Appeal of Peoples Temple
People were searching. You know, this was the end of 1971. There was a whole era that we lived in from the middle Sixties, that things had changed so quickly in this country, and there was a war going on at the same time. I had come back to Philadelphia less than a year before that to stand in front of my draft board to get them to reject me from going to Vietnam. And the only reason that even happened, because I met some people in California that said, "This is what you say to your draft board." I was counseled in Berkeley and I went back to Philadelphia and I had a draft board where everybody went. And I knew by a year later when you open up the obituaries, there were a lot of people that were in my high school class that were gone. And this is not something I wanted to do. So I think you needed to make a choice. We were young people, but you needed to make a choice. As much as, you know, it was fun and the flower power was taking over and it was like a different life was being created, but it was a very serious thing because you were still -- there was still a Vietnam War going on and if you don't play your cards right, you're going to be there. So you had to make some kind of decision, and I made a decision to go with Jim Jones.

Turning Point
I feel like the first year or two I was there was still like a lot of the old people from Indiana, the people that first came. It was more of that flavor in the Temple. And I think by time like '73 or '74 came -- the San Francisco church was purchased, Los Angeles church was purchased -- it became more of a machine, and I think that's when things really began to change. But at the same time there was more of a cultural structure there. I remember, you know ... it was just different. It became a different kind of organization...

There were more of these secret meetings going on that I wasn't part of. In fact, I was in publication. A lot of times they were meeting in this room above publications, and it was just like I was never part of it. So it was like all of a sudden things turned into more of... just something that I didn't know -- things I didn't know about. And if you didn't need to know it, you weren't told. So it was by need to know. Everything was by need to know. And I didn't know. I didn't know.

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