This is a complete and accurate transcript of the tape of the oral history interview of Rev. William A. Drury (CN 492, T8) in the Archives of the Billy Graham Center. No spoken words have been omitted, except for any non-English phrases which could not be understood by the transcribers. Foreign terms that are not commonly understood appear in italics. In very few cases words were too unclear to be distinguished. If the transcriber was not completely sure of having gotten what the speaker said, "[?]" was inserted. Grunts and verbal hesitations such as "ah" or "um" were usually omitted. The transcribers have not attempted to phonetically replicate English dialects but have instead entered the standard English word the speaker was expressing. Readers should remember that this is a transcript of spoken English, which follows a different rhythm and rule than written English.
. . . Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of though within the sentence on the part of the speaker.
. . . . Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of a incomplete sentence.
( ) Words in parentheses are asides made by the speaker.
[ ] Words in brackets are comments by the transcriber.
This transcription was made by Robert Shuster, Jennifer Taussig, and Maria Bergstedt and completed in March 1998.
Collection 492, T8. Conclusion of interview of William A. Drury by Robert Shuster, March 22, 1995.
DRURY: ...And I said, "Listen. In 1968 we had an emergency in the nation's capital, capital of the United States. It was called the riot. Instantaneously, we went to work on that riot. It lasted a few days, but we put it down...we put it down. We set up machine guns on the lawn of the Capital of the...to protect the president of the United States. It was an emergency." I said, "Why can't we take, not the National Guard, but troops who are stationed at Anders Air Force Base and some of the others around the nation's capital and guard the streets of the nation's capital? Just...just have shifts, you know. We're paying them...taxpayers pay the federal government to pay servicemen, you know." "Do you realize what that would cost?" I said, "Not a dime, because you're already paying them." And every question they had I answered. I said, "I doubt seriously that this information, this suggestion is going to get out of this room, because you guys don't want to do a blessed thing about the problem. Get your paycheck, get your expenses...." "Well, that's not fair, Reverend." I said, "You tell me exactly what you did with the information after I leave this.... You've got the employees...you've got the people. If there was a riot, they would be there. The National Guard with fourteen GIs instantaneously in the streets of D.C. In '68...." I said, "I got a flat tire in the riot right smack at Fourteenth and Park Road...Fourteenth and Irving, maybe, and I got a flat tire and fourteen weapons going off, .automatic weapons, the shooters from the roof top." The kids screaming incessantly twenty-four hours a day. Nobody talked about the screaming, frightened children twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But I said, "It can be done...it can be done." Somebody just made that suggestion today, you know, that New York City turned...turned.... When I say [today], the last few months somebody in high...in one of the high places.... But I suggested that years ago...to turn loose the National Guard to...to stem the tide. And I think that it can.... We did it in Haiti. Got a problem in Haiti? Send the troops to Haiti! Angola! [laughs] But we will not send the troops to the streets. And...and I believe that the troops would gain the respect of the little kids. They would be the role models that these kids so desperately need. Because little kids are inquisitive. "Hey, man, is that gun loaded? Hey, man, why do you wear that kind of a hat?" you know.
SHUSTER: Do you think that the situation would be any better when the troops pulled out?
DRURY: Yes.
SHUSTER: I mean, they couldn't be there forever.
DRURY: Well, no, they...they...right, they would not.... But, yes, I think that if you can cut off the supply...cut off the supply.... And if a ten-year-old kid knows who the pusher is.... I would even pay the kids...ten, eleven, twelve-year-old kids. Say, "Hey, man, you want a Big Mac [a hamburger]? Who's selling the stuff here in this neighborhood? A Big Mac, a Coke [ a soda], french fries, the whole nine yards, man. You and me, we'll go over and...if you come up with something good, there might be something more for you. Maybe we'll take you down to Woolworth's and do a little buying down there." And these kids will do anything for money. And...and there's no fear of death. Death...life is nothing in the inner city. It's just dead meat, you know. It's strange, but you don't have the comprehension of death, you know. It's...it's all around them...they say it, you know. But I think it could. It'd be better.... It was Edmund Burke who said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing." And we are doing.... And you talk about part-time hit and miss, that's exactly what the narcotics squad does. And these raids that they have again and again. You know, they just break down the door and grab the...grab the seller, or whatever...the shooter, or whatever the case may be. But I think it's worth a try. And I can't think of no better place to do it than in the nation's capital, in the District of [Columbia]. Maybe...maybe I can get [Newt] Gingrich's [Speaker of the House] ear. He is wild enough to try anything.
