#boonville

Pixley Falls State Park Boonville, NY

▲ Boonville, also known as the New Ideal City Ranch

I was a member of Unification “Church” for seven months, spending five of those months in the Oakland, California center, including San Francisco and Boonville. While in Boonville, I was aware of several cases of separation of young mothers and their small children, mainly between the ages of two to five years. The children lived in a separate trailer which was about a five-minute walk from the rest of the living quarters and activity area. “Church” members were periodically rotated to take care of these children. For the most part their mothers were not included in the rotation.

At least two of the mothers were sent to live in the Berkeley center for a period of at least several weeks while their children remained on the farm. While the mothers were on the farm, they were too busy to see their children more than once or twice a week, at most. The children would often cry hysterically when the mothers would leave after a short visit. In one case, a young divorced girl with a 2½ year old daughter wanted her child to join her on the farm but was denied the request. She was, therefore, in effect, forced to choose between Unification cult and her child. She chose the cult, leaving her child with her parents. She used to cry about this often, but always decided, with the help of several people, including myself, that the child would understand when she grew up that the mother had given her up to work for the Messiah (Sun Myung Moon) and the building of the Heavenly Kingdom.

I have chosen not to mention the names of the people involved to prevent retribution against them, but will reveal the names if necessary.

Barbara Wexler

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One Family meeting with Onni Durst scarred my soul

Life Among the Moonies [in Oakland] by Deanna Durham

Moon instructed: “Whenever the Blessed couples have children, as soon as the child become 100 days old, they will put him in the nursery school.”

Michael Warder’s reasons for leaving. As a top UC leader in the US in the 1970s he reported directly to Moon.

Moonwebs by Josh Freed (the book was made into a movie)

Barbara Underwood and the Oakland Moonies

Ford Greene – the former Moonie became an attorney

Crazy for God: The nightmare of cult life by Christopher Edwards

Papasan Choi and Boonville’s Japanese origins

Mose and Onni Durst – their legacy

Idling Alligator

Here we see a former Santa Fe Alco RSD15; I believe it was owned by the Squaw Creek Coal Company at the time I ran across it. I have some history of this very distinctive unit here...

9842 RSD15, was built by Alco in June 1960, #83578, as Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe 842. It was renumbered 9842 Class 9800, in 1970, and sold to Precision National Corp in 1975. They sold it to Squaw Creek Coal Company as 9842 in 1975. It later became Peabody Coal Company 9842 and then was sold to Indiana Hi-Rail as 9842 in 1988. It was soon renumbered 442. It was sold to Austin & Texas Central as 442 in 2000 (source).

I’m not sure where I was when I saw this locomotive: Boonville or Yankeetown, Indiana, perhaps. [Someone of FB has since told me this is two or three miles north of Boonville.]

Via Flickr