Out of Stormy Past, UPI's Two 'Mystery Men' Have Covered Long Distance (Part 2)
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- Created: Sunday, 13 January 2008 19:11
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 Dwight Allen |
June 20, 1982
Ruhe followed Geissler to Wilmette several months later to take a job at the church headquarters, where he began to develop a television program for the religious center.
Back at the University of Massachusetts, the dean, Dr. Dwight Allen, another Baha'i, ran into controversy in 1976. He had befriended Ruhe and Geissler and had put a number of Baha'i members on the education school faculty.
After a series of newspaper stories charging financial mismanagement at the school, Allen and three other faculty members resigned. No charges were placed against Allen, although one faculty member was convicted of embezzling more than $28,000 and was given a three-year suspended sentence.
An internal "blue-ribbon committee" of school administrators also conducted an investigation into allegations that Allen had operated a "diploma mill" while he was dean, but the committee cleared Allen of any wrongdoing.
Allen later was to become a business associate of Ruhe and Geissler in their TV enterprise.
In 1977, Ruhe and Geissler left the Baha'i center in Wilmette to form a Chicago company -- Communications Design Group, Inc., a firm which provided communications consulting serevices to various clients, including Bell & Howell.
A third partner in the venture was Joon Chung, who also had worked at the Baha'i center in Wilmette and now lives in Nashville. Irene Chung, to whom Joon Chung is married, is president of the company's Murfreesboro TV station operation, and both Chungs own stock in Focus properties.
Ruhe and Geissler say the reason so many Baha'i members invested in their television operations is that they (Ruhe and Geissler) did not get outside investors and members of the faith believed in them.