According to his biography, text below, he was a summer visitor to Star Lake.
SHORT BIOGRAPHY: GEORGE KELSEY DREHER, 1919-1994
One reviewer called him "a brilliant writer" and said "recognition can be delayed but greatness can never be denied"; another called him "sometimes scholarly, sometimes poetic", another "thorough" "forceful" "idiosyncratic", and yet another said "thank Dreher".
Born June 10, 1919, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, George Kelsey Dreher was the only son of a bank president and the oldest of two children. George Cameron Dreher was his father who was a jovial man known for his funny dinner stories. His father had worked his way up from a bank teller to become one of Milwaukee's important bankers. The work ethic was deep in the family tradition. He would tell young George a story of his uncle who would eat a large bowl of oatmeal every morning then go to the shore and single-handedly pick his fishing boat up over his head and carry it to the water. Their early years were spent in Wauwautosa, an affluent community on the shore of Lake Michigan. His mother, Marguerite Kelsey Dreher, was also of good humor and talented at the piano. She hired household help and maintained an active social calendar, which included lots of crocheting and bridge. He had one sister, Dorothy, who was younger.
Young George possessed an active imagination, which initiated many stories, and at one time he sent out arbitrary letters authored by a "talking canary" which actually generated responses to the embarrassment of his parents. A woman in the community humored him with several rounds of return letters to this canary. The neighborhood had several families with young children and life was pretty normal with numerous pranks and shenanigans. As he grew older he had private tutors in voice, piano, dance, and French.
His family was well off, yet moved to Eau Claire, a smaller town, as a result of the depression and high level powerplays within the Milwaukee banking establishment. Attending high school there, he was in the band and on the swimming team. The family spent their summers on Star Lake and he developed an appreciation for the great outdoors, fished for Muskie, and canoed. Some winters were spent in Florida to help young George's health. He was active in the Congregational church and civic life, aspiring to be a journalist or possibly a publisher.
He went to Dartmouth College where his uncle served as Dean of English. He was in the glee club and was a serious student. There he experienced a radical affirmation of faith and became a very devout Christian, even giving away his tuxedo and other worldly possessions. He was president of the Christian Student Union and a conscientious objector. He graduated in 1941 with a major in English Honors, a keen interest in Shakespeare, and a feeling that possibly the ministry would be right for him.
He subsequently earned degrees from Oberlin Graduate School of Theology and Yale Divinity School in an exciting theological climate. At Yale he began writing papers on the history of New England religion and became a Congregational historian. A friend introduced him to his future wife, Kathryn Rice, a rural Georgian, stunt pilot, and ex-Bulldog cheerleader who had graduated cum laude from the University of Georgia. She was then studying at Union Theological Seminary under Reinhold Niebuhr. George was ordained on June 3, 1946, in Bethany, Connecticut, where he had been student minister.
After some years of courting, and a somewhat fish out of water visit to her family's farm they were married on July 1, 1947, at James Chapel, Union Theological Seminary. Kay served one year on the professional staff of the New York State Student Christian movement and it was decided that she wouldn't seek ordination. He found a new parish and they moved to Mountain Home, Idaho, in the summer of 1946. Their first child, a daughter, was born in August 1948.
This small community afforded a pastoral setting. He wrote a devotional called "Abel Was Innocent" during that time. That piece was greatly influenced by the local shepherds in the surrounding mountainsides. It fascinated him to experience their method of sharing irrigation water via ditches under the auspices of the ditchmaster. There was a nearby air base that contributed a sizable part of the congregation. He relished the rugged western terrain of the Snake River Valley and wanted to remain in the region but he was young and needed to move.
A church called him with a nearly defunct congregation of eleven members. So in 1950 they moved to Bountiful, Utah. He helped to start a new church and they had three more children. Bountiful was a hilly suburb of Salt Lake City and the house was filled with growing babies. They built a new sanctuary and became strong under his leadership. The greater Salt Lake area was fervently religious, and the mountains were beautiful, but anticipating more intellectual excitement in the Berkeley area, he moved his family including a newborn daughter to Kensington, California, in August 1955.
San Francisco was visible from their front yard, and atop a giant redwood there one could view the bay bridges, Alcatraz, and beyond to the smoky hills of 'Frisco. He enjoyed taking his family camping in the Russian Gulch and Yosemite National Park and would whisk his wife away for a day here and there along the Big Sur coastline. The Arlington Community Church was rather large, the church well established; yet he didn't get very close to the intellectual activity at Berkeley. The exciting possibility of starting a new church captivated him and he soon moved to Wichita, Kansas, to begin from scratch. In the summer of 1957 the family headed east with a fishtank of guppies on the floorboard between his pregnant wife's feet in their '49 Plymouth with the luggage rack overflowing.
