Launched Into Life

My decision to become a Baha'i on March 2, 1970, while I was 17 and a senior in High School, changed everything! I had already been accepted at Northwest Nazarene College, but I knew I couldn't go there with my new religion and survive. I hastily applied and was accepted at Washington State University.

That summer I got on a bus with a lot of other Baha'i youth from the Pacific Northwest, and came to a Baha'i Youth Conference in Chicago. It was 1970, and the Sears Tower was still being built. I was truly a slack-jawed kid from Walla Walla, as I experienced this city for the first time. I had no idea that my decision to become a Baha'i would bring me to live in this amazing city five years later.

That summer was life-changing in another way . . . teenage hormones took hold, and I had sex for the first time! She was gorgeous, "liberated" (a term we used back then to denote a free spirit), had lived abroad for a year and spoke fluent French, wore her hair in a short pixie cut, and went by the nickname "Willie." I lost my virginity with a girl named Willie! How prophetic!

Willie moved out from her parents' house that summer, and moved into an apartment just a few blocks from my house. My mother was caught up in her own new relationship that summer, and I spent a lot of time with Willie. I was head over heels in love, but before the summer was over she broke up with me and started dating a guy from Thailand. I was crushed on the one hand, but somewhat relieved to be able to get back to living in chastity, which my new religion prescribed before marriage. I threw myself wholeheartedly into learning more about Baha'i and into my preparations for going to college.

My Baha'i teachers were Emmalu and Dorothy, sisters who had been Baha'is since the early days of the Faith in the United States. Emmalu liked to sit up all night, playing scrabble and smoking cigarettes, and since I had a night job at the local cannery I would hang out with Emmalu on my free nights, soaking up her fabulous stories and amazing knowledge.

Emmalu and Dorothy were my spiritual mothers, and they taught me how to look beyond the surface facts to search for the spiritual principles that apply in every situation. I credit them for fanning the flame of my new faith, and for launching me into a life that I could never have imagined possible just a few months earlier.