What is a Unitarian Universalist?

Directions

History

Staff and Lay Leaders

East Shore Unitarian Church began in 1948 when the Eddys, the Wensbergs, and the Farners decided that it was easier to establish a Unitarian Sunday School of their own than to pack up their young children on a Sunday morning and drive to University Church.  What started as a very small group grew so much that they rented the Mercer Island South End School for Sunday classes.

The parents soon felt the need to have a program of their own while Sunday School was in progress and in January of 1949, the Mercer Island Fellowship was begun.  In addition to the informal Sunday morning program, they met every other Sunday evening with the ministers of the Tacoma and University churches for a short service and a question-and-answer period for many newcomers.

The fledgling group soon needed more meeting space and leased the Chapel of Flowers, a funeral home located at the southeast corner of what is now Bellevue Square.  Rent was $125 a month and the Unitarians arrived as the Lutherans were leaving.  A back room provided space for coffee hour; the nursery was in the basement where the caskets were stored; and the Camp Fire house across the street was rented for church school use for $3 per Sunday.

In the meantime, a former Baptist minister named Lon Ray Call had convinced the Unitarian staff in Boston that the post-war period was ripe for church expansion.  One aspect of his proposal was active support in the formation of Unitarian groups that should grow enough to have a settled minister.  On January 15, 1949, the Unitarian Association officially recognized the Fellowship of Mercer Island, and the Association and Lon Call were persuaded to send Lon out west to organize the eager new group.  Lon and his wife, Lucy, arrived that summer after launching his ninth Unitarian church.

On the third Sunday in January,1950, the official organization of East Short Unitarian Church was celebrated. The 99 charter members representing 54 families signed the register. They elected a Board of Trustees, developed a Statement of Purpose, and formed a Women’s Alliance. By the spring of that year, East Shore had called its first minister, Chadbourne Spring. He arrived with his wife, Janet, and three daughters, and preached his first sermon on Easter Sunday.

The congregation, which had continued to meet at the Chapel of Flowers, longed for a church home, and in the spring of 1953 voted to acquire property for a church. An initial drive raised $10,000 for the purpose. The site selected was a seven acre parcel of farm and orchard atop a hill"…way out in Factoria with almost nothing around it anywhere," in the words of one member. The parcel was owned by Dr. Lester and Christie Henderson. They sold nearly five acres of wooded land to the church at appraised value. Years later, when the Hendersons moved, they offered the remaining two acres and the house to the church, but the congregation decided to buy only Holly House and a small side area.

A second fund drive raised $40,000 to begin construction. Jack Morse of the nationally-known firm of Bassetti & Morse drew up the plans and supervised the construction, with considerable interior work and landscaping done by members. Boeing employees looked at the roof design and immediately declared that it looked like a swept-wing jet. The total cost of $54,000 was partly covered by two $10,000 loans from the denomination.

Early member Bob Garthwaite recalls the upbeat mood of those early days. "The time was right. We, single-handedly it seemed, had won the war. We had converted from a war economy to one of peace. In fact, we had done many things, and just knew we could accomplish anything as long as we really wanted to." This can-do spirit has continued to animate East Shore during periods of change, growth, and economic challenge.

The nearly-completed church was dedicated on October 20, 1955. There was not yet glass in the big front windows. Heat, water and electricity were also missing, and because the organ had not arrived, Albert Schweitzer played for the first service—on recordings!

Bob Garthwaite described the insular Eastside’s reaction to the appearance of a Unitarian congregation in its midst: "The only member of the local clergy to attend Chad’s installation was Dr. Vall-Spinosa of St. Thomas Episcopal Church." Chad was even kept out of the local ministerial society by the minister of the Congregational church. But when the new building was dedicated, the successor to that hostile minister was on the platform representing the Bellevue Ministerial Association,"…which by then had accepted Chad as a member."

From the beginning, East Shore members were determined to learn about and affect the world around them. Well-publicized debates and forums on such controversial subjects as the admission of "Red China" to the United Nations earned the new church the name, "The Little Red Church on the Hill." However, patience and persuasive ways of East Shore’s very proper New England minister eroded such criticism, and in the early 1960s East Shore members spearheaded formation of an Eastside conference on Religion and Race. That group of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish congregations promoted civil rights during those turbulent days. There were some stormy discussions at East Shore before this congregation voted in February, 1964 to support open-housing legislation in the county, the cities of Seattle and other municipalities. A bomb threat and abusive phone calls did not deter the congregation from its stand.

East Shore people also supported a child through Save the Children, took part in Vietnam War protests, and boycotted lettuce and grapes. In the late 1970’s, the church sponsored a Southeast Asian family.

