The Day JFK Died
When I was studying to be a minister of the Gospel, my student churches were two adjacent wooden churches in the inner slum areas of Melbourne. For seven years during the 1950’s and 1960’s the people of those inner slum areas were my parish.
After more than seven years as student minister, then part time minister and finally as a full time graduated and ordained minister, my work as Pastor to the Slums was drawing to a close.
They had been seven incredibly happy years. The love of my life who had started there as my girlfriend, had become my fiancee ,and two years later my wife ,and three years later the mother of our first child.
Our baby daughter was the delight of all of the people in the church. With so many elderly people in both congregations, the coming of the first full time minister in forty years and the first baby to be born into a church manse in the two churches this century, created a great deal of delight for the elderly members. We used to think that Jenny had one hundred grandmothers.
The work among the boys upon parole and probation was becoming more intense. So many young people seemed to be getting into trouble and I was the only probation officer for the whole of the inner slum areas. I spent much of my time going in and out of the abattoirs, the sale yards and the racecourses to meet men who had been released from prison on parole and to make sure that they were keeping the conditions of their parole. Many of the young men who had been charged with serious offences had become Christians and were involved in the youth work and in the life of the church. The new manse had been purchased and the properties were all in good order. I had graduated both from the Federal College of The Bible of Churches of Christ and from Melbourne University, and the time had come to move on.
I had cherished the idea for seven years that I should do some post graduate study in the United States of America, and after writing to many various universities and colleges I decided that I would seek admission to the Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana, and work at the University of Indiana toward a Doctorate in Christian Education.
The idea behind all that I did was that I might equip myself to one day minister in a large city church, teaching Scriptural truths by the most efficient and effective means to large numbers of people.
An Australian minister of Churches of Christ was the senior pastor of a very large church in Indianapolis. He wrote offering me a position on his staff while I completed post graduate studies, and the thought of becoming Associate Minister at the Norwood Christian Church under Rev. Dr. Theo Fisher was a tremendous opportunity. Theo had become a leader of integration between the black and white communities of Indianapolis. He had marched with Martin Luther King into Selma, Alabama, and had succeeded in taking the church with him down the road to integration. In those days of intense civil rights campaigning Theo Fisher was a man of great courage, and I looked forward to working in ministry with him.
The second part of the picture fell into place when the Christian Theological Seminary offered me a post graduate scholarship. The letters flew backwards and forwards across the Pacific, and it became a matter of great excitement as we looked forward to leaving Australia on Boxing Day 1963 to commence our new life in the United States of America.
We had spent more than seven months getting ready to depart in 1963. We had been advised to gain a non quota immigrant visa because I would be working, as well as studying, in the United States of America. So we both had completed the long series of medical checks. Now, armed with our chest x rays, certificates of clearance about smallpox, venereal disease and a host of other unwanted conditions, with our taxation clearance and church authorisations, we waited upon the Consul for our visa.
We filled in endless forms which were sent backwards and forwards across the Pacific to Washington DC for official approval for our immigration. The people at the Consulate were quite nice, but the queues were inordinately long and we had to stand with baby daughter in arm for hours on end before we would have our certificates and applications processed.
In the meantime we continued to look after the last few of the boys who were on probation, and it was a delight to see some of them complete their time with completely clear records and be discharged from the offences which had originally taken them through the court system and into my custody. One of our worst offenders, young Reg the car thief, had completely changed his life and in his final letter written to me from the Turana Boys Home in pencil, expressed as eloquently as any unschooled sixteen year old could, what a change had occurred in his life and how probation was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
We packed all of our belongings. It broke our hearts to give away many of the gifts that we had been given for our engagement and wedding but it was not possible to take everything with us. In the centre of the lounge room we had a huge wooden crate five foot square and three foot deep. It weighed half a ton and it was the maximum that we were allowed to take on the ship. We sold some of our furniture and gave most of the rest of it to other young couples. Inside that wooden crate was placed all of our blankets, sheets and towels on the bottom and around the edges to protect the rest of the contents, all of the clothes that we intended taking, all baby Jenny’s requirements, the crockery, special wedding gifts, family photographs, typewriter, books, sermons, university transcripts and everything else that would be needed to establish us in our new life were packed into that crate. They went in with loving care, everything wrapped in towels or linen to protect them on the long sea journey. Eventually the wooden lid was closed and the whole lot bound in hoop iron and carted by truck to the wharves to be loaded on the SS Arcadia.
We had saved for three years to get enough money for our fare and it was a proud moment on the last day when we went to Macdonald Hamilton Pty Ltd and paid our fares, two adults and one child, Sydney to America, with air fares from Melbourne to Sydney and from San Francisco to Indianapolis.
