Editing Werner Erhard (section)

==Personal life==
John Paul Rosenberg was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 5, 1935.<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|6}}<ref name="Steven M. Tipton 1982, page 176">Steven M. Tipton, ''Getting Saved from the Sixties: Moral Meaning in Conversion and Cultural Change''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982, p. 176.</ref> His father was a small-restaurant owner who left [[Judaism]] for a [[Baptist]] mission and then joined his wife in the [[Episcopalian]] denomination<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|6}}<ref name="Steven M. Tipton 1982, page 176"/> where she taught Sunday School.<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|6}} They agreed that their son should choose his religion when he was old enough.<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|6}} He chose to be baptized in the Episcopal Church, served there for eight years as an acolyte,<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|6}} and has been an Episcopalian since.<ref>{{cite web |first= Dan |last= Wakefield |url= http://www.wernererhard.com/boundary.html |title= Erhard's Life After est Common boundary: March/April 1994 |publisher= wernererhard.com |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100512010211/http://www.wernererhard.com/boundary.html |archive-date= May 12, 2010 |df= mdy-all }}</ref>

Rosenberg attended Norristown High School in [[Norristown, Pennsylvania]], where he received the English award in his senior year.<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|25,29}} He graduated in June 1953, along with his future wife Patricia Fry,<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|30}} whom he married on September 26, 1953;<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|40}} they had four children.<ref name="Bartley" />{{page needed|date=November 2017}}

In 1960, Rosenberg deserted his wife and their children in Philadelphia.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Rodgers |first=Ann |date=16 July 1983 |title=Life Training or Brainwashing? EST: The Story Behind Erhard Seminar Training |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/concord-monitor/170397799/ |access-date=15 April 2025 |work=Concord Monitor |pages=13}} and {{Cite news |date=16 July 1983 |title=EST |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/concord-monitor/170397911/ |work=Concord Monitor |pages=14 |via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref> Rosenberg and June Bryde assumed false identities and traveled to Indianapolis.<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|57}} He chose the name "Werner Hans Erhard" from ''Esquire'' magazine articles he had read about West German economics minister [[Ludwig Erhard]] and physicist [[Werner Heisenberg]].<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|57–58}} Bryde changed her name to Ellen Virginia Erhard.<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|53}} The Erhards moved to St. Louis, where Werner took a job as a car salesman.<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|54,55}}

Patricia Rosenberg and their four children initially relied on welfare and help from family and friends. After five years without contact, Patricia Rosenberg divorced Erhard for desertion and remarried.<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|226}}

In October 1972, a year after creating [[Erhard Seminars Training]], Erhard contacted his first wife and family, arranged to provide support and college education for the children, and repaid Patricia's parents for their financial support.<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|335}} Between 1973 and 1975, members of his extended family took the est training, and Patricia and his younger siblings took jobs in the est organization.<ref name="Bartley" />{{rp|242,243}}