Lineage of Legends

United States · early years · 1959 – 1965

The Early Unification Movementin the United States

From Young Oon Kim's arrival on a student visa in Eugene, Oregon in January 1959, through the first members on Oak Hill, the Cole Street centre in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the satellite-centre experiment that finally broke the work open across the Bay Area, and on to Rev. Sun Myung Moon's first US visit and his forty-day blessing of holy grounds in every contiguous state — a chronological reading of the earliest American years of the Unification Movement, drawn from Galen Pumphrey's eyewitness history.

The Early Unification Church History, 1959–1965 — Galen Pumphrey (2004), archived at tparents.org.
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Era 1

I. The first missionary

1959 – 1960

Young Oon Kim · Eileen Welch · David S.C. Kim

Young Oon Kim — a former Ewha University professor of comparative religion — arrives alone in Eugene, Oregon in January 1959 on a student visa, told by Rev. Moon she would be rejected by 120 people before finding one. The first to fully accept is Eileen Welch; David S.C. Kim arrives that autumn to start a parallel group in Portland.

January 1959

Young Oon Kim arrives in Eugene, Oregon

Young Oon Kim arrives in the United States as the first Unification Church missionary, entering on a student visa to attend the University of Oregon. She had been a professor of comparative religion at Ewha University in Seoul before being asked by Rev. Sun Myung Moon to prepare an English version of the Divine Principle and go to the West. Rev. Moon tells her she will be rejected by 120 people before one accepts and becomes a member.

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1959

Eileen Welch — the first American member

Eileen Welch, a married woman with one son in Eugene, becomes the first person in the United States to fully understand the Divine Principle, accept Rev. Moon and his mission. Pumphrey marks her as the first American member by the standard that membership begins when a person grasps and accepts the message, not when they first hear it. She is later blessed with Hank Lemmers.

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Autumn 1959

David S.C. Kim arrives in Portland

David S.C. Kim arrives in the United States in the autumn of 1959, nine months after Miss Kim, and enrols at a seminary in Portland, Oregon. Working quietly under the scrutiny of his fundamentalist Christian college, he begins to find members of his own — including John Schmidli and Vernon Pearson, both later in the 1969 Blessing of 13 Couples in the United States.

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15 April 1960

True Parents' Blessing marked at Eugene

On the evening of 15 April 1960 Miss Kim holds a special meeting in her room at the Eugene Women's Club, dressed in her best Korean dress, with deep prayer, telling members only that the occasion is of special importance. The new members later learn it was the Blessing of Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han. Some weeks later a package arrives from Korea containing non-perishable food Rev. Moon had set aside from the wedding feast so the American family could partake of it.

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Spring 1960

The first small group on Oak Hill

On a ridge west of Eugene known as Oak Hill, Doris Orme — witnessed to in her church choir by Eileen Lemmers — arranges for Miss Kim to come to her home to present the Divine Principle to her neighbours Patty Pumphrey and Pauline Verheyen. Pauline and Patty read the first six chapters in a blue-bound mimeographed folder and accept. Doris Orme, Pauline Verheyen, Patty Pumphrey, Galen Pumphrey and (soon after) George Norton form the first American group; Eileen Lemmers is already a member. Early meetings are held at the Eugene Women's Club at 450 East 14th Street.

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Era 2

II. The Oak Hill centre and the move to San Francisco

1960 – 1961

Galen & Patty Pumphrey · Doris Orme · Pauline Verheyen · George Norton

Miss Kim moves into the Pumphreys' farm house on Oak Hill — the first American centre. Doris and Pauline's husbands force a confrontation; the two women walk out with only the clothes on their backs and Pauline's Bible, fleeing through Redding to Fresno to San Francisco. Miss Kim decides the work must continue there.

Mid 1960

Centre established at the Pumphrey house on Oak Hill

Miss Kim moves out of her Eugene Women's Club room and into the upstairs of Galen and Patty Pumphrey's farm house on Oak Hill (later Cantrell Road), west of Eugene. The Pumphreys move next door so the house can serve as a centre. George Norton and a young Korean university student soon move in — the first of many communal centres in the United States. Joint Sunday meetings with David Kim's Portland group begin in early summer.

