Interview Transcript

Audiotaped Interview with Carl J. Westman
April, 2003

Interviewer’s name is not given, but is believed to be Rev. Linnea Pearson.

CJW: I was born in Boston in 1911, and my parents, then, and grandparents, were Unitarian. When they moved to a suburb, Everett, when I was two years old, they migrated to the Universalist church. And I grew up in that church. When my father died in an accident when I was thirteen years old, the church became a real support for me, particularly the minister, who took an interest in me. I did things for him, such as running the projector for his illustrated lectures. I was very active in the youth group. I preached my first sermon when I was sixteen to a large audience, who were very kind to me, in spite of my brash teenage assertions. So the church has always been a part of my life. I knew in high school that I wanted to become a minister, but because I graduated in 1929, when the roof fell in on finances everywhere, I could not go to college because I had to help out at home, and that continued for some years.

Interviewer: That was kind of disappointment for you. When did you finally get so that you could go to school?

CJW: Well, I married young, and had a variety of jobs, from an office clerk, to working in construction, with the construction firms that built Quonset Naval Air Station during the immediate preceding years of the war, and then in a shipyard in Hingham, MA, and then I worked as a labor foreman in an iron foundry. And when it began to appear in, I think it was 1944, that maybe I had a chance to go to college, and theological school, and work my way through, I took that opportunity.

Interviewer: Going back for a minute, losing your father at thirteen had to be a very traumatic event for a teenage boy.

CJW: It changed my life in many ways. It was not only the shock of losing one’s father, but also because there was no money in the family, my mother had to go to work, and I had to work after school, going to high school, so I missed out on much of the social life that high school students have, and so, but Sunday being free, was where so much of my interest gathered.

Interviewer: Were you active in the youth group of the church?

CJW: Yes I was. We had a small, but very active, youth group in Everett, and it was part of larger groups in the county, which would have as many as 200 young people at a meeting. So that was a very good experience for me, and in some ways replaced what would normally be the teenage experience.

Interviewer: That’s so common for so many young people in the church. Did you marry someone from the church?

CJW: Yes I did. She was a year younger than I, and she was also in the church and in the youth group. We were married very young, which, looking back, perhaps it was too young; nevertheless, it happened. We were married for many years, finally growing apart, divorced in the 1960s.

Interviewer: Any children?

CJW: I have two sons and two daughters. [A] picture’s on the wall there. They are all doing very well, except my younger daughter Janet, who is the second from the right, who has ALS, the Lou Gehrig disease, and does not have long to live. And ... so we all grieve about that.

Interviewer: I’m sure you do. That’s the tragedy in your life today. Can you tell us about the Universalist Church, and what they were like when you were growing up?

CJW: The Universalist Church, when I was growing up ... in my community, it was a very strong church. The church held 400 people, and it was frequently filled, and sometimes they had to bring out additional chairs. There were over 200 children and young people in the Sunday School, so it was a very strong church for many years. But, in that city, Everett, so many people moved out to further suburbs, and the population moving in was largely Roman Catholic. So, the church gradually dwindled, and I don’t know when it closed, but sometime in the 1940s.

Interviewer: I see. When you first became a minister, can you tell me what it was like?

CJW: Yes. Bearing in mind all that I’ve told you, I was a latecomer to the ministry. I was forty years old when I was ordained, having finished theological school and college, and I think one of the great differences I see between the ministry today and what it was in my time, was that there’s far more attention paid to a minister’s needs than in my time. I made several moves, which were made just for increase in salary, which I had to have because of my family, and I would have gladly stayed if the church involved had been willing to pay me a little more money. Nowadays, I see that there is much attention paid to the minister’s salary package, and that is all to the good.

Interviewer: How did you feel about the fact that the church pays such a low wage?

CJW: It did not bother me; we were all in the same boat. I felt the ministry was where I belonged, and we did get by. My sons and daughters all went to state colleges, so they got through; my sons were on athletic scholarships. And, so, it made out, but no, it was a struggle. I did not even have pension money set aside until 1960, which means I did not accumulate much pension money.

Interviewer: And that’s why you’re having some hardship today.

CJW: Look where I live.

Interviewer: Can you tell us about the merger commission?

