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This is Jenna Barry at the Medford Public Library on July 10, 2024 with Peter Hanson the 2nd and Josh Hansen talking about growing up as Jehovah Witnesses in Medford. Yeah, growing up as Joh's Witnesses in Medford, it was, it's definitely an interesting thing. Um, Because, first

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of all, in school, I think we were the only ones who were, except for one year, where there was a girl in my class who was, who moved back to Puerto Rico the next year. So, It was interesting because in some ways each other were the

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only ones to relate to on some things. It also, um, I mean, I never had that one other person in my class, I just see Pete in the halls now and again, just walking from class to class, but I remember it was. It was always a

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good experience, usually. I can't think of any bad ones. I remember, um, I was given a lot of freedom in order to talk about, I believe, especially other kids would just be interested, you know, especially you don't often hear about Jehovah's Witnesses just all around. So

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people, I'd often get the question, like, what do you believe? What do you, you know, think about different things? And Kids were really interested. They were really interested in just honestly learning about everything. Yeah, so, and anyone who knows witnesses know we're not going to force

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our beliefs on anyone. We're free to talk about them. We even go door to door and talk about them, but we're not going to be like, oh, this is what you should, and if you disagree, no, we're not going to do that. So it really was

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nice to be able to talk to people and have them ask questions. I remember in 5th grade, actually. There were 2 other kids who were very interested and we would talk all the time and we'd have great discussions and then when they didn't want to, it

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was like, OK, cool, you know, we're not going to, um, holidays were interesting in school because, you know, there's always a holiday and. Witnesses generally don't celebrate holidays they go on, or birthdays or birthdays, yeah, oh, are you having a birthday party, no, so, can you

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come to my birthday party, I can't, you know, I, I wish you the best, but I actually remember one time, um. There is one kid who was a friend of mine who moved away since, um, whose name was also Josh, strangely enough, but he invited me

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to his birthday party and I explained that I don't celebrate birthdays, and he asked why, and because we're obviously we're in school, we don't have a lot of time to get into it right before class starts. I told them, I'll write you a letter just that

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explains my beliefs on the matter. And I gave it to him. And I was pulled aside a couple days later and I've asked, why did you give this letter to this one classmate, but you didn't get anything for the entire class, which was a practice at

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the time. So I ended up writing like 20 letters explaining that. Yeah, it was, there were definitely differences in a lot of things, whether it was holiday celebration or the flag salute, which in the United States was a big thing at one point, um. And witnesses

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also don't participate. Right, we don't salute the flag, um, we don't say the Pledge of allegiance of the flag. And um the Gobitis case actually that went up to the Supreme Court is a big part of that, um, because it was witnesses, and it's like, oh

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we're gonna expel you if you don't salute the flag, and basically the Supreme Court decided, no, you can't do that. um. So, I mean, we, we don't disrespect it by any means. It's like, no, we're very respectful of the flag of the country, of all of

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that, it's just we're not pledging our allegiance to it. So But there, there was a lot of understanding. It was like, OK, I'm going to, you know, sit here quietly, respectfully, or stand quietly, respectfully and do that because I also, we also don't want to disrupt

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anyone else. We're not gonna tell anyone else what they should be doing. It's OK, this is what we believe, so we can't do this. Cool, you know, and, and even when we disagree with something, it's like, you have every right to believe what you believe. Just,

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you know, allow us to believe what we believe too, right? We'll tell you about it, and if you don't want to hear about it, you say, I don't want to hear about it, and then we don't tell you, like. But it sounds like that was the

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case growing up. You were never, we were never made to feel. Like it was different or backwards in any way, shape or form and very much I appreciate the care that was taken that also to also help us as well, not to feel like we're, you

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know, necessarily standing out. I remember very clearly when on the flag salute actually when I first started a class, a teacher came up to me and asked, I know that this is what you believe. And um she was very familiar with it and she said, what,

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how would you like to handle this? Would you like to stay in your seat? Would you like to stand up? Would you like to stand in there's a little doorway, like, would you like to stand, you know, outside the door? And it was just such a

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nice thing to recognize the fact that. I didn't need to be made a spectacle of either. Yeah, I got to give a lot of credit to the teachers that we had when we were going through school because there were a lot of them that were very

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understanding on such things. If we were like we can't do this because of this reason, whether whatever it was, if it related to our beliefs, they were very understanding like, OK, um. You can sit this out, or what else can we find for you to do

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so that you're not just sitting there bored while the rest of the class is doing this. Um, they were very, very understanding of what we went through. Our parents would go in at the beginning of the year and talk to them, and they would be like,

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OK, thank you for coming in and telling me this, because now I know and I'm not going to force something on unintentionally. I'm going to respect whatever is believed, and yeah, it's a really a real credit to um the teachers that we had to and to

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the people in the community who were never, they they weren't mean about like one thing that we find when you go door to door is like we said, we're not forcing on anyone, but sometimes people are like grumpy or some of them are mean. We never

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had that when there was something if someone didn't understand something, they. Ask about it. If they didn't agree with it, it was like, well, I don't think that, OK, that's cool, but, you know, then we all just exist with what we believe, so there you go.

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Yeah.