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November 1960

First hardbound Divine Principle printed in Eugene

A new English Divine Principle, rewritten and typed by Miss Kim on a rented IBM Executive typewriter with proportional spacing, is printed by a small printer in Eugene and bound by hand. George Norton sells a piece of property to finance the printing. A monthly newsletter announces the hard-bound edition at four dollars. Miss Kim also announces that she is leaving the Oregon area and committing the Oregon groups to David Kim.

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Late 1960

The Exodus — Doris and Pauline leave their husbands

After mounting hostility, Doris Orme and Pauline Verheyen's husbands confront them with an ultimatum: leave Miss Kim or lose your children. The two women walk out with only the clothes on their backs and Pauline's Bible. Their green Jeep station wagon breaks down at the Oregon–California border; they reach Fresno by truck and bus, where a Seventh-Day Adventist landlady tells them God had told her to prepare a room for them. A detective hired by their husbands tracks them down; they slip out a back door and flee to San Francisco. Miss Kim takes their faith as the sign that the work must move there.

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Autumn 1960

Miss Kim and George Norton move to San Francisco · 410 Cole Street

In the autumn of 1960 Miss Kim and George Norton drive a car and trailer of belongings — and the unbound pages of the new Divine Principle — to San Francisco. They rent a large 7-room walk-up flat at 410 Cole Street in the Haight-Ashbury district, which becomes the first San Francisco centre. The Pumphreys soon follow with their youngest son Lloyd. Eileen Welch moves to Portland to work with David Kim and later pioneers Salt Lake City and Chicago.

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1961

Pooled pay-cheques sustain the Cole Street family

Members at 410 Cole Street take outside jobs and pool their wages. Doris and Pauline waitress at Foster's; George Norton works as a hospital orderly (he had been a Korean War corpsman); Patty Pumphrey is a bookkeeper at Wells Fargo on Haight Street; Galen Pumphrey eventually works as a mailman at the Burlingame post office. Miss Kim manages the household with extreme frugality, even refusing a heater George once bought for the centre. There is no fundraising; pooled pay-cheques fund the centre, vehicles and printing.

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Era 3

III. Witnessing in San Francisco

1961 – 1963

Peter Koch · Barbara Koch · Ercila Schuman · John Lofland

From 410 Cole Street the small family attempts every kind of witnessing — churches, spiritualist meetings, street preaching, radio, a loudspeaker van, a hand-painted banner — and takes over 1,500 people through the Divine Principle in a few years. The first lasting San Francisco members are Germans found through spiritualist churches. Berkeley sociologist John Lofland moves in to study them.

1961

Ercila Schuman — first lasting member from San Francisco

Doris finds Ercila Schuman, a young German woman, at a spiritualist church in San Francisco — the first real member to come from the city. Ercila knows Peter Koch, then in his third or fourth year of engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, and brings him to hear the Divine Principle. Peter becomes the first lasting member to join after listening to Miss Kim's four-hour taped lecture in front of a tape recorder.

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1962

Barbara Koch joins · early German core

Peter Koch leads his sister Barbara Koch — an interior architect in San Francisco — to check out his "crazy group", and she also joins. Barbara is later blessed with Reiner Vincenz and the two become leaders of the Unification Movement in Europe and the United States. Aside from the Koch siblings and Ercila Schuman, no American resident of San Francisco joins.

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Late 1962

Move to 1309 Masonic Avenue · The New Age Frontiers launches

After about a year on Cole Street the group buys three flats at 1309, 1311 and 1313 Masonic Avenue, on the east end of Haight-Ashbury, for $32,000 in the names of George Norton and Galen Pumphrey (the church is not yet a legal entity). They renovate 21 rooms, set up a print shop in the basement with an A.B. Dick offset machine, and in the later part of 1962 begin producing a monthly newsletter, The New Age Frontiers, sent to scattered members across the country.

