My Childhood and Becoming a Witness

Kindergarten

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”

Matthew 19:14

G.K. Chesterton once remarked that fairy tales are “more than true” — not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they remind us that dragons can be defeated. Stories hold a unique power. They transcend simple truth when they reveal deeper realities about ourselves or the world we live in, helping us face those realities with courage and honesty. The story that follows is my own. It is a narrative of dragons fought and dragons defeated, and I hope it conveys truths that will resonate with those I hold most dear. It is told as faithfully as memory permits, without exaggeration or embellishment, though admittedly, with omissions — some forgotten, others too embarrassing or painful to recount. Above all, it chronicles my 64-year journey to the Catholic Church.

My story begins in October 1948 with my mother, Patsy Ryburn who found herself pregnant at 16 after a ‘date’ with Gordon Whiting, a Navy enlistee stationed in San Diego, California. Shortly after, Gordon was deployed to Asia, leaving my mother to face the difficult reality of being a young, unwed mother. At 17, she accepted a marriage proposal from Richard Higuera, a childhood acquaintance from her church in Salinas, California. Richard, also serving in the Navy, was stationed on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. I was born in June of 1949 at the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. For the first three years of my life, we lived at #3 Iwo Jima Road in Midway Village, a Navy housing complex above the Cow Palace in San Francisco. I have few memories of this time — reconstructed mostly from old photographs — and my earliest vivid recollections begin around 1952, when Richard, Mom, and I moved moved to the housing project in Salinas, California.

At the age of six, life took a significant turn. In 1955, my mother divorced Richard Higuera and married my biological father, Gordon Whiting. Four years later, in 1959, at my mother’s request Gordon formally adopted me, and my legal name was changed from Richard Higuera to Richard Whiting. Sadly, life with Gordon was harrowing. He was an abusive father and husband, and his violent treatment of my mother and me left lasting emotional scars. This troubled home environment no doubt influenced my joining Jehovah’s Witnesses at the age of 15, as I sought a sense of solace and hope amidst the turmoil. I will describe the steps to my conversion further below.

My Early Life

My mother, Patsy Ryburn, was just 16 when she conceived me in Tijuana, Mexico, while on a ‘date’ with Gordon Whiting, a Navy enlistee stationed in San Diego, California. Mom was accompanying a girlfriend of hers who wished to visit her boyfriend before he shipped out to Asia. (I don’t know whether Mom knew Gordon Whiting before this occasion.) A day or so after, Gordon shipped out to Asia. Faced with the prospect of becoming an unwed mother, Mom accepted a marriage proposal from Richard Higuera, a boy she knew from school and church in Salinas, California. Richard, also in the Navy, was stationed on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. I was born in June of 1949 at Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. Our home was in Midway Village, at #3 Iwo Jima Road, part of the Navy barracks located above the Cow Palace in San Francisco.

In June 1952, we moved from San Francisco to Salinas, California, settling at 27D McGinley Way in the housing project near the corner of Sanborn Road and East Alisal Street. I was still too young for school, so I spent my days climbing trees and playing tag with the other children who lived in the project.

My maternal grandparents, Ben and Eva Ryburn moved from Oklahoma to Salinas in June of 1945. My grandmother, grandfather, and mother (who was 14 at the time but claimed to be 16 to qualify for work), found jobs at Raiter’s Cannery on East Alisal Street, canning tomatoes. My grandparents worked 14 to 15 hours a day, while my mother worked only eight hours due to her age. For reasons I’m not aware of, the family returned to Jay, Oklahoma in October of that same year.

By June 1946, the family had returned to Salinas, where my grandfather, known as ‘B.F.’, secured a job as the maintenance manager for the housing project we later called home. My grandparents lived in the larger main building at 37B McKinley Way, which I suspect might have once served as the Mess Hall when the site was used as a barracks.

Grandpa Ryburn, ever doting on me as his first grandson, would take me fishing with him, and let me watch him shave in the morning — a special bonding routine we shared.

