The Friend

"I know of no man who has devoted his life more unselfishly, nor with better effect, to the public good," wrote U.N. Mediator Ralph J. Bunche. Two bulky volumes of such warm words from all over the world were presented one day last week to a shy-looking, silver-haired man as he stood before a gathering on the Main Line campus of Pennsylvania's Haverford College. There some 600 Friends and friends of Friends gathered for a day of speechmaking, picnicking and Quaker fellowship to honor Clarence Evan Pickett, 65, retiring as executive secretary of the American Friends Service Committee.

Just as the Service Committee has come to symbolize Quakerism to many non-Quakers, hardworking, articulate Secretary Pickett has come to personify the Service Committee. Farm-raised and Quaker-educated (William Penn College, Oskaloosa, Iowa), Pickett spent World War I leading Friends' meetings, defending conscientious objectors and getting the side of his house painted yellow for his pacifist pains. In 1923 he joined the faculty of Earlham College at Richmond, Ind., where his favorite course was a study of the application of religion and ethics to current social problems.

When the American Friends Service Committee offered him its secretaryship in 1929, Pickett saw it as an ideal opportunity to put into practice the principles he had been teaching. The twelve-year-old organization then had an annual budget of about $50,000 and a staff of twelve, including the janitor. Today the staff of 492 works with a budget of $3,000,000 (the peak, in 1946, was $7,000,000).

During the Depression, Friend Pickett put the Service Committee to work on the industrial front, getting relief to the families of textile workers in a bitter North Carolina strike, feeding more than 40,000 children of destitute soft-coal miners. Even now, with 33 teams at work in Europe and the Orient, the Service Committee has earmarked $950,000 to be spent this year in the prosperous U.S.

Pickett's successor as Service Committee executive secretary is 33-year-old Oregonian Lewis Hoskins, who worked in China for the committee from 1945 to 1948, has served as its personnel director since last July. Pickett has been appointed "Honorary Secretary" with the understanding that he will continue to do special jobs for the committee. One current assignment: exploring new approaches to peace between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.

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