Author, Barbara Grazzuti Harrison, was Connie’s daughter. Barbara was baptized in 1944 as a Witness when she was only nine; when she was eighteen in 1953, she volunteered to live and work as a volunteer at Watch Tower headquarters. Before Connie and her daughter became Witnesses, they were nominal Catholics. Inasmuch as Barbara wrote in her book, Visions of Glory, that Connie believed “the Church was her mother’s and, she thought, an old ladies’ home. It could never be hers,” I took this to mean that Connie never committed herself to Catholicism like Barbara’s grandmother did.

I clearly remember Frances saying that her daughter and Connie’s daughter were molested by Catholic priests and that’s why both women were not Catholic any longer. However, in her book, Barbara does not mention being sexually molested, but near the end of her life, she revealed to a friend that her father, not a priest, had sexually abused her. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Grizzuti_Harrison

Nonetheless, it was not long after Frances found out about the molestation of her daughter that Connie called at the Pollini home while in her ministry work. The two women had much in common: a strong Italian background; Bensonhurst, Brooklyn; daughters the same age; molestation, and the Catholic Church.  And because Frances agreed to Connie’s offer of a free home Bible study, she, like Connie, became devoted to the Watch Tower religion.

Frances was a regular pioneer but didn’t drive a car. When she lived in Brooklyn, it was easier to spend 100-hours a month in that urban area doing the door-to-door ministry, what with so many people living in close proximity to one another, than it was in our spread-out Long Island community where cars were almost a necessity. Tired of walking one warm day, Frances told me later that she decided to make some back-calls hoping to be invited inside where she could rest a bit. When I answered the door at the house where I was visiting, Frances wasn’t going to take no for an answer, but was determined to keep talking to me even if I was just a kid so she didn’t have to continue walking. For many years after, I was immensely grateful to her for visiting that house for whatever the reason she stopped.

A few weeks after I met Frances, I was once again at my girlfriend’s house, this time doing homework, when her father came home early. He came upstairs to the bedroom where we were studying to tell his daughter to go downstairs because her mother wanted her to do something. After she left, he sat down next to me and we conversed about neighborhood things—me, a thirteen year old child, talking with a Wall Street executive, being treated like I was an equal. Of course, I was elated. He was everything my father was not—sophisticated, handsome, well-dressed, and well-educated.

After ten minutes or so, he reached over and put his hand on my knee while I was answering a question he asked. Slowly his hand traveled up under my skirt. It only took seconds for me to realize what was going on. I said nothing as I stood up and walked out of the room, down the stairs and out the front door, never to visit that house again. I did not tell anybody what happened including his daughter, but our friendship was over. I just chalked it up to an encounter with “a dirty ole’ man” and never thought much about it again. Inasmuch as it wasn’t an unusual occurrence among girls my age, no one went to the authorities. Girls at school complained about similar or much worse experiences they encountered with some of the male teachers.

At that point in my life, after having only two (four-hour long) Bible studies with Mrs. Pollini, I was already tuning out the evil that I perceived was all too common around me. All my religious questions were being answered satisfactorily from the Bible, something none of the Catholic clergy even tried to do. I was thrilled when I heard about the ideal society that was on the horizon where everyone would live in harmony. It was a done deal for me—I wanted a “new earth.’ Then there would be justice with a virtuous government and true happiness for all. Consequently, school, friends and relatives didn’t matter anymore.

Following two months of meaningful replies to my questions during our home Bible study, I inquired of Frances if there was a specific religion connected with the home Bible study work. “What do you call yourself?” I wanted to know. She replied, “Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religion directed by the Watch Tower organization in Brooklyn.” We had never heard of the religion before even though during July of that year thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses met together in an international convention at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, NY, which was about thirty miles from our home. It seemed odd to me at the time that I didn’t read reports of such a large meeting of nearly 166,000 people in our newspaper. I found out later that there was a tremendous amount of newspaper coverage of the 1953 Witness convention, but in a surprising way.