CJW: Yes, I was part of it. I was minister in Akron, Ohio, when I was first appointed. Well, first of all, I was on the Board of Trustees of the Universalist Church of America, and their Executive Committee, so I was appointed to the Merger Commission, which was comprised of a number of both Universalists and Unitarians who were charged with the task of finding ways that might support a merger of these two denominations. Merger had been talked about for a great many years. Some people said that merger talks began in 1855, and it took 100 years to get to the point of actually being serious. There were a number of problems that had to be solved, including the name of the new denomination. We were able to work out the differences in organization, and essentially create the organization of the Unitarian Universalist Association, as it became and still is today. There were many who weren’t that enthusiastic about merger. Some Unitarians felt that union with Universalists would hinder growth. Some Universalists felt that Unitarians were too radical, although there were radical elements in both denominations. The work required a great deal of study and reports, but the merger, after a couple of [votes], went through very well, and was – I wouldn’t say it was unanimous, but a very heavy majority favored this merger.

Interviewer: Some churches haven’t really taken up the double name. My church in Colorado hasn’t, and I was wondering about that.

CJW: Well, some of them prefer to maintain their historic name. On both sides. One church I served in Akron, a Universalist church, readily adopted the double name. The church I served in Rochester, New York, did not, because there was already a Unitarian church in the community. Although there were very good relations between the two, each kept their own name – First Universalist, First Unitarian.

Interviewer: Over the years, how has the role of the minister changed?

CJW: That’s a little difficult to answer, because I retired from full service in 1976. I would say that the minister is much better trained in counseling than in my day. I would say that in many cases, laypeople have assumed obligations they should, in terms of the organization of the congregation, so the minister doesn’t have to run everything. People do take care of fundraising and religious education and so on, so I’d say there’s, at least in my observation, there’s a great deal more of lay leadership, being active in our congregations, than in the early days of my ministry. And that’s a very good thing.

Interviewer: So you’re talking about how churches have changed as well. How has the denomination changed?

CJW: Very little, I think. It seems to me that we, more or less, behaved (if that’s the word) as each of us did separately. The general assemblies, which replaced the annual meeting of the American Unitarian Association and the annual meeting of the Universalist Church of America, are much more heavily attended than ever was the case before, in terms of the next general assembly in Boston in 2003, they’re expecting close to 9,000 people, I am informed, which would mean for a tremendous difference. I think one of the large changes I have seen is that women are, I believe, a majority of our ministry, and that’s been all to the good. So many of them have become, were, and are, very effective ministers.

Interviewer: That’s interesting. Now, as you look back on your ministry, what were the peak experiences, both traumatic and in regards to achievements?

CJW: The most traumatic experience was in my first church, Gloucester, Massachusetts, a historic church. It was the first organized Universalist Church in America, but these were the years 1950 to 1953, when McCarthyism was so prevalent that I was under fire for ideas which were certainly not unusual for Unitarian Universalists of that date. I was called a communist. One member stopped my eleven-year-old daughter in the street and told her “Your father’s a communist.” And so we understandably said she didn’t have to go to church anymore. So she stayed home and cooked Sunday dinner, and is a gourmet cook today. Being under fire for ideas that are basically within the Bill of Rights and within our Unitarian Universalist tradition of free speech and so forth, this certainly was the worst experience of my life, my ministerial life. I was very tempted to leave the ministry at that time, with people calling up while I was away and telling my wife that her husband’s a communist, and “Why don’t you all get out of town.”

Interviewer: These weren’t Unitarian Universalists?

CJW: Some were.

Interviewer: Some were Unitarian Universalists? My goodness.

CJW: Yes. I found out later that the postmaster, who was a member of the church, had a mail check put on me. So that was the most difficult experience of my life, my ministerial life.

Interviewer: Well, it sounds like it was your personal life also, with children.

CJW: Oh yes. And they’ve never forgotten it either. The ones who were old enough. The peak experiences? There were many. It’s hard to single them out. I’ve been ... certain recognitions, people who appreciated my ministry... I used to keep a file that I called “Treasured Letters,” and it was rather full. It’s hard to single out any one experience. I guess the successful outcome of the merger commission was one of the top experiences. And I enjoyed being a district executive, where I worked with many churches, helping them to solve problems, get ministers, and so forth, and I guess that was a fairly high point in the ministerial life. But most of all my peak experiences have been with people – persons to whom I related, became very close. Other than that, no, I was never elected to high office – although I served in a number of capacities, but no, my peak experiences [were] the kind of people people I would run into in our churches.