There they had two more children, which made six. He was a religion and philosophy lecturer at Wichita U. as well as minister of a fledgling congregation at Concord Church. Services were first held in the parsonage basement using a foot pump organ, and then at the elementary school until a church building could be built. With six children to feed much time was spent building church membership by calling on new families as they moved into newly built homes in the middle-class housing development. And he prepared lectures, which left little time for his family, which was then getting large. Grading students' papers was an agonizing process, which he gladly passed on to student professors if possible, but making the rounds in the community and bringing new people into his parish was pleasurable.
Using an A.B. Dick mimeograph machine he published a weekly newsletter, which he delivered to the main post office on the other side of town. These weekly trips across town allowed him to stop at the bakery thrift stores to supply his family for another week. Used and hand me down clothes were brought home for his children.
He began to write again and various pieces were published in United Church periodicals. He stopped lecturing and wrote a play called "Romain Will Knock" based on a protagonist dedicated to the humane campaign against hunger. He gave the manuscript as a Christmas present to his awestruck wife who was wondering if his writing would ever help feed the family. At the time, a prosperous neighbor who was a retired wheat farmer, was flying around the world to help other countries raise better crops. The vast wheat fields on our great plains were overflowing the grain elevators with rotting wheat berries as the huge B-52's being manufactured locally were flying overhead. The play was intended to be performed on Broadway but it wasn't. Was the drama too intellectual? Or is interest in humanitarian campaigns faddish?
By 1964, despite preaching for fairhousing and nuclear disarmament, he had built a healthy church congregation amidst a new housing development on the edge of wheat fields at the outskirts of a military industrial based city. He wanted to move back to New England to be closer to bigger libraries to pursue his research. He would miss the church family camps he led during the summers at Estes Park that allowed him to fish for trout, grow a beard, and to write. But one evening an unknown caller left a message for him with the children and asked that he call the pastoral search committee at the Mystic Congregational Church. The Rockies, West, and Mid-west would soon become memories as he made only rare return visits. Trading off their '53 Chevy he loaded his family into a new Volvo station wagon and pulled out of Wichita headed east. Once there, his itchy feet were finally nailed to the floor and he spent the rest of his life on the picturesque Connecticut coast.
But on one return trip he took four of his children and wife to the top of a 12,000' peak in Northeastern New Mexico on a visit to his son living near Taos. Later, he went to Albuquerque to participate in another son's marriage. And he visited a daughter working in Silicon Valley and a son working in the Texas oilfields . There were more visits too, but he was dynamically returning east having gone a full circle.
While living in Mystic, Connecticut, a sailors haven, he did the bulk of his writing and undertook a study of George Peele's 16th century drama researched at Yale University libraries from 1964-1974. This resulted in his publication of The Chronicle of King Edward The First (surnamed Longshanks) with the Life of Lluellen (Rebel in Wales) a retroform which provided a few unriddles in the text, modern spelling and punctuation, and an introduction. He also published samples from Peele's The love of King David and Fair Bethsabe and reference portions from the Bible in the translation by Miles Coverdale, selected and modernized, with comment. Following out an interest in the impact of the Bible on later literature, he presented papers to small groups on Fulke Greville, Giraudoux' Judith and Peele's David and Bethsabe. It was the latter, which led to the study of Edward I.
His environment in Mystic was more inspiring for his writing though he was still jammed for time. In the late 60's he again was excited by his play "Romain Will Knock" and converted it to prose, picking away in his two fingered style at the typewriter. He was intent, but still the manuscript was not published until 1995 , though he had even offered it gratis to be used to raise money to fight hunger. The prose underwent many revisions and is livelier than the play, even using some lingo he learned from a son's friend who had lived in an eastern ghetto. It is still mainly intellectual, challenging the reader to consider choices and consequences. The setting is an American city in the 1960's encompassing all walks of life, depicting many contrasts with only a few shades of gray.
Like a Camus novel, the content is philosophical. Like a Brecht play, the style is didactic with some alienation. But unlike Ibsen, he was willing to convert his playscript to prose, which left elegant flowing dialog. He passionately wanted to diminish hunger and felt this could contribute. At this time his household was bustling with activity from six children who kept him busy going to school sporting events, concerts, plays and musicals, and closely watching their studies. And he introduced them to events like the Newport Folk Festivals and Broadway plays, urging them to become involved in lots of activities.
