Sydney Pioneers Roger and Agnes Daniels

Dear Randall,

 Thank you very much once again for sending me the latest copy of the Free Minds Journal, along with your letter.  I see from the journal that Lloyd Barry died [last] year.  My wife Agnes Violet Daniels (Violet) remembers him well from when she was a young girl of nine years.  She was baptized in 1938 or 1939 when Judge Rutherford visited Sydney to address a large convention there.  Sydney was in an uproar at the time over the visit, and much adverse publicity appeared in Sydney newspapers as Rutherford was seen as a raving demagogue.  Even so he certainly made an impression on Sydney on that occasion; and then years later when I started going from house to house regularly, I often received angry expressions from householders relating to the visit and the luxury accommodations he traveled in by ship, etc.

 Back in those late 1930s my wife clearly remembers Lloyd Barry and Phil Rhees as being the most prominent and vocal of the Sydney Homebush Bethel branch office leaders.  There were only about five or six congregations in the whole Sydney region stretched out over 40 or 50 miles from the extreme north of the Harbor side at Homsby to the extreme southwest at Watchtower’s Kingdom farm Inglebarn, with the Homebush branch office roughly at the center.  The Homebush branch was sold some 30 years ago and the branch is located now with the huge printery at the former Kingdom farm now called Denham Court – instead of Inglebarn as the suburbs were refined and Inglebarn is now a much smaller suburb than formerly.

 During those late 1930s years that stretched out, a handful of Sydney congregations used to come together for a weekend or a Sunday once each month to meet in a large old movie theatre called “The Hub” in King Street Newtown, an inner city suburb.  Lloyd Barry and Phil Rhees used to hold sway much of the time as the principal public speakers right into the early World War II years when the Watchtower publishing activity came under government ban until 1943 when the High Court lifted the ban on appeal by the Watchtower.

 During 1938 and 1939 my wife, then Agnes Violet Woodfield, used to accompany her mother from door to door, carrying Judge Rutherford’s books in a large bag and the portable phonograph and records.  Sometimes she would go out from house to house with a lady called Rosie Drew who had been a stage actress.  She worked long hours when going with Rosie.  They started work about 9 A.M., stopped work at 12 noon for lunch or at wherever the last house was at that moment.  They both then sat on the street curb (gutter), ate their sandwiches, and resumed house to house work promptly at 12:30 P.M. to work tirelessly for another three hours before returning home, or do back calls.  These were the old days when the work was truly heart motivated.

 During the ban of World War II, the one north side congregation met in the home of George Woodfield, my wife’s father.  The home was beside Sydney Harbor where only poor people lived in those times.  Today only millionaires can afford to live there.  The Watchtower magazine was produced in an underground printing set up by George Gibb, a Scotsman, during the ban, and the north side brothers and sisters held the Watchtower study at Woodfields’ house. 

 My wife’s father, George Woodfield, used to take up the house floorboards and hide cartons of banned Watchtower literature for secret redistribution throughout the Sydney area.  They were exciting times with the police car frequently stopping my wife and her mother in house to house work looking for banned literature.  The Bible was not banned and my wife used it all the time in house to house work, and the older brothers and sisters were astonished at how familiar she became with the Bible and her ability to quickly wield “the Sword of the Spirit” when meeting opposition at the doors.  There was, of course, much of that during the war and one opposed neighbor often threatened to throw boiling water at my then future wife Violet Woodfield.  She was very zealous for the work and went through rough periods of persecution at school as well.

 It was during the war when Sydney was isolated from the central Watchtower control at New York that things went off the rails in Australia.  The Watchtower farm at Inglebarn was next door to one of Australia’s largest army camps and farm produce was traded with the army and army clothes – uniform washing, etc.  taken in for profit.  This was considered compromising by those looking back after the war.  One factory owned by a Jehovah’s Witness named Fred Austin used its engineering capability to produce military armaments.  The factory was stopped by Jehovah’s Witnesses.  The Branch servant named McGilvray used to go to the Sydney horse racetrack at Randwick – an inner city suburb – to gamble on Saturdays.  The same man got shot by an army guard at Homebush Bethel during the ban one night.  He failed to heed the guard’s command “Halt, who goes there?”  He recovered, a much wiser man.  In later years I worked in the tool making department of a Sydney company with the guard’s brother O’Keefe.

