I wanted to do a little research on Synanon's Tomales Bay facility from which I believe Rose Lena Cole may have run away in Dec of 1972. What I learned was both fascinating and chilling! For instance, did you know that today the facility is once again known by its original name?
The Marconi Conference Center
Here is a short blurb about it from Wikipedia:
The Marconi Conference Center State Historical Park/Marconi Conference Center SHP preserves a small hotel built by Guglielmo Marconi in 1913 to house personnel who staffed his transpacific radio receiver station nearby. The hotel and the associated operations building and employee cottages were built by the J.G. White Engineering Corp under contract to Marconi. RCA purchased the station from Marconi in 1920. The station was closed in 1939, though other nearby radio stations on the Point Reyes Peninsula still operate today. Synanon, a drug rehabilitation organization, owned it from the early 1960s until 1980, when it was purchased by a private foundation and given to the state in 1984 to operate as a conference center.
SOURCE:
Tomales Bay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I dug a little deeper and found this:
This was quite a remote site in 1914, and The Hotel housed station workers and Marconi guests. It offered the conveniences of a library, dining hall, billiard room and state-of-the-art plumbing. Built of concrete and tile, the three-story building's front veranda was designed in the classic Italinate villa style.
This same website went on to add that "It was Synanon's world headquarters from 1965 to 1980."
SOURCE:
http://bobhudson.com/marconi/
Meanwhile I found this:
RCA continued to hold title to the Marshall site until 1947. In the ensuing years the property changed hands several times before it was acquired by the Synanon Foundation, then a Santa Monica based drug rehabilitation organization. Shortly afterward, the Marconi property became the “world headquarters” of Synanon, which also acquired other nearby ranch properties.
In the late 1960’s, Synanon began to de-emphasize its rehabilitation programs, and became a self-declared “alternative lifestyle community.” At its height, it had about 1700 members, a large number of whom lived at the Marshall property. In 1975, Synanon underwent another transformation, declaring itself a “church” and amassing a large cache of weapons. In 1979, a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles by the local newspaper, The Point Reyes Light, began to expose Synanon’s finances, internal practices and abuses in the local community. The state of California launched a special investigation into Synanon’s affairs and in 1980 Charles Dedrich, long-time leader of the organization, was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. As one of the largest, longest-lived and certainly the most economically successful group of its kind, it should be recognized that Synanon will be the subject of scholarly interest and research.
During Synanon’s occupation of the property, several buildings were constructed, as well as a variety of landscape elements added. The buildings include a series of contemporary coastal shed-style residences and several corrugated metal structures scattered about the property. The pond next to the tennis courts and the vegetation planted close to the hotel and other buildings are the most notable of the landscape elements added.
SOURCE:
http://www.marconiconference.org/history.html
A blogger named Ann wrote the following:
Synanon started as a rehabilitation program for drug and alchohol addicts, an alternative to Alcoholics/Narcotics Anonymous which emphasized self-reliance as opposed to reliance on a higher power. The Synanon prayer includes lines like "Let me understand rather than be understood," which I rather like. But Synanon itself then became a church; there was the usual partner-swapping and brutally honest encounter groups (known as Games), and then, as always in these stories, the time arrived to amass weapons. They never killed anyone but they did leave a rattlesnake in the mailbox of a lawyer who'd sued them. The Point Reyes Light reporters who exposed the operations received Pulitzers.
SOURCE:
http://swerveandvanish.blogspot.com/2006/04/synanon.html
That lawyer, named Paul Morantz, was instrumental in finally bringing Synanon down. He wrote:
[Charles] Dederich said freedom to think to a dope addict was like a gun to a baby, and they wash dirty brains. Dederich is credited with coining the phrase “Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life.”
...
Juveniles in the 70’s were often sent to Synanon by juvenile agencies or by courts on juvenile officers’ recommendation. Synanon wanted the kids to try to keep their tax free status and placed them in a militaristic “Punk Squad” (forerunner of Scared Straight and other failed camp programs). As these juveniles did not want to be there, Synanon methods failed. Violence was then permitted upon them, breaking for first time Synanon’s “non violent rule.” Children were struck across the face, knocked down, otherwise punished and then “gamed.” Soon the OK on violence would spread to “splitees,” suspected thieves and perceived spies and enemies.
Dederich was ahead of times in ordering aerobics, running, diets and non smoking. All such “notions” Dederich declared were also a “squeeze” to get rotten fruit out of Synanon (those who will not obey). On remote properties in California such as Tomales Bay in Marin County and Badger, Tulare County, the organization had built un-permitted buildings, a trash dump, and an airstrip.
Lastly, Synanon engaged in "public beatings and getting “enemies” on missions that went coast to coast."
Perhaps that's why Rose was (and possibly remains) so afraid.
SOURCE:
http://www.paulmorantz.com/cult/the-history-of-synanon-and-charles-dederich/
- but I know in one later letter (don't recall from when, exactly), she said she was in Chinatown. I was hoping to figure out if the postcard was also sent from Chinatown, because it would mean she was in that neighborhood for quite awhile, long enough that someone could remember her. Chinatown is a neighborhood that still has many long-time residents, I've read that some families there have been there for generations.