Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Venice

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In The Beginning - The Genesis of UUCOV

By Nancy Stone

Delivered at a UUCOV Sunday Service

January 12, 2003

The program committee asked me to give this dissertation today because they thought perhaps newer members might not know the startling and dramatic history of the birth of our institution.

Any birth is attended by mixed and powerful emotions. Hope, uncertainty, fear, joy, eager anticipation, dogged determination, possibly anger and even rebellion -- a desire to stop the whole process, not go through with it at all. At one point or another, the birth of UUCOV inspired those same emotions in the breasts of the founding mothers and fathers, the six known, even today, as the Steering Committee.

And as with any new born, its history goes back well before delivery.

I remember a Venice neighborhood meeting at the Mortons of Sarasota UUs in the early 1 990s at which Jeanne Peck presented UUA material for starting a fellowship. But we were still powerfully attached to our church. So nothing came of those efforts at that time.

In 1998 things began to change. The Rev. Richard Benner, beloved and admired by many of us, was leaving Sarasota, for instance, and lots of Venetians, commuting 50 miles each Sunday to Sarasota or Port Charlotte felt it was time to talk more seriously about starting a church or fellowship in South County. The Pecks and John and Marilyn Richards talked in the middle of April 1998 and started the ball rolling, asking Nancy Stone from the Sarasota Church and Rhoda Bernstein from the Port Charlotte Fellowship to join them as a Steering Committee with the aim of starting a church in Venice.

At one of our first Steering Committee meetings we divided our duties: Len was asked to be president, Marilyn Richards, treasurer, Rhoda Bernstein, corporation secretary, Nancy Stone, recording secretary all protein until regular elections could be held..

We scheduled our first organizational meeting for April 19, 1998, at the Pecks. We had a mailing list of about 30 people - everyone we could think of that we regarded as a South County religious liberal. Only about half of these people were from the Sarasota church, a few from the Port Charlotte Fellowship, but for the rest, we just blue-skied it and took our chances that the others would be interested. And they were! We had a good crowd on the 19th

In the meantime, we began dealing with all those details that make an organization gel.

We rented a post office box - and preserved in our archives is the first envelope addressed to UUCOV, from Jean Heuman. Len made several announcements at the Sarasota Church stating our plans in a positive, welcoming tone. We began to think about things like bank accounts and pledge drives and most vital to all of us, affiliation with the the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Remember, by this time, it was still only May.

On May 17 we held a second organizational meeting, this time at Rhoda Bernstein's. Rhoda has a modestly sized house and we expected perhaps 15 people or so, but a story in the paper brought those liberals out of the woodwork, so to speak, and almost 30 people showed up. Nobody seemed to mind being crowded and everyone talked enthusiastically about what they all wanted in a church.

By the end of this meeting, we had all we needed for the next and most important step, joining the beloved (and occasionally hated) UUK The UUA wanted at least 30 committed charter members. We circulated sign up sheets at the organizational meetings and in no time had a significant 39 names to submit to Boston, together with the required $39 each. These lovely people willingly pledged an additional $11 each to give us a small budget to keep working with. It almost seemed magical! Hope and Joy abounded!

Again in the meantime, we were trying to open that bank account; Marilyn had found us a locally owned bank that was most accommodating, but they couldn't open a commercial account for us until we were incorporated. Len found a lawyer who drew up the necessary papers and submitted the application to the state. By May 27, 1998, we were a Florida Corporation. We even had an employer I.D. number, no employees yet, of course, but were eagerly thinking about it. Dogged determination - and lot of hard work - had brought us this far, and it wasn't even June!

So, we had a post office box, articles of incorporation, a bank account - and a name, a name that had been discussed soberly and seriously. Most of us felt "church" was out: Many of us knew the associations of the word were not inviting to many UUs, so we settled on the practical, concrete name for what we were, and hoped to continue being, a congregation.

