Alan+Green

__Alan Green__ Here beginneth a one-page summary of my checkered career, which some may attribute to being led by the Spirit, and others, more accurately if less charitably, may assign to my inability to hold a job. I hope and fear that there is probably some truth in both. In the fall of 1959, my new wife, Betsy (ne McGill) and I began work in Pasadena, CA, I as program secretary of the Caltech YMCA, she as a secretary at the American Friends Service Committee. Mine was a three-year assignment, at the end of which I entered a PhD program in history and interdisciplinary studies at Claremont Graduate University and began teaching at Claremont McKenna College, followed by seven years at UC Riverside, where I taught World and US History. In 1964, Betsy suffered a mental breakdown and was hospitalized with what today would be called multiple personality disorder. She committed suicide in the spring of 1965. I married my second wife, Katie (ne Willmarth) in December of 1965. We have four sons, two by her previous marriage and two by us: Gordon and Benjamin Griffiths, and Daniel and Gareth Green. Only one of these (Daniel) will have anything to do with the church. He is a graduate of CDSP and an Episcopal rector currently serving All Saints in Carmel. Having spent too much time opposing the Vietnam War and Gov. Ronald Reagan, and too little publishing deathless academic prose, my contract with the UC system was terminated. Fortunately, I was rescued by a friend who hired me as his associate for research and evaluation at a philanthropic foundation in Columbus, IN. After several months, he left me in charge while he went on to bigger things. Our grant-making portfolio consisted of religion, the arts, and social justice. I was happy in my work, but OPEC's oil embargo decimated our endowment and forced me to find other employment. For several months I was a consultant to the Religion Division of the Lilly Endowment and the Danforth Foundation, researching and evaluating programs. During our time in Indiana, Katie and I became serious gardeners. We lived on a farm in the country and, though we could only cultivate about a half acre of our eight, we pursued a course of soil restoration with the use of rear-end rototiller and composter, producing high quality vegetables for our table. In the winter of 1976, I was introduced to the president and ceo of the company that manufactured and distributed our rototiller. After several visits, I was hired and moved with my family to Charlotte, VT, where we immediately began to garden and convert an old dairy barn into a residence. What my job was at first was unclear, but after a few months I was asked to go to Troy, New York, to run the rototiller factory's personnel division. Soon, I found that I had strong ethical differences with the owners' contribution to their employees' stock ownership plan, I resigned about an hour before I was fired. There we were, halfway through construction on our wonderful barn/house, with a good-sized garden, but no visible means of support, at least none coming from me. In desperation I applied for, and was accepted into, a month long psychotherapy training session in Chapel Hill, NC. It changed my life. From being perfect, I became a human being. Upon my return to Vermont, I called several friends, told them my situation, and asked if there was something I could do for them. They all said yes, and I set sail onto the high seas of independent consultancy, which I navigated more or less successfully until 1981, when I landed ashore at a manufacturing plant in northwest Ohio as the director of organizational development. My assignment -- impossible as it turned out -- was to create a cooperative working environment between traditional management and UAW employees. Nevertheless, it was a great learning experience for me, accompanied by some very modest gains, some lasting friendships on both sides of the contract book, and a growing confidence on my part that love and compassion were not only possible but necessary for workplace viability. Compared with Vermont, Northwest Ohio was pretty miserable. I told Katie she had every right to stay put while I commuted. I committed to a maximum of five years, by which time I thought I would know enough to find a better spot somewhere else. Bless her heart, she decided to join me and brought our youngest, Gareth, along to finish high school, much to his dismay. As it turns out, we were there for only four years when I was hired by Schneider National, a trucking firm in Green Bay, WI and made a member of the top management team. My life was short at Schneider, but long enough to lead an effort to solve the major crisis of driver turnover that was threatening to bring the company's growth to a halt. In 1988, I was hired by a Japanese-owned consulting company, the Kaizen Institute of America, to help American corporations learn the principles and practices of continuous improvement in industrial manufacturing. I did that (not very well, I'm afraid) until 1996. Meanwhile Katie and I had moved back to California, northeast of Sacramento, to buy her father's little fruit and vegetable ranch. I wrote and published a book, A Company Discovers Its Soul (1996), helped to establish a little UCC congregation in Roseville, of which I was the pastor until 2001 when it closed down, partly as a consequence of September 11. By that time I was on Social Security, so we eked out until 2005 when we sold our renovated old farm house and land at a handsome profit and moved back to Wisconsin to hide out on a hill above Spring Green, close to two sons, a daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren who live and work in Madison. Katie and I are happy, we write books, faithfully attend the UCC in Dodgeville, WI, and do what little we can to "brighten the corner where we are."