A Hill of an Experience
Part I of IV
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he first time I met Herbert W. Armstrong I was six years old. My mother had been a Seventh Day Adventist, but had become disgusted with them and transferred her allegiance to the Radio Church of God (later the Worldwide Church of God--WCG) to which she listened as often as possible. HWA had a speaking engagement in Tacoma and my mother took me with her to attend this meeting. She and Loma (Mrs. Herbert Armstrong) became friends at this meeting – a relationship that developed and continued until Loma’s death.
Being only six, I didn’t have much of an impression regarding HWA. My interest was focused on a promised cheeseburger and chocolate malt – all for 15 cents! HWA to me then represented nothing more than another switch of church by Mom. I remember that he had a paunch and was an “old man” – I think he was about 45 at the time.
My next acquaintance with one who was later to become in an important individual in the WCG was Charles V. Dorothy. I was 12 at the time and he was 11. My family was out for a summer Sunday drive on the beautiful Hood Canal with grandma in the car. Charles’ parents owned the Brinnon General Store. Grandma wanted a beer. We stopped at the store. On Sunday it was illegal to sell beer. I was too young to buy it and Charles was too young to sell it. He and I were to go to the same High School in Quilcene in the fall. I think the situation struck his sense of humor, and he sold me the beer! Then he came out to the car to meet grandma.
My two older brothers had been away serving in the Navy and Marines respectively since the beginning of World War II. Besides one brother was 14 years older than I and the other 18 years older. I needed a brother. Charles was an only child, and he needed a brother: we became brothers. We remained, perhaps closer than brothers for nearly 50 years. He and I shared many an intellectual, emotional and religious experience in tandem for all those years of our brotherhood.
His untimely death from cancer at age 62 was a tragedy for all of us involved in his illustrious career both in an out of the WCG. God’s blessing on him and all those who survived this great loss!
Many more references to Charles, to and through the closing religious and political turmoil embroiled in the critical days of the beginning of the death throes of the WCG, will be addressed in future narrative in this story. His was a focal point in these events; praised and later condemned for his part. Charles remains alive in my memory.
I drew my first breath 9-20-32. There were two circumstances prior to this date that would have prevented that first breath. When I was in the first trimester in my mother’s womb, she sought medical help for how she was feeling. Dr. Horsefall diagnosed her as having gallstones and she was prepped for surgery to remove them. She was a trained nurse and the mother of five previous children born to her – but it had been nine years since the last and she felt she was “beyond bearing” at 42 years of age. My father found out about the situation, went to the pre-op room, physically removed his wife proclaiming the doctor to be an ignorant fool and stating, “She is pregnant!”
The second time was when I was due: the doctor had tied her legs together to prevent my birth until he was ready to go to work the next day! Surviving those two incidents, I took my first breath anyway. The family used to joke that the first of these incidences proved why I had so much gall!
My mother wanted to name me “Robin De Witt” because my eyes were robin’s egg blue. (They are actually hazel and often change from blue to green.) Dad saved me again and I ended up with David Jon Hayes Hill. I have dropped the Hayes, my maternal grandmother’s maiden name, since day one and the David in 1951 when I roomed with two other David’s – I have preferred the simple Jon Hill ever since.
My father was 100% Norwegian and my mother was English, Scot/Irish and French hailing from Massachusetts.
My mother’s mother, Emmaline Elizabeth, lived with us – she was a retired school teacher and when I was three she began to teach me my 3R’s with a slate board. She taught me the alphabet backwards just for kicks. This made using the dictionary difficult for years later. She taught me my times tables 15 times 15 and required me to use my right hand which makes my handwriting almost illegible to this day. But by four, I was reading books – skipped the second grade and made up for starting late at age seven.
My father worked in timber as a “bullbuck” running a crew and doing the scaling. Also a good cook and an excellent carpenter, he built several houses we lived in and I helped him build those. He taught me practical things like: the principle of fulcrum; inclined plane and screw; don’t fight gravity – make it work for you. Those were the days when children had lots of chores and they did them, or else….
Mother was a trained nurse, always caring for some relative or neighbor, living with us in the interim. So I learned both the male/female duties knowing how to cook, launder; clean house, iron etc. – as well as the practical stuff from my Dad.