 A lot of things went wrong in the Watchtower organization during World War II and in 1946 Nathan Knorr visited the Homebush Australia branch office to put things right.  A large convention was held in Sydney’s Town Hall and Knorr prayed to God for forgiveness of the Australian brothers who were involved in compromise.  A new branch servant was installed at Homebush named Floyd Garrett, a Texan from the United States.  I often went from house to house with him and found him a warm friendly person who with great tact could disarm any heated opposer in the door to door work.  It was about that time that Lloyd Barry was taken to the Gilead School in the U.S.A.  He thought he would return to Australia, but he was sent to Japan and later quite a few Australians followed him there – some from Bethel like Ruby Love and Gene Hyde.

 With Floyd Garrett in control, things went along nicely until the early 1950s when the largest post-war assembly was held at Sydney’s old Moonfield Racecourse – now a housing estate.  Nathan Knorr and Milton Henschel arrived from the U.S.A. and brought with them a group of Gilead graduates who were mostly Canadians as I recall.  They were Bob Smart, John Cutforth, Ben Mason, Don Macleon and Ted Jaracz.  These brothers were deployed to really get the work moving in Australia and they really did take up the post-war slack and get things on the move by implementing some new aggressive Watchtower initiated tightening up.  My wife and I met Milton Henschel at that assembly on a cafeteria line.  He got talking to our friend Nell Greenaway and wrote her letters from the U.S.A. for years afterwards.  He was only in his late 30s or early 40s then and gave some excellent talks in the assembly program, as did the group from Gilead.

 Of that original group from Gilead, only one stills hold sway and that is Don Mclean who still acts as spokesman for the cult from time to time and appears at large assemblies to give public addresses, etc.  Bob Smart died many years ago, but made a substantial effort in advancing the work post-war.  Ben Mason was a very well articulated speaker and well liked.  His mild tactful manner much like Floyd Garrett.  Ben Mason invited my wife and I to work with him at times, and on one occasion he took us along to a “Bahai” cult meeting where he had been invited to deliver an address to a cult meeting after which questions were fired at Ben and he proved more than equal to the task in refuting some difficult posers.  Of the Gilead group it could be stated that without a doubt John Cutforth was the most loved brother.  He could hold small and large audiences spellbound with his sincerity and warm kindly manner of speech.  He remained at the Homebush Branch office with the others until the mid 1960s and was reassigned to Papua, New Guinea,  where he accomplished much for the cult until his death some years ago when the Watchtower magazine carried an article on his life in the Watchtower service.  I often went house to house with him and he took the funeral service for my wife’s father George Woodfield about 1956.

 One of that group of Gilead brothers who arrived with Nathan Knorr in the early 1950s was Theodore (Ted) Jaracz.  He was assigned the office of Branch servant to replace Floyd Garrett, and under his control, we felt the first real implementation of tight rules and policies from New York.  Jaracz was a secretive and non-committal superior sort of person, but even so he was well liked and accepted by most of the local JWs.

 I also had several opportunities to work with him in the house to house work, and on one occasion, he condescended to sit though one of my public talks on the subject of “The Trinity” which was one of the most boring subjects I was ever assigned to speak about, and I don’t think I made a good impression on Jaracz as a public speaker on that occasion when I was 25 years of age (now 69).  I am almost sure that his purpose in attending the public meeting that day was to assess my potential for speaking assignments at large assemblies and I failed to meet his standard (thank goodness).  I do clearly recall that in those days so long ago now, that Jaracz used to suffer from painful migraine headaches, and he told me this.  The problem caused him to cancel speaking assignments from time to time when a substitute speaker would be required to take his place. Jaracz returned to the U.S. during the early 1960s and another American was sent out to take his place as Branch Servant and his name was Douglass Held who was accompanied by his wife.

 I never heard any thing more about Ted Jaracz until I read about him in Ray Franz’ book Crisis of Conscience and I was so surprised to see that he was a member of the Governing Body.  Now your latest Free Minds Journal presents him as a “big noise” in the Governing Body and a hard-liner, as well as being a dominant influence on decision making, etc., which does not bode well for any hope of more liberal policies appearing within the cult.  I think that Milton Henschel would be a rather submissive and mild type of person from what I can recall of him so long ago.

My wife and I still have many fond memories of some very lovely people that were our close friends during our many years of enslavement to the cult.  They were indeed our fellow slaves and we still love and hold their memory close to our hearts.  Many are now dead and gone and only a very few still slave on in the cult.

 All the best,

 Roger Daniels

AUSTRALIA

UPDATE Sept 5, 2000:
The picture at the top of the page was taken on Roger's 70th birthday, Aug. 31, 2000. Agnes is also 70 years old and they will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary Feb. 17, 2001.

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