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"It is not a chaos in which we live."
"God is good. Moral principles reign over, if not in, the lives of men."
When Charley said that he had only one sermon, it was these principles that under girded it. The universe was a place of value as well as of physical law. Man had a high place in the creation, and therefore a high calling.
His congregation listened, Sunday after Sunday, and felt half jostled, half exalted, and then went home to the roast beef and mashed potatoes that everybody ate for Sunday dinner in those days. The effect of any teaching is impossible to measure, but surely, while the beef and potatoes were turning into muscle and bone, Charley's preaching was becoming part of the way most of his parishioners thought.
Charley Styron came to Lincoln to strengthen the fragile partnership of the two churches. The "tact and diplomacy" mentioned by Bob Donaldson were sorely needed as the two congregations tried to worship together. Charley remembers that "The two choirs became one, but each choir sang its own version of the doxology simultaneously. When I brought this problem to the Joint Committee, they declared it too hot to touch. But when I proposed an entirely new version the congregation accepted it and it is still used today. It came from Harry Emerson Fosdick's Riverside Church in New York City, where both Clay and I had been employed as teachers in the church school."
From all that dwell below the skies
Let the Creator's praise arise.
Let the redeemer's name sung
Through every land by every tongue.
Charley began his ministry in the depths of the Depression. The expected annual budget of the combined churches in 1935 was $4500. On December 27th he was formally chosen by the Joint Committee at an annual salary of $2500 "with full use of the Parsonage," a large Victorian house on Trapelo Road.
Three days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor the Joint Committee met, and it was decided that Mr. Seeger would look into the purchase of new ash-cans, the hymnals would be removed from the Stone Church to the White Church, and twelve dollars would be spent for the Christmas party at the Sunday School - and it was noted in passing, "Mr. Styron discussed his point of view in regard to the war."
Among those present at this meeting were Donald Donaldson, Warren Flint, James DeNormandie, Stanley Tead and Mrs. Norman Fradd. By the end of the war three young men of the parish had lost their lives in the armed services - Whiton Jackson, Ned Seeger, and John MacDonald Fradd.
On the home front, food and gas rationing were constant reminders of the war abroad. Professor Joseph Snider, who with his wife Greta was a strong supporter of the First Parish, was in charge of gas rationing in Lincoln. His decisions about emergency allowances are remembered for their fairness.
If one were to include in the roster of Lincoln people who served in World War Two the names of men and women who would eventually find themselves coming to this church, it would be a long list. Among them were Robert Allen, Jim Ames, Andy Andrews, Stuart Avery, John Carley, Robert Church, Dan Ellis, Judy Emmons, George Fernald, Mauritz Fredriksen, Bill and Bea Grim, Ernie Johnson, Tom Leggat, Manny Maier, Jim Mansfield, Paul and Peggy Marsh, Glover Mayfield, Murv Moore, Fran and Leonard Moss, Suzanne Newton, Milton and Roberta Page, Bob Pearmain, Fred Richardson, Ed Rolfe, Marshall Sandock, Larry Thompson, Ralph Tuller, Winthrop and Sidney Walker, Bob White, Ed Williams, Guilbert Winchell and George Wood. David and Patty Garrison worked in a field hospital in France after D-Day. Eliot Hubbard met Margaret during a torpedo attack on his ship, which was evacuating families from Hawaii after Pearl Harbor. Enid Winchell was sent from Great Britain for safekeeping with her sister and brother, and welcomed by Harland and Peggy Newton before settling down with a Cambridge family for the duration.
After the war the population of the town increased with the widespread movement of city-dwellers to the suburbs. Everybody wanted to live in the country. Gas was no longer rationed. Route Two, the new highway running west from Cambridge, made commuting easy. Returning servicemen married, and there was a proliferation of babies. The newly built Smith School on Ballfield Road attracted brand new parents.
"Fertile Valley," the stretch of Trapelo Road running east from the center, demonstrated what was happening. The neighborhood was full of First Parish children - Averys. Bergens, DeNormandies, Donaldsons, Flints, Garrisons, Langtons, Styrons and Taylors. Henry Flint remembers when Charley Styron was almost alone as a Sunday School teacher - now, perforce, the new suburban parents drafted themselves to the cause.
Over the next ten or fifteen years a well-organized system was worked out. Superintendent Greta Snider was succeeded by Astrid Donaldson, Emily Bergen, and Ellie Donaldson. Old friends and newcomers alike were dragooned as volunteer teachers. Abigail Avery remembers what it was like, being urged to become a Sunday School teacher by Emily Bergen, soon after the Averys moved to town:
A.A. I don't know if I'd be a good teacher. I've never taught.
