{"id":117826,"date":"2022-09-18T14:58:57","date_gmt":"2022-09-18T21:58:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=117826"},"modified":"2022-10-28T11:43:30","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T18:43:30","slug":"farewell-to-a-writer","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=117826","title":{"rendered":"Farewell to a Writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We miss Glenda Randolph Bates.<\/p>\n

Glenda was a member of Peoples Temple in her youth, as was her sister Darlene Ramey and a dozen of her friends. Many of them went down to Jonestown before her, and she was supposed to follow them, but decided within hours of her scheduled departure to listen to her \u201cinner feelings of doom.\u201d As she reflects in her article, \u201cLeaving Jonestown<\/a>,\u201d she made excuses at the last minute to avoid going to the airport for the flight down to Guyana. In the end, that decision saved her life.<\/p>\n

Her sister died on November 18. So did all of the friends she had down there, and many others that she knew.<\/p>\n

In 2011, more than a decade ago and more than 30 years after the deaths, she expressed her own struggle in an email to me:<\/p>\n

I am still mourning, but trying to forgive myself for not grieving. It’s almost like I have to rewind my clock sometimes and cause myself to grieve. I think I’ll forever mourn the loss of them, but will have to forgive myself for working through the grief. I guess I felt like it was least that I could do. I mean like, how do I go on with my life? \u2026 I’ve lost [other] family since that day, but I have not grieved as I did with my Jonestown family and friends.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It took a while to get her to start to write \u2013 her first article came about the same time that she and I exchanged our personal thoughts about grief \u2013 but once she did, she unleashed a torrent of pent-up memories and reflections. She had reason to be bitter, and some of her stories were angry. But they reflected other emotions too \u2013 sadness, regret, even joy \u2013 over her life in the Temple. There are moments of longing in her collection<\/a>, but there are ones with laughter too. The stories ranging from self-effacing descriptions of teenage pranks to the mundane remembrances of everyday people aren\u2019t just of a young member of Peoples Temple, but of a young African American woman growing up in 1970s Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Glenda died in March 2022 of pancreatic cancer.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Whenever anyone contacts us looking for stories that describe life inside Peoples Temple, my default suggestion is to refer them to Edith Roller\u2019s journals<\/a>. They are articulate, revealing, sometimes funny, oftentimes poignant, sometimes humdrum, and \u2013 best of all for historians \u2013 detailed enough that they provide dates and contexts for unmarked tapes and documents recovered from Jonestown. But their major strength is that \u2013 since the author died in Jonestown \u2013 the accounts are by definition not influenced by the fact of the tragedy itself.<\/p>\n

Of all the people who have written since then, Glenda came the closest to matching Edith. But Edith\u2019s contribution was by circumstance, whereas Glenda\u2019s was by a conscious effort to report her memories as honestly as she could. That approach \u2013 to rise above the deaths to remember the Temple in life \u2013 required an element of real bravery. She honored everyone she knew, and in that way, undeniably \u2013 if inadvertently \u2013 brought honor to herself.<\/p>\n

(A second remembrance, by Rikke Wettendorff, may be found here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

(Fielding M. McGehee III<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is the principal researcher for the Jonestown Institute and this website, where he manages tape transcripts, Freedom of Information Act requests, primary source documents, and general inquiries on questions concerning Peoples Temple. <\/em>A selection of articles and editorials for <\/em>the jonestown report is <\/em>here<\/a>. He may be reached at\u00a0fieldingmcgehee@yahoo.com<\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We miss Glenda Randolph Bates. Glenda was a member of Peoples Temple in her youth, as was her sister Darlene Ramey and a dozen of her friends. Many of them went down to Jonestown before her, and she was supposed to follow them, but decided within hours of her scheduled departure to listen to her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"parent":118098,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-117826","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=117826"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118082,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117826\/revisions\/118082"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/118098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=117826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}