One memory from those days stands out vividly. For my birthday in 1953, Granny and Grandpa gifted me a Handy Andy toy tool set, complete with a small but fully functional saw, pliers, and hammer. Eager to test my new tools, I sat on Grandpa’s porch and began sawing into the wood of the step. Grandpa noticed through the screen door, but instead of being upset at the damage I was causing, he gently said, “Ricky, you don’t want to do that. Wait just a minute.” He disappeared into the house and soon returned with a two-by-four. Handing it to me, he said, “Here, you can saw this all you want.” His loving patience left a lasting impression on me.

In February of 1953, my sister Patti Dennette, whom we affectionately called ‘Dennie,’ was born. A few months later, in late June, we moved from the housing project as Richard bought a small house at 1318 Bardin Way in a newly developed neighborhood of the Alisal area of Salinas. It was here that I started kindergarten at Alisal Elementary School. My best friend at the time was Wayne Yost, who lived just a few houses down the street.

My memories of life on Bardin Way are few, but they remain strikingly vivid. I recall the day I got my hand caught in the automatic wringer on top of the washing machine in the garage, stepping on a rusty nail (which led to my first tetanus shot), and attending the annual Christmas party at the carrot packing plant where my mother worked.

But the memory that stands out most happened one evening as we were driving home from the grocery store. I sat in the back seat flipping a nickel up in the air and — as little boys will do — catching it in my mouth as it came down. On the last ‘catch’, I inadvertently swallowed, and the nickel dropped into my esophagus. It lodged sideways in my throat, making breathing very difficult. Terrified, when we got home I told my mother what I had done. Seeing me struggling to breathe, she rushed me to the hospital. There a doctor administered ether (the smell of which is memorable even to this day) and surgically removed the nickel. The doctor told my mother that if she had delayed even ten minutes, I would have died. I still have that nearly fatal nickel, which Mom kept until her death.

In July 1955, Grandpa Ryburn died, and everything began to change. ‘B.F.’, as his friends called him, was the rock of the family. He was kind and patient, gentle and loving, yet strong and dependable. With the rock of the family gone, things quickly began to fall apart. My mother divorced Richard Higuera in October of 1955 and married Gordon Whiting that December. In March of 1956, we moved to a duplex on a small cul-de-sac in San Jose. My memories of life the few months we lived here are fraught with pain.

My ‘new’ father, had a great dislike of me — even though he was in fact my biological father (a fact his mother, my paternal grandmother refused to believe since her son would never have done something like that! I imagine this contributed to Gordon’s animus toward me). One morning before Mom had awakened, Gordon was angered by something innocuous I had done and choked me by the neck until I passed out. He then left the house, but soon Mom awoke and found me lying unconscious on the kitchen floor. When I came to, she was sitting on the floor, rocking me back and forth in her arms, saying “Ricky, I’ll never let him do this to you again” — The first of many unfulfilled promises in my life.

Shortly thereafter, I attended a neighborhood Sunday School held in the home of an elderly lady who lived just around the corner from us. One Sunday, after class, she asked me to remove my shirt. She had noticed bruises on my face and neck and was concerned. Seeing the bruises on my back and arms as well, she called the police and told me to stay there until an officer arrived. When two officers arrived, they looked me over and asked me some questions, then put me in their squad car and drove back around the corner to our house. Telling me to stay in the car, the two policemen knocked on the door, spoke with Gordon for a couple of minutes, then returned to the car and told me it was okay for me to go into the house. (Things were very different with respect to child abuse ‘in those days’.) Needless to say, I was not allowed to attend Sunday School there after that.

In May of 1956 Dennie and I were sent to live for the summer with our maternal grandmother, Eva Ryburn in Jay, Oklahoma. Granny had returned to live here after Grandpa Ryburn’s death. We were only there for a few months, but this was where my nascent love of God began to blossom.

