Allan Rohlfs

I met Marshall in December 1972 and took my first workshop with him at his office in St. Louis, Missouri, USA in March 1973. Immediately I invited him to Chicago where I then organized workshops for him, twice a year for the next 12 years. I also got to know him personally and for a vacation traveled several times to his home to visit, three different homes in three different cities. Additional to NVC we shared a passion for baseball and always when being together would find a vacant field where we could hit fly balls and play catch. On one occasion, July, 1974 in Sherman, Texas I along with Marshall, Gloria his second wife and a friend of Gloria’s drove by car one hour to Dallas, Texas, to a lawyer’s office where CNVC was incorporated. We four signed the articles of incorporation. Prior to this in 1980 I attended a 2 day meeting in Oak Park, Illinois with about 15 others including and called together by Marshall to begin organizing NVC.

From my first workshop with Marshall I found a way out of judgments I was having about someone when I was upset with them, and into identifying and then communicating without any judgment or criticism but still with absolute honesty. This transformation was incredibly freeing. I immediately saw the implications for all of society. Along with empathy which I had already begun learning from Eugene Gendlin, himself a student of Carl Rogers, I could see how society could be transformed and freed from violence. Thus began for me a five decade long practice of learning and passing along what I had come to. Since, I’ve still not found anything as transformative as what I’ve learned from Marshall.