Mother was a Seventh Day Adventist, so the whole family was. I never liked “Sabbath School” with its purple books and a wimpy Jesus with long woman’s hair. But she changed churches when I was six, joining the Radio Church of God and taking me to see and listen to Herbert W. Armstrong – and that’s when I first met him. I don’t know if he ever remembered this. The rest of Mom’s life she was a confirmed WCG member.
When I was sixteen I broke my leg – the femur bone – working in the woods with my brother Pete who ran a “gypo outfit” for logging. This kept me in bed for six months (my sophomore year in high school) with a cast from my ankle to my neck and pins in my leg. My HS superintendent brought my studies with the required homework every Monday. By Tuesday I had all the homework done and spent the rest of the time reading books I got from the state library for paying the postage. I read three or four books a day, fiction and non-fiction. This experience convinced me I did NOT want to be a logger as were both my Dad and my two brothers.
By this time, World War II was over. I had learned to hate the Japanese and the Germans, and to love the Russians and the Chinese. Now I had to learn to love the Japanese/Germans and hate the Russians/Chinese because of the Communist threat. This prepared me emotionally for life in the HWA/WCG.
I had jobs making money ever since I could remember well. I made my first cash – a $5 gold piece – clearing berry bushes away from a duck pond. That gold piece my daughter Kaara now has. I had a paper route, picked cascara bark and pine cones, cleaned the Quilcine Oyster House five days a week after school, logged from 13 on until I broke my leg and worked for the Forest Service the Summer before I went to college. I had saved $850. I wanted to go to the University of Washington in Seattle the same as my brother/friend Charles V. Dorothy.
The $850 was in my mother’s bank account and she offered me a deal I could not refuse: go to Ambassador College for one year and if I didn’t like it she would finance my whole four years at the U Dub. This, of course, was Dad’s money, not Mom’s. That’s how I got to AC in the Fall of 1951. I called it “blackmail.”
I was almost nineteen when I arrived at college – old enough by today’s requirements to be called an “adult.” Honesty had been drilled into me at home from day one. Mom asked me to maintain an open mind during that first test year at AC. I think I was honestly willing to accept any change of mind I may have had at that time.
My impression of Mr. Armstrong with my more adult eyes changed him into a father figure of sorts, his white hair, though younger than my real Dad, his obvious desire to coach his students, his warm smile, his dignified bearing: my open mind said “listen to him.”
And so I listened, in classes, Bible study, Sabbath sermons, radio broadcasts and reading things he’d written. His wife, Loma, my Mom’s friend, was always very sweet, considerate and genuinely interested in each of us. By the time the Feast rolled around, I was taken by the volume of all these impressions. Like teens around the world, idealistic, looking for something greater than themselves for identification and an anchor in life I gratefully accepted this larger than life challenge. I was ready for conversion.
The Feast of Tabernacles was held at Belknap Springs, OR, in 1951. I attended with the rest of the students – all twenty-one of us. My fiancée, Audrey, also attended, coming with my parents from Washington. Both Audrey and I were baptized there by HWA – she was sweet sixteen.
Why was I “converted” at this time? Because the “reward” of being a member in good standing of the Radio Church of God would enable me to escape the terrible troubles to come and enable me to become a real Son of God; to be God as God is God. My research into all other major religions showed their “rewards” as pale in comparison.
Also at this feast, Herman (the brain) Hoeh – a senior at AC that year, announced in a sermonette that HWA had the office of Apostle. This was a first! HWA denied this at first, but warmed quickly to all the implications and later adopted this rank to himself in public. With Herman’s help all the other ranks were quickly figured out: deaconess, deacon, local elder, preaching elder, pastor, evangelist, apostle, Jesus, God the Father. The German had organized us, with the top human post of Apostle.
My $850 tuition paid for my first year – amazing how costs have risen – and I was employed by AC for manual labor on the buildings/grounds for enough to pay tithes, offerings, incidentals and room and board. I attended 21 hours of class and worked a minimum of 32 hours each week, made top grades, but was also a general problem because of my independent nature. I was the source of many new rules over my entire student years.