My first encounter with God

While living with Granny Ryburn, we attended Sunday school at her Pentecostal church. One evening Granny took us along to one of those Pentecostal revivals where an itinerant preacher invites the unsaved to come up to the stage to pray and ‘accept Jesus’. For some reason I was moved to leave my folding chair, walk up to the stage, kneel, and begin praying. I was still there on my knees praying when I felt Granny tap me on the shoulder and ask, ‘Ricky, are you okay? We have to go now.’ I got up and saw that the audience had already left, and the attendants were collecting the folding chairs. I had been in a state of prayer for some 20 minutes or more! Because of this Granny told family she was convinced that ‘Ricky is going to be a minister some day.’

In September of 1956, Mom and Gordon drove to Oklahoma to retrieve Dennie and me. We returned to a new house on Short Street once again in Salinas, California. I attended 1st grade at Sherwood Elementary School. Here I have only two memories. The first is my first day of school here: Gordon drove me to the school, parked across the street and told me that was my school. I got out of the car and ran across the street. When I reached the sidewalk, I heard Gordon yelling at me to come back. I ran back across the street to the open car window, and Gordon slapped me hard across the face, then told me I had to go up the block to where the crossing guard was and have them take me across the street.

My second memory of Sherwood Elementary is being sent to the Principal’s Office because I refused to ‘do the Hokey Pokey’ with the other children. For some reason I felt too embarrassed to dance; my teacher could not convince me to do so and sent me to the Principal’s Office. Happily, the Principal was very understanding, so this did not get reported to Gordon.

By the Winter of 1957, we were again living in San Jose, in a house on Walnut Street. Gordon was studying electrical engineering at San Jose State University and attending Navy Reserve meetings on Wednesday nights. (I remember this vividly as I had to polish his shoes until he could ‘see his reflection’ in them.) Mom was working afternoons and evenings as a waitress and nurse’s aide. I’m omitting the memories of abuse during this part of my childhood as they are too repulsive to repeat (some of my family are aware of them, though).

A crisis of faith

It was shortly after Christmas that I experienced a ‘crisis of faith’. As I stood at the sink one evening washing the dinner dishes, something popped into my mind: ‘What if God is like Santa Claus and isn’t real?’, I thought. This disturbed me greatly, so I prayed, something like ‘God, if you are real, please let me know for sure.’

About two weeks later I received an answer to my prayer. Mom was at work, and this particular evening I went outside the house to avoid being around Gordon. Standing outside, gazing up at the starry night sky, I was suddenly overcome with a sense that I cannot adequately describe — a sense of love so powerful, so great that it felt as if someone was there hugging me and comforting me. A feeling of sublime peace overwhelmed me, and I knew that this was God’s answer to my prayer: He was real, and He loved me more than I could ever imagine. I have never since doubted God’s existence (how could I, having experienced it personally?), though I have at times doubted whether He could still love me as He did in that moment.

As my ninth birthday approached, I asked my parents for a Bible. They were not at all religious, but had no objection and bought me a faux leather paper-bound King James Version Bible for my birthday. I was fascinated by that Bible with its full page color plates depicting various Biblical scenes. I loved reading, and even memorized the twenty-third psalm. One of my recurring childhood prayers was to someday see God ‘face to face’.

In August of 1958 we moved to Arcadia, California, but were there for only a couple of months. I can remember attending fourth grade here and swinging as high as possible on the swing set, then at the top of the arc leaping out and pretending to be flying an airplane like Terry Lee of ‘Terry and the Pirates’, a comic strip I regularly read in the Sunday funnies.

In October of 1958 we moved to Budd Avenue in Campbell, California, where I continued fourth grade at Cherry Lane School. One of my cherished memories from this period was the day Richard Higuera visited. My parents were both at work, and I returned home from school to find Richard waiting. Since we had an hour or more before my parents would be home, Richard asked me if I would like to learn algebra. I didn’t know what that was, of course, but in less than an hour Richard had me doing simple equations of the 2x + 1 = 17 variety. It was thrilling! Gordon had never taught me anything, and even resented my asking him for help with my homework. I take that back — Gordon did teach me one thing: how to shine shoes really really well.

Becoming a Witness

In April 1959, we moved to Santa Cruz Avenue in Santa Clara. Not far from our new home was a Southern Baptist church, and I asked my parents if I could attend Sunday school there. Although they were still non-religious, they gave me permission. Before long, I was baptized at the church. I don’t recall whether my parents were even aware of the baptism, but I do remember they were not present for it.

