One "newcomer" who was to come particularly close to the Beloved during this visit, and was later to play a key role in the development of Meher Center, was a woman named Jane Barry Haynes. Jane, 33, had pursued a career in the theater as an actress and producer. Since her childhood growing up in North Carolina, Jane had always had a longing to go to Myrtle Beach ("It was sort of like a Mecca — I didn't know why."), which she finally did in 1947. Ten years later, she was given the opportunity to manage the local theater-in-the-round there. Separated from her husband, she took a chance and moved to Myrtle Beach with her three children — two sons, John and Charles, and a daughter, Wendy.1 At that time, in 1957, despite having led a prosperous life, Jane had recently emerged from a traumatic experience of deep emptiness. She later related:
Everything had come together at once. I felt covered with the world. There was no worldly experience I had not had. One night I cried out from the depths of my being inside my heart, almost from the floor: "Help me! If there is a God — Jesus whom I pray to every night — please help me."
The next day she boarded a plane to Myrtle Beach, and through a book by J. D. Salinger titled Franny and Zooey , she began to find the answers to her search. The book contained quotes from spiritual texts and opened new avenues of insight to her; she now understood that her life and everything else was all governed by God's divine plan.2
In Myrtle Beach, Jane took over the local playhouse, later renaming it the Carousel Star Theater. Zasu Pitts, a popular comedienne and actress, was an old friend, and it was she who opened the new season in 1957. One day in the middle of June that year, after the show had begun, Zasu expressed an interest in visiting some of the beautiful homes in the area. Zasu insisted on being taken by Jane, and though Jane was extremely busy, she relented and took the film star to a home with an aviary where a Miss Universe beauty pageant had been held some time before. The home in Briarcliffe belonged to Eileen Coates (an architect). There, out of the blue, Zasu asked Eileen, "What about this Master who calls himself Meher Baba? I would like to see him." Zasu had heard of Baba in Hollywood from Mary Pickford. Norina Matchabelli had passed away two days before. Her death and connection with Meher Baba had been mentioned in the local newspapers.
Footnotes
- 1.Jane Haynes had four children; an older daughter named Diane was from a first marriage and lived with her father.
- 2.J. D. Salinger was an American author, whose other novel, Catcher in the Rye, became a classic. "Gerald Rosen, in his short 1977 book Zen in the Art of J. D. Salinger, observes that Franny and Zooey could be interpreted as a modern Zen tale, with the main character, Franny, progressing over the course of the book from a state of ignorance to the deep wisdom of enlightenment." (Wikipedia)