I was 14 when one of my older brothers, 24-year-old David, and sister-in-law Ronnie, the same age, announced to our family they were leaving their seemingly idyllic life in Grosse Pointe and Detroit behind. They drove up to my parents’ house on Windmill Pointe in Grosse Pointe Park to deliver the news in person, as if proximity might soften the blow.

It didn’t.

The deer in the headlights, stunned look on my parents’ faces was excruciating to watch. My parents were losing a son, a daughter-in-law and three grandchildren. I was losing a brother, sister-in-law, two nephews and a niece. I had been woven into their daily lives babysitting for — Matthew, 5, Amy, 4, and Mark, 3 often at their little brick house on Mt. Vernon. The idea that they would simply step out of the family and never look back felt unreal, like watching people walk into blinding fog and vanish.

They were trading their sweet little brick home in the Farms — bought for them by my parents for a Volkswagen bus and the promise of happiness and salvation to be served up by some holy man in the hills of the Hudson Valley.

Through friends, they had met a charismatic, self-proclaimed spiritual leader named Herbert Schwartz, who led a religious commune called Mount Hope on 220 acres of rolling hills outside Middletown, New York, in the Hudson Valley. Forty miles from the Catskills. Seventy-five miles north of Manhattan.  Herbert fashioned himself a Jesus whisperer, to whom if one rendered complete control, he could deliver them from their inherent human evil into holiness and happiness. Both my brother and sister-in-law had been steeped in Catholic doctrine from an early age. In fact my sister-in-law once weighed a calling to the convent. Her older sister actually did take her sacred vows in the Catholic church. My brother attended Austin Catholic High School and years after graduation taught catechism on Sundays at St. Clare de Montefalco in Grosse Pointe Park.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, my family was no longer a religious family. A year earlier, my father had renounced the Catholic Church, disillusioned in and disgusted by the behavior of certain local priests he had seen drinking and chasing skirts after hours at local bars and restaurants that he and my mother would frequent occasionally. Witnessing that, it became difficult for him to sit in church on a Sunday morning listening to homilies delivered by the same men — dispensing moral exhortation and reflection. My mom, sister and I followed suit.  

Within weeks, David and Ronnie were gone, convinced they were pursuing a righteous and holy path while taking their innocent, powerless toddlers on a fateful journey to a place called Mount Hope.

Their absence was felt immediately by the family both emotionally and financially. David had been managing two of my father’s diners on Jefferson Avenue in Detroit — one near the Chrysler plant and the other further down Jefferson near Waterworks Park. My father stoically absorbed the loss — the hoped for father-son business legacy and filled the gap himself. He always did. He was one of those resilient, self-reliant people shaped by the Great Depression, someone who had learned early how to scrape and scrap his way forward—and to get back up quickly when knocked down. By the time he was ten he had one of the largest paper routes on the east side of Detroit. 

That mission was a proclamation.

An emancipation proclamation. They proceeded to formally disown my parents. They announced they had accepted Herbert Michael Schwartz as their spiritual father. As required, they presented his book of holy doctrine—Schwarzism. This presentation was not symbolic. To fully belong, you had to formally and personally renounce your former existence to those you were connected to and leave everything else behind. The concept was surreal to all. My brother doing this to my parents? Especially to my mother who was suffering the ravages of breast cancer.

Whatever hope my parents still carried died that day.

I felt the loss, wavering somewhere between incredulous, angry, sad, confused and betrayed.  It wasn’t just a move away they’d made for a better life. It was a “we’re never-coming-back” act, a deliberate renunciation of their family. But at fourteen, thankfully, I was insulated by the intense momentum of my teens. Those were my best years—years like, that in retrospect, I didn’t know would never return. I lived in a mansion. I threw gigantic parties after high school sporting events. My high school sweetheart was a varsity cheerleader. I excelled at school and sports. I was popular. Life felt full of possibility.