Interviewer: That doesn’t surprise me because we know you’re very loved and respected and appreciated in this community.

CJW: Well, that’s the only way I can put it.

Interviewer: Can you talk a little bit about your experiences in the civil rights movement?

CJW: Yes, a little bit. At the time, I was in Rochester, New York, minister of First Universalist there, and of course we were concerned, some of us in the congregation, and when the young black man was killed in Selma, and the Board of Trustees of the UUA all went there by airplane, at first I was going to do that, but then I talked to other interested persons, and we decided that we would instead hire a bus. And about forty of us went. Most of them were not members of our church, and there was certainly an integrated group, a number of, well, for example, some very intelligent and caring teachers, who happened to be black, were among those who went.

So we had a bus trip from Rochester to Montgomery, actually going to Birmingham to meet the march en route, and south of the Mason-Dixon line, new drivers came on the bus, they were all uptight about having to drive this bunch of people...

Interviewer: I can imagine!

CJW: ... and they were polite, but icy. I remember we arrived in Birmingham, and spent the night at the Unitarian church in Birmingham, sleeping on the floor, most of us, and in the morning, taking the bus to go to the outskirts of Montgomery, where we joined the march into that city. And that was an unforgettable experience, not only for the abuse that was heaped upon us as we marched, but also about walking through the slums of Montgomery, largely occupied by black people ... women who came out saying, “Thank God you’ve come, thank God you’ve come.” So that was an unforgettable experience.

One of the experiences that, when we walked to our bus after the mass meeting was over, another man and I were escorting two black schoolteachers from Rochester, and I can’t begin to tell you the kind of abuse that was heaped upon us, as we walked to the bus, from largely white young men. It would have been easy to yield to anger, but we were disciplined enough to do it. But I felt an enormous sensitivity to the kind of names, particularly, these young black teachers were called. The worst of profanity, if you can imagine it.

And then, of course, there was the famous meeting in Washington, where Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his “I Have A Dream” speech. And again, a number of us in Rochester got together and hired a bus to take us there, and that too was an unforgettable experience.

We also had some civil rights activities in the city of Rochester, where we had some riots. I remember trying to be part of the effort to calm things down, and in the clergy association of that city, we decided to go in pairs, a black minister and a white minister, through the rioting areas, attempting to calm things down. How much we succeeded, I’ll never know. Things did calm down, but maybe they would have anyway. But again, as we walked through, I must say, that we did not get any abuse. And we didn’t. We did stop a couple of young men from looting stores.

Well, there are other things I could mention, but that’s the most I can think of at the moment.

Interviewer: I find myself being surprised that there was that sort of a reaction that far north.

CJW: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Plainfield, New Jersey, also had riots. No question about it.

Interviewer: Those were really difficult days.

CJW: Yes, they were.

Interviewer: Things have changed a lot since then.

CJW: And of course, not all the members of our congregations approved it.

Interviewer: Really?

CJW: And we lost some members, but perhaps that’s just as well.

Interviewer: Yes, yes. Well, I’m wondering what I haven’t covered. Can you talk a little bit about what you think you might add to this enquiry about your life and the church and the denominations – is there anything I haven’t covered?

CJW: Well, I think that one of the fine, but also difficult, experiences of it was preparing for the ministry at college and theological school. I had to work; we had enough money to buy a small house, in Canton, New York, where St. Lawrence University is located, but in order to survive, I was janitor in the bank (a bank, there were two banks there). And I would go to the bank at four o’clock in the morning, and work until time to get to an eight o’clock class, and in the afternoon I would come back again and work two or three more hours. It was a grueling schedule, but I guess I was young enough not to have to worry too much about it physically. I do remember, Canton, New York, is cold country in the winter, and I have a distinctive memory of walking to the bank at four o’clock in the morning, with the temperature forty-two below zero, and the wind blowing in my face. I think that had a great deal of bearing on my decision to move to Florida and never touch a snow shovel again.

Interviewer: I think you’re echoing the thoughts of a lot of us. Well, thank you so much, Carl, for this interview, and it’ll be in the church archives I’m sure.

CJW: You’d better check to see if it’s recorded!

Interviewer: Yeah.....