Claude Worrell, deputy Guyanese ambassador to the United States, commended Peoples Temple for not “intruding” in the internal affairs of Guyana. “The Peoples Temple has identified with and become a great part of [the Guyanese government’s] direction.”
And Lieutenant Governor Dymally, a Trinidad native who had first introduced the Temple to Worrell, offered what Ukiah Daily Journal reporter Kathy Hunter termed “perhaps the most poignant accolade.” He said that Jones was bringing together all ages and races: “I am grateful he is showing an example not only in the U.S. but also in my former home territory, the Caribbean.”
The Fresno Four were introduced with a partial reading of their letter of thanks to the Temple: “There is no doubt that what you, Rev. Jones, and your flock did in Fresno ... is the most eloquent testimony possible to the brotherhood of man.” Thus Jones, the man who had used everything in his arsenal to suppress the Kinsolving series, was saluted as a champion of press freedom.
Praise echoed throughout the auditorium like reverent chanting. The speakers had been asked not to mention the name of the humble host being honored. That was being saved for Temple public relations man Mike Prokes. “Here’s a man who says as long as I have a home, you have a home,” cried Prokes. “Here’s a man with only one pair of shoes and no car, one suit of clothing—I think the suit he’s got on tonight was borrowed. Here’s a man who works over twenty hours a day. Here’s JIM JONES!” As the applause rose like a fountain, Prokes shouted an apology for mentioning, in his enthusiasm, the name Jim Jones: “I’m sorry Jim. I just had to say it.”
Still Jones did not rise: one adoring introduction was not enough. Willie Brown took the rostrum again: “Let me present to you what you should see every day when you look into the mirror in the early morning hours....” he declared. “Let me present to you a combination of Martin King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein ... Chairman Mao....”
Then, to the tumultuous applause, Jones stood with his chest thrown forward....
THIRTY-FOUR
The Writing on the Wall
Stephan Jones came down from Ukiah to the big city in 1975, with sports still on his mind and with the burdens that once had driven him to attempt suicide. In his sophomore year at Ukiah High School, he had played on the basketball team with his brothers and other Temple members. His father had tried to cool the teen-ager’s basketball mania, saying, “How would it look if people don’t see you at services? You should be setting an example.” But Stephan overcame his guilt and had a ready answer: athletes were important in the Soviet Union. His father granted grudging permission.
Stephan looked forward to playing in San Francisco, too. But he and other Temple high school kids were sent to Drew School, a college preparatory hardly known for athletic predominance. Not surprisingly, Stephan found the atmosphere snotty at Drew, just a few blocks from ritzy Pacific Heights. After a short spell, he and the rest of the Temple kids moved to Washington High, a larger, inner-city, public high school. Stephan Jones let his B average take care of itself, but he worked hard on the basketball court. He was excited about making the team—then abruptly his father pulled Temple students out of Washington.
Jim Jones enrolled them at Opportunity II High School, for troubled students, dropouts, unwed mothers and others who did not or could not make it in regular schools. Jones had made the move because the potential existed for turning a public alternative school almost into a Temple school. Also, he respected the political activism of the school’s coordinator, Yvonne Golden. The black educator raised issues and raised hell at school board meetings. At school, she energized naturally rebellious youth; she invited guest speakers such as Angela Davis, Dennis Banks and Rev. Jim Jones.
During the school year 1976-77, one year after Stephan Jones moved to San Francisco, Peoples Temple students filled one-third to one-half of the several hundred desks at Opportunity High. No one at school seemed particularly concerned about the disproportionate numbers, nor did it bother them when some students were absent for weeks at a time on bus trips or gave names and addresses of guardians that did not quite fit.
Generally, the students impressed many of Opportunity’s teachers as respectful, well motivated and eager to improve. Temple students made their mark in athletics, too. The Temple dominated the lineup of the 1977 baseball team, Opportunity’s first one. Though it did not win a game against the other full-size city high schools, it was undefeated in preseason play.