SHUSTER: Looks like the government is going to have to take over a lot of Washington, D.C. government anyway. [Referring to a proposal then current that the federal government assume more responsibility for the city's school system]
DRURY: Oh, yeah. That's...that's an insane situation.
SHUSTER: Let me ask you about something else. You talked about government involvement in the inner city. I know that in 1976 you ran for Congress. Can you give me a...tell me a little bit about how you decided to do that?
DRURY: Well, I never really got my eyes off the Lord, and I, you know, when I started Teen Haven, everything at Teen Haven, I had the taste in my mouth. I don't know if you know what that means or not, but I had the taste in my mouth.
SHUSTER: Wanting....
DRURY: At a banquet, .at a banquet not too far from where we're sitting, in a big restaurant, a Teen Haven banquet and I just threw out a question at the audience. I said, "Do any of you really know a totally committed, born-again, Evangelical, Bible-believing congressman or United States Senator, either in the House of Representatives here or the senate of the state of Pennsylvania or in Washington, D.C.?" I did not see a hand go up. I did not see.... Four or five hundred people at that banquet. I said, "What would you think if an Evangelical Christian...?" because in this county...in this county Christians do not run for office, you see, that's a no-no. And I said, "What would you think of a born-again going out and beating the bushes to run for United States Congress?"
SHUSTER: This county, of course, being Lancaster County?
DRURY: Yes. Lancaster County, Lancaster County. Some of the religious leaders in this county said. "All we have in Washington, D.C., is crooks. And so if you're a crook, you should run for Congress." So I didn't say any more than that. We had pledge cards and faith promises, we took up an offering that night. I was surprised how many cards in that offering said, "You should be the congressman. You should be the congressman. You should run." And in my mind I was thinking about this, you know. So I opted to run. But I have to confess I was running for the wrong reasons, you know. You have to ask...and even the guys who are down there are not down there for what they were sent to do, to be representative of the people. One of the things that I had to deal with is, do you vote your conscience or do you vote your constituency, you know? Big question, big question. Do you vote your conscience? And you might be alone out there, but you were sent there as a representative of the people. So what do you do? I met with some guys. I met with this fellow I talked about before, John Buchanan. I met with Senator Dick Schwiker [sp?], he was a United States...he's a....
SHUSTER: U.S. Senator. He was.
DRURY: Yeah, he was but....
SHUSTER: He was on Reagan's cabinet.
DRURY: ...he's a...a member of a small [denomination]...
SHUSTER: Oh, the Schwenkfeld....
DRURY: Schwenkfeld, Schwenkfeld. He's a Schwenkfelder. His daddy started the American [unclear] and Title Company. And I met with Schwiker [sp?], I met with John Buchanan, met with a couple other guys. Every one of them said that.... John Buchanan, who was sort of Lincolnesque is not in the Congress, he was there eighteen years...he said, "Brother Bill, it sure would be fun to have you down here." He said, "You talk so fast I don't know what you're talking about, and my southern brother in the House wouldn't have the foggiest idea what was going on on the House floor." But they said, you know, all of them came up with the same thing. They said, "There's a word down here that's not in your vocabulary. [static on tape] It's called compromise. And you don't know how to do that. And you're not going to make it down here." And they told me, you know, how to play the game. If you don't scratch somebody else's back, you can have the greatest idea in all the world, call it a bill that you want to get out of committee and it's not get...it's going to be locked in...it's going to die in committee unless you consider somebody else's pork or what they're going for it.
SHUSTER: Lyndon Johnson said that when he first came to Congress, Sam Rayburn [then Speaker of the House] said to him, "You want to get along? Go along."