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15 January 1963

John Lofland's first-year reflections in The New Age Frontiers

Berkeley sociology PhD candidate John Lofland, who has been studying with the group for a year and at one point moves into the centre, publishes "Reflection on My First Year with the Divine Principles" in The New Age Frontiers (No. 7, 15 January 1963). His later dissertation and book write the Unification Church off as a small cult with no future; the guest book of some 1,500 people who had come to hear the Divine Principle is later stolen from the Masonic Avenue centre.

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1963

The march in Union Square

Around 1963 members come in from Sacramento, Berkeley, San Jose and Burlingame for a rally in Union Square in downtown San Francisco. They march down Market Street with sandwich boards and signs, then preach in the park. The catch for the day is one Chinese seaman who has just jumped ship and cannot speak English — and who turns out to be wanted by the police. Pumphrey concludes the only method that ever works is one-on-one personal contact.

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Era 4

IV. The satellite centres

1963 – 1964

Doris Walder · Pauline Verheyen · Edwin Ang · Paul & Crystal Werner

Miss Kim, overruled at one family meeting and praying alone overnight, returns the next evening and splits the centre — each member must pioneer their own city, find their own work and raise their own spiritual children. Within a year strong new members appear from Berkeley, San Jose, Sacramento, Burlingame and Los Angeles.

1963

Miss Kim splits the centre

At a family meeting Miss Kim tells the members that nothing will happen at the current rate and they must leave San Francisco and pioneer the surrounding cities on their own. The members resist; she goes away to pray and the next evening returns with the same decision. Doris goes to San Jose, Pauline to Berkeley, Galen Pumphrey to Burlingame, Patty and the boys to Hayward. It is the first time members must teach and raise spiritual children without Miss Kim on hand.

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1963

New core members from the Bay Area satellites

Within months strong new members begin appearing from the satellite cities: Edwin (Dr Ang) Ang, Ernie Stewart and Elke Klawitter from Berkeley; Carl Rapkins and Ora Schoon from San Jose; and a married couple from Burlingame whom the Pumphreys bring in. The Berkeley centre is soon strong enough that Edwin Ang can take it over.

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1963

Doris to Los Angeles · Pauline to Sacramento · the Werners join

As the new members shoulder the satellite centres, the original pioneers move further out. Doris goes to Los Angeles, where she moves into Teddy Verheyen's apartment and starts teaching there. Pauline goes to Sacramento and moves straight into the house of Paul and Crystal Werner — "a real home church" — where the Werners join. Doug heads to Louisiana and Gordon to Texas.

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24 August 1963

Miss Kim's Sacramento testimony

On 24 August 1963 in Sacramento, Miss Kim gives the autobiographical testimony that is later printed as the appendix to Pumphrey's history. She recounts her search for God as a teenager, hearing "Jesus Loves Me" as a child, the voice telling her "It was not you who have been seeking me, but I who have been seeking you", her studies in Japan and Toronto, the kidney and digestive illness that confined her in Seoul, and how Rev. Moon's teaching healed her in three days at the end of December 1954.

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November 1963

The Pumphreys pioneer Denver

Over a long Thanksgiving weekend Galen and Patty Pumphrey load a 12-foot U-Haul behind their 1951 Chevrolet sedan and drive their three sons from San Francisco to Denver, Colorado — chosen from a road map left in a booth at the restaurant Galen cleaned mornings. Crossing the Salt Flats in Utah, the boys hear on a small transistor radio that President Kennedy has been shot; a tearful filling-station attendant outside Salt Lake City confirms it.

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1964

Pauline pioneers Cleveland

As the second-generation satellites take hold, Pauline Verheyen moves on again, this time to Cleveland, Ohio, where she establishes a group that will host True Father later in 1965. Members are now scattered across the country: Bo Hi Pak in Washington D.C., David Kim in Portland, the Pumphreys in Denver, and pioneers in Texas, Louisiana, Chicago and beyond.