During a student-teacher night, the Temple band provided entertainment, and Jim Jones presented the school with a $200 check for its athletic department. Some non-Temple parents were left scratching their heads, wondering who Jim Jones was. “For those of you who don’t know him,” Golden told the gathering, “he’s the best thing that ever happened to San Francisco....”
Yet Temple ties at Opportunity would start to unravel as the church experienced larger problems. Some faculty would begin questioning the relationship between Jones and Golden, who attended some Temple meetings but denied membership. School district officials would wonder whether the Temple had deliberately filled the school with students not eligible for enrollment there. A schools attorney would write an assistant superintendent:
“How did one-third to one-half of the student body of Opportunity II come to be Peoples Temple members within a short time? ... how is it that all or most of the adolescent members of Peoples Temple met [admission] criteria, while only 300 of all adolescent students in all of San Francisco qualify? The case of Rev. Jones’ sons, who are apparently academically successful, athletic, ‘all-American’ boys, seems particularly incongruous with the purpose of a continuation school.”
During this time, Stephan Jones’s relationship with Michelle Touchette flowered. Happy to be together, they would throw a football around, take walks in Golden Gate Park, and sometimes go to the movies. Since most members were living on two-dollar weekly allowances, Stephan had to filch money for his dates. He would sneak into his father’s room in the San Francisco temple and rifle the pockets for loose change or a couple of bills. Jim Jones never locked his doors, and sometimes Stephan had the misfortune to barge in when his father was entwined with a lover. Most of the time he could steal away undetected. Despite his relationship with Michelle, Stephan Jones began feeling overwhelmed by conflicting emotions, the instability of his family life, the uprooting and transplanting, the rivalries with his siblings. He stayed behind one weekend in the San Francisco temple while the others made the long trek to Los Angeles. When he thought all the buses had pulled out, he took an overdose of Quaaludes. It was his second suicide attempt. But he was mistaken: not everyone had left. Jim Jones walked back into the Temple and found his unconscious son. Frantic, Jones called for help. Jim McElvane slapped Stephan conscious. They wrestled him to his feet, walked him downstairs and pumped his stomach. They forced coffee into him and gradually he came out of his stupor.
A short time later, Stephan was sent to a psychiatrist. His father insisted that no one, including the psychiatrist, was to know that Jim Jones was his father. Sharon Amos posed as his “mother” for these sessions. As a disguise, Stephan wore dark glasses and piled his hair under his hat. He felt he could talk about everything except what really bothered him—his father. After a few sessions, the psychiatrist told Stephan he need not come anymore because he seemed to have analyzed and worked out his problem.
The episode had one important consequence: it gave Marceline Jones an excuse to spend more time with her son and to move to San Francisco. She transferred to the nearby Berkeley office of the State Department of Health. And in early December 1976 the Temple fixed up a San Francisco apartment for her with an extra room for her family to stay overnight.
Marceline Jones knew about Stephan’s hostility toward his father, but they talked about it only with restraint. Although she sometimes shared her problems with her son, more often she gave him motherly support. When Stephan showed an interest in acting, Marceline accompanied him to the American Cons
ervatory Theater, San Francisco’s principal repertory company, to investigate acting classes there. When Stephan wanted a place of his own, he and his mother found a second-story $250-a-month studio apartment. She even paid the first and last month’s rent from her own salary and bought him a bed and television set.
Stephan’s father had opposed the idea as elitist and only relented on the condition that Stephan not tell anyone about it. But living alone was an odd feeling for the lifetime communalist so Stephan soon had friends coming over at every chance. To pay expenses, he parked cars in a Chinatown garage. At last he was asserting his independence.
Christmas of 1976 was Marceline Jones’s happiest holiday in years. With Stephan nearby, and Jimmy and Lew living with her, she felt like a new person; to make the holiday complete, she called her parents. She also invited them to visit.
The Baldwins arrived in San Francisco on February 5, 1977. The reunion was a joyous occasion. Then one week later the phone rang. It was Jones. When Marceline got off the phone, she was distressed: Jones wanted to take Stephan to Guyana the next morning. She had pleaded and argued against it, knowing Jones might well keep him there.