DRURY: That's about it. That's it in a nutshell. But I ran, but I ran. One day I wanted the job, the next I didn't. I wrote to Billy Graham for some spiritual wisdom. And Billy.... I probably still have the letter somewhere - we moved. But a very brief note. He said, "I do not get involved in politics and I don't advise those who would like to do that," you know. A lot of guys in Lancaster County thought that I was where God would have me to be with Teen Haven. But we distributed.... You...you saw the little booklet called The Bill Drury Story that was run.... We distributed...when I ran for United States Congress - we distributed fifty thousand of those booklets, that are just gospel tracts, good, solid gospel tracts. It even spells out how we can be saved at the end of the booklet. And....
SHUSTER: Now you say, "We." Did you actually get Republican nomination?
DRURY: Oh, no, no. This was in the...oh, what do you call it? The...the [pauses] primary. The primary. There was thirteen originally in the primary. One of which...this guy I was talking about before, John Scheldrop [?], who's now up and up and up. And Armstrong Clark. But we had thirteen and two guys dropped out. Then there was eleven of us in the primary and it was a horse race. Again, I was naive, I didn't know how to play the game. Ed Eschelman [?] was retiring, that was the thing that brought this.... It was supposed to be an open primary, which was a joke. Ed Eschelman's administrative assistant who won the race (Robert Walker), reason being, he didn't win much of anything other than Eschelman called in all of his favors. Everywhere I went, Elizabethtown, Mount Joy, Ephratha, whatever I went, friends, people that I knew but were in party politics also, and they said, "Well, we got a call from Ed Eschelman." I said, "What is that supposed to mean?"
SHUSTER: [describing Drury's body language] They shrugged and....
DRURY: Yeah. "I asked Ed for a few favors, you know, and he came through. Now he needs a favor." I said, "Are you having to go to work...?" "No, I'm not going to go to work for Bob Walker, but I'm not going to buck him either." So township after township after township.... We don't have wards like you have in a big city. But I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it. The niece...the niece of one of my competitors, Al Lewis.... Al Lewis was a District Attorney in Lebanon County. Back in those days...they've changed the make-up of the district, but Al Lewis was a District Attorney from Lebanon County. Spent a small fortune, and the only thing he carried was Lebanon County. I came in...I come in fifth in the race for Lebanon, Chester, and Lancaster County, and I came in third in the County. Bob Walker was number one. The liberal, the so-called, Al Miller, who was a nice guy. He was a so-called liberal.... I don't know what I was. [Shuster laughs] I was a hell-fire and brimstone preacher. But I spoke at different...at all...every Republican headquarters in these areas. Townships would have their own meetings to interrogate the candidates, and I would give out The Bill Drury Story. Every one of them...every politician in this county who is affiliated with one of these groups got The Bill Drury Story, got my testimony, got the gospel. So anybody who was anybody heard the gospel. Well, I was candidating in the southern end of the county, and I called in to my wife. She said, "There's a girl in the hospital who's crying her heart out and she wants to talk to you. So I called her. She was Al Lewis' niece - the guy that was running from Lebanon County. She was in an automobile accident, she was crying. She said, "Mr. Drury, Mr. Drury, I have a problem." I said, "What is that, honey?" She said, "You were up in Lebanon County at the Republican headquarters, and you gave out that little book called The Bill Drury Story." I said, "Yes." She said, "I read that, and in the back it said, 'What must you do to be saved?'" And she said, "I accepted the Lord, and I think I'm saved, and I know Jesus now. My question is, when I get out of the hospital, do I work for my uncle or do I work for you?" [laughs] I said, "You work for your uncle. But you tell Uncle Al that you accepted Jesus and he ought to do the same thing." "I will do that, Mr. Drury, I will tell him." So...but it was interesting...it was interesting. Bob Walker....
SHUSTER: You said that you enjoyed it. What did you enjoy about it?
DRURY: There's a very powerful Republican in Philadelphia - Thatcher Longstretch. I don't know whether you know Thatcher.
SHUSTER: Sure.
DRURY: Thatcher's been around for a hundred years.
SHUSTER: I've heard of him. I've never met him.
DRURY: Thatcher is a dear friend of mine. He's like almost seven foot tall - he's the jolly green [giant]. I don't know if you've ever seen him on television. Real tall guy. He comes from....