Then in the 70's he completed a journalistic study of human power drives titled And Still We Lost which is not yet published. His mother, who had been a housemother at Beloit College and was living out her retirement years in Mystic as he wrote this piece, died in 1978. He took her ashes to Milwaukee to lay next to her husband who had died in the early 1950's and her only daughter who had died in her twenties from Addison's disease.
By then some of his children were in college and a daughter was studying in Germany. One summer he took a son and met her to trace family ancestry and was able to find a Jacob Dreher, an artisan, who had fathered two children in Schriesheim according to church record books and took them with their mother to the U.S. The son did bring back a pack of Dreher Birra brewed in the Italian Alps to the glee of his siblings who joked it was a family relic and possible hint as to the family's Milwaukee roots.
For the bi-centennial he published a book 1775-1783, Now Alarming, Now Promising, Fast Day-Thanksgiving Day Resolves of Congress. This book provides authentic texts for re-enacting a Revolutionary fast day or Thanksgiving Day. And it provides case material for discussing "Does America have a tradition of civil religion? If so, can Christians live with it?" and "Do Christians' attitudes when America won Independence help us understand independent nationalism in the Third World today?"
His church was still his main thrust, filling the days with its surrounding concerns. Many hours were spent on into the evenings and on Saturdays into the early morning hours preparing sermons. Sometimes his sermons were heavily theologically bent, once prompting one parishioner to ask, "Is he angry?" He was generally serious in the pulpit but would tell humorous stories to lighten the atmosphere on occasion. When guest preaching on family visits to Georgia he was always urged to use scripture more heavily when he spoke.
True to his intent, he was spending any spare moment in various libraries researching Peele and the American Revolutionary period. His little Ford Vega and then Fiesta cars were virtually worn to the ground making these 100 mile round trips. While his wife was working as an educator, his few hours away from parish work were spent writing. Only occasionally could his family drag him away for a few hours of relaxation on the beach.
In 1980 his parish gave him a partial sabbatical in conjunction with a Fellowship from Yale University to write an essay on the letters of Samuel Huntington, President of Congress 1779-1781. Finally, he was given some relief from his career-long struggle between ministering and writing. This resulted in possibly his most ambitious manuscript and soon to be released essay titled "Longer Than Expected." (Samuel Huntington to John Lawrence, treasurer of Connecticut, December 1, 1780: "As I find myself under a necessity to remaining in Congress much longer than I expected, for it was my wish and full expectation to have returned home in October last, I am under necessity of requesting one hundred pounds in hard money may be sent to me...") The theme is the marvelous ability of the American political system (whatever its concurrent faults) to practice FREEDOM, derived from a prior development of the Christian tradition.
It shows the presidency of Huntington in the light of New England religion. The current debate over the separation of church and state is integral to these letters. And though the original intent was merely to write an essay on a local signer of the Declaration of Independence, it became a "study to determine if Huntington's religious New England background was a significant factor in his attitudes and capabilities." "Issues...were the beginnings of the federal judicial branch, the creation of the first executive departments, currency reform with the devaluation of the Continental paper money, negotiation of a peace treaty with Great Britain and final ratification of the Articles of Confederation and the formal start of the Union." As Huntington's home was Norwich, a neighboring town at the head of the Thames River, local research was available at Connecticut College and the Mystic Seaport but many original papers were found in Hartford and New Haven as well.
During this time he trimmed his involvement from the many committees he had been participating in on the regional, state and local level. He had always tried to be involved and encouraged others to be, but his concentrated effort was required for this essay which he completed, but was never able to publish.
All his children being grown, he retired in 1984, already sensing the beginnings of a neurological deterioration, which eventually resulted in his death on October 18, 1994, at the age of 75. The last congregations he served were made up of people involved in national defense though he himself was a pacifist. He ministered in Wichita, which is a major base for the Strategic Air Command and a major manufacturer of military aircraft. And he ministered in Mystic which is adjacent to Groton, which is a major submarine base, home of the Naval Underwater Warfare Center, and a major manufacturer of nuclear armed and powered submarines. He was a deep thinker in the realm of Christian ethics and was able to serve these parishes wholeheartedly.
