I just saw "Faith for Sale" for the first time a couple days ago. I think I can identify several people.
The Antony A. Philips getting his Clear cert near the beginning is I think the same
Antony Philips who sometimes posts here (Pilot's Posts) under his own name, with a more current picture, sans beard.
Lee Ecker, the woman with the round glasses seen near the beginning, announced as Clear 386, lived in Hawaii in my day and was reputed to be a squirrel, probably the first person to whom I ever heard the word applied. She was once connected with the NY Org and has been mentioned in some posts on this board by Alan Walter. By the time I got into Scn (1975) she was ARCX'en with the church. I never met her, but saw some of her "squirrel" auditing in a pc folder at the Hawaii Org. Her pc had since come on Org lines. Her admin was non-standard -- no exams or C/S'es, maybe no ARF's either, just worksheets? -- but the auditing looked fine, actually.
Here we get into my "how I got into Scn" story.
I think the woman on the right at 0:26 or 0:27 hugging another woman is
Liza Hedin, née Thomas. She can also be seen sitting on the aisle in the second row on the right while A. Philips and Janet Lundy get their certs. She can even be seen sucking in her cheeks, which Liza was in the habit of doing.
Liza did my OCA eval when I was body-routed into the Honolulu Mission. I was not impressed with the eval, would not sign up for the Comm Course or even buy a copy of DMSMH. I remember Liza demo-ing with small objects on her desk as she talked and I didn't understand what she was doing, thought it was just a strange nervous habit. As I was walking out of the mission she said, "If you're not doing anything tonight, why don't you come back for our free intro lecture?"
As it turned out I wasn't doing anything that night -- I'd been in Honolulu maybe a week -- and went back for the free lecture. The lecture was delivered by
John Raffanello, who has sometimes posted here as The Magic Thetan. I believe that's him in "Faith for Sale" with headphones on, at 13:15 or so. John was not on staff, but gave an intro lecture on Friday night; in exchange, the mission gave him a copy of the Scn book of his choice.
I thought the lecture was great, and my interest went from almost nothing to very strong. I didn't just jump in with both feet though; I bought DMSMH that night and read it over the next few weeks. I kept coming back for John's lectures. I also went to the library to see what I could find out there.
At the time, Scn was not so well known and did not have the terrible public image it has today. The word "Scientology" was only vaguely familiar to me. I think I may have known that it was "that religion started by an ex-science-fiction writer." But the word didn't immediately set off alarms and sirens like it would now.
The two books the library had on the subject were "The Now Religion" by George Malko and "The Scandal of Scientology" by Paulette Cooper. It's years since I've read either. Malko's book didn't strike me as horribly damning; Paulette Cooper's seemed so wildly sensational that I doubted it could really be true!
I actually went back to the mission and sat down and discussed these books with Liza, who gave the impression that she had read them. Maybe she hadn't and was just kind of "um-hum"-ing me along with half-acks.
Once I'd finished DMSMH, heard a few of John's lectures, and talked out my considerations on the two anti-Scn books, I signed up for the Comm Course. By the time I finished it a couple weeks later, I happily considered myself a Scientologist.
I never knew John Raffanello personally. I don't think we ever had a conversation that went much beyond "How's it going?" Some time after Bent Corydon took over the Honolulu Mission -- I was on staff by then -- John came around for a behind-closed-doors pow-wow with Bent. After that John never came around anymore. I didn't consider it my place to ask what had happened; I was intimidated by Clears and OT's in those days.
Liza joined SO around the time I left Scn in 1981. I recently found a letter I'd forgotten about from her, from the Flag Land Base, talking about how tough, but great, SO was. Liza was probably about 60 at the time.
Liza was one of the best people I ever knew in Scn. She never let being a Scientologist keep her from being a kind and compassionate human being.
