A Living Legacy
© 2009, Rev. Bill Hamilton-Holway
What is most important to you?
What are the values you hold most deeply?
Can you imagine them embodied in the future?
When I think about this historic day, and the creation of the Maybeck Legacy Society, these are the questions grounding our actions. During our lives, we humans form communities. We find one another. We clarify what calls for our deepest commitments and we work to create institutions that embody our values. In a church community like this one, we inherit the dreams and the legacy of earlier generations of members. Our work is to shape this inheritance, and to add to it, as a powerful expression of the best within us.
The mission of this church is to create loving community, inspire spiritual growth, and encourage lives of integrity, joy, and service. We shape our inheritance to accomplish this mission. We each do what we can. Together we do a lot.
This congregation was organized as the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley in 1891. The first building was completed in 1898, and still stands on the corner of Dana and Bancroft, in Berkeley.
I want to tell you two stories about creating a living legacy, two stories that are behind all that encompasses us in this space today.1
In the late 1940s, as the University of California was expanding, they let it be known that the church property would be taken by eminent domain. The Church Board of Trustees appointed a Site Committee. One of the members, Bob Cockrell, met Bernard and Annie Smith Maybeck, who were longtime members of the church. Bernard was the famous architect who designed many of the Bay Area’s most notable buildings, including the Palace of Fine Arts. While he was the artist, Annie was the businesswoman. In the church she had helped to start the Sunday School. Within the family, she took charge of buying up small ranches in Kensington.
Mrs. Maybeck (as everyone addressed her) suggested to Bob Cockrell that the church should consider buying one of their Kensington parcels that had a wonderful view of the Bay, would provide ample parking, and was priced at 10 cents a square foot.
The Committee had been looking within the city limits, and questioned whether moving out of Berkeley was a good idea. It was not until a few years later that Bob Cockrell received a call from Mrs. Maybeck saying, “they were ‘getting on,’ [they were in their early 90s] and would soon have to come to some decision, and would Bob pick up Bernard to go over some fresh ideas about the lot.”
When Bob and Zylpha, his wife, picked Bernard up at the Maybeck home high in the Berkeley Hills, Mrs. Maybeck instructed Bob not to drive more than 15 miles per hour when Bernard was in the car.
Zylpha writes, “Just as we came near a curve, over on our side of the road came a boy on a bicycle. What to do? Stop, of course. Straight on to the bumper came boy and bicycle and over into the bushes sailed both.”
Bob got out of the car, and “out hopped the boy saying, ‘Whatever you do, don’t call my parents. They warned me never to bike down Euclid.’ “
The boy was fine, but the neighbors were all out on the street, and with all the commotion Bob was visibly shaken.
When he “got back in the car, Mr. Maybeck took his arm and said in a very quiet voice, ‘Why don’t we just sit quietly for a few moments? In due time he asked, “The little boy was not hurt? We were not hurt: The car was not hurt? How fortunate! Now we can put this behind us and move right along to the hilltop and go about our business, can’t we? If I hadn’t known what of the past to put behind me and leave there, I never could have lived to be 93. An now, there never, never will be any reason to mention this little episode to Mrs. Maybeck, will there?’”
Well, the rest is history. The church bought the Maybeck land for $31,000, at the same price Mrs. Maybeck had quoted five years earlier.
Now it seems like a gift, a living legacy.
Still, there was nothing on this hill but open space.
And that leads to our second story of living legacy.
It starts in 1959, as the congregation envisioned constructing this building. To raise the necessary funds, a Canvass Committee was appointed by the Board of Trustees, with Board Member Mary Edith McGrew, as the General Chair[man]. She also served as the Co-Chair of the Hostess Committee.
Of the 63 women canvass hostesses, I believe the only one in this sanctuary this morning is, as she was listed in the brochure, Mrs. Wm. J. Ulp. We call her Grace. She has given more of herself to this church than most of us know.
Hers is a story for another day.
Edith McGrew, born in 1882, moved to Berkeley with her parents in 1899, when her father was named assistant librarian at the University of California. She was educated in Cambridge, at Cal, and at the University of Chicago. For 38 years she was the principal of A-to-Zed School, a college preparatory school where many children of distinguished Berkeley families were educated.
Edith joined the church in 1904, at age 22, and served in many positions, including in the Women’s Alliance. So, it was only appropriate, after 55 years of membership that she was appointed Chair of the Canvass Committee.
The canvass was a success, but the big dreams of the congregation could only be realized by a second mortgage. Edith McGrew financed the mortgage. Our church history records:
“As a memorial gift to the memory of her parents and grandparents, who had been members of the Church, [in 1965] Edith McGrew paid off the $93,000 second mortgage she held on the church, bringing members’ equity in the church property to $900,000.”
But that was not her only gift. This organ “is the result of generous gifts of our members and friends.” A brochure about the organ, when it was dedicated in 1962, says it this way: During the years the organ was on the drawing board, many gifts were made to the fund, but it was upon a major gift by Miss Mary Edith McGrew, longest-time-member of the Church, that the organ was assured.
Her gifts to the church were large and small. In the Church Gift Book is this entry: Edith McGrew’s temple bell used Christmas Eve to chime the 10 o’clock ‘stillness.’
The ninth pew from the back on the west side says “McGrew” on it.
It was in recognition of her untiring generosity to this church that one of our most beautiful rooms was named, “The Edith McGrew Fireside Room.” And, in 1964, at the Annual Meeting of the church, Edith McGrew was awarded a life membership on the Board of Trustees. As far as I know, this is the only life membership ever awarded. She died, age 96, a member of the church for 74 years, in 1978. She left a living legacy.
Generosity of members continues. This organ that Edith McGrew “assured,” was upgraded about ten years ago with a gift from Jeanne and Ladd Griffith of the twelve deep bass pipes, bringing the total number of pipes to 2,764.
Elaine Clark established the William S. Morgan Fund for Theological Education, to honor her father, longtime member of this church, and the second President of what is now Starr King School for the ministry. Earlier, as the Sanctuary was completed, his family and friends donated this pulpit to the memory of William Saccheus Morgan.
The generosity of Wally and Patricia Ellis has made so much possible. We celebrated the bounteousness of their giving with the dedication of the Ellis Music Room.
And, so many of you, recently contributed to the installation of over 330 solar panels on the roof of this church. Living legacies.
There is so much more, but let me stop by asking again:
What is most important to you?
What are the values you hold most deeply?
Can you imagine them embodied in the future?
In a church community like this one, we inherit the dreams and the legacy of earlier generations of members.
Our work is to shape this inheritance,
and to add to it, as a powerful expression of the best within us.
What will be your living legacy?
1These stories are taken from information in the UUCB Archives, including “Vision on the Hilltop,” “The First Unitarian Church of Berkeley: A History,” letters and articles written by Zylpha Cockrell, and the Mary Edith McGrew file.
A Living Legacy from UU Church of Berkeley on Vimeo.
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