When he retired, his wife remained a remedial reading therapist in the local school system and he tried to think and write at home, but he was deteriorating. While in retirement he was able to complete "Kings of Judah," ten plays for amateurs, which is not yet published. The theme is the human benefit to which David and the successor kings of Judah either validated or failed to validate their kingship, not sheerly in terms of Divine Right of Kings--so preparing us partially for the messiaship of Jesus Christ. It has very sparse trappings and minces no words, seeming to capture blocks of thoughts in single phrases.
He suffered a series of small strokes. The first he was aware of hospitalized him while attending a seminar and doing research when visiting one of his daughters in England. He was examined by specialists in Boston but the exact nature of his illness was never determined. Unknowingly, one would assume it was Alzheimer's disease. He belonged to a group of theatergoers who were regulars at the Yale Repertoire and the Eugene O'Neill Theater but by then he was unable to promote his work. Even a local theater group in Stonington was beyond his reach by the time he completed "Kings of Judah" as his condition left him indecisive and docile.
In 1991, though he was unaware, his manuscript Ourselves & One Other, a devotional book, was published as a medley of images tied together by a view of faithful response to Jesus theme. This included devotions, poetry, music, comments on scripture using metaphors and paraphrases, and prayers that he had written through the years in every parish. It was edited with photographs and illustrations. When he first received a printed copy of it he was able to express surprise and pleasure but was unable to comment on it due to his illness which left him unable to articulate what he was thinking.
Now The Dog Is Quiet, the prose version of Romain Will Knock, was published in 1995, eight months after his death, after sitting idle for over twenty-five years. The main characters are businessmen but the theme is the humane campaign against hunger. It has many sides dealing with both social and business values but is secular and never actually mentions religion. A hopeful and strong ending which includes the entrance of a new character is climactic. It appears to offer a technique for Americans and the world to get along together.
There are many personal similarities to his life in the characters and events in the story. Perhaps Elson Miles is similar to his father, and Romain is similar to the other bankers he was working with. Perhaps John Wiro is similar to himself and Daphne Miles similar to his sister. His children remember some incidents with the family dog that are similar to ones in this story. It was entirely fitting that he gave such a personal story to his wife, for she too champions human rights, perhaps even more so, or at least they inspired each other. She also embraces other humane issues such as nuclear disarmament and regularly raises money to fight hunger through "CROP Walks" which matches dollars for miles.
He eventually offered it to be used to raise money to fight hunger through Church World Service-CROP. The inside back cover asks for donations to help fight hunger to be sent there.
In the words of some of his congregation, "He was a man who practiced what he believed." "A true Christian." "A selfless servant of God." "A man who truly lived his faith." Also, he was a great group leader. He could lead a church camp dining room in song and story telling as well as anyone. And he would listen to people's problems one on one, and usually was able to help.
He spent the last years of his life in a nursing home but never missed going to church, being wheeled over in a wheelchair by a friend, except for the last Sunday before his death. Becoming unable to swallow, he had stopped even trying to eat and drink and was overcome from lack of food and water.
A major publisher never published him, and this was great disappointment to him. He tried to gain a publisher until he was too ill to send his manuscripts off, and received rejection after rejection. This disappointment probably added fuel to his illness. His wife would say, "But George, what did you expect? Your subjects are so obscure." The books he self published on Peele, on Longshanks Book, using Adams Press, are still selling after twenty years and received acclaim by several select scholars for his introduction, editing, and comments.
One of this summer's blockbuster movies was based loosely on the story of King Edward I (Longshanks) through the very different eyes of William Wallace, a Scott and foe. In the fascinating 43-page introduction to "Edward I" he states, "Peele gave them [Welsh and Scottish nationalists] a voice, but implied that unification was the better policy." But then, "Peele's portrait of him is coherent and vivid enough that we feel curious about the actual Edward. We ask whether the portrait resembles the man. To relieve our curiosity, however, we first have to decide how much resemblance to expect..."
Iron Horse Free Press is posthumously publishing his remaining works. Using an economical 1st printing, the hope is to gain a market for a 2nd printing to command a more expensive production process. He IS being published and his life's works ARE becoming available with modest promotion should they find their way to an audience. The Huntington essay was published in early 1996 and was well received and is available in hardcover. A second edition of King Edward The First was published in September 1999 which included David and Bethsabe (Samples) and his remaining two known unpublished manuscripts are scheduled as projects.
It would be bittersweet for his recognition to come after his death, but not unusual for artists. His humility made him entirely the wrong person to promote his own work. He was more a serious writer and would have produced much more had he not become ill and had he received some encouragement from publishers. Not that he had ever written anything specifically with commerciality in mind. But, thinking ahead, he had looked for retirement spots in both Idaho and Vermont. His idea was to go to the mountains, grow a beard, and write.
