The next Watch Tower President, Frederick Franz, the lone “scholar” of the New World Translation (though officially anonymous), hailed from Covington, Kentucky. Born in 1893, he was 84 years old when he took the reins of this powerful cultic machine. But recall, his job was mostly administrative and titular at this point. The “Governing Body” was in charge. He ruled for 15 years and died at age 99.

Much earlier in life, Franz had been a Lutheran, then a Presbyterian. In fact he wanted to be a Presbyterian minister at one time. How far afield his life strayed from its roots , is pretty obvious. Baptized in 1914, he too “worked his way” up into the big machine that Watch Tower had become. Certainly his place on the Bible committee had something to do with his esteem in the group.

Nothing earth-shattering to report here… let’s move on.

Milton George Henschel. 1992-2000

Milton Henschel was born in 1920, and died in 2003 at age 82. He was from New Jersey. His baptism into the Society was in 1934, as a young teen. In 1947 he made the claim that he had been “anointed”, one of the criteria for being appointed to leadership.

Perhaps one of the ways he wanted to prove his authority from heaven was to come up with a new Witness teaching. It took the form of more opposition to the medical world. This time the gripe was against the transplanting of organs. He made it the law of Witness-land, but by 1980, the Witnesses had abandoned this fight.

Henschel held the Presidency from 1992-2000, when the ruling “Governing Body” separated from the Society’s Board of Directors. More political posturing and the Presidency took yet another hit. Mr. Henschel resigned and Mr. Adams soon took his place.

Don Alden Adams. 2000 to present

Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1925, Don Adams is the current President of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. Adams comes from the Episcopal faith. He has been the true “insider” of the organization and was the obvious choice to replace Mr. Henschel. It is said he has had little impact beyond the administrative, for reasons cited above. To be on the “Governing Body” is to wield the true power of the Society today.

Word is that that power, though still very real, has lessened its “antagonistic denouncements of the less popular Jehovah’s Witnesses distinctives,” such as the policies on birthdays and higher education etc.

A gentler, kinder, face of the Witnesses now shines upon us.