How John Robbins changed my life

By Dan Frazier, Tea Party Editor

About 1990, I took notice of a young lady by the name of Susan. At the time, I was just a few years out of college and working at a camera shop in Burbank, Calif. Susan was a cashier at the corner grocery down the street.

I finally got up the nerve to ask Susan out. We only went out once. We went out for dinner and she had a baked potato. It turned out she was a vegetarian. She said her dad was a butcher. I was fascinated. She recommended a book, Diet for a New America, by John Robbins. (See related story)

Susan and I never went out again. It seemed she was not nearly as impressed with me as I was with her.

Two years later, I was living in Flagstaff. I went to a party where I met a college student who mentioned he tried to avoid eating meat. It turned out he had been powerfully moved by a book called Diet for a New America. I asked him if I could borrow the book.

Within a week, I had finished the book and had vowed never to touch meat or fish or eggs or dairy again. I have never regretted that decision.

If there was a downside to being a vegan, it seemed to be that there were very few single women who shared my self-imposed dietary restrictions. Sometimes I thought my eating habits were interfering with my love life. But then I remembered that I had not had much of a love life even before I became a vegan. I wrote to Susan but she did not write back.

About two years later a local chapter of EarthSave International began operating in Flagstaff. I began attending the monthly vegetarian potlucks and educational programs sponsored by the group. EarthSave was (and is) a nonprofit organization formed as a way to channel the energy and excitement of thousands of people who had read Diet for a New America and who wanted to help spread the exciting message the book contained. It was at the EarthSave potlucks that I got to know Lisa Rayner. It turned out that Lisa was also a vegan. What's more, she was a good cook, sharp as a tack, and she returned my phone calls! Though the local chapter of EarthSave stopped hosting potlucks two years ago, those potlucks continue to bear fruit - and vegetables. In May of this year, Lisa and I were married.

Thank you Susan Clayton. Thank you John Robbins. Thank you Lisa Rayner.