By this time, we had singled out a number of people for vital posts in the new organization, people whose names are still writ large in the annuls of what we have become: We asked John Morton to chair the site committee; Henry Bright the Finance Committee, Kindra Muntz public relations and music; Jeanne Peck program; Harlene Henderson membership and hospitality; Charles Lincoln, special projects - which turned out to be a lot of things; Gertrude Marsh would handle art work and signage; and Marilyn Richards headed a by-laws committee.

We were thinking about a lot of things now, so based on the UUA manual we drew up a list of things to do and remember before the "delivery date". Our list contained such things as arranging social activities, publishing a newsletter, planning leadership training, finding someone to go to GA, celebrating our successes, becoming formally organized, raising funds. Lot of those things we'd already done, of course.

But in the next few weeks, we thought of other items to add to the list, such as finding a place to meet, investigating the purchase of hymnals, name tags, and on and on. We decided to ask members to contribute hymnals and dedicate them as they wished. (I'll give you a minute to look in the front cover of your hymnal to see who gave and dedicated the one you're using.) This turned out to be a successful drive and by the time we held our first service - we hadn't even set that date yet - we thought we had enough to accommodate the congregation.

What about our membership in our other congregations? We found that one could not hold membership in two churches in the same district, so we had to resign from the UU Church of Sarasota and the Port Charlotte Fellowship. This wasn't as cut and dried as it sounds: many of us had deep ties to the Sarasota Church, friends we didn't want lose in the process, and others had the same in Port Charlotte. So this was a significant point of commitment.

Carol and Gerry Jacob came forth with an offer to host the next organizational meeting, which was another great success with 36 people attending. This meeting not only included reports on the progress of the congregation, but those attending were divided into five groups, each group tackling the questions, "What do you want from this UUCOV?" "What time should the services be held?" "What should we call the newsletter?" We tabulated the answers, which were not surprising to the Steering Committee, and found that all present seemed to want pretty much the things that we thought we all wanted when we had started. Very generally, we all wanted Satisfying Sunday services, intellectual stimulation, a congenial atmosphere and socializing with those with whom we could share our beliefs, diverse as they might be..

Also, people wanted two services a month, to begin with. And by then we had already scheduled November 1, 1998, as the first service we would hold. But now we needed somewhere to meet! John Morton and the site committee had investigated a number of places to be used for services: from the Jewish Community Center to sharing space with the United Church of Christ. We even considered asking if the Seventh Day Adventists would be amenable to "sharing." But the Venice Community Center seemed to offer the most reasonable solution for services. So on June 25, 1998, we signed up for room G, later room F, which held more than 90 people, with the understanding that we could cancel if we needed to.

Things began to move faster and faster. The By-laws committee came up with a set of bylaws to begin working with; we scheduled more organizational meetings and social gatherings. By our July 4 organizational meeting plus dinner at Jo Folsome's, Jackie Huller had agreed to produce a regular newsletter. And at the July 4 fest, the by laws were presented and approved; the name for the newsletter was chosen from those presented at the previous organizational meeting. The Pecks had contributed a handsome book to be used as the official membership book, still is. Gertrude Marsh agreed to calligraph the names and dates as they are added.

The summer was full of UUCOV activities. On July 5, Kindra Munta gave the Steering Committee a report on GA. Near the end of July, several members of the Steering Committee met with members of the Manatee Fellowship in Bradenton for advice on managing successfully without professional help; we had a meeting with two District representatives for advice on getting a church started; we had a pizza party; a full-moon picnic and, most important, a luncheon at the Yacht Club to celebrate submitting our application for affiliation with the UUA.

You're probably saying by now that everything is going swimmingly and nothing has caused anyone to say "What have we gotten ourselves into?" or "I don't want to have this baby after all." Not true, of course; there were moments of doubt and anxiety and even discouragement.