Dick Armstrong and I became fast friends – we smoked, sang together driving around Pasadena in his convertible with Wayne Cole and George Meeker we made a great quartet with Dick playing his Uke (ukulele). We both liked going to movies, enjoyed similar jokes, could talk intelligently about nearly every topic. Every night Dick took the recordings of the daily broadcast over to Hollywood to a station there that made all the necessary copies and sent them to the various radio stations on which they were to be broadcast. The guy there had a full length locker and one time showed us a photo on the inside of the door: it was a full length shot of “the girl next door” – Doris Day – without a stitch on, front view! What a shock for us who had seen every one of her movies. Oh well, time to grow up.
Dick and I were almost inseparable during my freshman year. I often spent the night at the Armstrong’s home, which is where Dick lived. We often came in so late we climbed the trellis to his room in the back to avoid disturbing anyone.
Another thing about Dick: he was the most empathic, sincere and genuinely interested in the welfare of others of anyone I ever met while associated with the WCG. I still miss him.
As a sophomore in 1951, I was asked to give a sermonette at HQ. Sixty-five were in attendance with HWA present. I had no experience whatever in public speaking, but I did my best. My game leg was shaking violently, my sweat making spots on my pants as if I had lost control of my bladder; but I completely debunked Evolution in three minutes and sat down greatly embarrassed, but relieved. When HWA was through with his sermon he came to me personally and said that I was going to be a “very good speaker.” Boy, could he spot talent or what? After that I was used for more sermonettes and finally got the hang of it. Before the feast that year, I got a “Dear David Jon” letter from Audrey. She said she was engaged to a college junior from Colorado who played the sax. I was devastated! Dick and I went to every bar and in the area and I drank and drank. Sitting on a bar stool I proposed to Bobby Jo Carter. She turned me down saying I was on the rebound, and besides I was drunk: both true. Somehow I continued with good grades and giving sermonettes.
Ted was home from his stint in the Navy and began to attend AC. He was made “Office Manager” and had a small salary. We became even better friends than Dick and I had been. I think we became better friends because Ted was more dashing, devil-may-care and I was in the dumps – he seemed like more fun and distraction. Besides, being brothers, Dick and Ted did not run together. Ted was the younger, fresh from the Navy, and needed to establish himself. Dick just kept doing what Dick did. I continued to accompany Dick on his Hollywood trips, but soon found myself doing more with Ted. Ted was immediately attending classes, but I was a sophomore and he a freshman. If I remember correctly, we had two classes in common: Spanish and Old Testament Survey.
Jack Elliot “canned” me from working on the grounds because I had left my work several times to have a cup of Joe with Ted. Ted immediately hired me as “Assistant Office Manager.” We used to joke about the abbreviation of my “office”: Asst-off-mgr. Now I had a firm hold on upward mobility. I rented a miserable little apartment with the “Murphy bed” filling the living room when it was down, and I moved off campus.
At the 1952 graduation, all four original students were ordained as “Evangelists” – as I remember, they were Raymond Cole, Raymond McNair, Dick Armstrong and Herman Hoeh. So Herman’s ministerial organization, passed on to HWA, paid off and he started off at the top permissible rank. I had to struggle mightily to finally achieve that “office” in 1966 – but I get ahead of myself.
A word about each of the graduates: Raymond Cole was the one I knew least. He seemed like a cold fish, nothing like his brother Wayne. Certainly dedicated and well-versed Biblically – later I remember, I could always count on at least sixty-six scripture references in any sermon he gave, lots of notes to take, but I sometimes lost the aim of the sermon.
Raymond McNair was a friendly fellow, a true believer. He worked slavishly to improve his vocabulary – he tried adding ten new words a day, had them on 3x5 cards and practiced using them on anyone who would stop to listen: an admirable and sincere man.
Herman Hoeh had me puzzled. He was certainly intelligent, but not a mixer. If he had any friends, they were academic. He taught OTS that year and I was among the students. The big project was to determine where all the tribes of Israel had ended up in the modern world. We all brainstormed ideas, not much of a research or intellectual job, and came up with what most of you will remember as a result. I fear it was inaccurate, but certainly entertaining! And I got an A in the class.
Let me say this about Dick at this point: nobody’s perfect – we are all driven by strong emotional tides – but Dick was one of the most compassionate, empathic, concerned and loving in his response to the members of the church of anyone I have known, including myself. Dedicated, hard working and believing, I believe he could have been a very positive force in modifying the operation of church government and would have been heard by his father. His death later was not only a tragic loss to the family and all of us, but to the WCG as a whole.
