Bahá'í Faith in Austin

The early Years

by Catherine Gent, Austin Texas, 1992

Anna Reinke with Baha'is in Austin TX

1912-1914

It was probably Anna Reinke who brought the precious Name of Bahá'u'lláh to Austin in 1912 or 1914. Anna was a young seamstress here when she visited her sister in Washington, D.C. about that time. There she heard the Message of Bahá'u'lláh. She became a follower forthwith and devoted the rest of her life to teaching the wonderful Message. (See her biography as the first Bahá'í in Texas).

1940s

Catherine (better known as Neenah) Smith came here from San Antonio, a widow with grown children and grandchildren. She had come into the Faith from a strong Christian Science background and was the only member of her family to accept the Faith. She was petite, proper, always well-dressed, and absolutely indefatigible when it came to promotion of the Faith. Much of the success of the spread of the name of Bahá'í in Austin belongs to Neenah. She never stopped, taking the bus to East Austin and making friends with prominent school officials and church officials there. Neither she nor Anna had a car and neither had much money but they perservered, putting stories in the newspaper, holding firesides and arranging public meetings and speakers. Anna moved to the country not too many years after Neenah came.

Neenah's son lived in College Station where Catherine Gent and her family were at the time and they met when Neenah would come to visit her son and grandchildren, becoming fast friends for as long as Nee nah lived.

She was a wonderful woman and a true servant of Bahá'u'lláh and Abdul-Bahá. She was not afforded a Bahá'í funeral or burial but her life of pure service was surely her passport to her Beloved.

1950s

Soon came Henrietta and Herbert Buder and their four children and then Henrietta's father, George Clark, from Colorado, an early Bahá'í pioneer to other countries. Catherine Gent and her family lived in Austin from 1953 until 1955, during which time the public meetings and newspaper publicity were continued, often aided by visiting representatives of the national spiritual assembly who spoke at our meetings, and by other talented traveling Bahá'ís who could charm an audience.

The national Bahá'í community was few in number in those days and there was frequent and intimate contact between the believers in all areas. You needed help, you got it!

1954

With the Buders, Catherine and her children and Mrs. Morris, a dear lady who declared in her late years and graciously offered her nice duplex in old central Austin for weekly study classes, and Neenah, we taught, using the hotels (the Stephen F. Austin and the Driskill) and the old Austin Public Library on Ninth, the meeting room in the basement, as well as the Howson Branch Library on Bowman in Tarrytown for public meetings. We held Holy Day observances and Feasts in our homes.

It was in 1953 or 1954 that we held a weekly series on "Progressive Revelation" in the Stephen F. Austin Hotel. George Clark and Catherine Gent took week about giving the presentation. Coffee and cookies were served to about ten to twenty-five guests each week!

1960

The first local spiritual assembly was formed here in 1960. We soon had many black believers bringing with them about nine or ten more children into the children's classes.

The first LSA was composed of Henrietta and Herbert Buder, George Clark, Phillip and Dorothy Trutza, Musette Christian, Frank Bethune, Neenah Smith and Bransford Watson. Three of those members were black.

1961

The Gent family returned in January of 1961, this time to stay. Teaching was still being done by public meetings, weekly "firesides" and Holy Day observances where we could involve the public with current topics and ply them with punch and cookies. The Stephen F. Austin's elegant and spacious meeting rooms on the mezzanine held many a Bahá'í conference, local teaching event and state convention. Although Chris Gent was not yet a declared Bahá'í, he, as the hotel manager, was always wonderfully helpful and supportive. In fact, it is doubtful that we would have obtained the facilities all those times if not for his intervention!

The old East Austin YWCA was also one of the Bahá'ís very best meeting places, on 11th street near what is now I-35. It was razed years ago but in its day it enabled us to make many black friends as well as furnishing spacious and affordable facilities in which to meet and teach. The weekly children's classes were held there to the tune of the old upright piano.

