TWENTY-ONE
Her Father’s Daughter
Whenever her father worked bare-chested on their little farm in Redwood Valley, Maria Katsaris could see the sun glint off the cross that hung from a chain around his neck. Each morning of Maria’s nineteen years, Steven Katsaris had brought that familiar cross to his lips, like a priest vesting himself. In fact, Steven Katsaris had been an active Greek Orthodox priest most of his life—until recently. Maria remembered that the cross had always been one of her father’s dearest possessions, when she was a toddler in Pittsburgh, a buck-toothed six-year-old taking ballet lessons in Salt Lake City, a gawky teen-ager on the San Francisco Peninsula. Beautiful in its simplicity and message, the cross carried the early Christian symbols of Fos, for light, and Zoe, for life. Maria told her father that she wanted to wear it after he died.
When her parents were divorced, Maria lived with her mother a brief time in a San Francisco suburb. But after her graduation from high school in 1970, she and her brother Anthony joined their father in the Ukiah area. Though an authority figure, Katsaris seemed to be on the same side of the generation gap as his children. He criticized outmoded practices in the Greek Orthodox church, and he made a conscious decision to help troubled children rather than build big churches for his denomination.
At first, Maria and Anthony found jobs at a Ukiah kennel. But Maria wanted the challenge and satisfaction of working with children. She applied for a job at Trinity School for mentally disabled students, and she was hired as a teacher’s aide through normal channels, though certainly her chances were not harmed by her relationship to the schoolmaster, her father.
Although she was a principled teen-ager and could toss cuss words when appropriate, Maria was reticent and prone to defer to her father in public. She impressed some people as a wallflower. She seemed to lack confidence, and was unsure of her life’s direction, though she vaguely wanted to enter nursing school.
At Trinity, she embraced the students as she did her pets. She worked hard to understand and help youngsters suffering from parental abuse, hyperactivity and other emotional disturbances. She loved the job. Each night on the way home to Redwood Valley, she told her father about the day’s events—and sought his advice as a psychologist. They laughed, shared their ideas and discussed the state of the world.
At home, they worked together on their several acres. Maria loved animals, so they kept dogs and cats, and maintained a pet cemetery. They constructed a fence around their vegetable garden rather than corral their horse. Together, the father and his children put down new roofing and flooring on the house.
At home and at work, bearded Steve Katsaris remained the patriarch he had been when Maria sat in the front church pews watching him say mass, when they went fishing and horseback riding, and marched against the war. That summer, neither Maria nor Anthony had time for social contacts, and anyway Maria had always led a parochial life.
She had never dated. As a teen-ager she had worn braces to straighten her teeth, and she still thought of herself as a tall, bony ugly duckling. But her face was drawn in long, thin lines that suited her frame. Unpretentious, she wore her dark hair in pigtails and chose jeans over dresses.
Maria made her outside friends among the staff at Trinity, and one of her favorites became thirty-four-year-old Liz Foreman. Maria revealed something of herself to Foreman—the stabbing pain of her parents’ divorce during her high school years; her present feelings of isolation in a sheltered lifestyle that seemed to preclude the social life she never had.
As their friendship developed, Maria discovered that Foreman was a member of the kooky church called Peoples Temple and, oddly enough, kept a picture of Jones in her home and a blessed prayer cloth near her heart. Maria’s view of the Temple began to change when she saw that it attracted a respected friend who was fifteen years her senior and much more worldly.
Maria’s initial negativity toward the Temple may have come from her father. His intelligence had been insulted by the Temple’s fawning welcoming efforts when he arrived in Ukiah. Still, the Temple intrigued the humanistic former priest because he was familiar with socialistic and communistic religious groups and had attended numerous tent meetings in the Ohio Bible Belt. Furthermore, he believed in the phenomenon of healing through faith, whether at the Roman Catholic Lourdes in France or various Greek shrines. He had become more curious when he too discovered that Liz Foreman was a member. One day, while having lunch with Foreman in the school cafeteria, he inquired about meeting this purportedly clairvoyant minister named Jones.