At the Spring Break in 1953, I wrote Audrey telling her I was coming up there to “kill” the SOB she was engaged to. She told him – I never did get his name – and he immediately quit school and went back home to Colorado. Audrey and I got reengaged and set a wedding date for 6-21-53. I was joyous, deliriously happy and returned to working harder than ever in both classes and job.
Before the wonderful event took place, HWA stopped in the parking lot and told me I was the first sophomore to be going on a baptizing tour that summer. I said, “But I’m going to get married this summer!” He said, “Wouldn’t you much rather go on a baptizing tour?” I said, “No!” and got married 6-21-53 as planned. Charles Dorothy was my best man. He fixed up my borrowed car with a string of tin cans and appropriate graffiti.
I had inspired another rule: thou shalt not marry until you graduate. Hard to believe that was over 50 years ago.
I was editor of The Portfolio – and that started my writing/editing career. Got Basil Wolverton to create a masthead and a cartoon, for which he was famous, from time to time. I also later asked him to draw some cartoons for the Ambassador/Spokesman Club Manual which was the thesis for my Master’s degree.
I had hired my wife in the Co-Worker Department – nepotism has been in vogue since Noah – and she entered AC that Fall. We scraped by financially. I got involved in the press operations at this time. We had a small letterpress in the back room of the Office. I set type on a “joy stick” one letter at a time for the Coworker letter and other items. We had “rubber plates” we could attach to print the booklets, and then I assembled, stapled and trimmed these by the thousands, usually with student volunteer help. I also created new Thank You letters over HWA’s signature when he was too busy to compose one himself – I don’t think he ever knew this, but it worked! I introduced several improvements, and got a couple of small raises, thanks to Ted.
When Audrey became pregnant with Jonathan, we prepared for a home delivery “the natural way.” We both took classes for this. Jonathan was born at home 6-1-55 and after that many hundreds, if not thousands, in the church followed suit.
I was the speaker at my graduation that year and my week old son attended with his mother. By this time I was also teaching grade school at Imperial as part of my schooling. After graduation I continued teaching, managing the office, speaking and writing. Before Fall, HWA called me and Audrey to the “Penthouse” and said he had good news for us: we were being sent to Big Sandy where I would assist the local minister, Jimmy Friddle, teach grade and high school and drive the bus. This was not “good news” to me: I wanted to stay at HQ! I gave sermonettes, split sermons and full sermons both at Big Sandy and Shreveport, LA; counseling, baptizing, visiting – in short, doing all the work of a minister without being ordained.
Ted had told me when I left for Big Sandy that I was being sent out to “test” me and that how I performed was a “sink or swim” situation – I swam!
HWA was present for the Spring Feast in 1957 in Big Sandy. I had a split sermon with Norman Smith and I was to go first. Just seconds before I was to speak HWA asked me if I wanted to be ordained before or after I spoke. I chose before. There was a bad thunderstorm raging and before I could be ordained the electricity went out! Thankfully this did not delay my ordination. Herbert said it was the devil trying to impede God’s will. So we stood on the stage in the dark with flashlights focused on us, June bugs hitting us from all sides and crawling up our legs as I was ordained a “preaching elder” (bypassing deacon and local elder). He stated that the ordination was overdue and I agreed. I went ahead and preached my first “ordained” sermon in the dark with no microphone and 1500 in attendance – good acoustics in that old redwood dome!
At this time Ken Swisher had replaced Jimmy Friddle as the local minister. Audrey was pregnant for the second time and far along. She was Rh negative, I am positive. My positive factor acts like a poison to the mother and her body creates antibodies to destroy it. The baby, which is positive, must fight the destroying antibodies or die in the process. The doctor suggested we bring the baby a month early to prevent this, saving its life. Being “True Believers” we refused this suggestion, trusted God, and prayed to have this “disease” healed. Of course at the time we didn’t know this was not a disease, but a normal function of a human body. The child died 48 hours before birth. This was a terrible trauma for both of us – it was a little girl. Ken and I buried her in a very small coffin in Paupers Field – I only made $85 a week, and often was not paid.
A word about “healing.” I have buried infants who only needed a very simple repair operation to correct a heart valve, people who died of appendicitis and many other correctable problems, as I am sure my colleagues have. When Dick had his accident HWA determined that “corrective measures” were permissible and every medical means was used to try to save his life and later his use of medications to improve his condition were resorted to. I am still extremely sad that so many had to suffer unnecessarily and die. There are many responsibilities that are ours personally – God does not fry eggs for us! Let me add here a recommendation of a book for your reading enjoyment and enlightenment: The True Believer by Eric Hoffer (1952).
