Memories of the Quaker Past: Stories of Thirty-Seven Senior Quakers

Book excerpt: The book consists of excerpts from interviews of senior members of State College Friends Meeting. The narrators who lived through the Great Depression tell of their difficult childhood--and yet in most cases one they regarded as happy. Some of the conscientious objectors during WWII tell of life in CPS camps; others speak of using nonviolent methods with mental patients, while still others relate the story of the human guinea experiments some of them participated in. Of those who did relief work after the war overseas, probably the most exciting tales are told by the four who worked with the Friends Ambulance Unit in China. They happened to be located close to where the Nationalists and the Communists were fighting.