Pro Commerce

Glide Memorial United Methodist Church

I was the treasurer and business manager of Glide from 1970 to 1981.  The Internet records about Glide are total nonsense. They are based solely on the self-serving history as told by Cecil Williams. Here are the facts.

This page at Stanford is accurate: “By the early 1960s, …. Glide Memorial, a small congregation with a large endowment in the form of the Glide Foundation, was ready for change. In 1962 Bishop Tippett appointed the community organizer Lew Durham as director of the Foundation. Durham and pastor John V. Moore ('41) began to initiate a more progressive social agenda. The following year, the board established the Glide Urban Center, a new urban ministry that developed programs to counter the Tenderloin's worsening delinquency, prostitution, and drug problems. Rev. Ted McIlvenna was brought on to run the Glide Young Adult Ministry, Rev. Don Kuhn became Glide's publisher and PR specialist, and the charismatic Rev. Cecil Williams was hired as Minister of Outreach. Williams was named Glide's next pastor following Moore's departure in 1966.”

The first organizer to arrive at Glide in 1962 was Lew Durham. (Photo on the right) I wrote a blog post about Lew but it doesn’t do him justice.  He was the manager of Glide from 1962 until he went to live in a commune he started. He left in about 1978.  Lew brought in the three other significant ministers. He himself was a powerful force and supported the other ministers in their work.  He also maintained the needed cohesion and civility.

One was Ted McIlvenna. (Photo on the left)  The blog post I wrote about him covers much of the relevant material. Ted changed the world more than nearly any other person I’ve ever known. He revolutionized the global knowledge and lives of everyone in the field of human sexuality.

Another was Don Kuhn. (Photo lower right)  Don shaped the political future of San Francisco, for better or worse. In the current era of ‘wokism’ San Francisco is a leading source and bad example.  Don, with good intent, was a highly relevant player in that transition.  Don left Glide in about 1975 to be a minister at two churches; one in Oakland and one in the San Francisco Sunset District. The blog post on Don is here.

These three men brought in Cecil Williams to be minister to the congregation in 1964.  The other three went about their work while Cecil took all the glory and after I left, he took over the church, entirely. My blog post on Cecil, which is laudatory, is here.

One of the early blogs I wrote about Glide is here.  It has a few more details.  

I owe a great deal to my time at Glide. The knowledge I gained, the platform to work from and the help of Don, Ted and Lew were immense. The time and freedom to do my own work was of incalculable value. The actual work in my office was very minor; it only required a few hours of work a week. I had a great staff.  Among my major accomplishments at Glide were

• the creation of the Third World Tours, which led directly to the vast modern tour business in San Francisco and the hundreds of walking tours.  
• I forced the New York investment banks and firms to follow my investment practices which gave the freedom and technology for non-profit foundations to invest overseas.
• The creation of Wino Park at 6th and Minna, the first and to-date, only park for people later called the ‘homeless.’

By the time I left Glide I was no longer on good terms with Cecil Williams because I refused to give him and his family the unreasonable salaries he wanted.  I organized my own farewell dinner which was filled with my close friends and dignitaries of San Francisco to make sure my reputation was never sullied after I was gone. I had Cecil say some kind words about me.

Bill Graham

Bill Graham already had a reputation when the first Trips Festival occurred at Longshoreman’s Hall in San Francisco in early 1966. He was connected to the Mime Troupe.

I was there at the gate taking the money on the first night at the request of Stewart Brand, one of the three organizers of the Festival ( the others were Ken Kesey and Ramon Sender).  Stewart knew I was a banker and we knew each other from the Portola Institute and the San Francisco State College Education Fair that I had put on.

The festival was too exciting.  I couldn’t be at the gate taking money when there was so much fun going on.  I asked Bill Graham who I knew as the business manager of the Mime Troupe to handle the money.  He was known to be honest about money.

When he saw the overwhelming size of the hippie crowd and the wild music from the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Jefferson Airplane he was hooked.  He joined with a good friend of mine, Chet Helms to start putting on hippie concerts.  Graham continued that direction the rest of his life.

