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keep an eye on my brothers. I attended Bible school, Sunday school, and youth group and was active in service work and in the altar guild, which cleaned and prepared the altar on Saturdays for Sunday’s services. My quest to reconcile my father’s insistence on self-reliance and my mother’s concerns about social justice was helped along by the arrival in 1961 of a Methodist youth minister named Donald Jones.
    Rev. Jones was fresh out of Drew University Seminary and four years in the Navy. He was filled with the teachings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Reinhold Niebuhr. Bonhoeffer stressed that the role of a Christian was a moral one of total engagement in the world with the promotion of human development. Niebuhr struck a persuasive balance between a clear-eyed realism about human nature and an unrelenting passion for justice and social reform. Rev. Jones stressed that a Christian life was “faith in action.” I had never met anyone like him. Don called his Sunday and Thursday night Methodist Youth Fellowship sessions “the University of Life.” He was eager to work with us because he hoped we would become more aware of life outside of Park Ridge. He sure met his goals with me.
    Because of Don’s “University,” I first read e. e. cummings and T S. Eliot; experienced Picasso’s paintings, especially Guernica, and debated the meaning of the “Grand Inquisitor”
    in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. I came home bursting with excitement and shared what I had learned with my mother, who quickly came to find in Don a kindred spirit. But the University of Life was not just about art and literature. We visited black and Hispanic churches in Chicago’s inner city for exchanges with their youth groups. In the discussions we had sitting around church basements, I learned that, despite the obvious differences in our environments, these kids were more like me than I ever could have imagined. They also knew more about what was happening in the civil rights movement in the South. I had only vaguely heard of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, but these discussions sparked my interest.
    So, when Don announced one week that he would take us to hear Dr. King speak at Orchestra Hall, I was excited. My parents gave me permission, but some of my friends’
    parents refused to let them go hear such a “rabble-rouser.”
    Dr. King’s speech was entitled, “Remaining Awake Through a Revolution.” Until then, I had been dimly aware of the social revolution occurring in our country, but Dr.
    King’s words illuminated the struggle taking place and challenged our indifference: “We now stand on the border of the Promised Land of integration. The old order is passing away and a new one is coming in. We should all accept this order and learn to live together as brothers in a world society, or we will all perish together.”
    Though my eyes were opening, I still mostly parroted the conventional wisdom of Park Ridge’s and my father’s politics. While Don Jones threw me into “liberalizing” experiences, Paul Carlson introduced me to refugees from the Soviet Union who told haunting tales of cruelty under the Communists, which reinforced my already strong anti-Communist views. Don once remarked that he and Mr. Carlson were locked in a battle for my mind and soul. Their conflict was broader than that, however, and came to a head in our church, where Paul was also a member. Paul disagreed with Don’s priorities, including the University of Life curriculum, and pushed for Don’s removal from the church. After numerous confrontations, Don decided to leave First Methodist after only two years for a teaching position at Drew University, where he recently retired as Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics. We stayed in close touch over the years, and Don and his wife, Karen, were frequent visitors at the White House. He assisted at my brother Tony’s wedding in the Rose Garden on May 28, 1994
    I now see the conflict between Don Jones and