to whom I stayed close after he and Freddie were divorced. I know that Freddie lived in Scottsdale, and the last time I saw her was @1980 when she visited LA.
I don't even know if she is still alive. She would be an old lady now, like me, if she is still living. Bobby passed away. Jackie Crank ( Kitts) passed away. "Chubby" Crank is gone. I am the only one remaining from that old crowd. But ask away. Here, openly, or in PMs. Whatever.

 

[Gizmo]

Phenomenon, thank you so very much for filling in the blanks for so many for us !

 

[RogerB]

Our Phenomenonal Challenge is a treasure . . .

Who else is as gracious with her memories?

Rog

 

[Gizmo]

A bump for this fine thread !

 

[Gizmo]

Phenomenon was there to see so much long before we even began to think about that little cult we became part of & helped grow.

Sure do hope she decides to add more to out blank places of the early days !

 

[Terril park]

Phenomenon was there to see so much long before we even began to think about that little cult we became part of & helped grow.

Sure do hope she decides to add more to out blank places of the early days !

I hope this treasure does.

 

[AnonLover]

An obituary for someone Challenge may (or may not) remember from Phoenix in the 1950s...

John Robinson of Montford Park Players remembered
http://www.citizen-times.com/story/...on-montford-park-players-remembered/29930151/

...John was born in Stillwater, Minnesota, in 1923 and, as a young man, joined The Merchant Marine during World War II where he worked in the waters around Alaska. One night in January, his ship ran aground, but John and the crew managed to get everyone off the boat before it broke in half, Hazel said.

By the mid-'50s, John had moved to Arizona, where he was studying Dianetics, the idea that the mind can promote physical well-being. He became an associate of L. Ron Hubbard and wrote about energy fields and other ideas, Hazel said.

"He had a double major in math and physics, so it's the sort of thing that would interest him," Hazel said. "He was interested in people. He was interested in how people worked, and we were both early Dianetics people."

Hubbard would later go on to found Scientology, a movement in which John did not take part.

John and Hazel met in Arizona and started a family. They moved to Asheville in 1971, where John headed the accounting department for Beacon Blankets, a manufacturing company in Swannanoa. ...