One Saturday morning during the summer of 1961, as I sat at the kitchen table reading, the doorbell rang. My mother answered it and spoke briefly with someone at the door. A few moments later, she came into the kitchen holding a magazine-sized, pinkish-orange book titled From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained. Handing it to me, she explained that she had bought it from a woman going door-to-door. I was excited and eagerly opened it — but, as was a childhood habit, I began reading from the back. I’m not sure why I did this; perhaps it was impatience, wanting to know how a story would end. My first impression was a beautiful one: a vision of a paradise restored to humanity by God.

But in the chapter just before that serene ending was a vividly unsettling depiction of Armageddon, with imagery that was shockingly graphic, portraying divine destruction without mercy, sweeping across the earth, sparing no one, not even mothers and children. The horrific portrayal of violence unsettled me deeply. I was afraid to tell my my mother about it, and I couldn’t throw it away — after all, she had paid for it — so I hid it, tucking it beneath a stack of sweaters in a dresser drawer, hoping to forget abaout it. Which I did until …

One summer day in 1963, while rummaging through my dresser drawers for a shirt, I noticed the Paradise book peeking out from beneath the sweaters where I had stashed it two years earlier. A jolt of unease ran through me as I recalled its disturbing depiction of the world’s end. The thought, however, hit me: “If what this book says is true, I need to take it seriously.” I pulled it out and began reading — this time from the beginning — and finished it in less than a week. As if by fate, the very weekend I completed reading, a Witness named Joanne Jensen knocked on our door. In hindsight, I would come to view her visit as divine intervention — at least in some sense. My mother, uninterested in speaking with her, casually mentioned that I had just finished reading the Paradise book. Joanne asked if she could speak with me about it, and to my mother’s later regret, she let her in. I sat with Joanne in the living room, and as my mother left us to talk, Joanne began to ask about my thoughts on the book. I told her how much I had appreciated the information it contained. She offered to return weekly to study a chapter of the book with me, guiding me further into the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Although I wasn’t sure how my parents would react, fear of Armageddon loomed large in my mind, and that fear overpowered my hesitation. I agreed.

Over the next few weeks, Joanne continued visiting, and together we studied the first chapters of the Paradise book. However, my parents soon noticed the regularity of her visits and confronted me. They made it unequivocally clear that they would not allow their son to become “a Jehovah’s Witness” and insisted I tell Joanne she was no longer welcome. I tried to express how much I enjoyed what I was learning, but their decision was final — there was no room for discussion. When Joanne arrived for our next study, I tearfully explained that my parents had forbidden me from continuing, despite my sincere desire to do so. She kindly offered to speak with them, but I knew it would make no difference. Joanne suggested a quiet alternative: I could continue my studies in secret at school with a young Witness. She also offered to send me additional Bible literature through her daughter, Cindy, who, like me, was a freshman at A. C. Wilcox High School. I agreed.

Thus began a year-long journey of studying in secret. At school, I met regularly with a fellow Witness student, Mark Geller, to continue my lessons. On my walk home, I often took a detour by way of the Jensen home to ask Joanne. At night, I would read The Watchtower under the covers in my bed, using the faint beam of a penlight to avoid detection. I crafted cardboard pockets beneath a couple of dresser drawers, creating hidden compartments where I could safely store copies of The Watchtower and Awake! magazines. Determined to deepen my understanding, I acquired a copy of the Emphatic Diaglott to discreetly read the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, figuring my parents would not recognize it as a Watchtower publication even if they found it — and I read through the entire thing without getting caught.

During this time, we made a visit to my paternal grandmother, Bertha Reinegger, in Soquel, California, about an hour from home. While browsing through her library, I was thrilled to discover a copy of the 1942 Watchtower publication, The Truth Shall Make You Free. Careful not to raise suspicion, I casually asked Bertha if I could borrow one of her books. A lifelong advocate for reading, she naturally agreed without hesitation. I slipped the book under the back seat of our car and successfully smuggled it home, eager to dive into its pages in secret.