In one sense, it probably seemed prudent to welcome a humanitarian like Katsaris. He had a slightly “hip” appearance, had recently divorced, and was drifting away from the rigidity of the Greek Orthodox church. But great risks would be inherent in opening the doors to the former priest. First, he had influence in the religious community. Second, he had theological training and experience. Third, as head of the school and as a fair-sized employer, he came in contact with influential people. Fourth, he was a psychologist who was likely to see through Jones’s tricks, and perhaps to spot his mental disorders. At this time, Jones had already run afoul of the psychology community in Indiana. Katsaris could harm—or help the Temple cause on several fronts.
In the end, Jones directed Liz Foreman to extend an invitation, and one Sunday, Katsaris, Maria, her brother Anthony and a Trinity School psychologist who was curious, strolled into the Redwood Valley church.
The obligatory hour of hymns and testimonials was unremarkable. Then, just as they were expecting Jones’s act, a church member, Bob E., tapped their shoulders. “Rev. Katsaris, this is a closed meeting.” He was polite yet firm.
“You’re mistaken,” Katsaris said. “I got invited by Liz Foreman.”
Maria was miffed too. “We’re not gonna stay if we’re not wanted.”
The following morning, Rev. Jones called to apologize. “Rev. Katsaris. I didn’t know you were there. It was in fact a closed meeting. I’m sorry. If I had known you were there....”
“Thanks for calling,” said Katsaris.
Now even more anxious to see Jones in action, Katsaris soon attended a public Peoples Temple “tent meeting” in a big hall at the county fairgrounds. Anthony and Maria tagged along again. Again, when Jones’s appearance neared, Katsaris was tapped on the shoulder. A Temple lawyer, Eugene Chaikin, escorted him deep into the parking lot, some distance from the hall.
“Pastor Jones,” the attorney said, “asked me to ask you if there’s anything he can do for Trinity School.”
Peeved that he had been lured outside, Katsaris said abruptly, “Thank you. If there is anything that comes to mind, I’ll let you know.” He was eager to return for the finale.
As he started back toward the hall, however, the mellow-sounding attorney clamped a hand on his arm. “Is there any painting you need done?”
“I’ll have to talk to the maintenance department.” There was a loud outburst inside the auditorium. Katsaris impatiently brushed aside Chaikin and hurried back inside in time to see that a nurse showing a joyous audience something in a handkerchief.
Maria and Anthony wanted out. “Let’s go, Pop,” she said, disgusted. “Yeah, it’s really creepy,” added Anthony. As they hurried away, they quickly told their father about the discharged “cancer.” “Was it phony?” they wanted to know.
“You’d have to see it first,” Katsaris answered. Their hasty exit was cut off by a concerned-looking law student named Harriet Tropp. “Why are you leaving? Did you see something you didn’t like?”
Katsaris was angry at being stalled. Later he wryly told Liz Foreman, “If it was a miracle, I missed it.”
The phone rang at Katsaris’s home late one night following the tent service. An apologetic Jim Jones invited Katsaris and his family to a service that very night, August 1, 1972. Katsaris graciously accepted, unaware of the extraordinary groundwork being laid for his supposedly informal visit.
At the church, with the full
congregation before him, Jones criticized his people for allowing Katsaris to go away upset from the church and fairgrounds. “Name-takers,” Jones addressed those who screened visitors at the door. “The minute you hear a ‘reverend,’ say, ‘Oh, we’re so glad you came. We’re sorry. But we’re having a confession. Our people feel more at ease when they confess their faults to one another.’ Don’t say, ‘Members only.’ That sounds too uppity, too proud. Handle it discreetly. What we’ll do if enough people want [to visit] is to call a special Saturday night service and be the straightest bunch of people you’ve ever seen. We’ll have a devotional service and have Purity sing and Joy read from the Bible and we’ll not cuss that night.” His congregation burst into laughter at that—Purity and Joy were old followers of Father Divine who had never brought themselves to use foul language like the rest.
