William Thetford - Move To California

Move To California

In 1978 Thetford resigned from his positions at both Columbia University and at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. In 1980 he packed up his household, and at the apparent invitation of Judith Skutch Whitson, moved to Tiburon, California, where Whitson was by now employed full time in the publication and distribution of ACIM.

Now in Tiburon at age 57, Thetford transitioned into a sort of semi-retirement, no longer accepting any demanding positions of heavy responsibility in either his professional life, or in his involvement with the ever growing readership of ACIM. In California Thetford took on two part time professional positions; one as a psychology consultant at Travis Air Force Base and the other as one of the directors of the ACIM related Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon, as offered to him by his friend and fellow student of ACIM, Dr. Gerald Jampolsky.

In California Thetford spent the final eight years of his life regularly attending meetings of fellow ACIM students where ACIM principles would be discussed, but only rarely engaging in these discussions in any kind of an authoritative manner. Instead, during this final period of his life, he appears to have been primarily concerned with his own personal study of the ACIM material, and with enriching his own grasp of its message.

On July 4, 1988, at age 65 Thetford died of a massive heart attack.