The Urantia Chronicles: 4. The Forum

THE URANTIA CHRONICLES

The Beginning and the First Nine Years

[L-R]: Harry Loose; Harold and Martha Sherman; Sir Hubert Wilkins; Dr. Meredith Sprunger; contact commissioners Emma (Christy) Christensen,
Dr. Lena K. Sadler, Dr. William S. Sadler; Bill Sadler; Anna and Wilfred Kellogg; Clyde Bedell.

>THE URANTIA CHRONICLES
main page

Compiled and Edited
by Saskia Praamsma

00. Introduction
01. The Beginning
02. Dr. Sadler's History
03. Sherman and Loose
04. The Forum
05. Foundation and Brotherhood
06 “Patience Yet a Little While”
07. “The Word Is Made Book”
08. Blessings and Brickbats
09. The Message Spreads Abroad
10. Introducing a Revelation
11. Dr. Sprunger and the Ministers
12. Scientists and Metaphysicians
13. New Blood, New Ideas
14. Controversy with the Church
15. Questions and Some Answers
16. "It's for the Future, not Now"
17. Making Haste Slowly
18. Consideration of Some Criticisms
19. Appraisals and Transitions
20. The Wilkins Opportunity
21. Missed Chances
22. A Wall of Secrecy
23. Bill Sadler Speaks
24. More History Mysteries
25. A Season for All Things
26. Nine Years of Slow Growth

KEY

HMSA: Harold M. Sherman's archives
UBH: Urantia Book Historical Society
SHWA: Sir Hubert Wilkins' archives
UBF: Urantia Book Fellowship's Timeline
UF: Urantia Foundation's website
HIFTUB: How I Found the Urantia Book

MORE MOVEMENT HISTORY

4. The Forum

The Urantia Forum in 1934

While the most detailed account of Forum life is found in The Urantia Diaries of Harold and Martha Sherman, others have left behind their experiences and we present them here. Some were collected by Forumite Julia Early Fenderson in the early 1980s, others were submitted for How I Found the Urantia Book or Urantia newsletters.

**HIFTUB [Excerpt] TESTIMONY of CLYDE BEDELL**

My story begins in Chicago in 1921, when I was 23. I was working at the Walter Hoops Advertising Agency. My best friend there was Lister Alwood, much my senior, and a gifted writer and poet. While at Hoops I also met a lovely creature who joined the company after I did. I asked her for a date, she told me “soon,” and I gave her a raincheck. But before the raincheck could be honored, I left Hoops to join an agency in San Francisco.

After two years on the Coast, I received a wire from Alwood urging me to apply for a higher-paying job, one that he had applied for unsuccessfully. I agreed to return to Chicago for a personal interview. When I told my boss of my dilemma that good man said, “Go get it if you can, and God bless you. If you don’t get it, come back and go to work and forget about it.” I got the job.

The first evening back in Chicago I had dinner at Alwood’s home. He asked if I would like to attend with him, on the following Sunday, a meeting at the home of a famous psychiatrist—a Dr. William Sadler, a great speaker and teacher. Perhaps there would be some reading, but interesting discussion and conversation for sure. I accepted. Before Sunday came, I had a date with the “Hoops lovely,” making the raincheck good. We had not corresponded, but I had carefully kept the address.

The first Sunday I was back in Chicago—the last Sunday in September, 1924—I attended my first Sadler Forum meeting. Afterwards I asked the Doctor if I could bring a young woman the next time. He consented. The following Sunday Florence Evans went with me, and from that day to this we have been identified with the Forum that later received the Urantia Papers.

HIFTUB TESTIMONY of RUTH RENN

In 1925 I went to the Chicago Institute of Research and Diagnosis on Diversey Parkway for a complete physical examination. One appointment was with the co-owner, Dr. William Sadler, for a psychological test. He asked me many questions regarding my thoughts and desires. The question about religious beliefs was, “Do you believe in a Creator?”

The conversation led to truth. I mentioned that I would like to be closed in a room to read and read until I found the truth I was looking for. I remember the Doctor’s face as I said this. He seemed to have a satisfied spark in his eyes and he nodded his head up and down. Not long after that I received a note in the mail inviting me to attend a Sunday meeting called the Forum at the Sadler home.

One Sunday I persuaded my husband to attend a meeting with me to see what it was about. As we ascended the stairs of the building at 533 Diversey Parkway, my husband made the remark, “You will never get me down here again.” We were greeted by Dr. Lena Sadler, the Doctor’s wife, who said, “These beings told us to build the scaffolding; they would do the rest.”