I finished the school year continuing as before. That Summer I was assigned Houston and Dallas churches, 250 miles apart. Houston attendance at that time was 15, Dallas 75. We moved to the Houston area, immersed ourselves in work and processed our grief.
There was a backlog of people who had requested baptism, ministers were supposed to visit each member at least once a month. I made 26-30+ visits per week and began to reduce the backlog for baptism, which meant I drove 6000 miles each month – this was more than 40 hours a week just driving. The area I covered included Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Oklahoma – that’s a big area! I soon added a twice a month Bible study in Oklahoma City, 250 miles from Dallas.
A member woman in Dallas had given Audrey a little Chihuahua – it was a great help in her dealing with her loss. A local deacon in Houston complained about the dog to HQ, without ever saying anything to us, and we were visited by Ray Cole who was in charge of the field ministry. He arrived in a huff, corrected us, and left in the same -- a total surprise to us and no opportunity to offer anything from “our side.” Raymond was the one who had earlier ordained the deacon. When Ray left the Church later, he started his own church – “of the Eternal” or something like that – and disappeared into the woodwork.
I maintained my pace of work and by 1959 the Houston congregation was 175 and Dallas about 300.
I collapsed! The doctor said I had too much salt in my system – we traced this to the water softener installed where we rented. In addition, he said that I was suffering from exhaustion and I should “rest, rest, and rest!” I was called back to HQ for a “refresher course” and given 30 days vacation – my first days off in over five years.
This figures out to be six days a year, but all in one lump! Audrey and I went for a 10-day hike, backpacking in the Olympics. I had a 55-pound pack at the beginning and a 55-pound at the end – all the food weight was replaced with “pretty rocks.” That’s how I recovered from exhaustion. We spent a few days visiting relatives and friends and went to Pasadena – we didn’t know how to take a vacation. The church had moved our few belongings while we were in the mountains.
When I got back to HQ for my “refresher course,” I was not required to take any classes, but rather to teach several. Benjamin Rae, my Spanish teacher in college, was being sent to Mexico to acquire a doctor’s degree so he could later be sent to England to be on the staff at the new campus there. So I took all his classes including Spanish One, International Relations, Geography and a couple of theology classes as well as serving as faculty advisor for The Portfolio. I was on the speaking schedule weekly for various congregations organized out of HQ: it was a busy schedule.
Now I was 27 years old and through my juvenile phase of life. Given the opportunity to pursue my strengths: teach, write, speak – I began to blossom. Being a good workaholic, as so many others in the Outfit were, or are forced to be, I quickly found my cup filled to the brim.
Jim Gatt (Beverly Armstrong’s husband) was still running the press which had moved to more spacious quarters, acquired a decent 25 x 38 offset press and a linotype allowing offset printing of all booklets, letters and The Good News. I was put in charge of this to help organize and improve production: again there was a backlog needing to be brought up to date. We immediately went to “black on black” for the GN, which gave it a sharp, snappy look for the cost of one more run on the press: our centerpiece of equipment. This was an innovation inspired by Don Schoon who did the camera and plate burning work – the first time anyone in the trenches was listened to; he had no “rank” you know. I pursued this principle throughout my career at AC/WCG very successfully. A management procedure the Japanese later introduced to the USA.
In the summer of 1960, Audrey and I were sent to Oklahoma to start congregations in OK City and Tulsa. David and Molly Antion took over the churches at the end of the summer and Audrey and I returned to HQ to continue as before.
The reason I mention both wives is – as later discovered in the infamous “contract” that was to be signed by all who wished to continue to be employed – that wives of ministers were “assumed” to be automatically also “employed” with the employment of their minister husbands! Two for the cheap price of one. Hats off to the wives, because they did work hard as well. However this angers me to a great degree: wives seemed to fall into the same category along with the ox, the ass and others mentioned in Exodus 20:17 – i.e. chattel. ■
Coming soon: Part II (please check back)
Picture below is of three generations of
Hills: David Jon Hill (R), grandson Benjamin (C),
and son Jonathan (L), taken at a recent (2003) wedding.