Linda Z

I'm glad you overcame your angst and went, Johniam. And I'm glad it was a good experience for you. I've found that the more years pass, the more my high school classmates seem to appreciate each other, regardless of who/where we were "back then." Time seems to be a great equalizer. At our 10-year reunion, the people who were full of themselves in high school were still trying to strut their superiority, but by the 40th, everyone was pretty much glad to see each other and happy to still be kickin'! As the years continue to roll along, we get more and more emails or other notifications that one of our classmates has died. In fact, I just found out today on Facebook that we lost another one. That's always sad news, but it does sort of bring the rest of us closer together, like survivors in a lifeboat.

I agree that it's oriented oddly on the site. I don't know for sure, but the reason you heard for its odd position sounds like one of those twi urban legends. I never heard it said at HQ when the building was being built, when I toured the construction site, when VPW talked about its various elements and the reasons behind them, at the dedication service, or any other time. Looks to me like it was just bad planning, and I'd be willing to guess it wasn't the choice of the architects but VPW's, since he always seemed to micromanage such projects!

I figured out how to vote and voted for her, too. Go, Teajai!

She's beautiful, Rottie!! Just gorgeous. What a sweet face. Where do we vote? :)

Some screw-ups I didn't need twi's help with. I was already divorced before I ever heard of them. When the twi sh|t hit the twi fan, I was really thankful to be single. It was hard/confusing enough to walk away without having to deal with a spouse who might have wanted to stay "in." I give a lot of credit to those couples who managed to keep it together, especially those who disagreed on "should I stay or should I go." (Now I can't get those song lyrics out of my head. Damn.)

Ex, on the same newscast where I heard the Sandusky verdicts yesterday morning, there was a report about a bishop or some higher-up in the Catholic church who just got convicted of covering up for pedophile priests and shuffling them off to other unsuspecting parishes. His name is Lynn or Linn (dunno the spelling), and I forget what U.S. city he's in. Anyhow, he's going to jail. It's about time these people who hid the heinous deeds of these bastar-ds were prosecuted.

dabobbada has it right. It was ocular (i.e., of the eye) melanoma that metastasized (spread) to the liver, not the other way around. Not that it matters much, but we might as well be accurate.

Wow, what a great journey, and one with such a happy ending. Hooray for the young woman who gave up a kidney for your son. I'm sure God will bless her bigtime. I'm so happy for you and your family!!

What Donna said about that sweet, brilliant young woman was beyond shameful. It was downright evil. Hearing the garbage that Donna spewed after Naomi's tragic death removed all traces of fondness and respect I once had for her (her being Donna, of course) before she became whatever the he|| it was she morphed into.

Skyrider, I forgot to come back to this thread. RFR's house where I had to attend meetings was next door to Terry B's. It sounds like you're saying she had another one built farther down the road, correct? That's just mindblowing. The house she was still living in when I left in March of 1986 seemed quite new and rather high-end. I guess it simply wasn't good enough for the Queen of the Cornfield.

Until I got to Thomas's post I thought, at last, the HAM and Waysider Show has its own thread.

That's where the house was where I had to attend meetings/get-togethers when Ms. Fox Rivenbark Shumate Rivenbark was my boss. I suspect my confusion came from the date mentioned in Skyrider's post (1986). The house Te**y Bader built, next door to his, was built at least by '84, not during or after the PoP hubbub. No matter. There's still PLENTY of hypocrisy on the part of Ms. Fox Rivenbark Shumate Rivenbark to go around, and then some.

They might have been grown by the time she went into the FC, but I vaguely recall that maybe one of her sons went with her, or at least started out with her. I could be wrong.

Skyrider, you mean to tell me she had another house built besides the one she was living in next to Bader's?!? I left at the end of March in '86 and never knew this. Her house (the one she was living in when I was there) seemed like a perfectly good one to me, not to mention that it was quite new and was plenty large for one woman (and "friends") to occupy. I wonder where she got all her money to build such a house. I always heard she had money. But where did it come from? Was it from her divorces? Handed down from her Fox family? From getting paid off because "she knew where the bodies were buried" as the saying goes? In any case, with all the austerity policies foisted on the rank and file followers, if she had a house built that was newer than the new-looking one she lived in during the mid-80s, this is another example of the glaring hypocrisy of twi's so-called "leadership."