Chet was a gentle, tall, kind true hippie who brought Janis Joplin to San Francisco.  Graham promptly screwed Chet when Graham got control of the Fillmore Rock Auditorium and told Chet to go to hell.

A few years later, after Chet had been running the Avalon Ballroom successfully, he came to me with a political problem.  The City wanted to shut down his ballroom because the neighbors (imaginary people) said the noise was too loud and the crowd was making a mess.  (All untrue.  The building had super sound insulation and Chet cleaned the sidewalks meticulously.)

Chet had already hired a lawyer to fight the issue at the Board of Permit Appeals. The lawyer was Michael Stepanian who was a partner with Brian Rohan.  Both were stoned hippies and pretty much useless.  I told Stepanian to keep his mouth shut and say what I told him to say.  Which he did.

I knew the Board members and approached several of them, me, a bank vice president, and explained that Chet Helms was a hard-working decent honest guy.  His operation was clean and well run.   I had the majority of votes for Chet at that point.

Then, into the Board room walked Bill Graham in a hippie clown outfit and said boisterously that he was the leader of the hippie music scene and said he had a handful of telegrams from prominent bands who supported Chet and the Avalon Ballroom.  He threw the telegrams at the Board chair and walked out.  

The Board was made up of ordinary San Francisco straight politicians. One was the president of Olympic Savings and Loan.

I knew at that moment we had lost. And we had.

Nearly a decade later the lead minister at Glide Memorial Church, Cecil Williams, where I was the business manager, had arranged with Quincy Jones to put on a concert on behalf of Glide Church.  We got the Cow Palace that can hold 10,000 comfortably.  It was certain to be a sell-out.  

Cecil assured me that Bill Graham, a good friend of his, would not put on any competitive performance the same night.  Of course Graham did just that with another black pop-jazz composer.  We had to scramble to get 5,000 people just to look decent.  Most of the 5,000 were from Jim Jones’ People’s Temple brought in buses.

In the end Bill Graham died by his own hand in a helicopter accident.  Flying with his girl friend, Melissa Gold, wife of Herb Gold a friend of mine, on a very foggy night when his salaried pilot said it was too dangerous to fly; Bill told him to fly or be fired.  They ran into a 115,000 volt power tower and were fried.

Me and charitable foundations

Two foundations are in the election news these days.  One is the Clinton Foundation, the other is the Clinton Family Foundation.  The Clinton Foundation is a tax exempt public non-profit chartered under the IRS rule 501c3.  It gets special treatment as a Presidential Foundation and has an annual report online.  The Clinton Family Foundation isn’t found with a Google search.  ‘Family funds’ are subject to other IRS rules mostly regarding a required high level of distribution. The first is an operating foundation which means the staff does the charitable work.  The second is supposed to be pure charitable giving.  I doubt it should give funds to the first, but it does.

I know a little about 501c3 foundations.  I was the corporate treasurer and business manager of the the Glide Memorial Foundation for eleven years and ran two other foundations.

I had several problems in connection with protecting the tax exempt status of the Glide foundation.  The first occurred when one of the lead staffers married his secretary.  Another when this same staffer hired his brother.  Still another when the brother was found embezzling.  Lastly on my own staff I had many Yemeni maintenance employees; who because of the bizarre Arab family structures could all have been close relatives. (The embezzling brother was fired but not prosecuted.)

The problem that I was dealing with is an IRS prohibition on ‘self-dealing’.  Having family members being paid by the foundation in any capacity, as consultants, grant recipients or employees presents a question of self-dealing.  The solution was to get a ruling in writing from the lawyers and to discuss the matter with the Board of Directors and put it in the minutes.  The Board was legally expected to make sure that no one with a close relationship was getting extra benefits that others would not be entitled to.

Glide had 50 employees, the Clinton Foundation has 2,000.

I was careful to make sure that the Board understood and recorded all major grants received to make sure we weren’t being used as a coverup for self-dealing.  That was only a potential problem when Warren Buffett’s wife gave a large donation.  But she didn’t get any special treatment in return.  After she died her husband turned the donation into an auction for a lunch with Warren.   Again, the donors never knew they would win. Self-dealing wasn’t a problem when the only reward was discussion at a lunch with a person not connected to the foundation.