That day we sold the car, and the last of our Australian possessions were on board ship sailing to Sydney, where we would join it on Boxing Day after our final Christmas with Beverley’s mother. My mother left for Sydney so she could farewell us at the overseas terminal.
The day of our final appointment came as we went to the American Consulate to get the last approvals on our visa.
The queues were long and we waited patiently for several hours.
Suddenly the Consulate seemed to go berserk. Members of the Consulate ran to one another talking in excited whispers. People broke out into stares. Men wandered away from their desks and met in huddles. Someone locked the outside door of the Consulate and no one was to be admitted. Those of us who were being processed were just left, as if we were not there, or were invisible. Someone turned a radio on and people could hear. The news broke upon all assembled. “President John F. Kennedy has been shot. He has been assassinated in Dallas, Texas. No news of his condition is yet available officially, but it is believed that he is dead.”
The Consulate went into a tailspin and with it the world.
Minor details like our visa applications were literally wiped off the Consul’s table. World events caught us up in their confusion.
Immediately the American Consulates everywhere in the world were placed onto terrorist alert. The Consuls were recalled to Washington DC.
Somewhere, there on the floor, or on a bench, or in a waste paper basket, were our visas with our photographs and everything required except the official stamp.
The Consul office remained closed. The new President was sworn in and then the Consul’s office returned to normal. Now, with only days to go before our departure, we once more lined up with extra long lines of people wanting to be processed. It was Christmas Eve and the staff of the Consulate were harassed. They could not find our visas. We pleaded with them to commence new applications. We sent telegrams across the Pacific asking for cabled permission to leave without the visa. The legal minds in the Consulate argued that new visa applications could not be processed while present applications were pending.
Then it was time to break for Christmas parties and the Christmas holidays. My mother and friends went to Sydney to farewell us on Boxing Day. Reg, the boy from Turana, had his parents drive up to Sydney so he could stand at the passenger terminal to wave us goodbye. Beverley and I, and baby Jenny, slept on the floor, owning nothing except our toothbrushes. Even our hand luggage had been taken on board and placed in our cabin on the SS Arcadia. Christmas Day left us feeling utterly bereft without money, clothing, furniture, car, job or house.
On Boxing Day the dreaded news was given to us by the Consul from his home. “I am sorry but there is nothing I can do. We will just have to process a new visa application for you when the office opens in January.”
In Sydney the SS Arcadia sailed out into Sydney Harbour, and standing against the rail was Reg, the boy who had been on probation, with his family, my mother and friends, with no one to wave goodbye to.
Back in Melbourne Beverley and I and baby Jenny were still sleeping on the floor.
It would be another six months before the visas would finally be approved, before new x rays of our chests were completed and we were again guaranteed pure from infection of tuberculosis, smallpox, venereal disease and all the other unwanted conditions. New taxation clearance certificates had to be obtained, but by then I had missed the start of the university year. I could not wait in Indianapolis, and I could not be unemployed in Australia. President Kennedy’s assassination had affected our lives completely. I needed some work in order to keep us and so became Chaplain in a mental hospital and a small country church and the Pastor to the Slums began a new career as a bush padre.
We did not realize how completely that world event was to affect our lives. Our furniture crate was duly unloaded in San Francisco. Our luggage went on to Indianapolis. It would be more than two years before, eventually, we would get all of our hand luggage returned and get the crate back to Australia. We lived with borrowed everything during that period of time, gradually replacing our necessities and re establishing our lives until the time came when we could once more take up the interrupted journey.
Two years later, with another baby on the way, the hoop iron crate arrived back in Melbourne. How excited we were and how long were the delays of getting it out of the bond store. Eventually, with duties paid the truck delivered it to our country parsonage. With great excitement we burst open the iron bands and levered up the wooden lid. We peeled back the layers of blankets and bed linen still surrounded with moth balls. And inside lay all of our earthly possessions. The kitchen saucepans were all out of shape from the pressure of the crate being dropped by a crane. The typewriter was bent in the middle, the lecture notes and books had mildewed pages. The clothes looked terribly old fashioned and out of date and nothing seemed to fit. Things were broken. In fact as we unpacked and unwrapped everything complete despair settled upon us. Most of those things went back into the crate and the whole lot was sent to the tip.
Our era as Pastor to the Slums had come to an end. We had belongings given away in Australia, in storage in America, and finally resting in the Ararat tip. Our golden cocker spaniel had a new home and new owners, but a new life was beginning – a life far from the slums. I was now a bush padre and a chaplain in a mental hospital. A new era was starting.
But I can never forget those seven years when, after each night’s service in the little churches at Ascot Vale and Newmarket, I would walk out into the heavy air with the wind blowing from the abattoirs and start my motor bike to head back to the College of The Bible to continue to train for the ministry thinking about my meeting with some of God’s children in the slums of Newmarket.
GORDON MOYES
