CCLA Career Post Mortem and Follow Up
I love this thread and it seems to "have legs" so I want to pump it up a little more. There seems to be a significant number of people on ESMB and also on XSO who have a lot of reality and interest in the old CCLA people and seem enthralled with stories about CCLA in the early days. I am at my peak in writing skills and storytelling so I have decided to pen another installment.
In Part 4 of this thread I covered how I settled my Freeloader debt and was able to get back on CC lines. I mentioned that rather than pay off my CCLA debt in cash, I worked a deal which Yvonne and LRH both approved which was that I come in 9 hours Saturday and Sunday for 52 weeks and work on putting CCLA backlogs in order. I will cover what happened when I returned to the Org and how Yvonne and the staff reacted to me. I am also going to cover an incident which I call the Cindy Sieverson Caper.
THE CINDY SIEVERSON CAPER
Cindy was a heavy set blonde girl in her mid 20's who I believe was in HCO DIvision I but she might have been in Div VI. In any case, there were people on lines at CCLA who were very friendly with Yvonne, Milton Katselas, Flo Allen, Flo Barnett and others who had contacts in New York City. Yvonne was urged to start up a branch CC in New York City. If I remember correctly, there was already a second CC started in Portland, Oregon at this time, early 1974. I have no idea why Portland was chosen for the site of the 2nd Celebrity location but as for New York City, you know, it has 8 million people, Broadway is there, great writiers, dancers, musicians and poets live there and as the song says about New York city, "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere." Also of note, Steve Geltman a high classed auditor, even though he stuttered a little, was now auditing at CCLA. Seve's Parents, Frank and I don't remember his Mom's name, ran a prosperous mission in New York at the time. (The next day, Oct 25, I remember her name, Helen Geltman).
In any case, Cindy was chosen to go on a mission to New York city for Yvonne to set up a new celebrity centre there, CCNY. Apparently there were already several Scientology celebrities based out of New York, I think the singer Jimmy Spheeris was one of them. Cindy set off for New York and right off the bat there was trouble between Cindy and Yvonne. Cindy left back in 1973 before I went to the Apollo and Yvonne would grumble about Cindy not performing and achieving any results at some of the staff meetings which I attended as Treasury Org Officer.
When I got to the Apollo as Programs Chief, much to my surprise there were pages and pages from Cindy which were critical of Yvonne and which were claiming that Yvonne was not supporting her as promised. Two months later when I was filing chits for the MAA on the Apollo, waiting to route out, there were many more long letters from Cindy attacking Yvonne. On Yvonne's side there were letters from her to Cindy's Ethics file attacking Cindy for sending any new Celebrities which she contacted not to the new CCNY but to Frank Geltman's mission instead. Cindy denied strenously that she was doing this and Cindy's letters were long - at least 12 pages each, handwritten, and were those of an extremely enturbulated person. She just wrote itsa, itsa, figure, figure type stuff and she sounded as if she were dying on the inside and in fact I think some of the later letters mentioned that she had been diagnosed with cancer. NOBODY WENT HEAD TO HEAD AGAINST YVONNE, ESPECIALLY JUST A RANK AND FILE STAFF MEMBER WITH MINIMAL TRAINING AND PROCESSING, AND CAME OUT OF IT LANDING ON HER FEET. Yvonne also had a run in with Richard Forbes, who was a very upstat celebrity whose real name was Richard Sinatra. He married my auditor, Soo Ribisi. RIchard was Frank Sinatra's nephew, I believe, and changed his name to Forbes because he did not want to achieve success through his uncle's surname but rather on his own. He was an absolutely fantastic person, I have to go back and add him to my list of all stars. His fight with Yvonne started when I was at the Apollo but after I left the Programs Bureau so I have not the slightest idea what it was about but Richard died soom after of cancer as did Cindy Sieverson. Yvonne was a very powerful being with incredible stats and if someone challenged her authority it was hard for them to hold their position in space and a weak person such as Cindy quickly expired and even an extremely strong person like Richard, succombed to cancer shortly after his altercation with Yvonne and then Yvonne herself died of cancer.