The Glide Foundation supported many radical causes, and a close friend in the IRS told me about the entire file cabinet on us and an entire file drawer on me.  It was true when we finally got the material under the Freedom of Information Act, but it was 100% lined-out; redacted.  We never broke the law.  

Of course I followed IRS rules and was very careful knowing we were a radical operation. The Nixon IRS team of six came out to San Francisco to look at our file and discuss the level of scrutiny by the local office.  But the Nixon team was broken up after 3 months of its short life.

None of my type caution appears to be the case with the Clinton’s or the Clinton Foundation.

Glide Church and Cecil Williams

Among the four ministers that were brought  to revitalize San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Methodist Church, the last one was Cecil Williams, a black minister.  Cecil was selected for his skin color. This was in the early days when civil rights laws were being passed.  Cecil was brought in to handle the need for the church to have a functioning congregation. Cecil was very successful in attracting a young, hip congregation with live contemporary music and socialist sermons.

To me the relevant impact of Cecil Williams was his impact on the Methodist Church.

Until the early 1970's ministers in the Methodist Church served in a local church for roughly 3 years and then were assigned to a new church by their Annual Conference bishop.

This was a well-established tradition in the Methodist church from its founding.  The idea of ministers able to move at three year intervals was based on the idea of simple living ministers.  They could move and not become too attached to a local congregation and not too wealthy as a result of their fundraising skills.

Cecil created a large, several thousand member, congregation with a national reputation.  As a consequence it became impossible for the bishop of the Northern California Annual Conference to send Cecil off to some local congregation outside of San Francisco.  (Bishops Tippett and Cliff Crummy)

Because Cecil was black it was difficult to apply this rotating minister rule to him without coping with racist claims.

While Wikipedia mentions nothing about this, the Methodist Church was forced to drop one of its core important religious principles.  The Methodist appreciation of simple living was demonstrated by the rotation of the ministers on a continual basis. This disappeared. Methodism was a mainstream church with increasingly Leftist political values.  

This fear of being considered 'racist' for anyone dealing with blacks even in a normal way, was first evident  to me in the late 60s. It continues to this day. We have twice elected a black president who had little qualifying experience for the job and was a prolific liar in his first four years in office. But American Lefties don't want to be considered 'racist'.

Glide and Don Kuhn

This blog is a continuation of my series on Glide Church in San Francisco. An unknown but significant institution in America.

One of the original four ministers who came to Glide was Donald L. Kuhn.  Don was free to act on any of his interests. His prime interest was in the politics and cultural vitality of San Francisco. He therefore created a number of interesting portfolios for himself.

The most significant in terms of historic perspectives was his determination to bring minority individuals into the heart of the San Francisco political process. Don interviewed many hundreds of minorities that he found through church and organizational connections. Among the ones who were most competent and politically astute, he directed them to serve on any one of the appropriate 500 board re;ated positions and agencies that are part of San Francisco. He acted as a mentor. By the time he helped elect his own Mayor, George Moscone, he was able to get hundreds of his minority proteges appointed to important positions.

I do not know how to evaluate the historic repercussions of Don's actions because San Francisco has become the largest city in America with a pro-communist anti-business city government. It also remains as inefficient as it ever was. Maybe more so.(Inefficient is a good environment for starting new businesses.)

In the San Francisco cultural area Don published dozens of books under the Glide Publications label. He always aimed for social action and published books on lesbianism, family sexual abuse and the political activist cartoon world. Each of these was built around a community group and Don deserves credit for the extraordinary explosion of groups focused on intra-family sexual abuse. (Again, if you think that is important.)

Lastly, it was Don who brought me to Glide. Don had been instrumental in renovating the San Francisco public school system which is where we met. He continued to work on this issue throughout the decade that he was at Glide. I can't say it succeeded because nothing has succeeded in education.

Don worked on many vital projects, including planting trees in San Francisco, making San Francisco agencies more responsive to their clientele and promoting the poets and artists of San Francisco.

Don's role at Glide was instrumental in making Glide the center of many communities and new organizations that became important throughout the United States.