For example, at the full-moon beach picnic in August it absolutely poured and only eight people came. But a gorgeous rainbow ended the afternoon - a picture of which you can see in the archives. We reserved a room at Valenti's for our September pizza party... but they canceled us at the last minute without warning! There again, that ended happily as the Pecks invited the large crowd of us to their Waterford club house. Then there was the letter Len sent in June to every president and minister in the Cluster. Not a single one answered with a welcoming letter! On the other hand, several of us went to the Cluster meeting in November and were heartily welcomed by the members of the cluster.

The event that we viewed most cautiously was the invitation to the Steering Committee to attend a Board meeting of the Sarasota Church Board to see if-- in the president's words -- we could "make the transition a smooth one." The meeting was not warm and welcoming. They offered help in a couple of areas, but the "price" in return was, we felt, ridiculously high, and the membership, by written ballot, later turned the whole deal down. On the other hand, the Sarasota congregation has always welcomed us fondly when we attend their Summer lay services and we have picnicked happily together as congregations a couple of times. Also, several Sarasota members support UUCOV regularly.

The event that we viewed most hopefully was the visit by two representatives of the district. They came in July to offer us the wisdom they had gleaned from years of dealing with, helping and being part of new congregations. We were surprised that their wisdom often was that we were doing it wrong! We would fail because we had no plans at that time for Religious Education for children. (Of course, at that time, not a single family with children had shown interest.) We had not set aside a building fund yet. (Good heavens! In July we were only four months old!) And we would never make it big because we were applying to the UUA with only 39 charter members. For some reason, based on statistics, I suspect, congregations that apply with the minimum number never grow large.

We were not discouraged. And Mary Higgins, district executive, has been most generous with her time, advice and practical support.

Finally, in a letter dated October 25, 1998, from the secretary of the UUA, President Len Peck was told that the Board of Trustees of the UUA had voted to approve the application of and to receive into membership in the Association, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Venice. Florida.

It was the perfect boost to our spirits and our hopes for the first service we would present on Sunday, Nov. 1, 1998. We had our speaker: Len Peck, an experienced and entertaining, communicator, would give the sermon, "I Haven't Got a Prayer." We had excellent press coverage; Marilyn Amick would provide flowers; Ellen Cone from the Sarasota Church accepted an invitation to play the piano; we had arrangements for a printed order of service, even going so far as to vote that no italics be used; Margaret Raub and a crew were ready to take care of the refreshments; the hymnals had arrived and had been marked with the dedication slips; various of us would transport the hymnals each Sunday, because there was no storage space in the Community Center; in September the Richards had contributed a lovely blue crystal bowl to be used as a chalice and it would be inaugurated that first Sunday.

Everyone with a job arrived early at the Community Center, and helped the maintenance man set up chairs - guess who? Kenny Waters and John Meneilley - and the podium and move the piano. The guest book was ready - and we asked everyone attending to sign it, even if they had been with us for some time (all of five months!) And the membership book, of course.

Shortly after 10, people began to arrive. And they arrived, AND they arrived, AND they arrived, until 95 of them were packed into that little room! I think we were dazed! But Len's talk was marvelous, just the right note to start this castle-in-the-sky project. We were so crowded, we had to move the refreshments into

another room - which the Community Center just let us have without charge from then until we were no longer tenants.

While the Steering Committee seems to have a done a lot, we didn't do it without the help of all those people who showed up time after time, to give so generously of their time, their help and their money. Read the Charter member list - we decided to close off the charter members list only on the day we mailed our application to Boston for the UUA. So look at those names, from Marilyn Aniick to Lowell Zabel most of us are still here, giving our hearts and time and resources to UUCOV.

Still in the future on that Nov. 1, 1998, were fill time services, dozens and dozens of speakers, Venice Ranch, 2300 Edmondson, a Building Fund, 110 members, a half-time minister, a brand new sanctuary; and the scores of other things that make us a successful, year-round, diverse liberal congregation.

So, thank you, THANK YOU

To see pictures of the groundbreaking of our new Sanctuary, click here