When the meeting opened we were fortunate to hear Paper 1, “The Universal Father.” I was astounded. Never had I realized that we could be told so much about God. All the following week I was remembering little snatches of what I had heard about our heavenly Father, his love and mercy. I had found what I had been searching for.

The following Sunday my husband Roy was preparing to go to the meeting with no thought of what he had said the week before about never going again. Our lives were changed from that time on.

HIFTUB TESTIMONY of WESLEY JAMES

In the late 1920s my grandmother, Elizabeth James, began searching for answers to religious questions that troubled and intrigued her. The answers her Bible and church background provided lacked consistency as far as she was concerned. There were even questions she was told should not be asked, because they showed a lack of faith. She studied the philosophies and attended the meetings of a number of cults and isms that were popular in Chicago in those days, from the Swedenborgians and Rosicrucians to the Silver Shirts of a Dr. Pelley.

At one of these meetings my grandmother mentioned to some people her growing concern that none of the groups she had found thus far had the answers she was looking for. These people—Mrs. Jessie Hill and Fred and Alice Leverenz—suggested she might be interested in a group they belonged to that met on Sundays at 533 Diversey Parkway in Chicago.

After meeting Dr. Sadler and learning about the purpose of the Forum, my grandmother signed the pledge and became a member. Years later as one of the Seventy she was often praised for her prodigious memory and ability to quote verbatim from the unpublished papers which later became the Urantia Book.

The change in my grandmother after she joined the Forum so intrigued my parents that my mother wrote Dr. Sadler asking if they too could become Forum members. In response, Dr. Sadler asked my grandmother if she wouldn’t like to have her entire family in the Forum, and so my mother, father, and uncle, Wesley John James, became members.

As our family grew, my parents weren’t able to attend Forum meetings regularly. My grandmother almost always came for Sunday dinner after the meeting and would share with us what had been discussed. My oldest brother and I were very young, at most in first or second grade, and it was assumed we wouldn’t understand, but I can still dimly recall parts of what was said. I can definitely remember the strange looks and laughs my brother and I got when we told the neighbors’ kids that there had once been blue, green and orange people!

Early in her association with the Forum my mother asked Dr. Lena Sadler if they should teach their children the advanced UB ideas before the book was published. Dr. Lena replied that if they didn’t, both they and the children would miss the chance of a lifetime. So, although we went to regular Sunday school and church, at home religious questions always received UB-oriented answers.

When I was fifteen my grandmother asked me if I would like to become a Forum member. Coincidentally, the Sunday I signed the membership pledge and went to my first meeting, Alfred Leverenz, the son of Fred and Alice, was also attending his first meeting as a new member. While I completed reading all the papers on my own, I can’t say I understood a great deal of what I’d read. Even after my grandmother had me memorize the various orders of angels, the names and capitals of the superuniverse divisions, and the difference between “triata” and “ultimata,” the teachings still didn’t always strike me as true. I was a “UB burn-out” at a very early age!

NEWSLETTER JULIA EARLY FENDERSON

Interview with Ellen Montgomery, 1980

In 1939, after teaching school for ten years in New Mexico, Julia Early found herself in Chicago, a single mother with two young sons and unable to find a teaching job

One Sunday morning she attended services at a Methodist Church and heard the name Dr. William S. Sadler mentioned, not only as a world-famous psychiatrist but as a counselor who had successfully guided a number of people. She said, “I was quite shy but I was also very poor and in despair, so even though it was Sunday, I went out to the church parking lot and called Dr. Sadler from a pay phone.” Dr. Sadler agreed to see Julia the following day. He helped her find a job and gave her some books to read, including The Mind at Mischief, but did not mention anything to her about the Urantia papers.

Julia read every word, and when she went back to see Dr. Sadler on the third floor of 533 Diversey Parkway she questioned him about the case he referred to in the Appendix to The Mind at Mischief. Sadler was evasive but Julia was so persistent that finally, in near exasperation, he said, “Julia, sit down and I’ll tell you the whole story.” He told her about the Urantia papers and she didn’t sleep that night.

Julia said, “I was skeptical. I’d been brought up in a scholarly home. I’d been raised in the Methodist Church and had always had utter faith, but I’d also been taught not to believe that there was only one way to think.” . . .
Julia became an avid student of the papers and a member of the Forum. “The more I examined them the more I came to believe,” she said. The caliber of people who read with her also furthered her belief in the Urantia papers. She described Dr. Sadler as “one of the brainiest men I ever met.”