Marceline did not want her son six thousand miles away, especially at an age when he was ready to think about college and career. Yet she could see why Jones wanted Stephan in Jonestown. After all, their only natural son had already tried to commit suicide and now had his own apartment. How would it look if Jones’s own son defected?
At first Stephan refused to go, then Jones gave assurances that he would be home within a week. When Marceline finally told him, “I want you to go,” Stephan agreed to leave. Sadly, Marceline and her parents saw off the group the next morning.
Almost immediately upon arrival, Stephan was asked to remain in Jonestown permanently. He refused. Though he enjoyed the physical work and renewing his friendship with Mike and Al Touchette, Stephan longed for the San Francisco life—his new apartment, his newfound independence, acting lessons.
But two days later, as the entire group sat around the kitchen porch after work, Jones steered the conversation to the sacrifices people should be willing to make for the cause. Stephan became even more uneasy when Paula Adams—who disliked Jonestown’s administrators—volunteered to quit Georgetown and settle for good in the jungle. Under pressure, Stephan, too, offered to stay. It was not so much that he was still intimidated by his father. He did not want to appear selfish, to feel like an outcast in the church, the only life he had known.
After returning to San Francisco without Stephan, Jones laid plans to ship down another of his sons. Despite the fact that Lew Jones and his wife Terri Carter were expecting their first child and were in the midst of Lamaze classes, Jones packed them off to Jonestown. The pretense was that Lew’s work was lagging, and he had been picking up evil ways from an “outsider” who drank.
For the second time in a month, Marceline’s family was wrenched apart. The departure crushed Mrs. Baldwin, who had loved Lew since the day he had arrived as a malnourished Korean orphan. But it soon was followed by the departure of another adopted son, Tim Jones, and his new wife, Sandy Cobb. Jimmy, Jr., was to be next. Once Jones had all the children in Jonestown, there was no chance that Marceline would renew her threat to leave him and take the children.
By late 1976, the Jonestown settlers had voted to step up their work. Instead of taking the evening off, they toiled until 11:00 P.M. They had built a large dormitory to house workers, but they badly needed more people to fill it—and to beef up the work crews.
By early 1977, Jonestown still had fewer than fifty settlers. The only buildings had been constructed of poles and canvas roofing, with crude floors. While awaiting a large load of lumber for building permanent structures, they cultivated several hundred acres of land. Sawmill construction was getting under way. The piggery and chickery were already built; the mill was grinding flour from cassava root. The Cudjo chugged regularly to Georgetown for supplies.
Despite his sacrifices, Stephan Jones came to love Jonestown. With his own work crew and responsibilities, Jim Jones’s tall, skinny kid matured quickly. The troubled boy who had retreated within himself, sometimes to the point of aloofness or surliness, loved attacking the hardwood timber. As they cleared land with chain saws, axes and wedges, his muscles soon matched his newly found enthusiasm. His shoulders and chest thickened, and as he approached his eighteenth birthday, he acquired a powerful athlete’s body—six feet five, broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist. His legs were strong like his father’s. He pulled his long black hair behind his neck and secured it with a colorful bandanna, accentuating his high cheekbones. He wore khaki fatigues tucked inside high-topped boots that protected him from snakes. At last, he looked like the tall Indian warrior his mother had envisioned at his birth.
Young Jones’s arrival coincided with the first real construction spurt. He worked with Albert Touchette at manual labor, building bunk beds and toilets, digging wells and the like. On a typical day, Charlie Touchette made first calls at 5:00 A.M. If they overslept, they could always count on rambunctious Vincent Lopez to awaken the whole dorm when he jumped crashing out of bed. They ate a hearty breakfast of eggs, pancakes, chipped beef and toast, and by 6:30 were on the porch getting the day’s assignments from the elder Touchette.
