It makes you dig far down into your deep well and re-think, re-work, re-live important times of your life and others that were just plain fun. Thank you to San Francisco State University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), David Weir, Roz Leiser, Gayle Leyton, Joe Pierce, Connell Persico and Nancy Randall for camaraderie and two years of wonderful Monday night suppers devoted to telling such stories.

Our marriage – Royce Vaughn's and mine – has always been a marriage of words and pictures. We hope you'll look at his note cards and original art on this California Collectors' Series Web site and, on this page, read some of the personal history that has brought us to this point.

 

Saint Aidan's in the Sixties

Episcopalians, San Francisco Style

Royce considered attending seminary.

He considered joining the Quakers and becoming a conscientious objector.

Actually, before that, he considered joining the Irgun and going off to fight for the state of Israel.

I also had ecumenical ambitions. For college, I planned to go to St. Mary-of-the-Woods first ... Wittenberg next ... Brandeis next ... and perhaps the University of Chicago after that. Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish and finally secular. What a complicated, backwards Reformation!

We had sampled various churches, but it wasn't until Robert Cromey came knocking at our front door that we found an unorthodox liturgy that matched the spirit of the times.

We had been married at St. Cyprian's, a traditional all black Episcopal church for which Royce had designed the artwork above the front door and the plan for a rose window.

St. Aidan's was also Episcopal, a small mission outpost, mostly white, led by men who had jumped into the Civil Rights Movement with both feet. Cromey and Don Seaton who followed him were iconoclasts of the first order. Using the church as a foundation, they boldly declared that if this religion thing had any vitality, any validity at all, it needed to speak up. And the time was now.

Eleven o'clock Sunday morning had been declared the most segregated hour in America. We would do our little part to fix that. The world was immersed in social upheaval. We would reflect and act on that. As a group we came together in worship and then jumped out into the universe, each in our own way, to address the problems of the day. Our issues weren't always the same. But we were in it together and this was a place for us to talk...a place to try to figure out what was happening to a society lurching forward in new directions.

The sun shone brightly through the tall windows of that white-washed church. On each side of the altar were Mark Adams' primary-colored flames painted symbolically. On the back wall was his "Giant Wing" tapestry woven at Aubisson in rich burgundies, red and orange.

Royce strode up to the lectern to read the lessons and said, "Good Morning!" And everybody smiled and said "Good Morning!" back.

Folk songs, hand clapping and, by the time Lin Knight got there, lots of hugging set the mood. Musically, we were all over the map.

From stately Anglican hymns and comforting 19^th Century Americana to Simon and Garfunkel, from 'the bosom of Abraham" to " De Colores" and "Godspell" and "It's a Long Road to Freedom"...the songs we sang were the same ones Mahalia Jackson and Joan Baez and the Smothers Brothers sang. The only difference, perhaps, was that in later years one of our favorites was "Rise and Shine," a physically challenging little number in which you had to reach all the way down to your toes and spring back from the "muddy, muddy" with your hands waving in the air. It was like church camp all over again -- uninhibited enthusiasm. With a bow to the hippies (which we certainly weren't, but the times were), it was a reminder that life ought to be joyful.

There was an organ and always an organist, with something like Bach's "Tocatta and Fugue in D" to send us out the door. But on special occasions and when the sun shone through those tall, tall windows, guitars often won the day.

Royce, for the most part, was solid and serious and Anglican. I, on the other hand, eventually became something of a hand-clapper. Lisa, growing older, tugged at my arm, "Mother, don't sing so loud!" Jeff, not so restrained, found his favorite refrain in the song, "I've Got the Joy, Joy, Joy...´WHERE? His voice reached lower and lower with each chorus. "Down in my Heart..." WHERE? "Down in my Heart."

Worship in the Sixties certainly looked different than it had in the past. It sounded different. It tasted different.

In the churches of our youth, communion had come to you sitting in the pew, a tiny glass vial with a tiny sip of grape juice.

Here, the act of receiving meant getting up and walking to the altar rail for a taste of full-flavored wine which slid very slowly down your throat. We walked forward to share the Eucharist softly singing in two-part harmony a mellow tune which repeated the words "allelu-ia, allelu-ia, allelu-ia, allelu-ia." It was a sweet, gentle song. We sang it in the round -- a kind of "row, row, row your boat" repeated over and over until it entered our consciousness like the sound of OM.

There were no wafers to melt on your tongue. Instead, we shared a home made loaf of whole wheat bread which seemed so incredibly good it must have been baked that very morning. There was a texture to it, a small piece of bread to be chewed slowly and savored.

The "bread of life" was downright tasty!

 

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Three Lettuce Leaves

on a Previously Dirty Plate

 

The very, very rich -- as they say -- are not like you and me. Their women are thin.

They were not born that way. I'd like to think they had normal eating habits as children. I want to believe that as teenagers in San Francisco, they came down from Pacific Heights to eat at Mel's Drive-In and order normal hamburgers with normal catsup and onions and French fries on the side. I think they slurped normal milk shakes like the rest of us. And maybe, just maybe, they kept a secret supply of Milk Duds in their pocket books.

But somewhere along the way between the Cotillion and wedding reception at the Fairmont, something happens to young women of a certain breeding and income bracket. As they set out on the party circuit, those with any degree of discipline learn to survive on lettuce leaves.

One of them was at this moment standing in our kitchen.

Immaculately, exquisitely, yet ever so casually dressed, perfectly thin, perfectly coifed, she stood by my side keeping me company as I tore the three pieces of lettuce that would be her salad.

