A Daughter’S Memoir of Growing up Bahá’Í

By Diana Rouse Kaufman

Ray and Estelle Rouse became Bah's in 1941 and raised three children who also became Bah's. Over the course of sixty-two years of marriage, they lived in Washington DC, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, New York, North Carolina, and Arizona, and traveled to England, Israel, Italy, Spain, Guatemala, and Mexico, visiting Bah's and teaching the Bah' Faith wherever they went. From humble beginnings on a shoestring budget, they managed to educate their children and pursue their own dreams as well. Estelle was a prolific writer working on her autobiography at the time of her passing at age eighty-seven.

Ms. Kaufman draws on Ray and Estelle's own words to tell this story of one family's journey through the twentieth century that took them from post-World War I to space travel and beyond, from the civil rights era to the computer age. As the last remaining survivor of her birth family, she shares the story of her parents' conversion to the Bah' Faith and takes a light-hearted look at how their faith affected family life, parenting styles, and the changing relationships within the family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499051902

Diana Rouse Kaufman

Diana Rouse Kaufman was the youngest of three children in a Baha’i family. Following a twenty-five year career as a registered nurse, she re-turned to college to earn a bachelor’s degree in psychology summa cum laude from Kean College of New Jer-sey in 1997 and a master’s degree in behavioral science with a focus on human behavior and organizational psychology in 1999 from Kean University. Diana has four grown children, twelve grand-children, and one great-grandchild. She and her husband Rob-ert live in New Mexico.

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Copyright © 2014 by Diana Rouse Kaufman.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2014913325

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4990-5189-6

   Softcover   978-1-4990-5191-9

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1    Beginnings

Chapter 2    Walking A Spiritual Path Together

Chapter 3    In Their Prime

Chapter 4    Grow Old Along With Me…

Chapter 5    Mom’s Final Chapter

Chapter 6    A Rare Kind Of Wonderful Sadness

Chapter 7    Reflections

Appendix I    Letters From The Guardian, Shoghi Effendi

Appendix II    Progressive Revelation By Gloria J. Rouse, Age 16

Appendix III Teaching Trips To Guatemala

Bibliography

Endnotes

Dedicated to

Ray and Estelle’s six grandchildren

and

fourteen great-grandchildren

and future generations

in whom their legacy lives on.

INTRODUCTION

Ray Rouse grew up in a coal-mining town in the Ohio Valley with two older sisters. Estelle Benson was the eldest of five children growing up in a well-to-do family in Central America until tragedy struck. She spent five years in the silent halls of a French Catholic convent school in Costa Rica until she arrived in the US in 1934 at the age of fifteen. Ray and Estelle’s paths crossed on an ordinary workday at a bank in Washington DC in 1939 and their lives were changed forever.

Ray and Estelle inherited a legacy of love and commitment from their respective parents, Raymond and Bessie Rouse and Howard and Sarah Benson. With their parents’ inspiration, they navigated their family through the turbulent years of the 50s and 60s, maintaining an atmosphere of love, unity and harmony in their home that was hard to match.

Estelle was a prolific writer herself. During the last decade of her life, she began writing down everything she could remember of her childhood and younger years. She knew time was running out for her. My brother Ray and I assured her that we would finish telling her story but unfortunately, only four months after Mom’s passing, Ray was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and we both knew he would not be able to fulfill that promise.

My gratitude goes to all those kin who have faithfully preserved the family histories of the Rouse, Davis, Conway, Quinn, Benson and Veysset families and have shared the available information so generously. Through telling this story, my appreciation of our family ancestry has deepened profoundly. My goal has been to make this book interesting, informative, amusing and inspiring. I can only hope I’ve done their stories justice.

As young adults, Ray and Estelle Rouse learned about the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and, after careful investigation, committed themselves to His Faith. While some basic information is interspersed within this story, readers may wish to explore more about the Bahá’í Faith online at www.bahai.org or www.bahai.us.

Thank you to Glenda Baker for your encouragement over the course of many years and for your suggestions and editing skills. Thank you to Gerry DiGesu and the writing group at the Kenilworth NJ Library who gave me the courage to continue. Thank you to my friends who read early drafts of this book and gave me very positive and encouraging feedback, especially Joel McCray, Betty Vary, Patricia Allen, and my niece Alison Rouse, among others. Thank you to Martha Schweitz of the Office of Review of the Bahá’í National Center for your help in assuring accuracy of quotations from Bahá’í sources. And last, but certainly not least, I thank my beloved husband Robert, my hero. You make all things possible.

