Information bulletins
Ann Walk is not your typical UUCSS member. She lives in Michigan and has never lived in Maryland. An invitation from childhood friend Deborah Thornton to attend an online service led to a realization that we are her tribe. Since then, she has been a resolute attender and even helped with a church cleanup when…
Fred Teal grew up attending a Southern Presbyterian church in Washington DC. Beliefs were very rigid there as well as in his home. The church was not a source of comfort and acceptance. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a liberal arts degree and was drafted into the US Army in the fall…
Deborah Sorensen grew up in Texas and was highly involved in her local Methodist Church. It had a personable pastor with a fine sense of humor and a good youth group. That changed when the family moved to a rural location that did not have the same sense of home. After moving out of the family home she became more interested in…
Jan Kretz grew up French Catholic in Haverhill, Massachusetts surrounded by her 62 first cousins. She studied nursing at Fitchburg State College and was working at a local hospital when fate, in the form of an Army recruiter, came for her. He stopped by for her roommate, and he ended up with two recruits! Jan…
“I was born in Eastman, Georgia, a small Southern town south of Atlanta during the latter part of the Great Depression. FDR was President and the primary agenda of his New Deal was to lift the country out of poverty. Jim Crow was the law of the land. I was the eldest of three, and…
Dina Raley never quite fit in the Catholic church of her upbringing. It had always seemed forced, superficial, and unwelcoming. Most other churches seemed no different and so there was no attraction to religion. What changed was a realization that a church could provide community and be an outlet for social justice activism. She then…
Teresa Meeks was brought up in a pretty conservative Protestant church in Falls Church. She stayed with it until a close friend was fired by the church for being gay. After that, she was only interested in communities that supported LGBT members and staff. Her journey began with Arlington UUC and then Paint Branch where she met her future husband Fred Teal.…
Margo Kelly grew up in an Irish Catholic family but the religious part did not quite fit. While she liked the rituals, she did not like the patriarchy or the church’s stance on many social issues. For a time, she found the folk services at National Cathedral filled some of the gaps, but found the…
Jamie Jorgensen was happily Mormon for most of the first forty years of his life. He remembers with affection the structure and community that the church gave him with special fondness for his year and a half doing missionary work in Brazil. Over time, differences began to build up. Jamie leans non-theistic and socially liberal, neither of which are standard Mormon doctrine.…
Laurie Mears started off as a child in Unitarianism, and that’s important. Unitarians were rare birds in Kansas in the 1940s and early 50s, and the congregation held their children as precious. She always felt that folks were interested in her and who she was becoming. Fast forward to college, where she meets Preston Mears…