The History of the Unified Family in New York City

Barbara R. Mikesell [Ten Wolde]
March 1970

Barbara R. Mikesell [Ten Wolde]

Dearest Family,

I send my love and greeting to my Parents and each one of my brothers and sisters, I am thinking back now on the many and varied experiences that I have had since I joined the Unified Family. When 1 first became a member, my physical family was very much against the Family. Now even they see and appreciate the richness of this experience for my life.

When I joined the Unified Family in 1964, I left college. Now since September, I have returned and am working to finish my degree in elementary school teaching, and this week I have begun my student teaching. Maria Pascher and I have established a club on campus that teaches Principle and this semester we will establish a club for Freedom Leadership Foundation as well. This will be exiting because there will be competition from the leftist Students for a Democratic Society, Trotsky Socialism, and radical black and Spanish power movements. But we pray and work to offer a meaningful alternative to our searching fellow students.

Before I joined the Family, I had been involved in activist, "liberal" peace and political movements. When I heard Principle I left them all because now, through understanding man's separation from God, I found the cause of war that had been eluding me for so long. After these several years it seems strange to begin to become involved in political issues. Yet now I feel even more the urgency of this work.

I would like to share briefly about the history of the Unified Family in New York City.

Here in this city, once again I felt the broken heart of God.

This city must be redirected, otherwise something awful is coming to it. If you sensed that I was praying on top of the Empire State Building, that was the subject of my prayer. Where is all the wealth of this city going? Its facilities, for what? The fate of this city is not yet quite decided, whether it turns toward Satan or not. It is still teetering, not quite decided. The very instant the decision is made for Satan -- then the drastic thing will come.
Sun Myung Moon -- Leader's Address, New York City, 5/1/65

New York City is a city that was born in sin. Although the New York harbor is one of the best on the East Coast, it was the last to be developed because the pirates of the Atlantic had taken it over and made their haven base. The entrance was guarded and none could enter but them, with their wealth of captured spoil; some of them built fine homes. As piracy was stopped and the pressures of a growing society demanded a port, New York City joined the rest of the colonies in what was to become the great material development of a new nation. Soon the city-built-on-a-rock became the heart of the materialistic world. In Satan's world the money, and power that comes with it, is direct toward evil ends and brings this city into the darkness that our Leader spoke of in 1965.

Alexa Altomare and Moon Hye Yoon, two tiny children of God, bravely slipped into this Gomorrah of the atomic age in 1964. Their mission was to lay the foundation of the restoration of New York, seeking the lost children of God. They fasted and went to all the important places of the city in pouring rain to claim them for Father. Sometimes they got lost on the subways, they searched for a place to establish a Center and looked for jobs. Just before our Leader's visit in 1965, Mrs. Murtle Hurd took Alexa's place when she had to return to Washington.

Later Moon Hye also left and Mrs. Hurd was alone to share with Father's lonely heart in her tears, her prayers and her witnessing. Most of all she prayed that a solid foundation would be laid for Father's work in New York.

At the end of 1965, after a large national training session, her prayers were answered when Philip Burley and Bill Smith joined her; and in 1966 Diane (Giffin) Fernsler and I joined them after returning from Japan. We saw New York -- Beautiful and awful; she seemed reluctant to release her children from materialism and rushing life, but finally the children come. When the center began to grow I felt grateful for the tears and struggle of Alexa and Moon Hye and Mrs. Hurd. For a while we had a joke that New York was a midwife for the nation because it seemed all her new children went to other centers from the East Coast to the West. At one point this left the Center with only women. We decided this situation was not in keeping with the first chapter so we have been finding Father's lost Adam.

When I first visited New York with our Leader and members in 1965, I was overwhelmed. One can hardly see the tops of building and one could never count the masses of people how could there ever be any hope for New York? But now that I have been here to share in her trials and her hopes and dreams, I have come to love this city. With this strength of Father working to bind us together, we find power to continue His search for the Kingdom of God secure and beautiful.

My deepening love to each one of you, in our beloved Parent's Name,

Barbara R. Mikesell [Ten Wolde]