Next, Jones wanted to know what “feedback” had followed the Katsaris family’s rude treatment at the tent service. Taking the microphone, Liz Foreman recounted how she had acted “naïve,” as instructed, when Katsaris asked her about it. But, she reported, Katsaris was suspicious of the Temple’s motives and he thought the treatment might have been deliberate because the Temple detected the family’s negative feelings about the church. He went so far as to ask Foreman to find out why Chaikin “really” wanted him in the parking lot during the healing.
“Well,” said Jones. “We didn’t handle it right from the start, so I have to meet them [now]. I’m not threatened by those blowhards.... What kind of political stand do they take openly?” He was thinking aloud, trying to shape his strategy.
Liz Foreman, his expert on the Katsaris family, could not place the priest politically. “He’s never said what his politics are. He’s never committed himself.... He feels he just wants to observe.”
Jones was suspicious. Undeterred by that rather neutral evaluation, he blustered, “I’ll probably threaten him so badly [that] when I’m through he’ll want to fight me that much more, because the truth usually threatens hypocrites....”
“He’s up to something,” Jones declared. “He’s got ahold of a wind he thinks he can agitate a little.”
Foreman then portrayed herself as an infiltrator in Katsaris’s school and family. “The daughter says she’s thinking about becoming a member and wants to talk to you personally. I said it’s a very difficult thing to talk to our pastor.”
Mocking the sincerity and naïveté of the girl he never had met, he said to laughter, “Oh, dear God. Tell her to come too.”
Quickly the plan was fixed. “We’ll throw them some loops tonight,” he confided. “We’ll have no healing here tonight, you hear? Only what I do under the table.” They laughed. “We’ll talk about humanism and service work to our fellowman and God,” he explained like a coach chalking up plays. “If I say you’re an atheist tonight or a fundamentalist, you be that tonight. Right?”
“Right,” they shouted.
“We have some really bad enemies up to no good and we have to give them the wrong scent....” Jones was sharing secrets, and his people were delighted at being in on the game. He assigned specific roles to some, such as Chaikin, who was told to attest to a healing.
“Don’t call me ‘Father’ or ‘Savior’ tonight,” Jones cautioned. “We don’t want anything controversial. I’m ordering you to say, ‘Jim’ tonight, no exceptions.... You won’t be taking respect away by calling me ‘Jim.’ ”
Soon the Katsaris family—Steve and his second wife Ann, plus Anthony and Maria—entered and introduced themselves at the microphone, to a tumultuous prearranged welcome. Jones ventured the first move: “I understand there was a communications breakdown between you and the group, and I thought the best way was for you to come and get to know us....”
In shorthand fashion, he then described the Temple: “We have liberal and orthodox here, agnostics and fundamentalists. Some see me as a spiritual being, but most just think of me as Jim Jones.” He asked if Katsaris had any questions. Katsaris said he was happy to be there, pleased to meet Jones and did not feel any enmity. In fact, he said, he knew little of the Temple.
After an exhaustive recitation of Temple achievements, Jones confided some of his plans for expansion in the San Francisco Bay Area, and noted, “We’ve run into a problem [here] based on the liberalism of my theology.” Jones had pegged Katsaris as a liberal—and as someone concerned about his daughter. To counter any fears Katsaris might have of the church courting Maria, Jones announced that the Temple was deemphasizing local recruiting.
Though reserving some skepticism, Katsaris formed a favorable opinion of Jones. Rather than hurl stormy oratory, Jones caressed his people with talk of social justice, functioning more as a moderator or provoker of ideas than an omniscient voice. He seemed to be addressing important social issues in a practical, Christian way. And the meeting ended with no act of clairvoyance, no “cancer miracle.” The only unusual things Katsaris noticed were a pair of signs. One said, “Take as much food as you want, but only as much as you can eat,” and the other explained that Pastor Jones wore secondhand clothes and had only one suit to his name. The apologia rang a little phony, but overall the experience was a warm and positive one.