There was also Sir Hubert Wilkins, an Australian authority on Arctic exploration. Julia frequently read with him in between the Sunday meetings and she asked him why he believed. “It is their utter consistency from beginning to end,” he said. “No human being could have written these papers with so much consistency of detail . . . there would have been a crack someplace.”

Marian Rowley was appointed Julia’s “friendly helper,” someone new readers could talk to about questions, and the two became close friends.

At a Sunday Forum meeting during the winter in the early 1940s, Dr. Sadler asked all those who felt committed to the papers and really wanted to work with them to come up the following Wednesday night. That night was cold and snowy. Exactly seventy members arrived and signed their names in numerical order. Julia was number seventeen. The purpose of the meeting was to sign up for special training and courses of study to better prepare members for the future of the Urantia movement.

HIFTUB TESTIMONY of GRACE KOLZE WALKER

I was raised in a religious family in the suburbs of Chicago. My father was an evangelical minister, a circuit-riding preacher in his early ministry. Before the Depression, I wanted to be a missionary or a missionary doctor. In college I was exposed to what was called “higher criticism,” which questioned the authority of the Bible. This caused me to do a lot of thinking about religion. Later, I found a book by a German professor that was quite profound.

I asked my doctor, Dr. William Sadler on Diversey Parkway in Chicago, if he had read this book because I just felt he knew something. He said he had read the book, then added, “I’ve got something I think you’d be interested in.” He told me about the Urantia papers, and when I showed interest he said, “What are you doing on Sunday? Could you possibly come to the Forum next Sunday afternoon?” Explaining that it would take too long to describe the purpose of the Forum in his office, the Doctor invited me to come early. Upon joining the Forum, I signed, at the Doctor’s request, a pledge of secrecy concerning the Urantia Papers.

I began reading the Papers in 1945. I worked in downtown Chicago, and after work on Friday nights I would take the bus to 533 Diversey. Afterwards I’d take a late train and wouldn’t get home until midnight. Reading one paper at a time, I started with the Jesus papers, then began reading from the first part of the book. I was convinced that what I read was true, because the story of Jesus’ life as father to his brothers and sisters touched on so many of the same problems I had had in my life.

One time, when I first began to read. I approached Mrs. Kellogg, who was the proctor at the desk, and asked, “Do you really believe all of this?”
“I certainly do!” she replied.

The Sunday afternoon group, which had started as a discussion group, was called the Forum. At the time I began attending it had become an open-house time for readers. I also belonged to a group called the Seventy. There were just seventy people in this group originally, made up of those who had read the Papers in their entirety. Within this group a school was formed to train teachers, which held evening classes at 533. The problem was that there were teachers but no persons to teach at this time. Teachers far outnumbered new readers. In the Seventy group, each person had to write a paper on a Urantia topic. These were passed by the Doctor and read on Sundays.

HIFTUB TESTIMONY of KATHARINE “TICKY” JONES HARRIES

I wasn’t an original member of the Forum, which began in the early 1920s, nor were my parents, Lee Miller Jones and Katharine Lea Yarnall Jones. A number of people had already been there and dropped out before we started.

I was quite young when I began to notice that every Sunday after church, after the “funnies” and Sunday dinner, Daddy would disappear for the afternoon. Daddy had been introduced to Dr. Sadler by Fred Leverenz and had joined the early Forum in 1932. It took him a while, but Daddy finally talked Mother into going with him.

For many years thereafter she could not get rid of the feeling that “this is all so wonderful, and I believe it, but how could anything so wonderful possibly be true?” Then one day she realized that she didn’t feel that way anymore—she knew it was true.

They started taking me with them to 533 Diversey Parkway when I was eleven or twelve. Since I was much too young to attend the meetings I would visit downstairs with Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg and read or play games. Many times their daughter Ruth would spend the time with me. What a wonderful person she was! Dr. Sadler had his offices on the first floor and Ruth would take me in to see the lead-lined room which was used for X-rays and show me the specimens in the bottles of formaldehyde. On very warm days (there was no air conditioning then) we would go up to the roof and sit in the sun. Ruth was quite deaf from a childhood illness, but she could lip-read and we never had any trouble talking with one another.