When my mom and I attended our first Yankee Stadium convention in 1955, we couldn’t help but notice all the newspaper vendors on the sidewalks around the stadium hawking “Special Editions” of NYC papers that featured front-page articles about the convention with accompanying photos. Many articles were so lengthy that they continued on to the next page.

I was delighted to see the broad coverage of the convention thinking that maybe our non-Witness New York relatives would be reading about the work of Jehovah’s Witnesses in their daily paper. I hoped it would help them overcome their opposition to our new religion. They were quite irate, blaming me for splitting up the family, accusing me of influencing my mother to give up Catholicism and embrace a religion that didn’t allow members to celebrate the holidays, days that had been very important to our family.

Of course, my mother bought a copy of each of the newspapers as did thousands of other people who attended. Few of us realized what a “Special Edition” was. The situation was similar during the 1958 International Assembly of JWs held both at Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds.

Over thirty-five years later, when I was a staff member of the Watch Tower Writing Department, I learned Special Edition newspapers were only sold around the convention site. They had a different front and second page than the regularly published NYC daily newspapers. Obviously, the publishing companies made a lot of extra income selling Special Editions to Jehovah’s Witness convention attendees who were, for the most part, the only people reading about their own convention. So much for a witness to New Yorkers!

I came across an exceptionally complimentary article from one of those old Special Edition convention newspapers which had been stored in a file in the Writing Department. The quote that I was interested in could have been useful to Karl Adams to incorporate into one of the chapters of the Proclaimer’s book. Then I learned from one of the Writing staff  that the statement probably originated from some copy that the Watch Tower “Public Relations” Department provided to newspaper reporters. In light of the fact that I believed it wasn’t ethical to be quoting our own statements and attributing it to a “worldly” newspaper to make a point, I didn’t give it to Karl.

Funny how learning that those Special Edition newspapers were not bona fide daily newspapers affected me—the disappointment I felt when I learned the truth of the matter. This might not sound like a big deal, but back in the 1950s, the seemingly massive coverage of the Witnesses Yankee Stadium conventions in the newspapers I grew up with was an important psychological shot in the arm for me, and also for my mother. We, as well as thousands of others attending the Watch Tower conventions, were not very sophisticated people so the extensive journalistic hype about the Witnesses last-day movement definitely and foolishly cemented our conviction that we were onto something really significant!

During the spring of 1954, Frances and daughter, Mary Lou, took us to Brooklyn Heights to tour Watch Tower headquarters, or Bethel, where Watch Tower literature was printed. Immediately, I recognized some books on display in the lobby area of the Watch Tower’s 117 Adams Street factory from where we commenced our tour, because, at one time, copies of those books were in a bookcase in our house in Whitestone, NY.

I pointed the books out to my mother who told me she bought copies from a man who stopped at our house around 1945, before my father returned from war service. To my mother’s knowledge, the man never visited our house again. Mom said she didn’t know what religious group published the literature, but bought the books because of her fascination with the subject content. However, the books were never read by anyone in the family. Perhaps, if that man had returned and found us at home, we would have converted to the Watch Tower religion in 1945 rather than 1954.

The first person I met at Watch Tower headquarters in 1954 was Bill Cetnar, the receptionist in the factory lobby who arranged our tour. I remember thinking he was the handsomest young man I had ever seen. He knew the Pollini women from the Bensonhurst Congregation and greeted them warmly as he did us when introduced. What sealed our affection for Bill was that he was of Polish descent and my mother was from Poland.

I was awed by the welcome we received on that tour and have never forgotten the childish excitement I felt meeting genuine servants of God, people beyond reproach, people different from those I knew all my life who, I had been taught by Frances, were not serving God. But things were not quite like I imagined them to be.