E.B. You believe in God, don't you?
A.A. Yes.
E.B. Then you'd make a perfect teacher!
"So that's how I got involved," says Abbey ruefully. "Some are born to honor, some have honors thrust upon them."
Abbey's services were badly needed, and so were those of a legion of other volunteer teachers, to take charge of the flocks of children who were crowding into the Parish House on Sunday mornings, the girls in pretty dresses and patent-leather shoes, the boys in sport jackets and clip-on neckties. There were eighty-four children in the preschool section alone, when Astrid was in charge.
It was true everywhere. Public schools and church schools were bursting at the seams. In 1950 a fund drive raised the money for an addition to the Stone Church to house the throng and also to provide office space arid a new kitchen. The architect was Lincoln's Lawrence Anderson.
In the new classrooms some memorable courses were given. Martha DeNormandie remembers that the books of Unitarian teacher Sophia Fahs were an inspiration. They taught me to think of Jesus as a human being."
The individual skills of people in the parish were cleverly put to work. Charlotte Phillips's graduate work at M.I.T. was background for her course in "Lights," which started with sun, moon and stars, went on to clay oil lamps, candle-dipping, and the assembling of wires, batteries and bulbs, and finished with the concept of inner light.
Emily Bergen, reared in a ministerial household, taught a course in the prophets, showing the growth in the understanding of God as exemplified by Jeremiah, the voice of righteousness. Micah, the voice of humility, and finally Jesus as the voice of sacrificial love.
Story-teller Ed Barr held children spellbound with his stories about Joseph and Moses. George Wood built a puppet theater. Frances (Spud) Fleck was famous for her dramatic productions, Amahl and the Night Visitors and Green Pastures (Bob Lutnicki was God, with a big cigar). Martha DeNormandie and Phoebe Tonseth conducted worship services. Kaggie Wells and Fran Moss played the piano year in and year out. There were Christmas pageants, with their successions of Josephs and Marys. and service projects for the Unitarian Service Committee, for the Navahos, for a Nigerian village, and an annual Thanksgiving collection for the Home for Little Wanderers.
Emily remembers how much it meant to the teachers. "Among ourselves we had long theological discussions. There were hard questions - for example, how were we to teach Easter? We were building our own religious philosophies and faith at the same time."
In the end there was always the worrying question, were the children getting anything out of church school? Some of them, now grown up, say they came only because they were made to. But they remember Mrs. Phillips, they remember Mrs. DeNormandie and Mrs. Carley. Mrs. Drury, Mrs. Miser, Mr. Barr, Mr. Wood, Mrs. Wells, Mrs. Flint, Mrs. Crawford, Mrs. Moss, Mrs. Hubbard, Mrs. Culver, Mrs. Bergen, and all the Mrs. Donaldsons. Role models were all around them. And at least four young people from the First Parish have been ordained - Shelley Culver, Skip Winchell, Jan Gregory and Rebecca Pugh.
It was a burgeoning time for the church. If we look back now on the nineteen-fifties as a time of smug conventionality, we were unaware of it at the time. Nor did we know how thoroughly we would be shaken up in the decade to come. Sunday sermons were a stable center to the week, most women stayed at home and took care of the children. The idea of daycare would have shocked them. Even the new nursery school on the first floor of the Parish House was cooperative, requiring the help of all the mothers.
Political matters were stable too. When presidential elections rolled around, the Republican majority in Lincoln was challenged by a few brash young Democrats who supported Adlai Stevenson, but Eisenhower was the solid choice of most of the town.
But there were tricky Issues. As early as 1942 when a question on the right of physicians to give advice about contraception appeared on the ballot, Charles Styron wrote for the church Calendar, "I believe...it is our duty as Christians to vote YES on this Initiative Petition." And on October 9, 1960, just before the election of our first Catholic president, he preached a sermon on THE SECTARIAN ISSUE IN AMERICAN POLITICS, and concluded that "To vote for or against a presidential candidate for sectarian reasons is reprehensible."
An increase in residential zoning in Lincoln from one to two acres was another hotly contested issue when it came up in Town Meeting. Charley gave an impassioned speech against the increase, warning that it was "against people," and therefore unchristian. His opinion did not prevail.