A number of partial papers had been received and typed by the time I started going to the Sunday meetings when I was about thirteen. They were not complete as they are now in the Urantia Book, but were completed as more and more questions were asked. I remember my father spending many hours typing questions to submit to the contact personalities so that they could give us new information that would be especially meaningful to human beings.

I was not allowed to “join” the Forum until I was sixteen (later the joining age was raised to eighteen). Joining consisted in having a private chat with Dr. Sadler so that he was sure you were truly committed to being a part of the group, studying the papers and attending the meetings every Sunday. There were only three valid reasons for being absent: your health, your family, or your job. And one was never to discuss what was going on or any of the teachings in the Papers with non-members.

Life was very different then from what it is now. On Sundays one went to church in the morning, went home for a big Sunday dinner around noon and then went to Forum still dressed in Sunday Best. That meant silk stockings and dress shoes for the ladies (we didn’t have nylon stockings until after WW II), a dress or suit, and for some of them, a hat. The men wore a suit, white shirt and tie.

A paper was read aloud the first hour by Dr. Sadler or his son Bill, followed by a 15-minute break. Refreshments were not provided, so those who wanted to could go across the street for an ice cream or a Coke. The second hour was devoted to questions and discussion.

The room used for meetings was at the front of the building on the second floor, and was originally the living room of the apartment where Bill and Leone Sadler lived with their three children. Dr. Sadler and his wife, Dr. Lena, lived on the third floor. They had an elevator installed which was accessed from the foyer on each floor.

My father, mother and I went to the meetings year after year and during that time my maternal grandmother, Henrietta Lea “Dearie” Yarnall, who was widowed and came to live with us, started going to meetings too. Our group included males and females of all ages and educational levels and different church backgrounds.

While the Forum continued its Sunday meetings, another group was formed of the most committed members, which started meeting every Wednesday evening at 533. It was thought that these people would be the teachers once the book was printed. Attendance was mandatory and it was necessary to sign in each Wednesday. When all of us who wanted to join were counted, it was found that there were exactly seventy names—thus the name of the group, The Seventy.

In the last years of the Forum we would every so often be read a message from “The Boys Upstairs.” This is true—it happened! You can imagine the excitement, the butterflies in the tummy—and then the messages stopped.

HIFTUB TESTIMONY of C. BARRIE BEDELL

World War II was raging, rationing was in effect, and citizens of all ages were pouring all available money into savings bonds and stamps to support the war effort. Signs and posters and radio announcements barraged us with warnings to keep mum about defense activities: “Loose lips sink ships.” Everyone was aware of the subversive “fifth column,” spies and espionage agents working for the Nazis.

I was in my early teens, a mediocre high school student, obsessed with sports, and reasonably well informed on the progress of the war. At some point—I don’t remember exactly when—I noticed that my folks, Clyde and Florence Bedell, would disappear like clockwork every Sunday afternoon and Wednesday evening. I began to question them, “Where are you going?”
“Oh, the Forum,” was the usual reply. On Wednesday nights the answer would be, “The Seventy.”

“What is the Forum? the Seventy?” I would press them. “What do you do?”

The typical response was maddeningly vague, not at all satisfying to an inquisitive teen: “We read and talk about a variety of subjects.”

“Like what?” I would demand.

“We really can’t say.”

I began to harbor doubts that soon turned to suspicion. Something was terribly wrong. Then one blustery winter night I watched them depart in blizzard conditions. I began to think the unthinkable, that perhaps my parents were involved in something sinister. I came to the terrifying conclusion that they were involved in the Nazi fifth column.

I was greatly relieved when a few weeks later, on my fourteenth birthday, my parents announced: “Now we can tell you what we’ve been doing every Sunday and every Wednesday evening.” They took me to 533 Diversey Parkway and introduced me to Dr. William Sadler, who told me about the Urantia Papers and invited me to attend the Forum. I was excited about what I was soon to experience and, as all who had joined before me, I took an oath of secrecy. It was a pivotal day in my life, for which I will forever be profoundly grateful.

Frequently on Saturdays I went to 533 where I would sit in a small, dark anteroom on the ground floor and read papers one at a time—typewritten manuscripts, each page pasted onto heavier stock, each paper supplied in a kraft envelope handed to me by Christy. Later, typeset galley proofs replaced the typewritten pages. My favorites were “Life Establishment on Urantia,” “Government on a Neighboring Planet,” and the Adam and Eve saga.