SHUSTER: Patrician looking.
DRURY: Yes. And he went to Wharton School and all of that. He said to me, "There's no way you can lose, Drury. The name of the game is exposure. You've got exposure. And you will expose those people to what you believe." He's...he's a member of the Friends...Quakers, Thatcher. He said, "And they will find out what you believe. So go for it." He was one of the few guys in high places that really...he ran for the mayor's job several times in Philadelphia. He said, "Go for it." He...he...he said, "You can't lose."
SHUSTER: Didn't he run against [Frank] Rizzo one time?
DRURY: Yes, he did. And he made the stupid mistake (pardon the French) of standing in front.... Frank Rizzo was the chief of police, and he stood in front of the Round House, which is police headquarters, and called Frank Rizzo (the John Wayne of all police) he called him Bozo the Clown. And if anybody ever shot himself in the foot! I said to him after that, I said, "Thatcher, who in the world programmed your campaign?" you know. He said, "Well, that...that wasn't in the program. That was an ad-lib." I said, "That ad-lib alone could have cost you the election." But no, I enjoyed the exposure, and the [pauses] the combat experience with these guys on the platform. The largest meeting.... It's incredible when you get involved and see how many people are disinterested in politics. And that's why we have the disastrous mess we have.
SHUSTER: Disinterested as in "not interested."
DRURY: Yeah. And it doesn't take that much. If it wasn't for Bob Walker running...I'm not on an ego-trip, but I think I could I have won the thing hands down. But the favors had been called in. But we had a Temperance League dinner. A very strong Temperance League, the old Temperance League. Very strong in Lancaster County. And they had several hun...several hundred. It's run by women, and they had their husbands there, and we had all of the candidates at the head table. I said to the woman, "Please let me be last." She said, "Oh, Reverend, we want to put you first. You're a clergyman and all." [Shuster laughs] I said, "No, no, no. Please, I beg of you, please. Let me be last." She said, "Well, they're going to be tired, some of them might leave...." I said, "Let them leave." But they stayed. And these guys - Bob Walker and Miller and some of these other guys tried to sound as religious as they could at this Temperance League meeting, which was very conservative, the temperance group here in Lancaster County. And I sat there, and I chuckled. A couple of times, I even roared. I even burst out laughing when Al Miller got up there and said, "My mother used to read me the Bible." And I tell you, I cracked up. [Shuster laughs] And...but at any rate, the...when I got up at the end of that meeting, I said, "It's absolutely mind-boggling. I didn't know that...that all of you gentlemen were so religious!" I said.... Dick Scott, Dick Scott was the mayor of the city, and I beat him and he had a foul mouth. I said, "Dick, you really cleaned up your act tonight." [Shuster laughs] He said, "Knock it off, Drury! Knock it off. Cool it now!" He said, "We're in a nice place." I said, "That's...that's not the language I've heard you use other places." [laughs] But I may have got their vote; I don't know.
SHUSTER: Did your campaign have any effect on Teen Haven's ministry? Did it adversely affect....?
DRURY: No, no. I made a covenant with the Lord. I said, "If in any way...if in any way Teen Haven is...." And I did not take my hand off of Teen Haven. I kept all of the meetings. I can tell you what to do wrong, you know, to run a campaign. When these guys...when you get down to the last three months, you know.... But I got some good advice, and I didn't listen to it. But I took meetings. I was clear out in Omaha, Nebraska, in meetings out there while the campaign was going on.
SHUSTER: Evangelistic meetings?
DRURY: A smattering of meetings, different meetings. And I said, "If in any way...if any way...if the media took a pot shot at Teen Haven," which they never did...never did.... Only one guy in an open forum, and it never got into the press. We ran an ad in the Lancaster paper. The ad is different from week to week, about getting.... "If you are or know a disadvantaged child, have them contact us if you'd like to send the child to camp." And he said in open meeting...he said, "How do we know the money from those ads are going to Teen Haven and not to your campaign?" I said, "Now, that's a dirty shot. That's a low blow." And some of the other media were sitting there like that. I said, "You want to check out our books? Be my guest." I said, "I'm registered with the FEC. [Federal Election Commission] We have a bookkeeper strictly for the campaign. Find out where the money...." I said, "But that's a dirty shot." I said, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You're not hurting me, you're hurting...." Never got into the press, never got into the press. And I saw guys talking to him afterward. And I think he was.... [tape fades out and is blank for 30 seconds or so]
SHUSTER: You were saying if anything it strengthened your ministry.