Once a couple of dormitories had been framed, Stephan and Albert laid flooring, learning as they went. During breaks the guys would line up and do calisthenics, jumping jacks, sit-ups, push-ups and some clowning around. Stephan liked to tackle Albert when his back was turned and have a good wrestle.
The settlers toiled till about six each day, with a lunch break and a midafternoon slowdown because of the hot sun. After an hour’s break for dinners of barbecued chicken, macaroni and cheese, or pizza, Stephan and his crew returned to the sawmill until about ten, where they cut and finished wood for the next day’s building. Charlie Touchette stood by with his sheet listing sizes and dimensions for the lumber cutting. A team of six men would pick up each huge slab of board and run it through the blade.
The next day, one crew would lay the posts, another the floors. A third would prefabricate the walls, and a fourth crew, Stephan’s, would carry the frames out and set them up. Later they would install the doors and add roofing. Most of Jonestown was built that way, in little more than six months, thanks to sweat and long hours under the debilitating sun. Altogether, the crews built about sixty cottages.
The young men slept little more than about five hours a night, because they worked hard and played late. On nights when they did not work until ten, they would watch a movie and later fool around, running through the half-built dorms or playing cards, dominoes or chess in the recreation room. With so few women in Jonestown, some of the younger men caroused with the local girls in Port Kaituma.
Charlie Touchette’s authority was undisputed. He kept track of the work and made assignments. The construction side ran beautifully, but the agricultural problems remained, largely because of the poor soil. To make matters worse, the settlers sometimes improperly rotated crops. And most suggestions for improvements were turned down by Jones because they cost money. It was particularly frustrating for attorney Gene Chaikin, who threw himself into the study of crops, plants and agriculture, and wrote memo after memo to Jones.
Perhaps the hardest worker was Tom Kice, the stepfather of Wayne Pietila, one of the Eight Revolutionaries. Kice, once a deer-hunting, dope-smoking millworker, could not shake some hostile feelings for Jim Jones, but was grateful for the church’s positive influence on his trouble-prone son, Tommy, who learned to work on Jonestown crews. Tom, Sr., used to vow that he would kill a redneck some day. Kill he would —but it would be no redneck.
For Stephan, San Francisco seemed a distant memory. He missed his mother terribly, but still he was happier than he had ever been. He had become a big brother to John Victor Stoen, and he loved his tiny nephew, Chioke, newborn son of Lew and Terri. (Chioke had been Lew’s Korean name before the Jones family
adopted him.)
There was no paycheck at the end of the week—only the pride that came from building. Sometimes Stephan’s crew worked into the small hours of the morning just to put up one more cottage than they had the day before. Stephan would stroll through the three hundred acres of cleared land and aluminum-roofed buildings and tell himself, “I put every nail in that cottage. I knocked down the trees to cut the wood to build that house.” Others felt that pride too, and the enthusiasm was contagious.
One day late in 1976, Marshall Kilduff of the San Francisco Chronicle got to talking about Jones with some fellow observers of the Housing Authority scene. He, an Examiner reporter and an Authority executive customarily killed time before meetings, chatting over coffee in the executive’s office; on this day, the office door was ajar and some of Jones’s bodyguards loitered in the hall. Kilduff had never put much stock in the Kinsolving series in 1972 because he did not think much of Kinsolving’s work, but he had observed the Temple’s treatment of Chronicle reporter Julie Smith when she attempted a story in spring of 1976. He recalled aloud how Jones had tried blatant flattery on Smith and had somehow learned the exact contents of the story draft in her desk.
Jones’s spies were working on this particular day as well. After the commission meeting, the minister approached Kilduff. “I hear you think I’m eccentric, and try to butter up the press.” Kilduff replied: “I don’t know how you would know that, but I would not say those things in public.”
“I get the feeling you don’t trust me,” Jones said.
Rather than intimidating Kilduff, the exchange provided a catalyst. In the back of his mind, the intrigued reporter formulated an idea for a story—not a hard-hitting expose, but the profile of a colorful local figure with a Pentecostal flair.
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