I also regularly attended Sunday meetings upstairs (except when away at school), always greeted by Wilfred and Anna Kellogg. Papers were read by Dr. Sadler or his son, Bill. During breaks I hung out at O’Connell’s Coffee Shop across the street with somewhat older members Tom and Carolyn Kendall, Nola Evans, Al Leverenz, Phil Copenhaver, Donna and Harry Rowley, and others.

HIFTUB TESTIMONY of JEFF EVANS BEDELL

Talk about lucky! Here’s one of the luckiest guys alive. With my parents and brother Barrie I enjoyed a trip around the world in 1950. In propeller planes. Into my life came three months of eye-opening, exciting travel with six weeks in Australia where my dad, Clyde Bedell, had been called to put on seminars teaching retail advertising to department store staffs and newspaper ad men. This experience enabled me—a 13-year-old-boy—to personally see and feel the reality of the concept expressed by a Urantia believer and leader, Vern Grimsley, that “All humankind are one vast family, this world our home.”

I feel lucky to have been born to Clyde and Florence Bedell who had joined the original Sadler Forum in 1924. In 1950 I could accompany my parents and my 18-year-old brother, Barrie (if he wasn’t away at school), to 533 Diversey Parkway where the folks went upstairs and I was shown to a back room with a huge, flat, dark desk. There Marian Rowley brought an envelope and handed me the contents—the beginning of the Jesus Papers—to read while the Forum went on upstairs. By that time the Papers were in printed page form and affixed to heavier paper. At the top of the white pages were two words stamped in red: FINAL PROOF. My folks had to wait decades for actual book printing and distribution of the Urantia Books, but this young fellow had to wait only five years. The following year, when I turned 14, after a talk with Bill Sadler Jr., I was permitted to join the Forum. Bill Jr. was regularly reading the Papers aloud and leading the discussions. Everyone awaited the proceed-with-printing orders which were finally acted on in 1955.

HIFTUB TESTIMONY of LARRY BOWMAN

In the young mind of this mortal of Urantia—that being the name of our world—while growing up in Chicago in the 1940s and ’50s, there existed great confusion respecting what and where the Forum was that my dad was going to on Sunday afternoons.

For a long while I wondered if it was the Forum Cafeteria on Madison Street in the Chicago Loop. Frequently, whenever my family would make excursions downtown, we would eat there. In recent years I mentioned it to my sister, Carolyn. She thought Dad deliberately chose that place because of its name.

By the time Carolyn joined the Forum in late 1951, I knew it was not an eating place in the Loop but some kind of a meeting on Diversey Parkway on the city’s north side. Soon afterward, I began hearing the word “Urantia” at dinner conversations. Eventually I learned that this was the name of our planet from the perspective of celestial beings. I rather liked that idea, as by then I already knew that Earth meant “world” or “planet,” and I thought that, if we were only one of many inhabited worlds in the universe, certainly we had a more distinguished name. And how had I come to believe that there were other inhabited worlds? Because Dad had told me so. Only later did I realize that, for years, he had been implanting in me ideas from the Urantia Papers.

Sometime in the spring of 1952, Carolyn began working as receptionist for Dr. William S. Sadler, the psychiatrist whose office was in the same building where the Forum meetings took place. I understood he had some kind of connection with the Forum, but I wasn’t sure what. Before the end of the year Carolyn brought her fiancé, Tom Kendall, into the Forum. By this time my mom, who had never shown much interest in the group, began to think, “Well, if the Forum is good enough for my future son-in-law, there must be something to it.” She became a member sometime in the spring of ’53. Dad was secretly pleased, as Mom had been a longtime holdout.

With the household now just consisting of Mom, Dad, and me, I began hearing more about the Urantia Papers and started becoming intrigued. It must have been that summer of ’53 that I, too, expressed an interest in joining the Forum. However, as I was about to begin high school, Dr. Sadler thought it best that I wait a year. And so it was that on June 30, 1954, shortly after my fifteenth birthday, I had my interview with Dr. Sadler. Dad and Carolyn sat in with me. I no longer can remember everything that Doctor might have told me, but I know he mentioned the visits he would make with Howard Thurston, the magician, to expose fake mediums. Of course he told me about the longtime patient he’d had who seemed to be a conduit for celestial beings. (I had already heard about him from Dad and Carolyn.) What else he might have told me that night I cannot separate with certainty from stories I have subsequently heard over the years.