In 1961, East Shore helped found Northlake Unitarian Fellowship in Kirkland, and for three years (1965-1967) provided financial support for its minister, Ralph Mero, who served East Shore part-time.

Meanwhile, the baby boom had required construction of the first wing of the church school in 1960, with the other two wings following in 1963—at a total cost of $191,000. At last the children could gather in one location—although only by holding two sessions on Sundays. The buildings were financed through debentures purchased by members. (The largest of these three buildings was torn down in 1990 to make room for the present administration building.)

In 1966, the congregation again dared to incur a large debt to remodel the church building by pushing out the north and south walls to provide more office and storage space, enlarge the North Room and kitchen, and create the Bookshop balcony. The $48,000 was again financed by debentures. Remodeling plans were drawn by Bellevue architect Glenn Brewer, an East Shore member, and construction was completed in March, 1967. Glenn’s use of cedar siding in the sanctuary turned the room into an acoustically fine concert hall. Gallery space was also provided by the remodeling, and the new Gallery Committee opened its first exhibit on March 5, 1967.

Mr. Spring’s 16-year ministry ended with his resignation in 1966, and Dr. Call again took on ministerial leadership during an interim year until Charles Reinhardt, minister of the Unitarian Fellowship of Morristown, New Jersey, was called in 1967.

From East Shore’s beginning, music had been a vital part of worship services and community outreach. The congregation hired a University of Washington professor of music, Gerald Kechley, in 1958, and his development of a wonderful choir has blessed East Shore for forty-three years.

With the encouragement of Mr. Reinhardt, the arts flourished at East Shore during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Poetry, dance, drama, and a variety of musical expression frequently enhanced Sunday services, and each season featured a concert series with such well-known musicians as the Philadelphia String Quartet and the Soni Ventorum. A literary quarterly (the Abyss, later the Ark) was published for several years. In addition, the Gallery Committee’s monthly shows presented both new and established artists in one of only two galleries on the Eastside at that time.

Community involvement continued, too, through committees concerned with problems in education, local politics, and racial discrimination. An interracial day camp was organized and carried out in the summer of 1968, providing care for inner-city children whose mothers were enrolled in a work-training program. Some East Shore children also participated in this interracial experience.

The Boeing downturn affected many members of the congregation during the early 1970s but East Shore paid its bills, delayed maintenance and only once was late in paying debenture interest to its members. It helped that some church members donated their interest payments to the church, and a few donated their debentures. In March, 1975, the church paid off its mortgage to the denomination for its building loan. The last of three debentures issues was retired in 1983.

In the spring of 1975, Charles Reinhardt left East Shore for the Unitarian Church in Atlanta. The Reverend Vester Vanstrom was interim minister during the ensuing year until the congregation called the Reverend Stanley Stefancic from Birmingham, Alabama.

Under his ministry the church school was organized and the congregation was encouraged to hire an assistant minister, Arvid Straube, who had just completed his internship at the Vancouver, B.C. Unitarian Church. Arvid was responsible for religious education. Under Mr. Stefancic the congregation got liberal doses of philosophy and poetry as well as inspiration for political involvement. The new minister also pitched in to help repaint the church, both inside and out, along with an energetic crew of members.

In 1980 Mr. Stefancic resigned to take the pulpit of the Unitarian Church of San Francisco, and newly graduated seminarian Mr. Straube became interim minister, juggling church and church school for a year.

In September, 1981, Dr Leon Hopper left his position as Director for Ministerial Education of the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston to become East Shore’s fourth senior minister. Each minister had brought a different style and different strengths to the growing congregation, and Dr. Hopper began pulling all the strands together by encouraging the members to determine East Shore’s mission, its goals, and the steps to reach those goals.

East Shore was now one of the largest churches in the Pacific Northwest District of UUA, needing both its ministers and many committee volunteers to keep the church working. When Arvid accepted a call to be minister of the Unitarian church in Eno River, North Carolina, a search for another minister began immediately. The search culminated in a call to the Reverend Barbara Wells, who came to East Shore in 1985. Barbara helped refocus the church-school program and oversaw its growth from 50 to over 200 children. She was active in all parts of church life, providing adult classes, children’s workshops, and pulpit inspiration. She was also active in the community through the Greater Seattle Council of Churches.

Some of the early material for this review was taken from a paper written by Bob Garthwaite in the spring of 1995.  This review contains considerable additional information about the first decade of East Shore Unitarian Church.  Bob is continuing research to correct what he believes are some errors in his paper, but in the meantime a copy of it has been placed with other historical material in the church archives.  

Warren Raymond, one of the members involved in the Sanctuary Movement on behalf of East Shore, did the research and provided the paragraph on the Sanctuary Movement.