Allan
I was a Methodist as a child, but I knew that I had Quaker ancestors, and was always interested in that fact. In college, my (now) wife and I started attending Ann Arbor Friends Meeting. This was in the late 1960's, and opposition to the Viet Nam war was building up. I remember walking across the bridge between Detroit and Windsor with Elise Boulding and a lot of others, to deliver, illegally we were told, medicines to be sent to Viet Nam.
In May of 1967, we married in the Ann Arbor Friends Meeting house, not under the care of that meeting, not even after the manner of friends. That autumn we moved to Southern California, thinking that would be a temporary experiment. We joined Marloma Friends Meeting a soon after. Ten years later, with two young sons needing some companionship, we transferred to Orange County Friends Meeting, which at that time had a pretty active first-day program.
Our "temporary" stay on the West Coast has become permanent. We're a long way from the families we grew up with, but our Meeting has filled in the gap.