By the beginning of 1979, Peoples Temple was dead. Jonestown was empty, other than the presence of the Guyana Defence Force which guarded it against additional looting; the church as a corporate entity had declared bankruptcy, and its assets and properties were in receivership; and with the exception of a dozen former Temple members left in Guyana – either imprisoned or wrapping up Temple affairs at Lamaha Gardens – all the survivors had returned to the United States.<\/p>\n
While the nation’s attention drifted towards other issues in the news – and while life returned to normal for everyone else – the surviving members of Peoples Temple, both those returning from Guyana and those dispossessed from their former lives in California, had to learn how to survive on their own.<\/p>\n
The articles below reveal how former members survived that first year, even if – for some – that first year lasted for several decades.<\/p>\n
The editors of the jonestown report<\/i> are indebted to Laura Johnston Kohl for collecting and editing the stories in this special section.<\/p>\n 1. Coming Out Of The Peoples Temple Closet<\/a>, by Laura Johnston Kohl By the beginning of 1979, Peoples Temple was dead. Jonestown was empty, other than the presence of the Guyana Defence Force which guarded it against additional looting; the church as a corporate entity had declared bankruptcy, and its assets and properties were in receivership; and with the exception of a dozen former Temple members left […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":29227,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-30202","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30202","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\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30202"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52732,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30202\/revisions\/52732"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2. The Coldest Day Of My Life<\/a>, by Herbert Newell
\n3. How Bobby Survived and Returned<\/a>, by Judy McAbee
\n4. What I Still Carry With Me<\/a>, by Don Beck
\n5. Surviving My Survival<\/a>, by Tim Carter
\n6. The Carter Name<\/a>, by Mike Carter
\n7. A Time To Heal<\/a>, by Hattie Newell
\n8. Sharing the PT Story<\/a>, by Jordan Vilchez
\n9. Surprise! I’m Alive and Look What I’m Doing Now<\/a>, by Tommy Washington
\n10. Coming Out a Second Time<\/a>, by Garrett Lambrev
\n11. Living in Rome<\/a>, by Jim Randolph<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"