Iowa Bahá’í Roadshow, 1970s
By Diane Findlay, submitted July 2023
During the 1970s, a campaign of “Bahá’í Roadshows” was active around the country. It involved groups of youth who developed musical and dramatic arts programs for promoting the Faith and took them “on the road” as they could. This clipping from the IOWA CITY PRESS-CITIZEN from March 21, 1973 announces a public gathering featuring a talk titled “Peace is Inevitable” by Marty Schirn, and a performance by the Iowa Bahá’í Roadshow.
We’d love to update this article with more about the Iowa company. Terry Ofner remembers that Mark Harris was part of the group, along with Beth Ann Hartline and Jon Anastasio. Karen Penico Webb was part of the company and also remembers Murray Elmore, Kerry Hooper, Joe Driver, Jaye Hamilton, Julie _____, Lea Schroeder, and Vicki Abel, though not all at the same time. Karen estimates the years of the Iowa Roadshow as 1971-1974. She remembers that the shifting group had a soft folk-rock style with lots of tight harmony, and traveled all over the state as time allowed, since most were students. If you have more information about who participated or what, where, and when they performed, please email us at ibh@iowabahaihistory.org.
In conversation in July, 2026, Vicki Abel shared these memories; parts of this account are paraphrased:
So it was a very active, receptive period for teaching the Faith. I don’t remember who coordinated the activity of the Road Show. That person would contact participants, who were scattered around the state, to tell us where to meet that weekend. We would show up and present a program. We would announce that Christ had returned in the Person of Bahá’u’lláh. Someone would give a little talk on a basic teaching or principle of the Faith, followed by a song we sang together. For example, we’d talk about the oneness of the human family and sing “God Is One,” or the unity of religions and sing “From the Three Wives of Abraham…” Some of the towns we visited were Muscatine, Fairfield, Mount Pleasant, Cedar Rapids, Spencer Grinnell Dubuque, Davenport, Iowa City Cedar Rapids, and Burlington. Yvor Stoakley did the District Teaching Committee newsletter and he followed us and had a way of reacting to news that came in so, if it was a legitimate source, he would pass it on. I remember these newsletters were printed on those old mimeograph machines. He would do a template and then you run it through this machine. You couldn’t make mistakes on the template because it was like a carbon copy sort of thing. It was awful! He would do these newsletters and they would say things like, “OK Burlington just had 20 declarations.” “Fairfield just had 12 declarations.” “Mount Pleasant just had 8 declarations,” etc. These aren’t exact numbers; they just give an idea of the receptivity to the Message.
Margene Nelson Willis offered details and insights from her experience with this campaign a few years later. A new Bahá’í in 1978, she attended the National Convention and responded to a call for musicians and performers to attend a meeting about a summer youth travel teaching project. She recalls that groups were formed to go to New England, Illinois/midwest, and the deep south. Carolyn Cheeks, a member of the National Teaching Committee staff, coordinated the project. Margene volunteered as part of the group that visited the south. Here’s how it worked: Their director was Phil Sisson, a professional actor/musician from New York. There were five to seven team members at different times. They gathered in Durham, North Carolina, where they stayed about five days with a host couple. The team prayed, consulted, and learned each other’s talents. Sisson had a play written by a Bahá’í that they adapted for this purpose. They used both recorded and live music. They spent six weeks on the road, visiting towns in several southern states that had agreed to host them and feature their musical and dramatic skills in support of ongoing teaching efforts. they stayed with local host families. They prayed and deepened together, shared their musical and dramatic offerings, and met with the friends. The team helped with consolidation efforts following recent mass teaching campaigns that resulted in entry by troops. NOTE: It was on this trip, in Atlanta, that Margene met her future husband, Bill Willis. They later married in Iowa and lived here for several years.
