Chapter 2 of The Finders Operation - O
Short Biographies of other Counterculture Influencers The Finders Operation Associated With: Dr. Steve E. Beltz
Finders Operation member Steve E. Beltz was Marion Pettie’s and the Finders Operation New Age behavioral psychologist. Beltz received his Doctorate in Psychology from Pennsylvania State University. Beltz was the former Executive Director for the Center for Behavior Modification in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the 1960s. Beltz is also a private psychology practice and worked as a psychologist in Pennsylvania state hospitals. Beltz was the author of How to Make Johnny Want to Obey a book about parental behavioral modification for children. Beltz also during the late 1960s was the director of the Sandstone Ranch which was an Esalen-like center in California where he met World Future Society member Margaret Mead and Timothy Leary. Finally, Beltz had a local Philadelphia television show Ask Dr. Beltz and was a guest on the Johnny Carson, Mike Douglas, and Joan Rivers (the Joan Rivers Show episode was titled Children in Show Business) shows.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Around 1970 Steve Beltz, and his wife Judy Beltz, sold their upper-class Philadelphia, Pennsylvania home and bought a big yellow school bus. Steve told Finders Operation member Tobe Terrell in his book The Gamecaller that he met Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) in Boston and took some LSD Alpert gave him. Steve’s meeting with Alpert made him “restless with his professional life,” and he decided to tour the United States. The Beltz, their babysitter, and their five children (ages four to eleven) lived in the yellow school bus, and they traveled the United States visiting different communes for a few years. The Beltz’s visited the first Rainbow Gathering in Colorado in 1972 while traveling, a New Age festival that occurs the first week of July in different places in the United States. When they were touring the country, the Beltz’s met Finders Operation member Marion Pettie in Nethers, Virginia. In an interview with the Miami Herald, Beltz’s mentioned that initially, privacy was an issue on the Bus, especially regarding their sex life. The Beltz mentioned that “they were very concerned about sex, and waited until the kids were asleep, being very quiet about it.” Later one day, when they stopped for lunch, one of their children stated when Steve kissed his Judy, “uh-huh, the bus is going to rock tonight!” Steve concludes, “the kids are very comfortable with sex; they have a very healthy attitude about it.”[7] [8]
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