On reflection, it seems that there were many institutes and conferences back in those days. They were either brought to us "whole cloth" by an auxiliary board member or an NSA representative who hosted it or the materials were mailed ready-to-use and we provided our own coordinator and discussion leaders.

Some of the topics for deepenings in those early days were: a course on Bahá'í Law, lasting two days; Tablets to the Kings; Teaching the Minorities; Living the Bahá'í Life; and frequent LSA training institutes. Segregation was a burning issue and few groups chose to explore it, so the Bahá'ís were outstanding in their fearless and loving presentations.

The principles still had great drawing power in the fifties and sixties: the oneness of religion; world peace, what with the Korean War that began in 1950 and the Vietnam War in the sixties; independent investigation of truth; equality of men and women; and of course the oneness of mankind that became a prime topic following the Supreme Court ruling in 1954 that desegrated the public schools.

Let it be noted here that in addition to closer ties with the national figures in the Faith, we also were closer to more of our Bahá'í brothers and sisters in Texas then. State Convention was the order of the day. Despite the fact that we have grown and grown praise be to God! - there was something good also about knowing almost every Bahá'í in the state! At state convention, you saw them all at least that one time each year. Party time! It was delightful. Sometimes is was hard to transact business for all the visiting and "catching up" going on!

Also, in spite of Texas' vast distances, the Bahá'í communities associated with one another often. San Antonio would host a picnic for Austin. Dallas had a special Bahá'í visitor and invited Austin and San Antonio and Houston. Houston would sponsor a deepening and San Antonio and Corpus would go. You might say we had to stick together there weren't all that many of us.

Also, and this is very important because it says so much about our world today, color and ethnic origin were not the issues they are today. In fact, the word "ethnic" was not used, the phrase "life style" had yet to be coined and the special interest groups that so divide our society were few and less strident.

The following has to come under the heading of editorial comment but here goes: in addition to "Godlessness", another reason for our ills today must be laid to one dreadful fact overpopulation! There is just so much land, air, water, food to go around and increasingly people watch their "piece of the pie" diminish and even disappear. (The rats are getting restless in their cages and the more rats, the meaner they get. Scared and irritable at overcrowding, they snap at one another).

1962

The teaching effort in Austin received a transfusion with the coming of new members into the community. Lura and Alvin Rouse arrived from Carrizo Springs. Side note here: in the late forties and until Catherine and her family left College Station in 1952, Lura and Catherine had collaborated long distance and put out the children's monthly Bahá'í newsletter and study booklet. We had not met but we corresponded frequently and together we mailed out to all the Bahá'í children in the state a pretty good little booklet, if I do say so myself! Anyway, Lura and Catherine were thrilled to finally meet when they came here to live.

A couple and their daughter came from Hawaii, Bill and Sookja Kim (Sookie) Winters and daughter Joanie. They had a nice house in northwest Austin and were very successful in "selling" the Message of the Faith at the same time they sold their home improvement products. Some of the first microwave ovens in Austin were sold by them, including the Gent's. They brought into the Faith such priceless jewels as Foy and Yvonne Justice and Roy and Naoma Hocker, both of whom had lovely homes which they generously opened to the community for all sorts of occasions.

Like the rest of American society, and indeed the world in general, the Austin Bahá'í Community went through some troubled times during the social unrest of the sixties, the Vietnam War and the "there-is-no-difference-between-right-and-wrong" philosophies of the sixties and early seventies. Adversities strengthen and instruct, however, and for us, they forged a stronger and more spiritual bond, praise be to God.

It was a God-given bounty that the Universal House of Justice came into being at this time to act as a beacon of light for an embattled world.

Also in 1963, a young Grover Gonzales, originally from Arrequippa, Peru, was sent here by his employer, an oil company, for a stay of a precious two or three years. Although he could not speak English, he learned well enough to earn his masters in geology from the University of Texas. Grover not only obtained his degree, he also brought love and humility and a new depth of knowledge about the Writings rare in one humble Peruvian Indian who learned of the Faith by teaching himself Arabic so he could decipher the original Bahá'í texts and disprove it, to satisfy his strict Catholic upbringing! He eventually became the chairman of the National Spiritual Assembly of Peru.

