Written approximately in 1955 - 1956 while living in Irvington and Terrytown, NY with Ruth and Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey, M.D. Ruth was a psychiatric social worker (MSSW) who worked with Janey and Dr. Lolly at Paine Whitney Hospital on the problems of alcoholism.
A few years before, not long after the war, Ruth went to Europe and Germany as Director for Refugee Resettlement for Church World Service. This work continued for about three years. During the time between when I was born, February 1946 to the time when I went to Australia, I lived in the DP camp near Munich, at place called Funk Kaserne and had been a German military barracks during the war. My father was Frederick Zahn, from Austria ( Frederick Zahn FZ)
It was there at St. Nicholas Church, Munich, that I was baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church. { St. Nicholas Church, Munich} Approximately in 1949 I was relocated to Australia via the ship Oxfordshire with departure I believe from Italy. In Australia I lived there until shortly before traveling to the United States, in camps for stateless and displaced children, boys in one camp and girls in their own. I learned to speak English through emersion as no one else spoke German language to me. Those were hard times for most everybody. Refugee children, refugee adults. We all knew hard times. But I am told that life had become better in Australia than it had been in Funk Kaserne, especially as regards to receiving medical help when needed.
I do remember clearly my years in Australia, Melbourne and Adlaide. Life was not easy for anyone. And the Australian government had been kind to us by opening the doors to let us come in to the land of the kangaroos and koala bears. And it was in Box Hill Home for Boys (Melbourne) that the first turning point in my life happened and caused me to wonder and to question everything thereafter in life. I think it was that event, perhaps what I and the others saw, that I began to wonder what it was that we had seen, the great unknown something.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mary+jane+sherfey&t=chromentp&atb=v344-3vb&ia=web
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Jane_Sherfey
https://www.liquisearch.com/mary_jane_sherfey
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/12/obituaries/dr-mary-sherfey-psychiatrist-and-an-authority-on-sexuality.html
https://www.howold.co/person/mary-jane-sherfey/biography
etc
At this time in my life, 10-11 I was struggling to learn how to write. I had not yet begun with arithematic. I had settled on my new name to be Nenad Shields Downing, though I had not yet learned to write it properly. My choice of Ruth was not a rejection of Mary Jane. It was from her that I became interested in the human brain and other such things.
There is more later, photos of the Prince of Georgia, Bishops of the various Orthodox Churches, Church World Service and the World Council of Churches at news conference, and other such things.
