Introduction

In the next issue, Beacon Lights begins a projected long-running series on the history of the PRCA. This series will consist of transcriptions of oral history interviews I conducted in 2008–2009. Some background and explanation is in order. Sometime in 2008 my wife, Ruthellen, and I went to Lansing, Illinois, to visit my life-long friend Mr. James Blankespoor, whom I knew all my life as “Uncle Jim. “Although he was no blood relation to me, this moniker indicates a close and familiar...