DRURY: Yeah, it enlarged our tent and lengthened our cords in that we...I got exposure. And I have friends today who are very, very prominent in the Republican Party in Lancaster County who became friends of mine because of the campaign. I doubt seriously that voted for me. One of them has a big law firm here in Lancaster County, probably the biggest. He's the head of the firm, and calls me up on my birthday and wishes me a happy birthday. I don't know how he keeps all these birthdays straight. And I spoke in his church. He goes to a fairly large, large denominational church in Lancaster City, probably the largest. And I spoke in his Sunday school class, and he calls me his feisty Irish friend, his feisty Irish friend. And I haven't asked him for too many favors, but when I have...
SHUSTER: Isn't that redundant? "Feisty" and "Irish"?
DRURY: Yeah. Well, he said that, not.... "My...my feisty Irish friend," you know. But he has become a very dear friend, and almost anything...and...and I don't approach him that often. If it has to do with Teen Haven, he will do it without any...any charges, you know.
SHUSTER: Have you seen...? Looking back on how Teen Haven has developed over the years, has the ministry changed in any way?
DRURY: Yeah. Well, as I said in Philadelphia you had the gang syndrome, two hundred and sixty gangs. We don't have organized gangs in Philadelphia. You have drug gangs and they're...they're not even gangs. Because you don't have the vicious, violent organized [unclear] street gangs. You had rumbles [fights] with zip guns and chains and all that. And I've been involved in...in three...in three rumbles. I didn't choose to be there! I just happened to be there when a rumble broke loose. But that has changed. Drugs have moved in like a flood. And it's interesting when you compare drugs and the church of Jesus Christ. Why couldn't the church have had the effect that the drug pushers have had? Drug pushers sell to their users. If Bob happens to be a user, a drug pusher comes in. I have never heard or met in my entire life a drug pusher who sells drugs on credit. They don't sell drugs on credit cards. So every drug pusher has got a load of cash, usually several thousand dollars on his person, okay. He is a candidate to be robbed, molested, murdered by every one of his customers. And yet they will go in and they will hawk their product - acid, speed, heroin, you name it. They will go in and hawk their product for the almighty dollar. You cannot get the suburban Evangelical church that has moved out of the area.... One big church in Philadelphia has moved out so far I...I stopped into at that church. It was out in the boonies. I had to have dinner with somebody out at Plymouth Meeting (who happened to be Don Crawford)...
SHUSTER: Sure.
DRURY: ...Percy Crawford's older son) and I walked in.... That pastor didn't even want to talk about urban America. I mean, that guy...that guy was downright nasty. He said, "That's not our problem." He said, "That's why we moved out." I said, "Because of a problem?" [laughs] I said "Fantasyland. You deliberately send white virgins (they're called missionaries) to other lands that have every type of kind of problem under the sun, explain that." He said, "I don't want to talk about it," you know. A big church, big church, that church had history, it had history and...in Philadelphia. But hundreds, hundreds of churches in Philadelphia have moved out. Fourth Presbyterian Church, down in Washington D.C.? I guess Halverson is still the Senate, the Chaplain of the Senate.
SHUSTER: I think he's retired. If he hasn't retired, he's going to be retiring in June.
DRURY: And those chu...you go out around to Beltway, you go out around to stop into churches in Silver Spring and Montgomery County and Prince George's County, find out where those churches were. And they were down in Cardoza, and they were in Southeast, which is a cesspool today. I think that if I started a work in D.C. it'd be down in Southeast. 'Cause you've got more congested minority families living down there with more kids in Southeast, which is...which is a disastrous situation. But God has worked, and souls have been saved. I think I shared with you that we work with about fifty thousand kids. Real quick, I walked into my doctor's office the other day. This thing on my head is a carcinoma, and found out that it's positive and it has to be treated for cancer, skin cancer. Walked into the office, and there sitting behind the desk is a beautiful Hispanic woman, you know. And she said, "Mr. D, I finally get to meet you." I said, "What is that supposed to mean?" She said, "My name is Daisy." I said, "Daisy how are you, but what does that mean?" She said, "I grew up at Teen Haven."