I didn’t yet understand how fleeting and fragile personal identities could be. College stripped mine away with dispatch.

At Michigan State in the fall of 1972, I became one in a sea of more than forty-four thousand undergraduates. Tennis had been my anchor, so I tried out for MSU’s varsity team. I went from competing for the top spots on my high school team at Grosse Pointe  South to fighting for a meaningless thirteenth position at MSU—one that never traveled, never played matches.  But I earned that 13th postion as a walk on. Scrappy me — won a tournament with a 40-player draw to determine who would get that 13th position, but not playing matches and just going to practice every day just didn’t cut it for me. So I left tennis behind which was a big mistake.

In hindsight, I should have gone to a smaller school, somewhere I could make a go of it and be a contender. That critical error of judgment haunts me to this day.

Disheartened and dejected I paused my college education.

My freshman year a bust in many ways — I didn’t return to MSU the next year and and took a year off. I couldn’t have possibly imagined at the time the paths that I would go down. I don’t remember deciding so much as drifting into them. I was nineteen, disillusioned and likely clinically depressed. I wanted  answers that didn’t waver.  Perhaps I carried the same seeking instinct that compelled my brother David to search for meaning in a cult.

Very susceptible at the time I jumped into Scientology after reading a book called Dianetics a good friend made me aware of. After reading that I was lured by its promise of achieving transcendent abilities. Before long, I found myself walking into the Church of Scientology in downtown Detroit. Soon I was spending thousands on auditing — its one-on-one counseling practice designed to yield  —  spiritual enlightenment, freedom, and the ability to overcome life’s problems when one reached a state of Clear. Ironically it became clear that the state of Clear was always going to be just out of reach. The auditor determined when that state was reached. I had been had. But before I reached that awareness I had asked my sister for $2,500 for additional auditing servicess. 

My parents discovered the check that had just arrived by mail — $2,500 made out to the Church of Scientology.  They had already lost one son to a cult. They weren’t going to lose another. They staged an intervention bee lining it downtown and upon arrival demanding that they see me. I was escorted out of one of the classrooms into the hallway. I can still see them marching toward me down the halls of the church with authority or maybe fear disguised as authority. They insisted that I come with them and put The Church of Scientology in my rearview mirror. I concurred. Followers surrounded us as we made our way to the exit, imploring me to stay and that I was making a grave mistake.

I felt relief. Someone had actually cared about me and where I was heading in life. Lo and behold — my parents! 

Still searching months later,  I turned non-sensically to my brother’s cult — Mount Hope.

I conveniently disregarded what I already knew,  that living there required surrendering control of your life to a man who demanded obedience. I told myself the same things my brother once had.

It was spiritual. It was loving. It would be good for me.

My father — already disowned by one son — drove me to the Greyhound station in downtown Detroit. He did it with a restraint and grace that still humbles me. He didn’t argue. Perhaps he understood that resistance would only strengthen my resolve.

Before I got out of the car to board, I told him I loved him and told him I just needed to try this way of life.

He let me go without attempting to bend my will.

Mount Hope revolved around the “big house,” where the roughly 200 plus, followers and guests gathered daily – meals, childcare, medical care, worship – all centralized. At its core was Herbert’s room, the command center. A buzzer system controlled access: green meant ring for entrance; red meant don’t bother Herbert and whoever he was with. Even the children understood.

People sat around the room in chairs, sofas and at his feet. Herbert dispensed his religious instruction, wisdom, approval and correction and so much more. He gave treats and privileges to adults and children alike. Upon arrival at Mount Hope, he became your spiritual father. Slowly, deliberately, you were taught to distrust your instincts — then your thoughts.

I had visited there a few times not long after David and Ronnie left Grosse Pointe. I had to see what they had traded their previous life for. Before as a guest, it all seemed harmonious, loving and a cool way of living. This time though, I arrived not as an observer but as a follower. That distinction mattered. Followers didn’t own their lives.