Diana Rouse Kaufman

Albuquerque, New Mexico

June 2014

CHAPTER 1

Beginnings

There are Rouses and Rowses spread around the country, but our particular branch of the Rowse/Rouse family¹ traces its roots to Simon Rowse, who lived and died in the hamlet of Dartmoor, near the town of Postbridge in Devonshire, England. Simon Rowse had a son Thomas who had seven children, Matthew, Mark, John, Mary, Ann, Elizabeth, and Thomas II. Matthew and Mark became ministers in the Church of England. Six of the children remained in England their entire lives. Thomas Sr. died in 1880 and is buried in Postbridge. Thomas II studied to become a chemist and mining engineer; he married Charlotte Martin and their first four children were born in England. The family came to America in 1874, when their eldest son Charles was thirteen years old. They settled in western Pennsylvania where three more children were born.

As Charles grew up, he farmed the family homestead and eventually married Elizabeth Evans, who had also come from England as a child. At some time, Charles and his brother Thomas III began spelling their name with a u instead of a w, although no one seems to know exactly why. Charles and Elizabeth had four children, a daughter Anna and three sons, Thomas, Raymond and William. Raymond Harry Rouse, born October 25th, 1886, would grow up to be my grandfather. Many years later, Grampa recalled that, when he was only 3 ½ years old, his father suffered an accidental gunshot wound that killed him. Grampa remembered that his father’s dying words were, Oh God, what’ll happen to Lizzie and the kids?

On March 11th, 1890, a short article titled The Young Man Is Dead on page 5 of The Pittsburgh Dispatch read, Charles Rouse, of Grove City, received a fatal shot in the head on Saturday [March 8th] as the result of the careless handling of a revolver. He had attempted to discharge the weapon at a dog, and failing in this, looked into the muzzle to see what was wrong. While in this position the explosion occurred, the contents of the pistol passing into his forehead just above the left eye, causing death a few hours afterward. Another article in the county paper stated that Charles had stopped at his mother’s on his way to work in a coal mine near Jefferson Centre. His mother asked him to kill a dog running in the yard…

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Ray’s paternal grandparents Michael Green and Elizabeth Evans Rouse Green, c. 1900

As young as he was, Grampa never forgot this tragic event that took his hard-working father away from his family. He never forgot that his father’s dying words were of his worry over what would become of the young wife and four small children he loved so much. Grampa told us what happened to Lizzie and her kids was Michael Green, a big, strapping Irishman known as Mickey, referred to by his stepson as a saint and a prince who married a widow with four kids. Three more children came along after their marriage. Mickey worked six days a week in the coalmines, deep in the pitch-dark tunnels under the Appalachian Mountains. Raymond couldn’t wait until he was old enough to quit school so he could work in the mines next to Mickey. When he was thirteen years old and had reached the fourth grade, he decided it was time to go to work. Raymond would work in those dirty mines for thirty-three years.

My mother later wrote, "Young Grampa and a friend once climbed over a farmer’s fence and took a couple of watermelons without permission. When his step-dad found out, the boys were ordered to face the farmer, apologize for their action and pay for the melons… Grampa told how he and his older brother Tom and younger brother Bill and their half-brother Donald shared the attic as their sleeping room. During the winter sometimes they would awaken to a coat of powdery snow, which had blown in between the roof rafters and covered their blankets. Such stories were always told with a chuckle."

Meanwhile, my great-great-grandfather, (my grandmother Bessie’s grandfather) Obediah M. Davis, was born on January 3rd, 1832 to a man named Obadiah M. Barnes for whom he was named. His father was Scottish and his mother Irish. He was adopted at an early age by a close friend his father knew from the Methodist church, Nathan G. Davis of Bridgeport, Ohio, who had three children of his own under nine years of age when he adopted the Barnes baby.²

On March 30th, 1854, at the age of twenty-two, Obediah married Dorcas Ann Coss in the presence of their fathers, Nathan Davis and Martin Coss. Sadly, their firstborn child, a son, died soon after birth. Over the course of the next six years, three daughters and two sons were born. On July 1st, 1861, like thousands of other young men, Obediah left his wife with five small children and enlisted in the 43rd Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry under Col. J.L. Kirby Smith, nephew of rebel General Kirby Smith, and went to war. On August 22nd, 1862, Obediah’s father Nathan Davis enlisted in the 98th Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry and served until mustered out on June 1st, 1865 when the war ended.