One reviewer called him "a brilliant writer" and said "recognition can be delayed but greatness can never be denied"; another called him "sometimes scholarly, sometimes poetic", another "thorough" "forceful" "idiosyncratic", and yet another said "thank Dreher".
Born June 10, 1919, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, George Kelsey Dreher was the only son of a bank president and the oldest of two children. George Cameron Dreher was his father who was a jovial man known for his funny dinner stories. His father had worked his way up from a bank teller to become one of Milwaukee's important bankers. The work ethic was deep in the family tradition. He would tell young George a story of his uncle who would eat a large bowl of oatmeal every morning then go to the shore and single-handedly pick his fishing boat up over his head and carry it to the water. Their early years were spent in Wauwautosa, an affluent community on the shore of Lake Michigan. His mother, Marguerite Kelsey Dreher, was also of good humor and talented at the piano. She hired household help and maintained an active social calendar, which included lots of crocheting and bridge. He had one sister, Dorothy, who was younger.
Young George possessed an active imagination, which initiated many stories, and at one time he sent out arbitrary letters authored by a "talking canary" which actually generated responses to the embarrassment of his parents. A woman in the community humored him with several rounds of return letters to this canary. The neighborhood had several families with young children and life was pretty normal with numerous pranks and shenanigans. As he grew older he had private tutors in voice, piano, dance, and French.
His family was well off, yet moved to Eau Claire, a smaller town, as a result of the depression and high level powerplays within the Milwaukee banking establishment. Attending high school there, he was in the band and on the swimming team. The family spent their summers on Star Lake and he developed an appreciation for the great outdoors, fished for Muskie, and canoed. Some winters were spent in Florida to help young George's health. He was active in the Congregational church and civic life, aspiring to be a journalist or possibly a publisher. He went to Dartmouth College where his uncle served as Dean of English. He was in the glee club and was a serious student. There he experienced a radical affirmation of faith and became a very devout Christian, even giving away his tuxedo and other worldly possessions. He was president of the Christian Student Union and a conscientious objector. He graduated in 1941 with a major in English Honors, a keen interest in Shakespeare, and a feeling that possibly the ministry would be right for him.
He subsequently earned degrees from Oberlin Graduate School of Theology and Yale Divinity School in an exciting theological climate. At Yale he began writing papers on the history of New England religion and became a Congregational historian. A friend introduced him to his future wife, Kathryn Rice, a rural Georgian, stunt pilot, and ex-Bulldog cheerleader who had graduated cum laude from the University of Georgia. She was then studying at Union Theological Seminary under Reinhold Niebuhr. George was ordained on June 3, 1946, in Bethany, Connecticut, where he had been student minister. After some years of courting, and a somewhat fish out of water visit to her family's farm they were married on July 1, 1947, at James Chapel, Union Theological Seminary. Kay served one year on the professional staff of the New York State Student Christian movement and it was decided that she wouldn't seek ordination. He found a new parish and they moved to Mountain Home, Idaho, in the summer of 1946. Their first child, a daughter, was born in August 1948. This small community afforded a pastoral setting. He wrote a devotional called "Abel Was Innocent" during that time. That piece was greatly influenced by the local shepherds in the surrounding mountainsides. It fascinated him to experience their method of sharing irrigation water via ditches under the auspices of the ditchmaster. There was a nearby air base that contributed a sizable part of the congregation. He relished the rugged western terrain of the Snake River Valley and wanted to remain in the region but he was young and needed to move.
A church called him with a nearly defunct congregation of eleven members. So in 1950 they moved to Bountiful, Utah. He helped to start a new church and they had three more children. Bountiful was a hilly suburb of Salt Lake City and the house was filled with growing babies. They built a new sanctuary and became strong under his leadership. The greater Salt Lake area was fervently religious, and the mountains were beautiful, but anticipating more intellectual excitement in the Berkeley area, he moved his family including a newborn daughter to Kensington, California, in August 1955.
San Francisco was visible from their front yard, and atop a giant redwood there one could view the bay bridges, Alcatraz, and beyond to the smoky hills of 'Frisco. He enjoyed taking his family camping in the Russian Gulch and Yosemite National Park and would whisk his wife away for a day here and there along the Big Sur coastline. The Arlington Community Church was rather large, the church well established; yet he didn't get very close to the intellectual activity at Berkeley. The exciting possibility of starting a new church captivated him and he soon moved to Wichita, Kansas, to begin from scratch. In the summer of 1957 the family headed east with a fishtank of guppies on the floorboard between his pregnant wife's feet in their '49 Plymouth with the luggage rack overflowing.