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Era 5

V. True Father's arrival

12 – 18 February 1965

Rev. Sun Myung Moon · Mrs Won Bok Choi · Young Oon Kim · Col. Bo Hi Pak

After more than five years of preparation, Rev. Moon arrives at San Francisco airport at 5.50 a.m. on 12 February 1965, accompanied by Mrs Won Bok Choi and met by some thirty-five members. Over six days in the Bay Area he sets up the first national holy ground on Twin Peaks, visits the Robinsons — the first black American family in the movement — and orders the scattered groups merged under HSA-UWC.

12 February 1965 · 05:50

Rev. Moon arrives at San Francisco airport

Rev. Sun Myung Moon arrives at San Francisco airport at 5.50 a.m. on 12 February 1965, the first passenger off a Japan Airlines flight from Korea, accompanied by Mrs Won Bok Choi. Around thirty to thirty-five members line up to greet him: David Kim, David Bridges and John Schmidli drive down from Oregon; Col. Bo Hi Pak, Jhoon Rhee and Alexa Altomere fly in from Washington D.C.; Doris comes up from Los Angeles; Carl Rapkins from Fresno; with local members from the Bay Area. Breakfast follows at the Oakland centre.

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13 February 1965

Tour of San Francisco · Pumphrey visits Robinson home

On the Saturday Rev. Moon tours Golden Gate Park, Fisherman's Wharf and the San Francisco Zoo at a punishing pace, then visits 1309 Masonic Avenue, where Peter and Shirley Robinson and their three children — the first black American family to accept the Divine Principle and Rev. Moon — are living with Ora Schoon. Over a pot-luck dinner Rev. Moon prays that if the United States does not overcome its racial injustice it will lose its blessing, and that the Robinsons have a great mission to carry the Divine Principle to their race.

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14 February 1965

First Holy Ground in the USA · Twin Peaks, San Francisco

On the Sunday evening Rev. Moon takes about fifteen members to the top of Twin Peaks in San Francisco. He prays in a cold wind on a rock formation; one clairvoyant member sees his aura grow until it engulfs the group and a shaft of light come down to him. On the Monday afternoon he returns, sanctifies the South Peak (Mother's Peak) and chooses the North Peak (Father's Peak) as the first national Holy Ground in the United States — symbolically tied by Korean soil and Holy Salt to the Holy Ground in Korea. He tells the members "Had you known the importance of this occasion, you would have come here and prayed all night."

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14 February 1965

Order to unify the American groups under HSA-UWC

At a 4 a.m. business meeting with local leaders, Rev. Moon announces that the national headquarters will be in Washington D.C. and that the separately incorporated groups across the country must be merged legally under the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. Each existing group is to nominate one board member, who must be a college graduate. He presents the Bay Area group with his flag — white silk with his symbol in red — received on their behalf by Jim Fleming in a black lacquer box.

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Era 6

VI. Fifty states in forty days

19 February – 31 March 1965

Rev. Moon · Mrs Choi · Young Oon Kim · George Norton · Gordon Ross

From 19 February to 30 March 1965, Rev. Moon and his party cross every contiguous state in a blue 1965 Plymouth Fury III station wagon — some 15,000 miles in forty days — making a Holy Ground in each, ending where the work began, at Oak Hill in Eugene, before flying out of San Francisco on 31 March.

19 February 1965

Departure from Oakland in the blue Plymouth Fury

On the morning of Friday 19 February 1965, Rev. Moon, Mrs Choi, Miss Kim, George Norton, Gordon Ross and Eva Sepp leave Oakland in a new blue 1965 Plymouth Fury III station wagon bought by members for the trip. The plan is to drive all forty-eight contiguous states in forty days and make a Holy Ground in each, often travelling around the clock, eating in the car and sleeping while moving — sometimes at 100 mph on isolated western roads.

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25 February 1965

Holy Grounds on Mt Whitney and at Bad Water, Death Valley

Leaving Los Angeles on Thursday 25 February with Teddy Verheyen and John Pinkerton aboard, the party climbs into a small grove of pine trees about 8,000 feet up Mt Whitney — at 14,495 feet the highest peak in the continental United States — where Rev. Moon blesses ground covered with a foot of snow. The same day he blesses Bad Water in Death Valley, 280 feet below sea level, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere — this time covered in salt, not snow.