Of Obediah’s five children, two daughters and one son died during the war. Dorcas herself became deathly ill in the spring of 1865 and Obediah was granted ten days’ leave to be with her during her last days. Lincoln had been assassinated. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox. I cannot imagine the mental stress Obediah endured, fighting the war, losing three children and then his own dear wife too. He left his daughter Amanda, eight, and his youngest son Kirby, three, who may have been named after his admired commander Kirby Smith, in the care of Dorcas’ father Martin Coss when he returned to his regiment to complete his obligations. As a captain of the 43rd regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, Obediah was honorably discharged, mustered out of service on July 13th, 1865 at Louisville, Kentucky and finally returned home to Bridgeport to recover from the ravages of war.

After the unimaginable tragedy of war, life endures. On July 2nd, 1867, Obediah, now thirty-two years old, married Mary Beatty Morrison, a twenty-year-old girl who had come to America from Drumhagles, County Antrim, Ireland when she was only six weeks old. Mary had two brothers and two sisters, all of whom settled in Bridgeport and Bellaire in Belmont County, Ohio. Now Amanda and Kirby had a new mama and eventually eleven more children were added to this family. The rocking chair upon which these many children and many generations since were nursed and soothed as babies remains a prized possession of our family.

Amanda eventually married Oliver B. Conway and they lived in Bridgeport to the end of their lives. Bessie Conway, my grandmother, born in 1888, was the fourth of six children born to Amanda and Oliver. Also living in Bridgeport were Elizabeth and Mickey Green and their growing family.

I wish I had more information about how Raymond Rouse met and courted Bessie Conway. Grampa once told me he had dated her sister Mary Conway first, but he married Bessie on August 12th, 1908. Many years later, my mother wrote that her in-laws "were of fine moral character, true role models of the Golden Rule, fairness, honesty, faith, [and] trustworthiness. [Dad Rouse] worked in the coal mines of the Ohio Valley and other blue collar jobs, sometimes a double or triple shift, in order to provide the family’s needs."

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Ray’s maternal grandparents Amanda and Oliver Conway with Ray c. 1923

Raymond and Bessie’s first daughter Mary Loretta was born in 1909. Many years later, Grampa Rouse related that one night he came home after a long day underground, ate his dinner and lay on the floor in front of the fireplace with his baby girl Mary toddling around him. Mary plunked her diapered bottom on his chest while he dozed. He felt her tiny fingers gently patting the top of his head. He continued dozing in front of the fire while Mary intently patted one spot on his scalp. Later he arose to put Mary to bed and then discovered that she had carefully pressed a wad of bubble gum into his hair. Bessie had to take the scissors to him.

Another girl Dorothy Mae followed in 1913 and then, finally, a son Raymond Charles Rouse in 1918, named for his grandfather who had tragically died so young. The children were raised with a firm and loving hand in a home with little money but lots of laughter, common sense and respect. We loved to hear Grampa talk about our father when he was a little boy. He told the story of one summer evening when little Raymond was about five years old and Bessie dished up each child a bowl of homemade ice cream as a special treat. With a disappointed look on his face, little Raymond asked, Is that all I get?

Grampa quietly responded, Just wait ‘til I finish my ice cream and I’ll show you a trick. Raymond sat patiently and when his father finished eating his ice cream, Grampa picked up Raymond’s bowl and finished eating his as well. Raymond then looked up wide-eyed at his father and said, What’s the trick? and Grampa said, That was it. Raymond never again complained that he didn’t get enough ice cream.

Along about this time, Bessie bought her son a book called Peter Rabbit and the Fairies by Alma Hudson, published in 1921 by Cupples & Leon Company, New York. Bessie paid thirty-five cents for the book and in her neat handwriting she carefully wrote inside:

Raymond C. Rouse

Oct. 17th, 1925

The first book – he wanted it so he could read it.

From His Mother.

Estelle wrote, Grampa said, ‘Working in the mine we never saw the sunshine from Sunday to Sunday because they started work so early and worked so late each day.’ They would work long hours bent over as they used pick and axe and shovel to break down the coal and the working space was only about four feet high.

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Raymond C. Rouse

Senior Yearbook 1935

Ray Rouse was a conscientious student, popular, good-looking, with an exceptional sense of humor and good moral character. He was elected president of his junior and senior classes in high school. According to the 1935 Bridgeport High School yearbook titled Sunnyhill, Volume XIII, on May 2nd, 1935, Raymond Rouse played the role of MacIntosh in Robert St. Clair’s play Tiger House, termed a thrilling mystery comedy.

In spite of Ray’s sharp intelligence and good grades, college was not considered an option at that time. After graduation from high school in 1935, Ray went to Washington DC where his two older sisters had also gone to find work. Like many single individuals in those days, Ray rented a room on the second floor of a respectable boarding house at 1812 Lamont Street, which included a shared bathroom, telephone privileges, and meals with other tenants. He found a position as a bookkeeper with the American Security and Trust Company, at 15th and Pennsylvania Avenue, a block from the White House and around the corner from Lafayette Park.