That could have been at some point, Krys, but when I was in the Family Corps, people my parents' age (in their 60s at the time) did the same program the rest of us did, including hitching to LEAD and doing the rock climbing/hiking there. VPW referred to the elderly members of the FC as the "Sunset Corps." I'll never forget Clarence Glatfe**er, who must have been 80 by the time he was in residence with us, doing yoga at 6:00 a.m. in the chapel at RC. The "lion" pose with Clarence's lack of teeth was particularly memorable. He was a real trouper.

Twinky, I'm sure you meant no offense, but re: your comment, "not even regular Corps": We in the Family Corps took the same classes, went to the same interminable meetings, did "bless patrol, worked our 4-hour-a-day jobs, did "skullery duty," strung stupid chairs,and took care of our kids on top of everything else. I'm sure, however, Rosalie never did "clean the moat" duty and never helped dig ditches or pull weeds or slaughter chickens like the rest of us in the FC.

Nobody had a girl named Rembert. Rembert Rivenbark is a man.

Not to pick nits, but if she were 76 now, she would have graduated from high school at age 21. Are you sure this wasn't just her rumored age, Old Skool? I doubt she announced her actual age in the dining room.

She graduated in '57, so she'd be more like 72 or 73.

Fox is her maiden name. Here's a link to her photo in the New Bern HS yearbook, class of 1957: http://www.e-yearbook.com/yearbooks/New_Bern_High_School_Bruin_Yearbook/1957/Page_96.html If you use a magnifying glass on the page (unless you want to pay to be a member of the Web site and see it full-size), you can see both her name and her photo, 5th row down, 2nd person from left. There's a Rembert R. Rivenbark, Jr. with wife Rosalie in the 1958 New Bern city directory. If that's the same Rosalie (and it makes sense that it is), she must have married him right out of high school. I also found her listed as "Rosalie Fox Shumate" in the 1963 East Carolina College's (not University) "The Buccaneer" yearbook, but w/ no photo. There's also a record of a divorce between James M. Shumate, Jr. and Rosalie Shumate on Dec. 30, 1970, in Craven County, NC. What's interesting is her use of the name "Rivenbark." It doesn't surprise me, though. It looks like Rembert Rivenbark was from a fairly prominent New Bern family. Maybe that name gave her more prestige than Shumate. Edited to add: I just looked at Chockfull's post again. Now that marriage license makes sense. When she married Shumate in 1960, her legal name would have been Rivenbark from her previous marriage. Busy girl!

Heh heh, hugs back atcha, my friend.

There seems to be a correlation between too much makeup, phony blonde hair, and televangelists' scandals. Good for the granddaughter for having the guts to expose this one.

Johniam has been expressing criticisms of twi in these forums for a long time. Usually people here seem to want to focus on his more twi-favorable views, though, and take him to task for those. It's as if his criticisms are invisible.

WordWolf said: I've always read here that people heard that this was the reason for his being forced to resign. This is the first time I've read about there being supporting documents. If the person who dug up those documents would post them here, it certainly would/should go a long way toward knocking VPW off the pedestal that some people still have him on. Cold, hard facts are hard to argue with. Do you have a copy of the documents, WW? Can you post them? If not, can you get the person who found them to post them?

Penworks wrote: Just to clarify this point...having worked in Way Publications, I can say we didn't change the intent of what was written; it was the job of the Research Dept. to make sure what was written lined up with "the Word" (in reality, with anything previously written by VPW). Our job in Way Pub was to correct grammar, syntax, punctuation, etc. Any questions about the actual content, or any editing that potentially could change the content, had to be answered/approved by the Research Dept. In other words, Way Pub was responsible for style, but Research was responsible for substance.