There they had two more children, which made six. He was a religion and philosophy lecturer at Wichita U. as well as minister of a fledgling congregation at Concord Church. Services were first held in the parsonage basement using a foot pump organ, and then at the elementary school until a church building could be built. With six children to feed much time was spent building church membership by calling on new families as they moved into newly built homes in the middle-class housing development. And he prepared lectures, which left little time for his family, which was then getting large. Grading students' papers was an agonizing process, which he gladly passed on to student professors if possible, but making the rounds in the community and bringing new people into his parish was pleasurable.
Using an A.B. Dick mimeograph machine he published a weekly newsletter, which he delivered to the main post office on the other side of town. These weekly trips across town allowed him to stop at the bakery thrift stores to supply his family for another week. Used and hand me down clothes were brought home for his children.
He began to write again and various pieces were published in United Church periodicals. He stopped lecturing and wrote a play called "Romain Will Knock" based on a protagonist dedicated to the humane campaign against hunger. He gave the manuscript as a Christmas present to his awestruck wife who was wondering if his writing would ever help feed the family. At the time, a prosperous neighbor who was a retired wheat farmer, was flying around the world to help other countries raise better crops. The vast wheat fields on our great plains were overflowing the grain elevators with rotting wheat berries as the huge B-52's being manufactured locally were flying overhead. The play was intended to be performed on Broadway but it wasn't. Was the drama too intellectual? Or is interest in humanitarian campaigns faddish?
By 1964, despite preaching for fairhousing and nuclear disarmament, he had built a healthy church congregation amidst a new housing development on the edge of wheat fields at the outskirts of a military industrial based city. He wanted to move back to New England to be closer to bigger libraries to pursue his research. He would miss the church family camps he led during the summers at Estes Park that allowed him to fish for trout, grow a beard, and to write. But one evening an unknown caller left a message for him with the children and asked that he call the pastoral search committee at the Mystic Congregational Church. The Rockies, West, and Mid-west would soon become memories as he made only rare return visits. Trading off their '53 Chevy he loaded his family into a new Volvo station wagon and pulled out of Wichita headed east. Once there, his itchy feet were finally nailed to the floor and he spent the rest of his life on the picturesque Connecticut coast.
But on one return trip he took four of his children and wife to the top of a 12,000' peak in Northeastern New Mexico on a visit to his son living near Taos. Later, he went to Albuquerque to participate in another son's marriage. And he visited a daughter working in Silicon Valley and a son working in the Texas oilfields . There were more visits too, but he was dynamically returning east having gone a full circle.
While living in Mystic, Connecticut, a sailors haven, he did the bulk of his writing and undertook a study of George Peele's 16th century drama researched at Yale University libraries from 1964-1974. This resulted in his publication of The Chronicle of King Edward The First (surnamed Longshanks) with the Life of Lluellen (Rebel in Wales) a retroform which provided a few unriddles in the text, modern spelling and punctuation, and an introduction. He also published samples from Peele's The love of King David and Fair Bethsabe and reference portions from the Bible in the translation by Miles Coverdale, selected and modernized, with comment. Following out an interest in the impact of the Bible on later literature, he presented papers to small groups on Fulke Greville, Giraudoux' Judith and Peele's David and Bethsabe. It was the latter, which led to the study of Edward I.
His environment in Mystic was more inspiring for his writing though he was still jammed for time. In the late 60's he again was excited by his play "Romain Will Knock" and converted it to prose, picking away in his two fingered style at the typewriter. He was intent, but still the manuscript was not published until 1995 , though he had even offered it gratis to be used to raise money to fight hunger. The prose underwent many revisions and is livelier than the play, even using some lingo he learned from a son's friend who had lived in an eastern ghetto. It is still mainly intellectual, challenging the reader to consider choices and consequences. The setting is an American city in the 1960's encompassing all walks of life, depicting many contrasts with only a few shades of gray.
Like a Camus novel, the content is philosophical. Like a Brecht play, the style is didactic with some alienation. But unlike Ibsen, he was willing to convert his playscript to prose, which left elegant flowing dialog. He passionately wanted to diminish hunger and felt this could contribute. At this time his household was bustling with activity from six children who kept him busy going to school sporting events, concerts, plays and musicals, and closely watching their studies. And he introduced them to events like the Newport Folk Festivals and Broadway plays, urging them to become involved in lots of activities.
