Cold War Still Has Bitter Chill for San Marino Bookstore Volunteers

For Myril Creer, the search for truth began with a crisis. It occurred in the 1950s, when her daughter, a talented art student, fell under the persuasion of a certain professor.

Beautiful landscapes gave way to strange abstractions. “Horrible,” she recalls. “Gloomy, ugly-looking things.”

Creer did some reading about mind control, about the evils of state-controlled education. Her search led her to the John Birch Society. Today, the friendly grandmother from Arcadia is an ideological soldier in the war on communism, one of a handful of volunteers who operate an American Opinion bookstore in San Marino.

Here, the Cold War is still in deep freeze. Nobody is charmed by Gorbachev’s smile. And, while admiring their courage, Creer, for one, finds a measure of fault in the Beijing demonstrators who erected the “Goddess of Democracy.” The problem, Creer says, is that the “Red Chinese” still haven’t renounced their Red-ness.

Despite glasnost, despite the demonstrations of democratic yearnings in China, Poland and elsewhere, the anti-communist John Birch Society, its members say, is not in retreat. This is true, Birchers say, despite the recent closure of their Western regional offices that used to occupy this same San Marino storefront.

McCarthy Birthplace

Last month, the Birch Society staff moved to Appleton, Wis. That is the birthplace of the late Sen. Joe McCarthy and, conveniently, the center of new Birch Society chief executive officer G. Allen Bubolz’s insurance, investment and real estate concerns. The Society’s eastern regional office in Massachusetts also is expected to shut down and consolidate in Appleton next month.

When the Society’s salaried power structure was in San Marino, it was easy to keep the bookstore open to the public. Now it is left to volunteers like Creer and Marge Jensen, doing what they see is their duty.

Besides the San Marino location, there are also American Opinion bookstores in Downey and North Hollywood.

“Some members of the John Birch Society don’t even know we’re open,” Creer said.

Certain American opinions, of course, are featured more than others. A map of the world portrays, in red, the level of communist domination in the world. A visitor might be stunned to learn that New Zealand is a Marxist-leaning state. Twenty cents will get you a “Remember the Panama Canal!” bumper sticker.

Creer sees naivete in the pro-democracy rebellion in China. “They want democracy and communism. But communism is communism, which means total government control,” Creer says.

“The very fact that some of these students raise a clenched fist”--the grandmother shakes her head sadly--”well, that’s a symbol of the Communist Party.”

She is similarly skeptical of Solidarity’s recent success in Polish elections.

‘Just Deception’

“Can we really trust this is a bona fide change?” Creer asked. “They’re trying to make it appear that communism is going out, that it is mellowing, and it’s kind of democratizing. That to me is just deception.

“You have to keep your mind open and always remember what these communists stand for. They always take over countries from within.”

Many books at American Opinion are available in mainstream bookstores. But there are also older, more obscure titles, such as John Noble’s “I Was a Slave in Russia” and a curious volume titled “Russia’s Space Hoax--Documented Proof That the Soviet Space Program Has Been Faked.”

Side by side are books titled “The Selling of Gorbachev” and “Out of the Blue,” an autobiography by Dodgers pitcher Orel Hershiser.

There is a sense of preaching to the converted. Only three browsers dropped by Thursday. All are prospective volunteers.

“We used to have a wonderful store in Montrose,” recalls Olive Enright, an 87-year-old Bircher. It is a nickname they use for themselves. “These bookstores are superb, really. You can get a lot of information you can’t get anywhere else.”

Membership Not Disclosed

Kevin Bearly, Birch Society area coordinator, also showed up. Hardly in decline, Birchers are again on the move and growing, Bearly insisted. Total membership is something “we don’t disclose,” Bearly says. But nationally, he said, it numbers in the tens of thousands.

Many new recruits, he said, are immigrants from totalitarian regimes. Parents are encouraged to send their teen-agers to John Birch Society education summer camps. The Reagan years, Bearly said, brought a decrease in membership. But now conservatives realize that Reagan’s deeds weren’t as conservative as his rhetoric.

Bearly is careful in emphasizing that neither he nor Creer--nor anyone at the American Opinion bookstores--may speak on behalf of the John Birch Society. Only the official spokesman in Appleton can do that.

“To me,” Bearly says, “the truth we’re seeing from the China situation is that people want to be free. They value freedom more than peace.

‘Rocks and Fists’

“And you can be sure they wish they didn’t have gun control, rather than going up against tanks with rocks and fists.”

Tom Gow, recently transplanted from San Marino to Appleton, sent the official Birch position by facsimile machine. Gow said he had been so busy setting up the new office that he found out the Ayatollah had died four days after the fact.

“Once again, leaders of world communism have resorted to savage brutality to maintain their totalitarian rule. No one should be surprised at the recent horrifying events in China. Communists should be counted on to act as communists have always acted.”