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5 March 1965

Wrong bridge at Cairo · Holy Ground in Paducah

Leaving the Oswalds and Weirs in Creve Coeur, St Louis, the party heads for Paducah, Kentucky, crossing the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois. After accidentally crossing into Ohio, then back into Missouri before finally finding the right bridge, they reach Paducah and bless ground. From there they push on south through Memphis (where local police stop George Norton, accept his Association card and walk away bewildered), to Little Rock, Vicksburg, Mobile and on to Tampa.

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8 – 9 March 1965

Florida · Mr Pak meets the party · Key West

On 8 March the party is greeted in Tampa by the Tampa Family and Mr Bo Hi Pak from Washington. After blessing a Tampa park, they drive down the west coast to Miami Beach, where Rev. Moon dips his finger in the warm Atlantic and writes in Korean in the sand next to Mr Pak's "Ahbogee" (father) the word "Ohmonee" (mother). They continue south to Key West, the southernmost point of the United States, and the next morning Rev. Moon takes some sand and seashells as souvenirs.

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12 March 1965

Arrival in Washington D.C. · blessing the White House and Capitol lawns

On Friday afternoon 12 March 1965, after passing through Martinsburg, West Virginia and Hagerstown, Maryland, the party reaches Washington D.C. and the Arlington, Virginia home of Bo Hi Pak — Father's designated assistant military attaché at the Korean Embassy and the future founder of the Washington group. Over several days the lawns of the White House and the Capitol are blessed alongside official and unofficial meetings with the Washington Family.

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19 March 1965

Arthur Ford sitting in Philadelphia

En route west, the party stops in Philadelphia at the home of the famous trance medium Arthur Ford, whose spirit guide Fletcher has previously testified to Rev. Moon as the Messiah of the New Age. Fletcher testifies again — "You are sitting in the presence of Truth incarnate" — before two Episcopalian priests present. Rev. Moon advises Mr Ford to study the Divine Principle and pursue a higher spiritual level. The same day Central Park in New York is blessed.

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25 March 1965

Holy Ground in Denver · the 1951 Chevrolet

The party arrives at the Pumphreys' small house at 1020 Jay Street in Denver in the evening of 25 March. After a full-house meeting that runs until 4.30 a.m., the next morning Rev. Moon asks to bless Holy Ground. The Plymouth has a burned valve, so he is asked which car to use. Miss Kim explains that the Pumphreys' aged 1951 Chevrolet was the first car the San Francisco centre had; he chooses to ride in it and makes it a historical car. He blesses a very large elm in Denver City Park.

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29 – 30 March 1965

"It is fulfilled" · final blessing at Mt Tabor, Portland · return to Eugene

On 29 March 1965 Rev. Moon gives his final official Holy Ground blessing of the United States at Mt Tabor Park in Portland, Oregon, declaring "It is fulfilled!" The party then drives to Eugene, the birthplace of the American Family, where Miss Kim escorts him to the houses she had first lived in and held meetings, and Rev. Moon blesses a Holy Ground in Eugene as a special favour. They visit Oak Hill itself before driving overnight back to Oakland, arriving at 5 a.m. on 30 March.

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31 March 1965

Rev. Moon departs San Francisco

On the morning of 31 March 1965 the Bay Area Family accompany Rev. Moon, Mrs Choi and Mr Nishikawa (Mr Choi of Japan, who will later work in San Francisco) to the airport to see them off — with strongly mixed emotions, knowing they will not see him again for another year, but happy that his world trip is continuing. The first chapter of the American movement closes with the first national leaders meeting completed, every state grounded, and the small early family scattered as pioneers across the country.

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Sources

Every event on this page is drawn from Galen Pumphrey's eyewitness account The Early Unification Church History, 1959–1965, written from the founding Oak Hill / Cole Street period he lived through with Young Oon Kim, and including Miss Kim's own 1963 Sacramento testimony as an appendix. The book covers the first five years of the movement in America up to and including Rev. Moon's 1965 arrival and forty-day national tour.

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