William Arrott Dear Friends, The news of Johnnie Colemon’s transition brought back many memories which I would like to share with you. The date and facts may not be exact, but it’s how I remember them. She was a good friend of Religious Science and a close friend of many Religious Science ministers, particularly Raymond Charles Barker and Frank Richelieu, and many other ministers who have contributed much to our teaching, including Catherine Ponder and Marcus Bach. Tom Costa and Tom Johnson both spoke at Christ Universal Temple. I’ll never forget Tom Costa’s talk. Christ Universal Temple’s 4500-seat sanctuary was filled with standees lining the walls. The curtain parted to open the service with the 120-voice choir singing “Thine Is the Glory,” accompanied by eight musicians, including piano, organ, percussion, brass and strings. The stage left door opened and out strode Johnnie Colemon, all six feet of her, with all five feet of Tom Costa trotting beside her like a little white poodle. The whole service was very moving. When Tom stood at the podium and said “Good morning,” nearly 5,000 voices roared back “Good morning!!!” Tom lost it, he was so overwhelmed he was speechless. Johnnie rushed up with an ornate chalice of water. Tom took a few sips and then tried to put the chalice on the shelf of the Lucite podium but instead banged it into the side . . . not once, but twice . . . and then said, “You’d never know I started out as a bartender.” After he had the whole audience in his hand. I had introduced Tom to Johnnie several years before when he came to Chicago to talk at the annual banquet of the DuPage Center and Carleton Whitehead had him speak at an INTA luncheon downtown, at which Johnnie was present. Afterwards, on the spur of the moment I drove Tom down to Johnnie’s former Center. She didn’t know we were coming, but she dropped everything when we got there. And by everything, I mean everything. It was a Saturday afternoon but the place was jumping. She had a Board meeting going on, another meeting of all the ushers, and some kind of a children’s group. By the way the children ran up to her, you knew she was more than show, she was the real thing. She also told us that she meets with the ushers on a regular basis and always reminds them, “You meet the people before they get to hear me, and you either turn them on or you turn them off.” I first met Johnnie in 1974 when I was president of the Alumni Association of First Church and we had invited her to give the opening treatment preceding Marcus Bach’s talk. I was so flustered that I couldn’t remember her name. But believe me, it never happened again in the many times I did have the privilege of introducing her. In 1975, Johnnie and Carleton Whitehead co-chaired the annual INTA Congress which drew a new record attendance. The program was a virtual Who’s Who in New Thought. Afterwards, Johnnie handed Blaine Mays of INTA a check for $60,000. Dr. Mays to this day credits Johnnie for keeping INTA afloat in a difficult period. In 1976 when we founded the DuPage Center, the first tithe we received from any church was from Christ Universal Temple. And in 1979 she was the main speaker at the DuPage annual banquet. That same year I had the privilege of chairing the Sunday afternoon session of the INTA Congress in Honolulu at which she was the sole speaker to a room jammed to capacity. She wore an exquisite flowery gown, and Bob Mayes who played the piano beautifully throughout her presentation wore a shirt of the same pattern. The day before I was on a surf board off Waikiki as Johnnie and her colorfully dressed entourage walked down to the water’s edge. I couldn’t help thinking of Jesus at the Sea of Galilee. Although I left the ministry later that year before being called back in 1990 to First Church as an interim co-pastor, I continued to keep in contact with Johnnie Colemon and happened to be present at a number of important occasions. I don’t remember the exact dates, but the events remain clear in my mind. At O’Hare Airport I ran into Johnnie at the baggage claim where she said she was returning from “helping Della (Reese) through her thing.” Her “thing” was a brain aneurism on the Johnny Carson Show. Sometime after that when I attended the Sunday service at CUT, there was a huge murmur at the back of the church followed by a burst of applause as Della Reese walked in, her head still bandaged, making her first public appearance since her surgery. The whole church had been treating for her recovery. (I was also at CUT when Johnnie was conducting a healing meeting at which Ben Vereen walked in following his recovery from being hit by an automobile while dancing along the Santa Monica freeway. The place went up for grabs then, too.) At a later date, when I was in Phoenix on business, I turned on Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power on TV in time to hear him introduce the soloist for that morning as Mrs. Franklin Lett . . . and out walked Della