I do not know if these three deaths were related or had any causual link. I know for certain that Yvonne certainly in no way intended anyone to die. It may be just like the first clear John McMaster, when he began fighting with LRH and was off loaded, he quickly died of cancer almost certainly without LRH consciously intending this. All the parties involve were all in their mid 20's to thier mid 40's. You can form your own decisions. I know in Yvonne's case, she was getting only 2 or 3 hours sleep nightly for many years because she was so caught up in her work and serving LRH. There is every chance that years of insufficient sleep helped contribute to her brain cancer. One last sad thing about Cindy's death. Dozens and dozens of long letters which she wrote almost all went completely unread. Sandy Wilhere was overloaded being Programs Chief for 5 Orgs before I arrived on the Apollo and certainly had no time to read them, I skimmed a couple of them while programs chief but I had absolutely zero power since I never even got a hat pack which told me where I was on the Org Board. In the end all the letters were sent to her Ethics file, unread by anyone but me, who had no power to do anything, especially at the end when I was filing chits for the MAA. It is very hard to know that a Sea Org staff member poured out her heart and soul writing dozens of letters and KR's up to the Apollo and they all ended up unread and routed to her ethics file. Sometimes, when I think of that, I almost want to cry at how cold and unjust the world can be at times. NOTE: PLEASE SEE REPLY POST COMMENT BY CARMELO ORCHARD WHICH CORRECTS ME. Carmelo stated that as a boy, Richard grew up in and around Las Vegas and was fascinated by nuclear test sites which were active there at the time and suggests that his propensity to cancer came from his playing often near the nuclear test sights where he was exposed to radiation and his cancer had nothing to do with Yvonne. Also Richard died in Sept, 1979 not 1976 as I had thought.
I RETURN TO MY OLD GROUP AT CCLA - NO LONGER SEA ORG BUT PUBLIC
When I first returned, my old junior, Adele Vonnie wanted to talk to me. I met her outside at a local coffee shop and she wanted to know the whole story. I told her everything and she said that I really screwed up and should have never accepted the post of Programs Chief. I said, come on Adelle, I was brand new there and was ordered to Programs Chief by LRH. I had wanted out of Treasury for months and I got promoted up to a much higher post, how could I not accept the job and turn down LRH. She said, no, no I was all wrong, since there was no Hat Pack with items A to J, I did not have to accept the post. I asked well then what, I would be returned to Apollo Treasury making phone calls to Portuguese businesses all day long without knowing how to speak Portuguese. She said that since that post had no hat pack, I should not have taken that one either.
When I went into the Org, no one would talk to me at first. They knew that I had been offloaded out of the Sea Org and figured I must have committed some big crimes. A few of my friends looked me in the eye and put out the message silently, "I can't talk to you now, but I still like you and think you are a good guy and I know you will work up through the conditions." Those were about 2/3 of the staff, the other 1/3 whom I considered jerks, just looked straight ahead and gave me the cold shoulder, but were they really jerks, no, they were just following protocol and were playing it safe until they got more data.
I saw Yvonne and she was very kind to me, she instantly without thinking about it signed my CSW about working off my Freeloader debt instead of paying it off. She said I could start work right away, if I had time, could I pick up a package from Qual and take it over to another building? I said sure and went over to qual and Julie Goetz was there and I believe her sister Barb was there also. Julie asked me what was up and when I told her I was working off my debt and Yvonne sent me here, Julie relaxed and I was handed a fairly large amount of cash, around $1,000 to take to someone at another location. I thought wow, I am still in a lower condition, should I be carrying around Org money. Julie, made me feel so good, when she said that she had no problem entrusting me. After an hour or so, the staff knew that I was back and it was okayed by Yvonne so I suffered the cold shoulder treatment for only about an hour.
Back in Treasury, Kitty greeted me. By the way, she had seen me earlier before I was okay to be there and she looked straight ahead with no acknowledgement, I just now remembered that.
Kitty had given everyone in Treasury a new nickname having to do with money. Kitty called herself "Diamond Lil Georgius", the director of RAM, Frances Pavlides, was called, "It ain't Pennies Pavlides" and they had a new Dir of Disbursements to fill my shoes, his name was Jim Coonrad and I think Kittty recruited him. He was a good guy and was doing a good job in Disbursements even though he was still pretty new. She nicknamed him "Cash Coonrad", I think Jim was also now holding Purchasing Officer from above and Adelle Vonnie, my old junior had been awarded full tme tech training. Mark Ambrose, the out ethics cashier with the high stats had recently left when his bonuses were cut a couple of weeks earlier. He routed off staff as soon as his bonuses were cut. He had got me to let him use my Chevron credit card to purchase a hand calculator for $100 and never paid me back one dime even though he made as high as $700 one week, he refused to give me anything because he said he needed his $700 to purchase stereo equipment. Whenever I tried to write him up or went to see Margaret George the MAA, I was told his stats were so high he had Ethics immunity. Another brilliant example of the Hubbard Ethics system at work!
I worked weekends for a whole year on into early 1975, usually I was in the Disbursements office alone or with Cash Coonrad. He was a nice guy and we hit it off. A couple of times he had questions which I answered but he was learing fast and knew the post pretty well by that time.
Well that's, a wrap on this Wrap Up portion of my story. I may have another story in me for tomorrow because I went back on course at CCLA in early 1975 and I will tell about that and then my final meeting with Yvonne at the Fort Harrison in late 1977.
Lakey