I went to Glide after deciding to leave the Bank of California.  Among many offers I was interested in, Glide was one and the other was Booz Allen.  I was to be the national bank marketing director for Booz Allen.  

One hot night on the beach, while I was making up my mind, I had built a small fire with my girl friend. In the fire were hot dogs and potatoes. First to come walking up the beach was the personnel manager from Booz Allen; he and his wife had a portable table and champagne and offered to have us join them.  Next came Don Kuhn and his wife Emogene, they just had beer with them.  I invited them to join us and made up my mind that I fitted in better at Glide.

Glide and the players 1

This is a continuation of yesterday's blog about Glide church in San Francisco. The first of many.

The first minister to arrive with a an appointment from the Methodist District Bishop was Lewis Durham. Lew played the role of chief executive and organizer throughout his career at Glide which lasted until roughly 1976. He was the glue that made the organization work. His unique talents were as a mediator and quiet leader.

Among a dozen projects of significance that Lew organized were Huckleberry House.  A home for the explosion of young runaways flocking to San Francisco in 1967.  Another Glide minister is given credit for starting Huckleberry, but Lew was the driving cohesive force.  Today Huckleberry survives as a large social service organization with 60 employees.

The most important lessons I learned from Lew were that:

* A mediator's function is to identify with the values and ideas of the opponent (the mediator usually starts out sympathizing with one side). Only by seeing exactly how your opponent sees, feels and thinks can you find a resolution to any conflict. This was a standard teaching for ministers in the Methodist tradition but Lew fully understood it before he taught me.

*  Another lesson Lew taught me was about myself. He used to bring me a problem of any sort and say that he would be back in a while to get an answer. Over a few years he had learned that my brain was especially good at solving problems when given two weeks to contemplate it. After two weeks Lew would come back for his answer.

* Lew also taught me about the concept of ‘the flag’. Methodist training had emphasized that all movements need a flag around which supporters can rally. That flag can be an idea, a metaphor, a physical object, but the flag always played the same role as in military history where the flag is carried at the front of a salient. Lew always spoke of Glide as an institution that raised flags for movements and peoples.

Glide Church

My wonderful friend, Alex, has suggested that I write some blogs about Glide. Glide is actually  Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco.

Alex suggests that I write about it because I was there as business manager and treasurer from 1970 until 1981. During the most exciting years. Most of the influential participants are dead and the two remaining have written a rather self-centered aggrandizing picture.

Glide was an extremely important institution at a time in American history when the hippie world that centered on San Francisco was shaping the global future. I am not exaggerating. One can easily look at my many blogs on hippies to see that they had an extraordinary influence on everything from food, to health, to fashion,  to business and  to technology.  Interestingly Glide church was an institution at the very center of this globe shaking phenomenon.

History is often written as the consequence of trends and sometimes written as a consequence of extraordinary individuals. From my experience it is clearly both. For individuals, we can substitute institutions as well. The institution of the Protestant reformation had an overwhelming influence on history as did the Masonic order in promoting commerce. Both are institutions.

In this case Glide and the four founding ministers  had an extraordinary impact on the world as I will try and explain in occasional blogs on the subject.

The name Glide derives from Lizzie Glide a religious woman who inherited vast sums from her husband's investment in Ventura County oil. In the late 1920s and into the ‘30s Lizzie built a church at the most heathen location in America that she could think of which was in the ‘Tenderloin’ of San Francisco. She put a rotating neon cross on the top of the the church building. In addition to her endowment she bought a nearby Methodist hotel and she also built the church as part of an office building with the intention of generating future income for the church.

When I arrived in 1970 the buildings and the liquid assets were substantial enough to maintain a staff of 30. I was able to grow the liquid assets at 20% a year while I was treasurer working with an asset firm.

The significant change in Glide occurred in 1963 when Lew Durham, a Methodist minister from a prominent Methodist divinity school in Tennessee was appointed to handle the Lizzie Glide trust. Lew brought out two of his fellow classmates. By 1965 the hippie revolution was beginning and each of these ministers began developing their own special contributions. At the same time they felt the need to actually have a church component and they brought out another Methodist minister who became the best-known of the group: Cecil Williams who remains there to this day.