On my first day, I ran into 20-year-old Kathy D. — a tall, pretty, fair skinned young woman with auburn hair that beautifully caught the light. I’d met her on an earlier visit. The chemistry between us in that prior visit was still there. I was thrilled she was unattached. That night, we walked beneath a clear, star-filled sky through the rolling hills of the Hudson Valley. We walked longer than planned, and somewhere along the way it became clear this wasn’t just a walk. There was an ease between us, a sense that something else had begun to quietly take shape.  At one point we stopped and leaned against a wooden fence, breath visible in the cold air, and embraced and kissed. It was innocent. Hopeful. It felt like a beginning. Maybe I was going to build a life here with someone.

The next morning, the adults gathered in Herbert’s room. He sat in the oversized easy chair that was his throne, flanked by his lieutenants — Cecilia ‘ Sis ‘ Mellet on his right and Dorothy ‘ Dottie ‘ Wiseman on his left.

Herbert fixed his gaze on me.

“So,” he said in a mocking spirit full of ridicule, “you had one of my girls last night?”

The room went silent.

He continued, angrily gesturing — disingenuously offering women as if they were his possessions. “You want Dottie too? You wan Sis?” The message was unmistakable: I was being publicly humiliated, called out as immoral and sinful! Was it a setup with Kathy? Or had Herbert just weaponized the private information that no doubt he had coerced out of her. In any case it didn’t matter!

I knew what this was — I sprung up from my cross-legged position on the floor and stormed out in disgust and anger. Herbert attempted to establish his dominance over me for all to witness and I wasn’t having it. It was a test that he failed miserably if he was trying to encourage me into the fold.

Herbert had desecrated what had been most innocent between me and Kathy the night before, stripping it of its purity. I never saw or spoke to Kathy again to see how she felt about what transpired that morning in Herbert’s inner sanctum and what the back story was. I do know she settled down with a guy named Tom C. of the commune and had a number of kids.

I packed up my belongings — guitar, banjo and backpack — and began my 5 mile march to Middletown. I was powered by anger and fury.  Some nice stranger saw my struggle with the cargo and offered me a ride into Middletown. I then caught a bus home to Michigan.

When my father picked me up in Detroit at the Greyhound station, his joy was unmistakable. He had gotten a son back! Standing there together in solidarity and acknowledgment of our newly affirmed bond remains one of my most treasured memories with him. There was real healing in those moments!

I had rejected wholesale what another son had embraced wholly and unequivocally! Chalk one up in the win column for Dad!

I was lucky. I got out.

Most did not.

The night before my walk with Kathy, my brother, seated at the long table where he and his family were eating, ordered Mark, his 7-year-old son to stand so that the rest of the room could witness a public punishment. He struck him on the side of the head with an open hand — hard enough to stun the room and most of all me. No one intervened or commented. At Mount Hope such displays were normalized. Silent witnessing was the order of the day.

I left prisoners behind — most regrettably my brother’s children. Six of them then. Three more would be born there and a tenth after they left. Those nine kids went on to be raised in silence — under fear, apprehension and oftentimes terror!

Decades later, my two oldest nephews — Matthew and Mark, the son who had suffered the public punishment — would die by suicide. They were shaped in that world.

I am not a licensed therapist, though I have spent my share of time in therapy. It is my considered opinion, as a conscious and reflective human being, that had my nephews not been raised in that environment, they would still be alive among us today.

They were approximately three and five years old when they were plucked out of their safe, secure, and peaceful Grosse Pointe existence and thrust into a repressive, fear-based institutional hell. There, up to a certain age, children were segregated by age and raised not by parents, but by institutional caregivers appointed by Herbert.

There were no more bedtime rituals, no being tucked in at bedtime by mommy and daddy. By severing those bonds, Herbert was able to assert complete control over their developing minds, hearts and souls.

They never stood a stand a chance!