By the late fifties many of the baby boom children were in school for much of the day. Their mothers had more time to themselves. A lot of them went back to college. Often their new learning was in child-centered studies. They were learning to be teachers and librarians, rather than the lawyers and business women that many of their daughters would one day become.
But there still seemed to be plenty of time for volunteering, not only in the church school but in the Women's Society, which was an outgrowth of the Unitarian Alliance and the two Congregational women's organizations, the Afternoon and Evening Groups. The Women's Society could be relied on to raise money for special First Parish needs, over and over again, with auctions, church suppers, and most especially, with Christmas Bazaars.
The idea of holding a fair at Christmas time, with everyone making gifts and crafts and delicacies for everyone else to buy, was brought to the First Parish by Ginny Grinnell in 1948 from Winnetka, Illinois. "That first fall we didn't have much time. But there were lots of clever ingenious people. We'd get the men there to decorate the Town Hall. I remember Bob Church on a ladder trying to hang that big star. The Christmas tree was always supplied by Harland and Peggy Newton. Helen Savage and Jan Swift collected white elephants, which were always very profitable. Mickey Rodimon had a tea room - she was a wonderful gourmet cook. The Pilgrim Fellowship boys made hot dogs. I remember the teenagers waiting on tables - Kate Wells, Sue Davis, Jenny Rodimon, and David and Danny Donaldson. There were special groups with their own projects: Evelyn Brisson was part of the Water Basin group who did sewing. Peg Thorpe and Alice Smith and their group on Sandy Pond Road made beautiful wreaths and pinecone decorations. Stan Cibel made wooden toys, and Thelma made little angel ornaments. Persis Murphy's husband Cyrus worked for Hood Ice Cream, and provided us with Hoodsies. Astrid made her Swedish Christmas Bread."
The first Christmas Bazaar made $900 for the church. It was only the beginning. In 1990 "A Touch of Christmas" earned $5700.
In 1958 Marnie Smith was asked by the World Service Committee "to organize a program for the entertainment of foreign students as a means of furthering international brotherhood and understanding." As a result the First Parish sponsored a series of students - Kazuo Ozawa from Japan, Washington Okumu from Kenya, Pramod Gadre from India, Donggill Kim from Korea, Mr. McKenzie from Jamaica, and Cirilio ("Jun") Del Carmen from the Philippines, as well as students from Turkey, Bolivia, and Czechoslovakia.
Everyone remembers best the first "Lincoln Scholar," Mr. Ozawa. Marnie (now Mrs. Richard Wengren) says of him, "He was small, eager, cheery, modest, versatile, a real ambassador of good will in rather fractured English. I need to call him lovable - and loving, in the most Christian sense. He was a good friend to so many people in the First Parish. He made origami for the kids, and brought them the dolls that are still on a high shelf in an upstairs Sunday School room. He dazzled us with prayers in Japanese, he made sukiyaki in our homes, he showed us some of the mysteries of the tea ceremony, with that strange bright green powdered tea mixed with a little bamboo whisk. And subsequently he sent his son Henri back to our Regional High School as an exchange student. Henry, as personable as his father, lived with Gordon and Enid Winchell's family half the year.
By 1969 the program had changed. In that year the World Service and Social Action Committees were combined into the Committee of Concern. The church was turning to the urban needs of our own city of Boston. The civil rights of black Americans had become a matter of overriding importance. Who could forget Elma Lewis's fervent cry, as she spoke from the stage in the Parish House about her School of Fine Arts In Roxbury, "Don't give your money to Harvard! Give it to us!"
Henry Morgan recalls the succession of dramatic events that accompanied the attempt to integrate the schools of Boston, and our efforts here in Lincoln to take part. There was a summer program in Lincoln for black children, we participated in the one-day School Stay-out of 1964, and we helped to begin the all-important new Metco program for bussing inner city children to suburban schools.
Henry: "In 1967 we formed the Student Sponsorship Committee - Bob Lemire, Kits Culver, Judy Emmons, Gwen Morgan, Al Weiss, Carol Allen, Henry Outten, Bill Sharpe. And, of course, Charley Styron was always behind us, always with us and always very far ahead of us."
Into this struggle our young assistant ministers brought new ways of preaching and teaching and fresh styles of ministry. In 1957 David Eaton had been our first black assistant, and for some of us the first black person in our homes. Jim Riddle was white, but his ardent devotion to the cause of civil rights made him a popular leader. Many of us learned to sing "We Shall Overcome" from Jim.