At the invitation of Tim Stoen, Steve and Maria Katsaris walked to the Jones home for a nightcap of coffee, tea or milk. About ten members were sitting around talking, among them Marceline and Grace and Tim Stoen. Jim Jones, wearing dark glasses, strode into the room a half hour later. Though Jones was outgoing and friendly, Katsaris distrusted the dark-glasses routine and was disturbed by the adulation waved around like great fans to Jones’s ego. “Our pastor is very kind to animals,” an apparently mature adult would pipe up, while someone else would chime in: “Our pastor says we should be good to children and to our seniors.”
Maria sat quietly through the session. She had already contacted the church, unbeknownst to her father. Jones would take a strong interest in her, and would tell Liz Foreman, “Maria is a highly evolved person, and we have to attract her and keep her.” It would not take much work to make her a loyal and dedicated member, thanks in part to the humanitarianism and sensitivity instilled by her family.
But other factors made the winning of Maria Katsaris more desirable, and easier. If Jones could steal her love from her father, she might eventually become as dedicated to his Temple “Family” as she had been to her own. The conquest would be all the more gratifying because Maria was another cleric’s daughter—in that respect another Carolyn Layton or Annie Moore. Jones’s disdain for Katsaris—a hypocrite he called him—was raw, and he relished duping him, outwitting him, making him the fool. His tactic was this: he would attempt to convince part of Maria that she was achieving independence from a powerful father figure while actually she was becoming totally dependent upon another.
By small increments, Maria became involved in the Temple. Under Jones’s instructions, Foreman brought her to services and sat with her. Jones sold Maria through his message and his manner, as well as through the Temple people and good works. One day she told her father, “I’m going on a bus trip to San Francisco and won’t be back until Sunday. I’m going to help some people in the ghetto.”
Katsaris was proud of her; but he soon became increasingly uneasy with her detachment. Their communications stiffened, and she spent more time with Liz Foreman than with her own family. It became difficult to talk, especially about the church. In response to questions, she would offer only terse answers such as, “I worked in the day care center.”
“What do you do there?”
“We take care of kids.”
She would not lie, but spoke only in generalities. Maria’s secrecy soon made Katsaris desperate, and he turned to his own staff. “What’s going on with Maria?” he asked her contemporaries and friends. Various theories were offered—delayed teen-age reactions, rebellion or overreaching for independence.
Whatever it was, Katsaris hoped that she would outgrow it. But their relationship became more strained. Mar
ia never would talk freely about the church except to make pat defenses when her father challenged her beliefs. She steadfastly refused to fill in her cliché-ridden sketch of a do-gooder organization.
This was the same pattern experienced by the Houstons, the Moores, the Laytons and others. Families were torn by two conflicting forces—appreciation and pride over the humanitarian work, unhappiness and suspicions about the isolation and subtle alienation manifested in flat communications and unwillingness to discuss the Temple in detail. The secrecy drove a wedge between members and their families; on one side, it created family resentment toward the church; on the other, it made continued family communications awkward for the member.
In the case of Katsaris, the pain of separation from his daughter was prolonged over a period of years. His daughter’s love would not be quickly obliterated or transferred to someone else. Also, Katsaris, like Rev. Moore and his wife, was relatively invulnerable to divide-and-conquer tactics commonly used against other families. For instance, Jones could not score points with Maria by labeling her father a racist or a fascist. Furthermore, Katsaris was astute and understanding enough to avoid serious direct confrontations with his daughter over the church. He realized that Maria’s feelings had become so hardened that he would risk losing his child altogether with ill-considered words and actions. His basic tactic, his natural tendency, was to keep extending love to Maria.
For all his restraint, occasionally concern overwhelmed him. One night, for instance, he drove Maria to a meeting at the Temple and came upon formations of men wearing uniforms and berets. Their arms were folded like lightweight imitations of the Black Panthers in the 1960s. To Katsaris, it looked like a parade of paramilitary punks, and he told Maria so. “Maria, that is uncalled for,” he said. “If you don’t want the local population to be concerned, you shouldn’t do that.”
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