For one thing, shortly before mother and I met Bill Cetnar, he worked in the Service Department, the prestigious Watch Tower department that handled organizational matters. He also did research projects for the Editorial (Writing) Department and wrote a monthly article for the Informant (now Kingdom Ministry). As if all those elite assignments weren’t enough, Bill wrote and produced a half-hour program for the Society-owned radio station, WBBR.  Nevertheless, because of his vocal in-house disagreement with the Society’s policy on blood transfusion, he was transferred to the 117 Adams Street factory to be the lobby receptionist.  After a total of eight years at Bethel, Bill left the “House of God” and settled in Pennsylvania after marrying another Bethelite, Joan. Eventually, he was disfellowshipped for “heresy´ because he questioned the Witnesses’ ban on blood transfusion. That was December 12, 1962. Thereafter, Bill was shunned by both his and his wife’s family and by all other Witnesses. So along with his wife and children, he left Pennsylvania and moved to California where for the rest of his life he “witnessed” against Watch Tower teachings especially their ban on blood transfusions. And, in no uncertain words, Bill proclaimed that Watch Tower leaders’ assertion of being God’s organization was baseless presumption.

William Cetnar died in 1991. Alice Gott, a long-time Bethelite (now deceased), stopped me one day in the Writing Department to tell me about his death. Alice was a professional artist. Watch Tower’s then President, Nathan Knorr, invited Alice to Bethel in the 1950s to work in the Art Department. After ten years at Bethel, she married Bethelilte, Bob Gott. Bob worked in the Press Room with my husband in the 1950s, but when we entered Bethel in 1982, Bob was working in the Treasury Department as Bethel’s banker.

I recollect it like yesterday when Alice asked me if I had heard that Bill Cetnar was dead. “No,” I said. “Well,” Alice related, “the SOB (she did not abbreviate the curse words, either), had a heart attack on an airplane on route to give another talk against us," meaning the Watch Tower. (I found out after I exited the Watch Tower religion that Bill did not die on an airplane.)  Alice’s voice literally quivered with rage when she added, “I’m glad he’s dead.” To both of us, Bill Cetnar was a traitor because he turned his back on the Watch Tower. I stood there agreeing with her, but ill at ease with seeing such fury and heartlessness.

A few weeks before our tour-day, Frances reserved lunch space for us in the Bethel Dining Room. After the morning tour, we were going to eat with the entire Bethel family, then about 400 members, food that was grown at farms owned by Watch Tower. I’ll never forget eating fresh corn on the cob and a the embarrassment I felt because with each bite of corn, the kernels were sticking in my front teeth all the while I was trying to answer questions asked by those volunteer workers, young men  from all over the United States, whose table we sat at.

I barely finished lunch when I was startled to hear a booming voice emanating from speakers on the wall. Names were announced and these people were told to come to the front of the room and stand by the wall. I found out afterwards that the voice belonged to the president of the Watch Tower who was clearly very angry. While the roomful of people continued to sit at their assigned tables, Nathan H. Knorr tore into seven young men and shamed them for over-drinking at a party they had attended at a Long Island home of Witnesses during the past weekend. It was such a long and brutal verbal beating that I remember sitting there trembling.

My mother was almost shocked speechless for the rest of the afternoon. She told me years later that it had been her intention to put an end to our association with the Watch Tower organization after that experience, but since I loved the group, and she loved me, she stayed, thinking that I would have run away from home if she and Dad would have stopped me from associating with the Witnesses. I denied that but deep in my heart, I knew she was right!

I remember being introduced to Barbara Grazutti (Harrison) that day, so I know she was there during the dressing-down in the Bethel dining room of those young men. According to her book, Barbara said she exited Watch Tower headquarters in 1956, quite disillusioned after two and a half years, and shortly thereafter left the Watch Tower religion altogether, much to her mother’s unforgiveable displeasure.

Barbara and I spoke on the phone in March of 2002, 48 years after I met her in Bethel. She invited me to come and stay for a few days at her home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, so we could talk at length. But because of her rapidly declining health, we never got together, and Barbara died approximately one month later. She told me she had had a wonderful life after she left the Watch Tower religion and had no regrets, even to smoking cigarettes, which was thought to have caused what she died from, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

Interestingly, Barbara said she had phone contact with long-time senior writer in Watch Tower’s Writing Department, Colin Quackenbush, and was planning to have lunch with him in the then near future. I’m sure it would have been a memorable lunch, but I don’t think it happened because of Barbara’s death.

The next installment will be about my “new life” as a JW and experiences in "unassigned territory."

TrackBack URI for this entry