Suddenly I realized I couldn't count.

There were eight of us -- four couples -- and only seven plates. Now, we're not talking Limoges, not Spode, not Wedgewood. Our dishware in those days was perhaps top of the line at Sears. Flatware was strictly Cost Plus. Crystal? Who ever heard of crystal? We were young do-gooders without credentials. Why these multi-millionaires were in our house was Royce's exquisitely crafted notion that since they didn't know each other, we would serve as a catalyst for their introduction.

Which would have been fine, had there been enough plates!

Obviously we were unprepared. For us, entertaining was something we did when Royce called mid-afternoon to say people were coming at seven. We rarely thought three weeks ahead. The pantry was stocked. Usually, it was better if we didn't spend too much time thinking about it in advance.

The guest -- petite and elegant, wearing an outfit far beyond the means of my meager paycheck -- chatted as I contemplated the situation.

And suddenly I had the answer. Eyes averted, nonchalantly strolling through the living room directly in front of the other guests who were deep in conversation, I made my way to the guest bathroom, headed straight for the scraggily philodendron in the corner, scooped up the missing plate underneath, whisked it back to the kitchen behind my back and with what I hoped was complete composure, scrubbed that dirty dish in the kitchen sink!

If the elegant guest noticed the maneuver, she never mentioned it. Her manners, like her clothes, were impeccable.

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Rap Brown, Or Was it Stokely?

 

You must understand it's not been I who have led this parade of people through our lives.

It's always been Royce's show -- his optimism, his vision, his demons and his unrelenting force that led the way.

"Royce, the people's choice", the first black student elected Lt. Governor of Ohio Buckeye Boys' State in 1948 ... Royce, one of the first three black men admitted to Princeton in 1949, thirteen years before James Meredith entered the University of Mississippi ... Royce, the first black man pledged to the prestigious Quadrangle eating club and then cautioned that it might be prudent for him to stay in his dorm while a KKK cross burned on campus ... Royce whose gut usually told him to do the more conservative thing, like study art history which he loved, but whose time in history demanded he take a higher road.

How does a sweet young thing from Swayzee, Indiana, stand in the light of so luminous a figure? Very carefully, I think. Our high school journalism class newspaper ran a story asking what you wanted to be when you grew up. My answer was a sign of the times. "A diplomat's wife," I said. Not a diplomat. No one would have expected that. After all, it was only 1955. Except for Clare Booth Luce, there were few strong women role models.

Eventually, I married my diplomat. It was San Francisco, 1963.

I remember an event in the early years - a huge gathering up a winding path to a house overlooking the Bay. Between the first and second floor was a fountain with running water. In front of it, standing on the landing, was someone radically chic - Rap Brown, I think. Or maybe Stokely. I don't really remember. Would it be terribly impolite to say that on this occasion his rhetoric defined him, not his name?

The speech went on for some time and the audience listened raptly. I heard the word "overthrow." And all I could think was if indeed someone like this fellow were going to overthrow the government, who would run the water department? A scene from "Lawrence of Arabia" came to mind. It was the chaos of the Damascus city hall and an insurgent government desperately trying to find its voice. The phones needed electrical generators. Who would be in charge? When fire broke out, there was no force in the water pumps. Who would carry the water?

Always practical, I could hardly visualize a coup. It was all far over my head. Frankly I was watching the drama, not really listening to the words.

For that matter, no one else was ready to revolt either. Guests were terribly respectable movers and shakers, hardly the stuff of overthrow. Rap, or Stokely, or whoever it was, invited discussion and provoked conversations throughout the house. People listened politely and debated the issues, but nobody grabbed a spear. This was merely the Bay Area trying to hear all sides of the burgeoning civil rights movement.

I was not a part of the discussions. Struggling to fit in, I listened valiantly, but had little to contribute. In those days, when people heard I was a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, they would lean forward in eager anticipation to see if I had anything interesting to say. I didn't.

Not about politics. Not about overthrowing the government. Not about fighting the system. I didn't enter this marriage to make a political statement. Ideally, however, I did relish the possibility of a more civilized world. I thought our kids might possibly be made of better stuff than generations before.

I had come to adulthood prepared to talk about Hemingway, Edgar Lee Masters, Emily Dickinson, e.e. cummings, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, the "soft-as-morphine" poetry of Tennessee Williams, and a writing style called "slice of life." Nobody told me what the realities of the Sixties would be like. I was totally unprepared.

What I knew for sure was that Royce's passion for knowledge thrilled me. It was like sitting at my mother's kitchen table surrounded by encyclopedias. If it was time to eat, we pushed them aside for a "cheesewich," a slice of pasteurized American cheese toasted on white Wonder Bread. Dinner over, we moved the books back again. I suppose I thought life with Royce would be like that. In the end, the slice of life we cut out for ourselves was far different from what I had imagined.

For starters, in spite of what my study with Dr. Coyle had led me to believe, Hemingway's name never came up in social conversations. Royce's heroes -- Botticelli, Michelangelo and Da Vinci - also had to step aside. This was not Quatrrocento Italy. It was San Francisco of the 1960s. Times were changing. So were we. It was exciting to adapt classic sensibilities to more pressing social needs. Royce did it easily. It took me longer.

Together -- and separately -- we've spent over 40 years being idealists desperately trying to keep poetry in our lives. At the same time, we've become immensely more practical.

Theoretically, the water department still needs fixing. We're working on it.

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