He called our youngest daughter his little "ahn-gel." In truth, Grover was the "ahn-gél"! He was saintly, like a Bahá'í of the far distant future when we have learned our lessons and become more like Abdul-Bahá.

Soon after came the first Persian believers, to infuse the American community with a renewed model of service to the Faith and depth of understanding of the Holy Writings. Repression and persecution of the Bahá'í Community in Iran did not begin with the Islamic Revolution in 1979, of course. It only became more heinous.

There were the Meshgins, Khosrow and Nahid, Mehrdad Ehsani and his brothers and another family with children. Khosrow soon became chairman of the assembly. Others followed in a steady exodus from their native country.

1970

It was about this time that the big international celebration and dinner that marked Intercalary Days and Naw Ruż were begun. The party alternated between the Justice's home in north Austin, the Gents, the Hockers and the Griffiths in south Austin and sometimes places like the public meeting room in Hancock Center, eventually settling at the Zilker Club House when it became so popular that it drew Bahá'ís from miles around.

In the early seventies, the public-meeting-advertising, etc. became too costly and above all, unproductive. That is when the teaching efforts were concentrated on the University of Texas campus and the CampusClub was formed, the Bahá'í Association. We began holding all the observances and meetings there that we could, using the old Union Building meeting rooms, the Junior Ballroom, the BEB Auditorium and the Auditorium in Calhoun Hall on the west side of the esplanade. In 1973, the Bahá'í Association spearheaded a major proclamation, comprising a month-long citywide proclamation culminating in a public meeting at Palmer Auditorium, which had a big portable sign out front for several days, "Bahá'í Faith - Public Meeting etc. etc." About one hundred people attended. The public proclamations were a far cry from the day in 1948 that we attended the Bahá'í State Convention in a living room of a Houston Bahá'í!

Speaking of 1948, please forgive a backward look here in the chronology so that an important event can be noted. It was 1958 or 1959 that Texas held its first Bahá'í summer school! A site near Dallas (or Fort Worth? Nancy Dobbins will know) that was a camp for church groups and/or YWCA-YMCA, with barracks and cots and dining facilities and a swimming pool, all set in a grove of beautiful old trees.

The Dobbins and their two daughters joined the Galveston Bahá'ís including the Gent's two daughters and the Ibsen's daughter plus dozens more Bahá'í children and their parents for a history-making five days of study and companionship and play.

Now back to the seventies: more and mare Persians blessed our community with their presence including Enayattola and Mihan Moshref and their four children, and Farid Fathi and the Sadighians, Oumars and Homa Meshgin, the Vahdats, the Rastegars, the Hematis and so many others. As has been mentioned before, these lovely people from the land of the birth of the blessed Faith have enriched communities all over the world with their ancestral knowledge of the Writings and the deep understanding that the non-Persian may strive a lifetime to attain. Perhaps their being violently flung to the four winds had a divine purpose!

To conclude, here are some of the well-known servants of Baha'u'llah who visited or lived in Austin during these years:

  • Winston Evans, author of Bahá'í pamphlets and essays and lecturer;
  • Leroy Ioas, Hand of the Cause;
  • Florence Mayberry, Continental Board of Counsellors, visited many times;
  • William Maxwell, Continental Board of Counsellors;
  • Marjorie McCormick, NSA;
  • Katherine McLaughlin, Auxiliary Board Member;
  • Tony Pelle, Public Information Director for the NSA, visited several times;
  • Paul Pettit, Auxiliary Board Member, lived here and later visited often;
  • Martha Root, world pioneer, visited Anna Reinke;
  • David Ruhe, NSA;
  • Velma Sherrill, Auxiliary Board Member, visited several times.

They gave the Bahá'ís heart and spoke to groups and held news conferences and held our hard when troubles threatened and deepened us and counselled us, just as their younger counterparts still do today.