Our second marriage allowed us to recover from our first marriages!  His former wife was a very successful choirmaster in a very popular church but after twenty-five years she ran away with the minister.  I divorced my first husband even though I believed that marriage should be forever.  I realized that my first husband wanted to destroy me, but I was undone until my second husband came and saved me from my devastated feelings.   We finished the trip together and came back to the United States and then we agreed to an amiable divorce. Typically, he did the divorce himself, very successfully!

 

Unfortunately, I had allowed my chemistry to lapse.  The whole chemistry field had evolved far beyond my expertise.  I would have had to spend two years catching up before I could get job in chemistry.  My daughter was still in school but she had enough to live on.  My son was out of school and independent.  I needed a job right away so I found a government program which would pay me a small sum right away as I learned to type.  I completed the course and got a job with EPA in San Francisco.    In those days EPA did not have computers; they had huge clumsy word processing machines.  I along with another new hire learned to produce letters and documents.  But there was a huge problem if one made a mistake, it would require back-tracking, which is in itself confusing and difficult.  My companion in learning those difficult machines was an entrancing, young black girl with huge eyes.  If she made a mistake, she would roll her eyes to the ceiling and say, “Jesus, come to the phone!”

 

I actually found a safe haven in, of all places,  Glide Memorial Church.  Lizzie Glide purchased a parcel of land at the intersection of Ellis and Taylor Streets in San Francisco  and founded the Glide Foundation as a memorial to her millionaire cattleman husband, H.L. Glide of Sacramento.  Apparently Lizzie was concerned about the souls of prostitutes living around the so-called Tenderloin area, so she made it a condition of her grant that the church would never move away.

 

I stayed and volunteered for Glide for over eight years because it gave me a spiritual home, courage, and vibrant adventures.  The service was so dynamic that every single Sunday at least three busloads of tourists would come to experience it.  Cecil Williams was a magnificent preacher.  When he really got going there was absolutely nothing like it, in my entire life before or since, and I have attended many, many churches and listened seriously and attentively.

 

I wrote and produced a modern one act play based on the Greek play by Aristophanes, Lysistrata, a comic masterpiece, in which the women of Greece impose a moratorium on all sexual activity to end the Peloponnesian War.  I named my play Sister Strata.  She wasn’t a nun.  As I remember her, she was a wise prostitute, organizing woman against war.  Cecil came to see a rehearsal.  I was stunned when Cecil actually allowed my play to appear on his platform on a Sunday.  After that success I took council with Cecil because I despaired of attracting a good man to love.  He firmly advised me to look actively.  He assured me that I was indeed an interesting woman.