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Raymond H. and Bessie C. Rouse 1935

On a trip home in 1938, Ray’s parents advised him to check out the activities of the Spiritualists in the DC area, as they had been interested in spiritualism for a number of years. They also advised their son to find a church to attend, as they believed it was important to have faith in God and to live by high moral values. According to Wikipedia:

Spiritualism is a religious movement that began in the United States and was prominent in the 1840s–1920s, especially in English-speaking countries. The movement’s distinguishing feature is the belief that the spirits of the dead can be contacted by mediums. These spirits are believed to lie on a higher plane of existence than humans, and are therefore capable of providing us with guidance in both worldly and spiritual matters. Modern Spiritualism first appeared in the 1840s in the Burned-Over District of upstate New York where earlier religious movements such as Millerism (Seventh Day Adventists) and Mormonism had emerged during the Second Great Awakening. It was an environment in which many people felt that direct communication with God or angels was possible, and in which many people felt uncomfortable with notions that God would behave harshly — for example, that God would condemn unbaptized infants to an eternity in Hell.³

Ray said, "On return to DC, I checked the telephone directory, made a list of spiritualists, and set about visiting them one by one as time permitted. First I called each one to let them know that I was on a project to investigate spiritualist activities in the city. It was during my visit to the fourth spiritualist gathering (around January 1939, just short of age twenty-one) that I met Emilie Baker… She handed me a Bahá’í pamphlet which I glanced at quickly and returned to her with the comment, ‘This is about religion. I’m not interested in religion, so save the pamphlet. I’m only interested in making lots of money.’

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Emilie Baker 1922

"Mrs. Baker was twice my age, stocky-built, and just under five feet tall. She grabbed my arm, looked me straight in the eyes and in her strong voice said, ‘My dear boy, this is the WEALTH OF THE KINGDOM and I’m giving it to you! Now you TAKE it!’ My response was ‘I can’t resist that – let me have it!’ and I put the pamphlet in my pocket. Two weeks later on a Sunday evening, I stood on F Street in Washington DC trying to decide whether to go to a movie or attend the last spiritualist meeting on my list. I chose the latter and headed to the Raleigh Hotel for a meeting advertised to the general public. I sat down and within two minutes the same Mrs. Baker sat beside me and said, ‘I think we’ve met before.’ After the session she asked if I had read the pamphlet. I said ‘Yes.’ She asked, ‘Did you get anything out of it?’ I said, ‘No.’

We visited while waiting for the heavy rain to stop. I found out Mrs. Baker traveled by streetcar. I offered to drive her home. She said, ‘Fine, you can come in and meet my sweetie.’ That’s how I met Clarence Baker. We sat and talked and drank coffee and ate homemade cake until the wee hours.

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Clarence Baker

Ray learned about a new Messenger from God named Bahá’u’lláh (meaning The Glory of God) who was born into a noble family in Persia in 1817. Bahá’u’lláh brought teachings to unite mankind, had been exiled four times and was imprisoned for forty years until the end of His life. According to His Will and Testament, after His death in 1892 in Akká, Palestine, His son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (meaning Servant of the Glory) became the head of the Bahá’í community. After ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’ passed away in 1921, according to His Will and Testament, His grandson Shoghi Effendi Rabbání became the world head, or The Guardian of the Bahá’í Community.⁴

In 1912 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made a fourteen-month journey to Europe and North America which resulted in substantial growth of the number of enrolled members of the new Faith. One of the people who met ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and became a Bahá’í was Mrs. Isabella Brittingham of Philadelphia, where she later taught the new religion to Clarence and Emilie Baker in the 1920s.

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Isabella Brittingham 1922 who taught The Bahá’í Faith to Clarence and Emilie Baker in Philadelphia in the 1920s

Bahá’u’lláh eliminated the role of clergy in this Faith and, among other teachings, established the principles of universal literacy and independent investigation of truth. Because people can now read the teachings for themselves, the need for another person to read and interpret Holy Scripture is gone. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explained, "The first [teaching of Bahá’u’lláh] is the independent investigation of truth; for blind imitation of the past will stunt the mind. But once every soul inquireth into truth, society will be freed from the darkness of continually repeating the past."⁵ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá also stated, "What does it mean to investigate reality? It means that man must forget all hearsay and examine truth himself, for he does not know whether statements he hears are in accordance with reality or not. Wherever he finds truth or reality, he must hold to it, forsaking, discarding all else; for outside of reality there is naught but superstition and imagination."⁶