The movement for the civil rights of blacks in the United States had been given impetus by the 1954 Supreme Court decision to set aside the "separate but equal" doctrine in public education. The decision was not enough to guarantee a climate of acceptance for integrated schools in the south. Violence accompanied the attempts of black students to enroll in all-white schools.
And then in 1955 Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. When most of Montgomery's fifty-thousand black citizens boycotted the city bus system, it was the beginning of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, under the leadership of Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy.
"The issue was so clear," says Gwen Morgan, looking back today on those stirring times. "It was unthinkable that you wouldn't respond."
Charles Styron responded. For him the movement was a perfect example of New Testament values in conflict with injustice. King's commitment to nonviolence, his insistence that "Love will be returned for hate," the television Images of black children trying to go to school amid angry crowds of shrieking whites - it was the Sermon on the Mount come to life: blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake; whosoever is angry with his brother, resist not evil; love your enemies.
During the next decade, as the crusade for the rights of black citizens continued, as state and federal governments sometimes failed them, as police protection against violent mobs was often lacking, as King and Abernathy were jailed, time and again. Charley's sermons reflected his passionate concern. When a protest march for the voting rights of black citizens was organized - a walk to Montgomery, Alabama, from the town of Selma in March, 1965 - clergy and lay people from all over the United States took part. Charley was there, and so were Jim Riddle and Eliot Hubbard. Alvin Levin flew down to join the end of the march, confident that someone would guide his wheelchair.
On his return to Lincoln after the march, Charley preached a sermon about his experiences in Alabama that was perhaps the most memorable of his life. "It was electrifying," remembers Jo Carley. "The place was absolutely still." It stirred to action many in his congregation, and stirs them still.
Henry Morgan: "I have been involved in Chicago, in two very decayed sections of the city, South Shore, which is 98% black, and Austin, which is 80% black...I have been there one Saturday a month for these nineteen years. I am there because Charley sent me."
Eliot Hubbard: "Charley asked me to represent the church on the board of St. Mark's Social Center. It was my first contact with blacks, and with some of their remarkable leaders, like Melnia Cass and Noel Day. This was the beginning of my involvement in civil rights for the black community."
Both Henry and Eliot went on to lifetimes of concern with issues involving the advancement of black Americans. Many others in the First Parish have worked quietly for the education of black children, for libraries in their schools, for better housing, for access to business investment, for integration in all aspects of American society, and, most especially, for the Metco program.
The list of names is endless. Kits Culver tutored underprivileged children in a Cambridge school; Lex Taylor and Jean Preston were tireless drivers, transporting children to Lincoln from the Elma Lewis School and back again, a group organized by Kitty Jenney opened a library in the Paul D. Dever School at Columbia Point. It was staffed by Kitty and by Emily Bergen and Martha DeNormandie and Debby French and Jackie Resnick. "I can't believe we did it four days a week for eleven years," says Martha, "but we did."
Lex Taylor worked for the Fair Housing Office in Roxbury for eight years. "We were dealing with slum landlords, trying to Improve housing for people living in awful conditions. I loved it."
Another First Parish connection with the inner city was a warm relation with a sister church, St. Mark's in Roxbury. ‘Those early meetings were thoughtful, powerful, successful and deeply moving," remembers Martha.
An obvious question at this time was why there were no black householders in the town of Lincoln. At Charley's suggestion Bill Langton started a local Fair Housing Committee, and Alvin Levin supplied it with legal counsel. It wasn't until much later that the town could boast a few black citizens, but the committee was the beginning of other more successful campaigns.
In 1968, during Charley's last years in the First Parish, there were two important events in the life of the church. One was happy and cooperative, the other divisive and painful.
The first was the all-church production of the Chester miracle play, No ye's Fludde, by Benjamin Britten. Under Mary Drury's superintendency in the church school, Betty Levin and Fran Moss coached children and adults to take staffing parts as Noye and his family. Judy Spock built the vessel in the front of the sanctuary, George Wood and Milt Page made a platform for it to rest on, and Judy Gross and Jane Langton made animal masks. At the performance a team of invisible mothers sent scores of small bears and deer, owls and swans, lions and camels singing down the aisles, two by two, to board the Ark. Pip Moss conducted the choir, Marg Sykes struck the hanging coffee-mugs for the first splatter of raindrops, a group of ringers clanged their handbells, and Bob Wentworth led Leonard Moss and a tightly jammed crowd of other musicians, young and old, in Britten's tricky music, while Gordon Winchell thundered orders from the balcony as the voice of God. The congregation, to its surprise, found itself participating, singing hymns imploring help for the storm-tossed Ark. The whole performance was repeated in 1980, with Roy Raja taking the part of Noye for the second time. Mary Crowe as his uncooperative wife, and a whole new generation of animals.
