{"id":30876,"date":"2013-07-25T15:52:47","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T15:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alternativejonestown.com\/?page_id=30876"},"modified":"2014-01-31T22:23:05","modified_gmt":"2014-01-31T22:23:05","slug":"rememroller","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=30876","title":{"rendered":"Discovering Aunt Edith through Her Journals"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Edith<\/a>
Edith Roller at Christmas in Redwood Valley, circa 1974.
Photo Courtesy of California Historical Society, MSP 3800<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I believe that many of us \u00ad\u2013 whether we have no connection to Jonestown, or whether, like myself, we are relatives of the Jonestown dead \u2013 are interested in the broad questions about human nature that Jonestown asks. My aunt was Edith Roller, a 62-year-old woman who kept a journal<\/a> during her years in Peoples Temple, including \u2013 more sporadically \u2013\u00a0 during Jonestown\u2019s final year. I hope these journals can shed some light on these question, especially about the shared faith and dedication that the people of Peoples Temple brought to building a kinder world.<\/p>\n

The easiest question to ask is why the commonality of purpose \u2013 for certainly there was one \u2013 become a commonality of fear so great that a significant number of people agreed that it was better to die and\/or kill their peers than face whatever they imagined might come next? What did they think would happen if they remained alive to experience it? The will to live is\u00a0strong; this fear must have been mighty to have overcome that instinct. Edith\u2019s journals can\u2019t touch that, of course, but it\u2019s possible that the tracks of those fears will begin to show in Edith\u2019s later entries. I hope they do.<\/p>\n

I think this is an important question. One can be glib about the answer, of course, saying that the people had been bent to do Jim\u2019s will because they accepted him as some sort of \u201csupernatural\u201d creature who was therefore exempt from standard definitions of rationality and morality. And certainly, that has to be one component. And maybe it\u2019s as simple as that. But even that asks a question. Why does being \u201csupernatural\u201d exempt one from generally agreed upon standards of behavior?<\/p>\n

Looking at all of this from the narrow perspective of Edith\u2019s life and psyche, I have to ask, too, if most of the people at Jonestown weren\u2019t refugees, one way or another, from a world that does seem too cruel and heartless. Perhaps they were drawn to Jim and susceptible to his world view because they were all suffering from earlier cruelties. Certainly this was true of Edith.<\/p>\n

She suffered, like her three sisters, from what we in my generation term \u201cthe gene.\u201d It\u2019s an easy way to talk about what manifests as one or another sort of insanity. There are definite markers \u2013 certain types of OC behavior being one of them. These girls were collectors: Edith collected words and facts and information and organized them; her sister, Edna, who recently died, had every issue \u2013 in order, in boxes \u2013 of The Rocky Mountain News<\/em>, where my father had been city editor, from the time he took that job until the time she had to leave her house; my mother collected plants and pots and all things associated with them but also had rooms filled with all the useful things \u2013 pins and bottles and string and so on that one might once again need; and Dorothy, known as Bug, was a true bag lady who filled various Chicago apartments with old clothes and scavenged stuff from people\u2019s trash. She also haunted Goodwill and Salvation Army stores in search of overlooked treasures.<\/p>\n

Ah, you say, typical behavior of Depression-era people. Yes, but not so quick there. This came from a deeper and stronger sense of lack. And it certainly wasn\u2019t the only manifestation of \u201cthe gene.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the psychological components are much more difficult to characterize and must go back for generations. There is an iron will and indomitable sense of self-righteousness that mixes with a streak of unbelievable cruelty. It doesn\u2019t do good to rehash old hurts, even those of people long dead, so I won\u2019t. I will say that the sisters were all subjected to it.<\/p>\n

Edith\u2019s willingness to teach people how to build incendiaries in the service of what she believed \u201cright action\u201d during the tumultuous 60s may have been her expression of this. That, too, might show up in the journals.<\/p>\n

One way or another, we all work to heal from the wounds inflicted on us as children, as do so many other people. I am interested in Edith\u2019s story, and the story of her sisters and the balance of the family, from that perspective: An exploration of the ways we all find to heal our wounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I believe that many of us \u00ad\u2013 whether we have no connection to Jonestown, or whether, like myself, we are relatives of the Jonestown dead \u2013 are interested in the broad questions about human nature that Jonestown asks. My aunt was Edith Roller, a 62-year-old woman who kept a journal during her years in Peoples […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":30921,"menu_order":9,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-30876","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30876","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=30876"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55850,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30876\/revisions\/55850"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/30921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}