SHUSTER: Hmm.
DRURY: I didn't know the girl, I had never met her. She said...she said, "I'm here because you were there." And she said, "We get together with the kids that I grew up with," she said, "and just about every one of them have made it." "Made it" means that they've got a home, they've got children, they've got a husband who stayed with them. And she said, "We get together and we have our cup of coffee at night or whatever," and she said, "(We don't do it often) invariably the only thing we talk about is Teen Haven." I might have shared with you last time that CBS gave us a grant, a check about three thousand dollars from the network, CBS. I went to channel ten to pick up the check. And I got the check, that was a little bit of a ceremony, and they gave me this check. I think it was three thousand dollars. I turned around, there's a great big black guy, looked like Mike Tyson [champion heavyweight boxer], large economy size, big bulging muscles, big grin, probably forty years of age. He said, "Hey, Mr. D., remember me?" I said, "I haven't got the foggiest." He said, "I'm Milo Young." Now the name I knew. I said, "You are not Milo Young." "Yeah, baby, I'm Milo Young. You were there, and I'm here," he said, "Can I give you a hug," he said, "I should have done that a long..." I said, "Be gentle, be very, very..." This guy's about two hundred and sixty. I've had two spinal operations. But you go on and on and on, experience after experience after.... Walked into Philadelphia Inquirer. And you have to sign in and all of these buildings downtown now have bullet proof glass and gendarmes sitting there. And a guy said sign in, great big black guy. As I said, our work is ninety-eight percent minority, primarily black, Hispanic, and then a handful of whites. And so I signed in, you know, "Bill Drury, Teen Haven." He turned the thing around, and he said, "Hey man, hey, you the Haven man, right, you the Haven man? [Shuster chuckles] Pinebrook, you know, Pinebrook. I was up at Pinebrook." And he came around and he was hugging me, and he said, "Hey man, I never thought I'd see you. Aren't you dead?" [Shuster laughs] And I said, "Who are you?" And again, in his late thirties, whatever, he said, "Man, I was up at Pinebrook. Those were good times. I often wondered where you ever got the money to pay for that kind of stuff, because we didn't pay." And he went on and on and on. Walked into Philadelphia Electric Company. Same thing. Security guard had...had been to camp, you know. And you can go on and on and on. I...I am almost sure that I would have shared with you that we had a VIP luncheon at the...at the...at the Union League and Phil Bower who's CEO [chief executive officer], chairman of Tastycake [a Philadelphia pastry company] put the luncheon together for us and somebody just before that said that a guy had approached him and said, "Is a guy by the name of Mr. Drury still involved in Teen Haven?" He said, "Yeah, he's still founder, director, chief cook and bottle washer." He said, "Ask him if he knows a guy by the name of Slime." Did I tell you that story?
SHUSTER: Slime?
DRURY: Slime. A guy by the name of Slime. And so sure enough, it was either John Schleh or Doug Rogers and they got back to me and they said, "A guy...a well dressed black by the name of Slime was asking for you." I said, "Was he really?" He said, "Are you sitting down?" I said, Yes, I am sitting down." He said, "He's working on his doctorate. He's working on his Ph.D.." I said, "You can't be serious," you know. And he is a member of the largest black church in Philadelphia, 29th...where the ball park was? 22nd and Leigh Avenue. They took that whole area, put up a shopping mall. The church has ten, fifteen thousand members, I don't know.
SHUSTER: And he was a kid...
DRURY: Oh yeah.
SHUSTER: ...who had gone to Teen Haven?
