Jane Foster, one of the original UUFM founding members, wrote of her memories of the beginning of our fellowship:

Remembering UUFM

By Jane Foster (written about 1993?)

Memory is strange. Some memories seem long ago. Others, like the beginnings of this Fellowship, do not seem so remote in time. It does not at all seem forty years ago that John and I arrived in Mankato with our four children, six and a half, four and a half and two who were fifteen months old. I had come out of an urban environment and at a relatively early age had become a member of a church of eighteen hundred members. I was uncertain about how well I would fit in in Mankato, particularly when I found that the first question I was asked when meeting new faculty, their wives and neighbors was, “What church do you attend?” I decided that Mankato must be part of the Bible Belt. But John and I were younger then, enthusiastic, and anxious to find and be part of a religious community.

At that time I was thinking primarily of a religious community for our children. I thought then and I still believe that it is not enough for a child to learn values such as a high regard for the worth of the individual, encouragement in the search for truth, the importance of peace and justice, a desire to improve the quality of life for those less fortunate than ourselves and a respect for our planet earth. These values and others. As children grow up and go to school it is important for them to know that there are others who feel as their parents. Children are exposed to peer pressure at an earlier age. It is good for children to know that they have the warmth and support of a larger group than the family.

Thus when Monroe Husband came to town in October1952 John and I went down to the Saulpaugh Hotel and heard him talk and encourage us to start a Unitarian Fellowship. G. S. Pettersen, sociologist at the college, was there. Mr. Arnold, biology department at the high school, Mr. Hinrich and Louise Roth. There were others. All of these people had a church affiliation already so in the beginning we met in each other’s homes or the YW in the evening and always on weekdays. Louise, Ruth Roberts, Mary Lou Page and I simultaneously organized a cooperative play school that met twice a week usually in the kitchens of our homes. That was the beginning of the church school. Louise has a photograph of her Nancy, Donald Roberts, Marilyn Page, the McLean girl and our David, five four-year-olds holding vases of spring flowers, the vases having been made out of tin cans and remnants of wall paper. That first year we were getting experience with the children and with each other. We also had long committee meetings of mothers discussing what it was we really wanted to teach these children and when. Sometimes to the amusement of our husbands the meetings went on until midnight. Betty Whitcomb, the RE Director at Unity Church, St. Paul came down once as a resource person and gave us advice and support. Louise went East one summer and attended a month-long workshop with Sophia Fahs.

I think that the first public place that the church school met was the YMCA which was located where the Greyhound Bus Depot is, or should I say was, in the late 1950’s. Jim Maslon, one of our members with four children, offered us the use of a building on Honeymead property. Before the days of Prohibition we were told the building had been a German beer garden. We had Sunday School classes there and simultaneously some of the adults met as a discussion group. One major community event that we sponsored was an exhibition of Paul Hapke’s paintings. Also at this time the Guthrie Theater was getting started. Marian Powers talked to the children about the theater one Sunday morning. The children decided that they wanted to have a part in helping to make the theater happen. The collection that morning amounted to something like $6.37 which was duly forwarded to the theater. To our amazement we found our gift was covered in the pages of The New Yorker. One that I remember was Louise taking a group of children on a field trip to get some clay and with that clay they built the Temple of Israel on Louise’s kitchen table. This impressive structure was photographed with a cover story by the Mankato Free Press.

One year we used the Mankato Town Hall for meeting on Easter morning. It was a beautiful sunny early spring morning. We all had breakfast together and Edna Ravnholt made seventy-two hot cross buns for the occasion.

The adult fellowship, then as now, relied heavily on our membership and on the college (it was a college then) for speakers. But we also had out-of-town speakers regularly. One of our earliest efforts was sponsoring Homer Jack who represented the USC who spoke on race issues. We had a dinner at the Burton Hotel and the public was invited. Arthur Foote of St. Paul’s Unity Church came on several occasions. Carl Storm from the Minneapolis Unitarian society came. Max Gabler came from Madison. John Cummins from the Universalist Church in Minneapolis. Members of the Twin Cities churches also came and talked. ________, one of the prime movers of the USC, a physicist from the U. of M who talked on humanism. A couple from the Universalist Church who were taking strong action to break down the discrimination against the blacks, a representative of the Minnesota Memorial Society. I remember the stormy night one winter with Judge Rosenbloom arrived in his own plane to address the fellowship.

What I also remember in connection with these early days in the fellowship is that whenever we had an outside speaker we had dinner in a member’s home. This meant that we had some very pleasant socializing with our speakers and often stimulating conversation. I am thinking of Mulford Sibley. This sort of thing was possible because the fellowship was small and it was only possible while we were meeting in the evenings. Ministers had their own churches on Sundays.

We had a lot of social concerns in those days but they were channeled through other organizations. Louise was chair of the Blue Earth County Republican Party for a while. Eiler Ravnholt was chair of the DFL until he moved to Washington. Our church school children rang doorbells on Halloween for pennies to UNICEF. Some of the Unitarian women helped with the lunch service provided at Immanuel St. Joes. Louise was on the state board of Planned Parenthood.

Part of our early history was our relationships with the Willmar Fellowship. I still marvel that two cars full of Willmar Unitarians on a Sunday in January in 1953 with the temperature at least 25 below

zero drove 125 miles to Mankato to participate in our meeting and encourage us and support. Like the Hanska Church members these people were mostly farmers. They did not have a church school but they did operate a Unitarian children’s camp for a week during the summer on a nearby lake and they invited Mankato Fellowship children to be part of the camp. I went with our two oldest boys once or perhaps twice. John went with the children once. Ede Haroldson was a most able organizer and director of the camp.

Although my initial interest in the fellowship was to provide a special kind of education and experience for our children, I found that as time passed I wanted the same kind of association for myself. I want to be with people who don’t have all the answers but who are enjoying the quest. I want to be with people who care and I want to be with people who want to make our planet a better place to live for all of us. This fellowship has meant a lot to us. Even during those years that we were in China I often thought of you on Sunday morning which for you would have been Sunday night. For myself I don’t think that I could have survived in Mankato or anywhere without being part of a religious community such as this.