I was an active member in the early 1960’s of Liberal Religious Youth (LRY). During the 1963-1964 academic year, I was the Chairman of the New England Regional Committee (NERC).
Prior to that, I was the representative to NERC of the Norfolk-Suffolk Federation.
The May 1963 Norfolk-Suffolk Federation newsletter had a story based on a supposed popularity poll. The headline read, “ROGER SMITH VOTED MOST IMMORAL BOY IN FED!”
The joke was that I was regarded as such a straight arrow.
The spoof article showed that in the “poll,” I was — besides being voted “most immoral” — also voted “most intelligent,” “most rule-conscious,” “most conservative,” and “most likely to succeed.”
Rev. John Coffee, our advisor, minister of the Unitarian Church in Roxbury, cooked this up and took great delight in his joke.
Rev. Coffee told me years later that several adults were alarmed by this headline and wanted to know just who this “immoral boy” was and just what was going on.
Rev. Coffee passed away in 2014.
