The year 1970 is permanently engraved in my memory. Lots of things happened that year that irrevocably changed my family and those things still have an impact on me today.

In July 1970 I had my third birthday.

That same year, my paternal grandfather, Grandpa Oberg, died. I don’t remember him unfortunately, but I have particular memories of his death, such as seeing him in a casket in the dining room of the house belonging to my Uncle Laverne and Aunt Harriett Oberg, my father’s older brother and his wife. People, mostly relatives, were standing around in groups, many of them crying. Then there was the graveyard and the gravesite where he was buried. If my memory is correct, it was a sunny day and my brother, Dan, and I ran around a bit, and I particularly remember looking down into the big black hole into which my grandpa’s casket was to be laid. In my memory, my mother had made us black suits with matching jackets and shorts with a white shirt underneath. (Interestingly, a few years ago when my Uncle Laverne died, I drove out to Nebraska to attend his funeral along with some other family members. My uncle was buried in the same graveyard as my grandpa. The graveyard was definitely familiar to me even after more than 30 years had passed since my Grandpa Oberg’s funeral. My brothers and I decided to look for his grave and I was the first one to find it. That whole, short visit to Gothenburg, Nebraska, was like a series of flashbacks to memories long suppressed.)

In 1970 the church group my family belonged to suffered a huge split over revelations of immorality, or at least, ‘inappropriate conduct,’ of what they then termed the ‘universal leader,’ a man from New York named James Taylor, Jr. (a.k.a. JT Jr.). My maternal grandfather, Stanley McCallum, was involved in uncovering the ‘inappropriate conduct’ and was therefore near the center of the whole controversy. People in this church group (generically known as Exclusive Brethren) split over who believed which side of the story. This affected people all over the world, splitting families, pitting children against parents, husbands against wives, friends against each other. Two of my grandpa’s own sons refused to believe him and actively worked to discredit him and support JT Jr. (and still do to this day). I have no memory of Uncle David and Uncle Garth and I know next to nothing about their children or grandchildren, my cousins, except for one who left that group about eight years ago. I know of situations beyond count where separations were forced by JT Jr. supporters, e.g. children were taken away from their parents by relatives, in some cases, never to be seen again. I know of husbands whose wives and kids stayed with the JT Jr. camp and spent the rest of their lives living alone and never recovering from the pain of separation. My grandpa and grandma never recovered from this, either.

Partly due to this split, my parents decided in 1970 to sell their farm in Nebraska and move in with my maternal grandparents in Detroit. I well remember living in the basement of my grandparents’ home for several months, then moving into a nearby house, where we lived for the next year and a half or so before moving to east central Illinois where I spent most of my growing up years. Lots of dramatic and difficult experiences punctuated that 18 month stay in Detroit but I won’t go into them here. My grandma died in 1982 and my grandpa in 1987. After their death when going through some of their papers I remember coming across my grandma’s diaries in which she documented some of the anguish, loss, and depression they felt as a result of the 1970 split.

For me the events of 1970 became almost legendary, serving as a backdrop to just about everything and everybody I knew. And there were many more splits after that. I no longer think that one side was entirely evil and one was entirely good. I do know, however, that the legacy of this JT Jr. guy is still very prevalent today, especially in Australia and New Zealand where the latest ‘universal leader’ is a Sydney business man named Bruce Hales. These people have received a lot of media scrutiny over their political machinations in that part of the world and elsewhere. It was pretty freaky for me to read about and then see a few videos on Google Video documenting what’s been going on. Fortunately I haven’t had much interaction with these people, although my sister Becky and her husband, Martin, have. Martin has many siblings who are in that group and they have been involved in legal proceedings about custody battles and such between parents and children who are part of this sect and those who aren’t. Both times I traveled to New Zealand, I saw members of this sect (a.k.a. Peebs, Exclusives, The Brethren, PBs, etc.) everywhere, and all of the people I knew there were tragically affected in some way or another. I well remember going to a small town in the north of the South Island called Motueka where there is a meeting of about 200 members, a big population of Peebs in such a small town. As soon as we arrived in town, our arrival was noted by these people and we were watched during our stay. My brother-in-law’s father and I would walk down one side of the main street, and notice some of these people coming toward us on the same side of the street. As soon as they noticed us, they crossed over to the other side of the street so as not to come in contact.

I am very thankful to have not been raised in that group, that my parents raised me and my siblings in a better environment, even though that environment was heavily influenced by, and contained a lot of legacies from, the JT Jr. era such as alcoholism. I’ve glossed over most of the darker elements to the story because I don’t think they need to be gone over yet again and also because I still don’t have a complete understanding of it all. And I don’t really want to anymore.

So…There you have it. 1970 was quite a year.