Word: klassen
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...David Klassen pumps $2 worth of gas into a farmer's battered pickup, takes the money and eases back onto the hood of his car. He wipes his greasy hands on his blue jeans and squints into the bright west Texas sun. "Maybe I'll go back to Mexico," he says. "I don't know. I've talked to the lawyers and the immigration people, and I just don't know who to believe any more...
...Klassen, 35, a mechanic and part owner of a gas station in Seminole, Texas (pop. 7,000), is an illegal alien from Mexico. But he is different from the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans who annually sneak across the border. Klassen is a Mennonite, one of 650 members of the reclusive religious sect who settled in the dusty plains country in the spring of 1977. Through a combination of bad advice and their own gullibility, the law-abiding Mennonites have since found themselves stranded on the wrong side...
...advised the Mennonites that no laws were broken and that they must live with their mistake. But the group has deposed Reimer, a drastic step for their communal church. Many Mennonites, disillusioned with their church hierarchy, have also stopped attending Sunday services. "I'll tell you the truth," says Klassen. "Us Mennonites are not true Christians any more because of all this trouble. There's no love between...
...first question is the easier. Just about everything went wrong. To begin with, the top management, recruited from business, was remarkably unbusinesslike. Elmer Klassen, who was Postmaster General from January 1972 to February 1975, always seemed uncertain about what the Postal Service should be. He let people go, and then, when operations deteriorated, hired others to take their place. The Postal Service, which spends 85% of its budget on labor, now employs 700,000, making it, after the Bell System, the nation's second largest corporate employer...
Faced with all these problems, Klassen's successor as Postmaster General, Benjamin Franklin Bailar, a former vice president for international relations at American Can Co., gives the promise of providing more efficient administration. He is young (41), analytical and decisive. Even if the Postal Service had had good management from the start, however, it would still be in deep trouble today...