Reese. Frank Lett, whom I had gotten to know well through the Prosperity Group at First Church, had initially done the graphic design and advertising for the DuPage Center when we first started. He had also designed the record albums for CUT’s first choral LPs. That’s how small the world was getting. I was at CUT when Johnnie Colemon announced that the U. S. Congress had passed a bill authorizing her to build a new center including an elementary school and a senior housing project. But I was also at CUT when she announced that Congress failed to authorize the money to do it. Later I was at CUT when she brought in Robert Schuller to help launch the program which did lead to the successful development of the new CUT. When Johnnie invited Louis Farrakhan to speak at CUT, I was there. She evidently got to him because there was nothing racist in his talk; in fact, it was on principle. We can all take lessons from the way he talked. He stood ramrod straight, few gestures, no walking around. Yet he made eye contact with virtually everyone in the room, including me, and kept everyone spellbound. Incidentally, when the great Chicago Symphony Orchestra embarked on a program of neighborhood concerts, their first stop was CUT. Louis Farrakhan was there also, and so was I. I sat right behind him, and he could hardly contain himself. He had been a concert violinist before. Reportedly, he took up the violin again after the concert. That was not Johnnie’s first involvement with the Chicago Symphony. They put on a Christmas concert combining the CUT choir with the Symphony chorus and full orchestra. Johnnie had the center box. I was there. Nor was that her first involvement with an important audience. She even took the CUT children’s choir to England where they sang for Queen Elizabeth. Rance Crain of Crain Publishing and his mother came to CUT with me and were so impressed with Johnnie and the entire service that Rance wrote a major article in Crain’s New York Business saying he didn’t know which she was better at: ministry or marketing. Not all the occasions were happy. I remember the Easter Sunday when Johnnie gave a very moving talk, but then sat down and seemed to turn gray. Then she rose again and announced that her mother Lulu Parker had just died. Johnnie had kept it secret for three days while she arranged for the fountain in front, which had been under construction, to be completed and turned on that so it could be dedicated to her mother that Sunday. For those who may not remember how Johnnie got started in the ministry, she had just received a telephone call confirming that she had a terminal illness and would soon die. Overwhelmed, she bumped into a coffee table and knocked off a Unity magazine with an article on spiritual healing. Her mother had been putting the magazine there for years, but Johnnie paid no attention to it . . . until that moment. Thereupon she took herself to Unity Village and the rest is history. Johnnie’s Unity Village experience is a story in itself. She was not allowed to stay on the grounds. One day, coming to class in a rainstorm her car broke down. She stormed into the classroom saying words to the effect, “I’m wet and I’m mad and I’m not going to take this anymore.” Catherine Ponder was a classmate, and she led a revolt that demanding that Johnnie be allowed to stay on the grounds with the rest of them. So Unity relented and let Johnnie and her mother stay on the grounds . . . in the old slave quarters. Not too many years later, Johnnie became the first woman as well as the first Black to become president of the Unity Ministers Association. When Catherine Ponder was coming to CUT to do a seminar on her book The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity, Johnnie bought up in advance all the available copies of the book she could find anywhere in the country. I was there when Johnnie called the ushers down the aisles with arm loads of the book. I didn’t count them, but it looked as if she sold nearly 500 copies in less than five minutes. When my wife Elizabeth was ordained by Frank Richelieu at the North Shore Center for Spiritual Living (NSCSL), Johnnie left the Universal Foundation for Better Living (UFBL) to attend. And when Elizabeth and Michael Rann published their book Shortcut to a Miracle, even though she was in semi-retirement, Johnnie and Helen Carry, her closest associate, arranged for them to present their first seminar at CUT. When Elodie Lane, the first Religious Science licensed practitioner in Chicago who became the lead practitioner at NSCSL, was named Practitioner of the Year by RSI, Johnnie and Helen arranged for Elodie and I (mostly Elodie) to do a workshop on spiritual mind treatment for her students at CUT. Thanks for letting me share. I take no credit, but I was there. And I am so grateful for these extraordinary opportunities. Like · · Share
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 22:34:05 +0000
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