Then in the 70's he completed a journalistic study of human power drives titled And Still We Lost which is not yet published. His mother, who had been a housemother at Beloit College and was living out her retirement years in Mystic as he wrote this piece, died in 1978. He took her ashes to Milwaukee to lay next to her husband who had died in the early 1950's and her only daughter who had died in her twenties from Addison's disease.
By then some of his children were in college and a daughter was studying in Germany. One summer he took a son and met her to trace family ancestry and was able to find a Jacob Dreher, an artisan, who had fathered two children in Schriesheim according to church record books and took them with their mother to the U.S. The son did bring back a pack of Dreher Birra brewed in the Italian Alps to the glee of his siblings who joked it was a family relic and possible hint as to the family's Milwaukee roots.
For the bi-centennial he published a book 1775-1783, Now Alarming, Now Promising, Fast Day-Thanksgiving Day Resolves of Congress. This book provides authentic texts for re-enacting a Revolutionary fast day or Thanksgiving Day. And it provides case material for discussing "Does America have a tradition of civil religion? If so, can Christians live with it?" and "Do Christians' attitudes when America won Independence help us understand independent nationalism in the Third World today?"
His church was still his main thrust, filling the days with its surrounding concerns. Many hours were spent on into the evenings and on Saturdays into the early morning hours preparing sermons. Sometimes his sermons were heavily theologically bent, once prompting one parishioner to ask, "Is he angry?" He was generally serious in the pulpit but would tell humorous stories to lighten the atmosphere on occasion. When guest preaching on family visits to Georgia he was always urged to use scripture more heavily when he spoke.
True to his intent, he was spending any spare moment in various libraries researching Peele and the American Revolutionary period. His little Ford Vega and then Fiesta cars were virtually worn to the ground making these 100 mile round trips. While his wife was working as an educator, his few hours away from parish work were spent writing. Only occasionally could his family drag him away for a few hours of relaxation on the beach.
In 1980 his parish gave him a partial sabbatical in conjunction with a Fellowship from Yale University to write an essay on the letters of Samuel Huntington, President of Congress 1779-1781. Finally, he was given some relief from his career-long struggle between ministering and writing. This resulted in possibly his most ambitious manuscript and soon to be released essay titled "Longer Than Expected." (Samuel Huntington to John Lawrence, treasurer of Connecticut, December 1, 1780: "As I find myself under a necessity to remaining in Congress much longer than I expected, for it was my wish and full expectation to have returned home in October last, I am under necessity of requesting one hundred pounds in hard money may be sent to me...") The theme is the marvelous ability of the American political system (whatever its concurrent faults) to practice FREEDOM, derived from a prior development of the Christian tradition.
It shows the presidency of Huntington in the light of New England religion. The current debate over the separation of church and state is integral to these letters. And though the original intent was merely to write an essay on a local signer of the Declaration of Independence, it became a "study to determine if Huntington's religious New England background was a significant factor in his attitudes and capabilities." "Issues...were the beginnings of the federal judicial branch, the creation of the first executive departments, currency reform with the devaluation of the Continental paper money, negotiation of a peace treaty with Great Britain and final ratification of the Articles of Confederation and the formal start of the Union." As Huntington's home was Norwich, a neighboring town at the head of the Thames River, local research was available at Connecticut College and the Mystic Seaport but many original papers were found in Hartford and New Haven as well.
During this time he trimmed his involvement from the many committees he had been participating in on the regional, state and local level. He had always tried to be involved and encouraged others to be, but his concentrated effort was required for this essay which he completed, but was never able to publish.
All his children being grown, he retired in 1984, already sensing the beginnings of a neurological deterioration, which eventually resulted in his death on October 18, 1994, at the age of 75. The last congregations he served were made up of people involved in national defense though he himself was a pacifist. He ministered in Wichita, which is a major base for the Strategic Air Command and a major manufacturer of military aircraft. And he ministered in Mystic which is adjacent to Groton, which is a major submarine base, home of the Naval Underwater Warfare Center, and a major manufacturer of nuclear armed and powered submarines. He was a deep thinker in the realm of Christian ethics and was able to serve these parishes wholeheartedly.
When he retired, his wife remained a remedial reading therapist in the local school system and he tried to think and write at home, but he was deteriorating. While in retirement he was able to complete "Kings of Judah," ten plays for amateurs, which is not yet published. The theme is the human benefit to which David and the successor kings of Judah either validated or failed to validate their kingship, not sheerly in terms of Divine Right of Kings--so preparing us partially for the messiaship of Jesus Christ. It has very sparse trappings and minces no words, seeming to capture blocks of thoughts in single phrases.