I missed only two meetings that entire year of ’53-’54. The meetings started at 3:00 and ran until 5, with a break about halfway through. Because the book had not yet been published, the format for the weekly meetings was for Bill Sadler to read the paper aloud. Only after the reading were any questions allowed. Bill had an excellent speaking voice and was a very good reader. If he was ever absent, either his father or Christy (Emma Christensen) would be the reader.

That first year, the Forum was in Part I. Here I was, a 15-year-old mingling with old people—folks in their fifties, sixties, seventies—and listening to the hardest part of the Urantia papers. I’m sure I comprehended very little, but I felt it was my duty to attend and get what I could out of the meetings.
On my own, I was reading Part III of the papers. In order to do that, I accompanied my parents on Wednesday evenings, and Mom and I sat in a room on the first floor and read there. If Dad was with us that evening, he would be upstairs in the Forum room attending the Seventy, the advanced study group that started in 1939.

NEWSLETTER TESTIMONY of MARK KULIEKE

In the days of the Forum, bringing the Urantia Papers into being and planning for their publication and dissemination was apparently regarded as a serious adult matter. The custodians of the revelation at 533 Diversey Parkway in Chicago did not want kids around gumming up the works. Children were not permitted within the precincts of 533, with just a couple of exceptions.

As a Forum kid, meaning a child of Forum members, I recall the occasions where we were let in and I looked forward to each event with keen anticipation. The first one of the year was Palm Sunday. My father, mother, sister Lynne and I, along with numerous uncles, aunts and cousins, would usually all rendezvous at my grandparents’ home about three miles down Diversey Parkway. We caravaned in from there. Usually six to twelve kids were at these special events. Children were allowed to go to the Forum meetings for the annual communion celebration, and then attend the party held afterward that included punch and cookies. I recall being included in the solemn Remembrance service and drinking the grape juice out of the tiny communion glasses. When we weren’t participating in the service, we generally removed ourselves to one corner of the first floor and tried to play and socialize in a somewhat muted manner. I believe we all realized we had to be on better-than-ordinary behavior at the Forum.

The next family occasion of the year was Dr. Sadler’s birthday celebration in mid-June. This was not a meeting, but a party held in the Doctor’s residence on the third floor. This was especially enjoyable for we were celebrating not only his birthday, but also the end of the school season and the beginning of summer. Dr. Sadler received his visitors solidly ensconced in his favorite overstuffed armchair at the head of the living room which lined up with the hallway. He was short and chubby with white hair and glasses and he had the anatomy of a Santa Claus sitting there. Forumites filed by one at a time to extend their greetings. In my child mind, Dr. Sadler was the epitome of a revered, wise old man and all kids were always quite decorous and in awe of the Forum’s leader. Beyond piping up, “Hello,” conversation was generally limited. It was a setting where he talked and we listened.

The third occasion which was a family affair was the celebration of Jesus’ birthday on August 21 at 8:00 p.m. Whatever else might befall us—the world might crash—but we came to know that we would still be at 533 Diversey Parkway on the evening of August 21. This annual service was first initiated about 1935 and continued right up into the 1990s at the same time and the same place. My cousin David and I recall that the outside temperature on the evening of August 21 was invariably 100 degrees with no breeze and this was long before air conditioning arrived at 533. We always sought window seats. It didn’t help much. We came to accept that celebrating Jesus’ birthday meant sweating profusely, perhaps to remind us of what the temperature in Palestine was like and what Jesus himself probably went through. In fact, after air conditioning was added, it always felt like something was missing from an August 21 celebration. Recognizing the importance of the occasion, we tried hard not to squirm in the heat and did our best to listen intently as the most honored of Forum leaders would read of the Master’s life on Urantia.

While a handful of Forumites may have glared at us kids severely, the overwhelming majority always seemed to greet us warmly, almost like long-lost friends. Old Mrs. Kellogg was always very friendly as well as Christy and the other ladies who then and later worked in the 533 office. The parties on the third floor generally involved punch and various trays of goodies and hours of storytelling by Dr. Sadler. He would generally keep the entire room enthralled as he told of his various experiences in detective work, undercover work, medicine and psychiatry, as well as the many anecdotes involving superhuman visitors and his best forecast of the future of our planet.

The only other Forum event we were allowed in on was not held at 533. It was the annual picnic. From around 1950 to the mid 1960s it was held at Dr. Sadler’s summer lodge at Beverly Shores, Indiana. Prior to that, it had been held at the senior Hales’ residence in Oak Park, just west of Chicago.

3. Sherman and Loose

5. Foundation and Brotherhood