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Worldwide Marriage Encounter Goes to Washington

Bill & Carolyn McQuiston

It started with a letter to President Bush. At the 2002 summer meeting of the Interfaith Board, in the mode of discussing ways to promote Worldwide Marriage Encounter, the Board noted that President Bush proclaims an interest in promoting strong marriages. Doesn’t it seem that his mission dovetails with ours? Why not write a letter to him and tell him so and see if there might be some way we can work together.

It seemed like a somewhat bold and far-fetched hope that anything could come of such a letter more than a perfunctory reply on nice linen paper from a federal office somewhere in Washington D.C. Yet, the Interfaith Board Facilitators, Bill & Carolyn McQuiston, still found it to be a rather weighty task to write a letter to the President of the United States. A draft was approved at the winter 2003 meeting, but before it could be mailed, the war broke out and the timing didn’t seem to be right.

At last the letter was sent in May of 2003. As time went by, it seemed to have fallen into the abyss without even the expected polite letter in return. Then one day Bill & Carolyn came home and found a message on their answering machine from the Office of Faith Based Initiatives at the White House. Wow, the White House! She wanted to know how she could be of help to us. On the off chance such a question would ever be asked, Bill & Carolyn were prepared. “We would like a meeting to come present who we are and how we think we might fit into the President’s Marriage Initiative.” As easy as that, we were given the name and fax number of the appointment secretary for the Director of the office and our letter was forwarded to the secretary But the next communication came back that the more appropriate office was the Office on Domestic Policy. With a few more phone calls back and forth and communication between Bill & Carolyn and Bob & Joy Hernandez and Father Chuck Kosanke (the contingent recommended by the Interfaith Board to make the trip), we had an appointment to see the Special Assistant to the President on Domestic Policy on April 2, 2004.

Bill & Carolyn picked up Bob & Joy and Father Chuck and we all drove to the home of John & Ann Geer in Vienna, Virginia. That gave us the evening to put the finishing touches on our presentation. Bob prepared a Power Point presentation which we opted to use on paper. We had our statistics and each of us had our part.

Appointment day was about as rainy as a day can be. We took the metro and then a cab and slogged the last short way through the downpour to the Executive Office Building. This is an old ornate office building next to the White House. We were impressed by the security process. There was a tent set up in the plaza at the foot of the many stairs to the front door. In that tent our names were entered into a computer and matched up with the information we had sent a week in advance so that we could be “checked out” We held our breaths, but our names came up with no hitches and we were given the go-ahead to enter the building. Inside the building there was a booth like at the movie theaters. Again we gave our names and this time we were each given a tag with the letter “A” on it on a chain to wear around our necks. We set our purses and brief cases on a conveyor belt to go through the x-ray machine. We had to set our “A” badge against a metal pad and then the gate opened for each of us to go in. Whew! But once we were in, we were in and we were free to wander about the building. We stumbled upon the Indian Treaty Room where as you probably guessed, Indian treaties were signed. And we enjoyed domed staircases and elaborate woodwork throughout the halls.

Once at the office of the Special Assistant we were given a sitting area in which to wait as she was running late in coming back from a meeting. It was good to have the chance to catch our breaths, get out of our raincoats and prepare ourselves. Finally Terrill Helaska appeared at the door and with a kindly smile invited us to join her in her office. Neither she nor her office was imposing and we gradually felt more at ease moving from our formal presentation into a less formal conversation about our purposes and dreams. It seemed rather “bad luck” to us that on just the previous day, Congress had voted down the President’s Marriage Initiative. But Ms. Helaska seemed undaunted and talked about the Marriage Initiative being split from other issues and presented on its own next year. She seemed optimistic that it would pass under those circumstances, but she also seemed eager to have organizations such as ours who might help out by contacting their Congress people across the United States to support the initiative. She was impressed that 2 million couples had attended Worldwide Marriage Encounter weekends. She was interested in Worldwide Marriage Encounter’s effort to bring support to military couples through M.E. on bases in the U.S. and around the world. Her interest also was peaked by our mention of the Worldwide Convention in Towson, Maryland in 2005. She stated that the President would be looking for forums such as these from which to make his policy statements. This marriage conference in nearby Maryland could be an excellent opportunity for him. She also stated that she was collecting information about as many organizations such as ours as possible for future reference when the Initiative can move forward. We didn’t talk specifically about money, but money will be a part of the Initiative probably in the form of grants.

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Bill & Carolyn McQuiston, Special Assistant Terrill Helaska,
Fr. Chuck Kosanke, Joy & Bob Hernandez

We hardly caught a glimpse of the cherry blossoms which were in full bloom and the goal of most visitors to Washington that week, but we went away feeling that we were successful in putting the name of Worldwide Marriage Encounter on the books. If the President is reelected and if the Marriage Initiative passes, who knows what will be the outcome of this visit. After all, who really believed that the letter to the President would lead to a meeting with his Special Assistant in the White House Executive Office Building?

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