So this is what Ray Rouse began to learn about during his visits with Clarence and Emilie Baker. He was touched by Bahá’u’lláh’s principles of the oneness of God, the unity of His Prophets and the oneness of the human race. Bahá’u’lláh said, "This is the changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future."⁷ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá stated, "All the divine Manifestations have proclaimed the oneness of God and the unity of mankind. They have taught that men should love and mutually help each other in order that they might progress. Now if this conception of religion be true, its essential principle is the oneness of humanity. The fundamental truth of the Manifestations is peace. This underlies all religion, all justice. The divine purpose is that men should live in unity, concord and agreement and should love one another."⁸

Ray wrote, The Bakers became Bahá’ís in the early 1920s as students under Isabella Brittingham (Mrs. James Brittingham) and always referred to her as ‘Mother Brittingham.’ Mother Brittingham taught the Faith so effectively that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá affectionately called her ‘The Bahá’í Maker’. In addition, Mrs. Brittingham was one of nineteen Bahá’ís to whom Shoghi Effendi gave the honorary title ‘Disciple of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.’⁹

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Estelle A. Benson 1940

Ray continued, "We called the Bakers Pop and Mom. She wrote quite frequently to Shoghi Effendi and reported her activities and her occasional use of offensive language. Quite often Mrs. Baker would go to a Sunday service at one of the black churches located in the Washington area. Shoghi Effendi would respond to her letters and urge her to continue her audacious teaching and to ignore any shortcomings. His letters were always very warm and appreciative for her services. Pop was a deep student of Bahá’í Writings and… was a fulltime chemist for a photographic supply house. He was always a strong, dependable, supporting influence in his wife’s teaching activities.

While working at the American Security and Trust Company in 1939, Ray wrote, the secretary in the Department terminated her employment for marriage and a young lady was introduced in the department as a replacement. That person turned out to be Estelle Alice Benson.

While Ray’s grandfather arrived in America as a 13-year-old in 1874, Estelle’s Irish great-grandfather John Henderson Quinn and Scottish great-grandmother Isabella Livingston Quinn came to America around 1865 with two small children and settled in northwestern Pennsylvania where they had eight more children. Their fourth child Margaret (Maude) became my great-grandmother. Maude married Fred Hodges Benson on June 19th, 1889. With thanks to my cousin Jim Benson for his research, our first known Benson ancestor was Dirk Bensingh (1620-1659), a Swede who went to Denmark and then to Harlem and Fort Orange (Albany, New York) in North America, and the family branched into Canada before the American Revolution. Fred and Maude had three children, a son Howard in 1890 followed by Clarence in 1891 and in 1899, their only daughter Margaret.

Howard Livingston Benson, later to become my grandfather, graduated in 1912 from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he played baseball, ran track, was captain of the football team and was a member of Delta Upsilon fraternity. Howard earned a degree in engineering but after graduation, he went to the Canal Zone of Panama to manage a branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Clarence attended West Point, Class of 1914, and was a classmate and good friend of future US president Dwight D. Eisenhower. Sadly, younger sister Margaret died on Christmas Day in 1916.

On January 26th, 1918 Howard married Sarah Gabrielle Veysset in Panama. Howard was twenty-eight and Sarah twenty-five. Sarah’s sister Elena stated years later, It was a mixed marriage, you know, because she was Catholic and he was Protestant and [they were married by] Don Francisco de la Osa [who was] a very, very well-known judge in Panama.¹⁰

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Howard L. and Sarah V. Benson, taken in Panama 1921

Sarah’s father Edmund Veysset was born in 1855 in Puteaux, France, a suburb west of Paris. Edmund had been orphaned as a child and eventually went to Panama to work on the construction of the Panama Canal. There he met Jeanne Prieur who was born in Nolay, France, the daughter of Emile Prieur and Claudette Mannet. Jeanne had left her native France as a young adult and worked as a seamstress of fine formal wedding gowns. Edmund and Jeanne were married in the Church of Santa Ana in Panama in 1889 and had two sons, Alberto and Horacio, and three daughters, Sarah Gabriela, Elena Edith and Ana Clara. After Edmund’s death, Jeanne spent most of her time in Panama and Costa Rica taking care of her grandchildren and many years later returned to France.

Howard and Sarah settled into married life in a second floor apartment above the bank. On November 24th, 1918, Howard and Sarah’s first child, a baby girl Estelle, was born. In a letter dated January 26th, 1919, their first wedding anniversary, Howard wrote to his parents, "Estelle is growing fast, and prettier every day. She was two months old day before yesterday and weighed 14 pounds, which we consider some