DRURY: Well, yeah. He had.... Slime...Slime...Slime was a gang member, a very active gang. Slime and Ten Cents and Slop and Twine. These were street names of gang kids back in those days. And we worked with gangs. We...we had a center at 16th and Wallace. Wait, I mean, we were at 1911 Mt. Vernon Street. But 16th and Wallace was the Imperial Tenderloin, which was an organized gang that was constantly and incessantly warring with the Moroccos, which were north of Fairmont Avenue. Fairmont Avenue was the Berlin Wall [dividing line] and if you crossed over Fairmont Avenue, you signed your death certificate and if you went into Morocco turf.... But I called one these guys back and I said, "Hey listen. Do you have this guy, Slime or whatever his name is today give me a call because I want him to give a luncheon at this luncheon, this VIP...." So we get down there, the League...the League, which you know something about. It's almost velvet carpeted, you know and it's really posh. And I'm up there greeting people and this tall handsome black comes up. Well dressed, you know. Hundred and fifty dollar shiny shoes, you know. And he said, "Well, would I find the Reverend Mr. Drury." [Shuster laughs] The Reverend Mr.... And I said "I am the Reverend Mr. Drury. And you are?" And he went like this [puts hand to his mouth as if to whisper a secret]. A tall guy, about six-six. He leaned over. [Whispers] "Slime!" [Both laugh] He said, "Please. Reverend, when you introduce me...." It was "reverend" now. He said, "My..." and he gave me his name, which I can't even think of. He said, "It's not Slime any more. It has not been Slime for a long time." And I said, "Where did you do your undergraduate?" "Temple University," you know. He went on and on, explained the whole thing. I said, "You're working on a earned doctorate?" He said, "Yes sir. Yes sir. I got to do my thesis." I don't even know what his thesis.... But...I...and he was articulate. He was articulate, you know, when he got up to speak. And I sat there, just about dropped my teeth and I thought, you know.... But there you see God at work, you know. This what mankind would have called a piece of trash, a piece of garbage, a street kid. He was going nowhere, you know. Came to a little row house, heard the Gospel, played Monopoly, who knows what.
SHUSTER: The stone which the builders have rejected. [Psalm 118:22, I Peter 2:7]
DRURY: Yes. Yeah. And we see it again and again, right here in Lancaster. What you don't have, what you don't have and you should have out there is the video [Video V1 in Collection 492]. Channel eight, which is the NBC affiliate, came over to our camp. When these new people come on the scene, I try to get next to them immediately and Paul Quinn is the new vice president and general manager of the NBC affiliate here at channel eight. His predecessor...his predecessor.... They don't stay long. [laughs] His predecessor had come on the scene, I took him out for lunch. At the end of lunch he said, "What is it that channel eight can do for Teen Haven?" I said, "That's a good question. You have a live talk show. It's called live. I don't know whether it's really live or not." He said, "Well, some of it's live." [Shuster laughs] I said, "Well, why don't you come and do your talk show over at camp." And he turned to the other guy, Nelson Sears, he said, "Hey, Let's do that." He said, "Would you have a half hour...?" I said, "You could have a three hour program." He said, "Well, it's only half an hour and you'd probably have twenty minutes. The rest is commercials," you know. So they did. They came. They came the week before. We took girls with girls, guys with guys. They shot a lot of footage. I wish I had used my Pennsylvania Dutch smarts and got all the footage that they threw away. But...and then they came back the next week for the live show and they had guys...and I was over there. And there are three testimonies on...on there that would bless your heart. One was Darrell Melvin, who was a black out of Philadelphia, came with [?] the Lancaster Teen Haven center, worked for the summer and then we registered him at McCasky High School. Now that is a story in itself. And I think we're out of time, right?
SHUSTER: Yeah. I need to be going. But go ahead with the end of the...the story.
DRURY: The...Darrell played first string ball with Sam Bowie, who is now in...in...in the NBA [National Basketball Association]. And Darrell is on that tape. Thrilling testimonies! Married, he had a child now. Greg Brocato, a sixteen year old alcoholic out of Buffalo, New York, a white kid, Polish kid, is now our assistant camp director. William. William is a Mexican kid, grew up in Lancaster city. All of these people are being interviewed, they are interviewed by two unsaved talk show hosts [Shuster chuckles] and it's quite the.... If I think about it, I'll...I'll....
SHUSTER: Yeah, we'd love to have that for the...the Archives.
DRURY: Yeah.
SHUSTER: That would be great.
DRURY: I think that says it all as far as what's happening, how the kids come to...came, how we get them. Well, you're out of time.