The other significant event was the troubling issue of Sanctuary.
All those who were part of the parish in June, 1968, remember the seriousness of the debate and the gulf that opened up among us as we questioned our connection with the war in Vietnam and the military draft.
Charley was approached by Nan Stone, a young woman from the New England Resistance, a group organized to help young men avoid the draft. Next she approached the Prudential Committee to ask whether our church would be willing to provide sanctuary to a member of the armed forces who was absent without leave. We would house him in the church or the Parish House, publicly announce his presence, and wait with him until he was arrested, making no resistance to the arrest.
There had already been at least two public occasions of sanctuary in the Boston area, a tumultuous one in Marsh Chapel at Boston University and a dignified one at Friends Meeting in Cambridge.
A majority of the Prudential Committee voted to present the matter to the entire congregation. Two all-church meetings were held in the church on Wednesday, June 12th, and Sunday afternoon, June 16th, in preparation for a meeting Sunday evening to vote on the question. It was apparent at the first meeting that there was a great divergence of opinion.
In Charles Styron's written history of the church, he mentions one of the very few previous occasions "on which the church took a vote on a moral issue...Along with multitudes of churches north of the Mason-Dixon Line It was voted on March 20, 1848, that no person who holds or traffics in slaves shall be admitted to the communion of the church."
Now here was another such occasion. But was it a moral issue? Should we be bringing it up in church at all?
When Martin Luther King led the march from Selma to Montgomery, the issue had seemed crystal clear to Charles Styron and to most of the clergy of New England, and to their congregations. The draft question was not so clear.
Many who opposed our conduct of the war in Vietnam did not think such a dramatic action by our church the right way to express that opinion. Many felt the matter should not have come up in the church at all. Others thought that those who wished to respond to the request of the New England Resistance should be allowed to do so, while those who did not wish to, would simply not participate. Some thought such an action a betrayal of the sacrifice of young men who had already lost their lives in Vietnam. Still others were wholeheartedly in favor of bringing the national debate into the church, the institution that was supposed to be the arbiter of moral action.
The question was complex and hotly debated. It was finally settled by a vote to instruct the Prudential Committee to appoint a group to study the issue.
The appointed group included Abigail Avery, Thomas Casner, Rufus Grason, Philip Moss and Henry Outten, with Gwen Morgan as chair. They at once declared their intention not "to be a roadblock to action, simply by studying the matter." Their report was presented to the Prudential Committee in November. Charley called it "masterful...I think it will be one of the outstanding documents in the history of this church." The report recommended that in case we were asked to provide "hospitality and help," and if a group within the church was willing to provide it --
1. The Prudential Committee would make a decision about each individual case.
2. It would appoint a group to help.
On the evening of April 1, 1969, the church voted, 45 to 38, to adopt the recommendations of the study committee. We were never asked to act on this decision.
Was the sanctuary issue good or bad for the First Parish? There is no denying that the scars took a long time to heal. It was a model in miniature of the way the entire nation was scarred, a reflection of the widespread discord in the country at large.
The question of the Vietnam military draft was an especially searing one for families with sons of draft age. Charley helped at least one young man who had been raised in our church to achieve status as a conscientious objector, after his first application to the West Concord Draft Board was turned down. Nancy Rockwell learned of an earlier case, when she went with our First Parish Peace Group on a recent march in Washington. Enid Winchell's banner, FIRST PARISH IN LINCOLN, MASSACHUSETTS, attracted the attention of someone who had grown up in our town. Richard Conant told Nancy that Charles Styron had helped him obtain C.O. status during World War Two.
Charley Styron retired rich in honors in 1970 to the vacation house he had built in New Ipswich. New Hampshire, with his wife, Claora. The part played by Clay in the life of the church had been active from the beginning. A professional speech therapist, she found time for every sort of role a church community asks of a minister's wife, from the entertaining of visiting dignitaries to singing in the choir, to teaching in the church school.
From New Ipswich the Styrons soon made a completely fresh start by moving to Medford Leas, the new Quaker retirement community in Medford, New Jersey. There they quickly established themselves as active leaders. Charley began by persuading his fellow residents to abolish the dress code. One suspects he has continued to jostle and exalt his friends and neighbors at Medford Leas, just as he did his congregation for thirty-five years in Lincoln.