He suffered a series of small strokes. The first he was aware of hospitalized him while attending a seminar and doing research when visiting one of his daughters in England. He was examined by specialists in Boston but the exact nature of his illness was never determined. Unknowingly, one would assume it was Alzheimer's disease. He belonged to a group of theatergoers who were regulars at the Yale Repertoire and the Eugene O'Neill Theater but by then he was unable to promote his work. Even a local theater group in Stonington was beyond his reach by the time he completed "Kings of Judah" as his condition left him indecisive and docile.
In 1991, though he was unaware, his manuscript Ourselves & One Other, a devotional book, was published as a medley of images tied together by a view of faithful response to Jesus theme. This included devotions, poetry, music, comments on scripture using metaphors and paraphrases, and prayers that he had written through the years in every parish. It was edited with photographs and illustrations. When he first received a printed copy of it he was able to express surprise and pleasure but was unable to comment on it due to his illness which left him unable to articulate what he was thinking.
Now The Dog Is Quiet, the prose version of Romain Will Knock, was published in 1995, eight months after his death, after sitting idle for over twenty-five years. The main characters are businessmen but the theme is the humane campaign against hunger. It has many sides dealing with both social and business values but is secular and never actually mentions religion. A hopeful and strong ending which includes the entrance of a new character is climactic. It appears to offer a technique for Americans and the world to get along together.
There are many personal similarities to his life in the characters and events in the story. Perhaps Elson Miles is similar to his father, and Romain is similar to the other bankers he was working with. Perhaps John Wiro is similar to himself and Daphne Miles similar to his sister. His children remember some incidents with the family dog that are similar to ones in this story. It was entirely fitting that he gave such a personal story to his wife, for she too champions human rights, perhaps even more so, or at least they inspired each other. She also embraces other humane issues such as nuclear disarmament and regularly raises money to fight hunger through "CROP Walks" which matches dollars for miles.
He eventually offered it to be used to raise money to fight hunger through Church World Service-CROP. The inside back cover asks for donations to help fight hunger to be sent there.
In the words of some of his congregation, "He was a man who practiced what he believed." "A true Christian." "A selfless servant of God." "A man who truly lived his faith." Also, he was a great group leader. He could lead a church camp dining room in song and story telling as well as anyone. And he would listen to people's problems one on one, and usually was able to help.
He spent the last years of his life in a nursing home but never missed going to church, being wheeled over in a wheelchair by a friend, except for the last Sunday before his death. Becoming unable to swallow, he had stopped even trying to eat and drink and was overcome from lack of food and water.
A major publisher never published him, and this was great disappointment to him. He tried to gain a publisher until he was too ill to send his manuscripts off, and received rejection after rejection. This disappointment probably added fuel to his illness. His wife would say, "But George, what did you expect? Your subjects are so obscure." The books he self published on Peele, on Longshanks Book, using Adams Press, are still selling after twenty years and received acclaim by several select scholars for his introduction, editing, and comments.
One of this summer's blockbuster movies was based loosely on the story of King Edward I (Longshanks) through the very different eyes of William Wallace, a Scott and foe. In the fascinating 43-page introduction to "Edward I" he states, "Peele gave them [Welsh and Scottish nationalists] a voice, but implied that unification was the better policy." But then, "Peele's portrait of him is coherent and vivid enough that we feel curious about the actual Edward. We ask whether the portrait resembles the man. To relieve our curiosity, however, we first have to decide how much resemblance to expect..."
Iron Horse Free Press is posthumously publishing his remaining works. Using an economical 1st printing, the hope is to gain a market for a 2nd printing to command a more expensive production process. He IS being published and his life's works ARE becoming available with modest promotion should they find their way to an audience. The Huntington essay was published in early 1996 and was well received and is available in hardcover. A second edition of King Edward The First was published in September 1999 which included David and Bethsabe (Samples) and his remaining two known unpublished manuscripts are scheduled as projects.
It would be bittersweet for his recognition to come after his death, but not unusual for artists. His humility made him entirely the wrong person to promote his own work. He was more a serious writer and would have produced much more had he not become ill and had he received some encouragement from publishers. Not that he had ever written anything specifically with commerciality in mind. But, thinking ahead, he had looked for retirement spots in both Idaho and Vermont. His idea was to go to the mountains, grow a beard, and write.