SHUSTER: Yeah, I...we are. I think maybe...every time...every time we have an interview, you give us so much stuff, give me so much stuff [Drury chuckles] that it's really.... It's marvelous to see how the Lord has worked...
DRURY: Well....
SHUSTER: ...through you and the things He is doing and also [pause] what's the word, humiliating, humbling to think of what the church isn't doing and what....
DRURY: Yeah, what could be done, what could have been done, you know. I've been around you know. I'll be sixty-nine in two months. Still going strong. Working every day, you know. Taking meetings, running here, there and everywhere. Doing talk shows and service clubs and all of that. But the church goes on being their [?] church. Not THE Church but the church. You know, there is a different... T-H-E, okay. Not the church but THE Church but the church. And if the church would be THE Church, you know.... I go to a huge church here in Lancaster County outside the city. Eighteen hundred members. It is like pulling teeth to get any of those people. They are so petrified, so petrified of the Seventh Ward, the inner city of Lancaster. "You really can't expect us to go. It's not safe, Mr. Drury." And I tell them, "Our staff, our personnel - Bible College graduates - live in the Seventh Ward, you know. They sleep in the Seventh Ward." But what the church could do if the...the church ever comes alive. I was thrilled and excited for you to say something's happening up at Wheaton [referring to the 1995 revival on campus in March 1995]. But if revival ever breaks loose, ever really breaks loose and they come back like Gideon of old to take this cities for.... It can happen. If we have proved any one thing in thirty-two years, Bob, we have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, it can happen. And we've seen bona fided results of people that, you know, here, there and everywhere. There is a guy, another guy I could tell you about, has his own business today and he's making money. And he was a problem guy, foul mouthed problem guy. Today he's a beautiful, beautiful godly Christian man, you know. Married, has children and the whole thing. But they all came up through the ministry of Teen Haven. They could have come up through the local church, through the churches I won't mention in Philadelphia. All of them, all of them great missionary minded churches fifty years ago. [Chuckles] Today.... When the mission came to their front door, they moved to the suburbs. And that's sad, that's a horrible indictment. And that's true in every major city in America. Go to L.A., go to Chicago, go to Detroit. These churches were downtown. And then the yuppies...the yuppies and the dinks.... Now, I don't know if you know what a...do you know what a dink is?
SHUSTER: I don't know what a dink is.
DRURY: A dink is "Double income, no kids."
SHUSTER: Oh.
DRURY: Doctor, lawyer, his wife is an accountant. They are moving back to urban America and the church.... The...the first house that I bought for three thousand dollars, are you ready for this? You cannot touch that house today for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
SHUSTER: Huh.
DRURY: It is a townhouse and that whole neighborhood is changed drastically. It was a war zone. It was where the gangs...this one gang I was talking about. And the church, the church is not there to minister to these people. And if you get some young, executive pastor down there, I know, I know if he really knew how to cut the mustard for Jesus.... Because these people, these people, these young professionals are lonely people. They are lonely, lonely people. Their whole thing is to run downtown, pay ten dollars to park the car for the night, go to the theater, have dinner, you know. And they are lonely people, they are really lonely people. And the church of Jesus Christ should come back and do something. But I don't know that they ever will, you know. There are...there are historically now over thirty-two years...some blacks have been well trained, you know, and they are in black urban America, you know. There is a Willie Richardson. I don't know whether you know that name, whether Ernie Wilson [a pastor Shuster had interviewed] would know that name and there are a few guy.... Not...not too many of them. You count them on two hands. Good Evangelical pastors. You got a lot of civil rights guys in there, just beating the drum for civil rights. But preaching the gospel? So, it can happen and it should happen. And I don't want to take any more of your time, but if you're coming east again, if you have any other questions, if we raise any questions, I don't know whether you....
SHUSTER: Yeah, well I think there are still some things I want to talk about [Drury laughs] so if you're willing to put up with me again...
DRURY: Sure.
SHUSTER: ...I'd like to next time I am back. And again, thank you. Many thanks for being so frank and telling us how the Lord has worked through you.
DRURY: My pleasure, my pleasure.
END OF TAPE