From Chuck Fager: A Wednesday afternoon at Quaker House: I was digging into the pile of papers on my desk, the doorbell rang, and a young man was on the porch. His name was Thomas Mayfield.

Turns out he was a former QH client: he had a QH Newsletter from March 2000, and he was pictured there, bald but smiling, shortly after being discharged as a CO from the army at Ft. Bragg. He was looking for my predecessor, who worked with him for the 10 months his CO process took, doubtless to catch up.

Seems he's on something of a spiritual journey, or maybe just wandering, having spent time in an ashram in Florida. (He also has much more hair now!)

We settled on the front porch and watched the warm rain come down, and before long he had retrieved his CO file, which he carries with him, and I had an idea. there's a soldier now at Ft. Bragg, I'll call him George, with whom I've been working, who's moving toward filing his own CO claim; and it occurred to me that Tom had experience which might be useful.

So a phone call and an hour later, Tom and George were sitting on the couch, looking over Tom's paperwork and talking in abbreviations ("MOS", "FSB," etc.) which "TOC" ("This Old Civilian") had to struggle to keep up with. We all talked about our various experiences with CO forms and procedures, and I think George both learned a good deal, and gained some encouragement from this. One suspicion I think we all had, but only talked about a little bit, was that the army might not be as accomodating to George's claim as it was to Tom's (if 10 months and several cases of "lost paperwork" can be called accommodating).

At one point, George looked over at me and said, "I suppose we're keeping you from your work, sitting here."

I just grinned at him. Yes, the paperwork was still waiting, and probably quietly reproducing the way it seems to do. But this conversation was "work" too, indeed part of the original work of Quaker House.

They're both gone now; Tom Mayfield may or may not drop back by, as the spirit moves, before he heads further north and west. But I'm confident I'll be hearing more from George, one way or another. And I'm back among the paperwork, until the next such "disruption" occurs.

I just thought you ought to know.

From Steve Woolford & Lenore Yarger:

In February, out of 98 cases, "we worked on six conscientious objector cases. Notable among these was one conscientious objector who initially submitted to us a very confusing and incomplete application draft. We worked with him through several drafts with the final result being one of the strongest CO applications we have seen. he was cooperative and grateful and it was wonderful to see what a difference our counseling made in increasing the likelihood of his being recognized for CO status.