Eventually, the truth had to come out. One day, when I got home from school, my mother confronted me. She had received a call from the school band director, informing her that I was refusing to play the national anthem. (I played trumpet — poorly by the way — in band and orchestra.) This was the moment of reckoning. I admitted my conscientious conviction: the anthem, to me, was a form of political expression, and I could not in good conscience participate. My mother was furious, and when Gordon found out, he was equally so. They pressed me further — was I still studying with the Witnesses, despite their explicit orders? I admitted I was. In a fit of rage, Gordon picked up the phone and called the Jensen household, threatening to sue them. It wasn’t long before Joanne’s husband (who wasn’t a Witness) showed up at our door. The confrontation quickly escalated into a fight in the street between him and Gordon. Someone called the police, and they arrived to break it up.

Faced with my defiance, my parents threatened drastic measures. They warned me that if I didn’t give up this “crazy religion,” they would send me to military school or ship me off to Oklahoma to live with my maternal grandmother. Calmly, I explained that there was no way I could abandon what I had come to believe, even if I wanted to — and I didn’t want to. They could do whatever they felt necessary, but I was resolute. I would not stop learning about Jehovah.

That was the final straw. Gordon, determined to break my convictions, handed me a copy of Thirty Years a Watchtower Slave by William Schnell. He demanded that I read it. I did — and saw right through it. The book reeked of bias, a bitter tirade written by someone clearly nursing old grievances. When I finished, I told my parents as much: the book was little more than an angry rant, and it had done nothing to change my mind.

Having failed to convince me that the Witnesses were part of a cult, my parents resorted to professional help, taking me to a child psychologist in San Jose. After a thorough interview, the psychologist surprised them with his conclusion: opposing my conscience, he said, would likely cause me more harm than the religion itself. To me, this felt like yet another confirmation that I was on the right path — divine guidance and further validation of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

In a final act of desperation, my parents made one last attempt to persuade me to abandon the religion. When that effort failed, they told me I had broken their hearts and warned that I would need to leave the house once I graduated from high school. They also made it clear that I was forbidden from having any influence over my younger sister and four younger brothers.

Undeterred, I was baptized as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses on October 30, 1965, at the age of 16. My father’s ridicule and harassment continued relentlessly until the day I left home — the day after I graduated from high school. As I stood at the threshold, ready to leave for good, he gave me what would turn out to be the most valuable piece of advice I’ve ever received. “Rick,” he said, “promise me you’ll never let someone else do your thinking for you.” I promised him I wouldn’t. It took many years, but eventually, I kept that promise.

Summary

The early years of my life were, thankfully, shaped by the love and patience of both my grandfather and stepfather. Their examples and nurturing provided me with the resilience I would later need to endure the emotional and physical abuse experienced from my biological father.

My natural inclination toward spirituality, coupled with the dysfunction within my family, inevitably led me to become one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I longed to please God and sought comfort in the idea of having a Heavenly Father who cared for me. The mid-1960s — a time of intense social and political upheaval — offered little stability, but the Watchtower Society’s teachings promised hope. They assured me that if I became and remained a faithful Jehovah’s Witness, I would very soon experience eternal life in a paradise on earth, free from the turmoil surrounding me. It was a message that offered both purpose and peace.

During my senior year of high school, our class counselor, Mr. Cole, summoned me to his office. He wanted to know why I hadn’t applied for any college scholarships, given that I ranked among the top ten students out of a graduating class of 500. As it turned out, he had taken it upon himself to secure two scholarships for me to Santa Clara University, a well-regarded Jesuit institution located just a short distance from where I lived. I told Mr. Cole that I would not be going to college because as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I believed the world was about to end and that higher education was therefore pointless. Mr. Cole’s face flushed with disbelief. “You’re throwing your life away!” he exclaimed, his frustration palpable. That conversation took place in the spring of 1967 — now some 59 years ago.

Looking back, I probably owe Mr. Cole an apology.

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