Bob Stebbins, Founding Member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Madison County, Recalls Our History:
Ann (wife) and I attempted to get a Fellowship together within five years after we arrived in Richmond, but we couldn’t find sufficiently interested people. We concluded that “it couldn’t be done.” But in 1977. Jon and Ticha Wells appeared. They had been involved in St. John’s UU Church in Cincinnati, wanted more of the same in Richmond, and they didn’t know it couldn’t be done. Jon, a salesman of mining drill bits, somehow found me. We met in my office on campus early in 1978, and he had ideas for moving ahead. I had just had a heart attack and told him I couldn’t be counted on for much. He didn’t need much, for he had a list of other people to contact, including Chad Spring, a retired UU minister then living in Berea. Wally Dixon, Associate Dean of the then College of Science and Mathematics, soon joined Jon, Chad, and me to form a sort of executive, planning, and program committee.
We met many times around our breakfast table at 208 College View [only once did I forget about the meeting and go to the office before they arrived, leaving them stranded]. The first meetings in spring 1978 were held in homes (Stebbins, Dixon, and I don’t remember what others). In the fall of ‘78 we held our first public meetings at the Rural Electric Co-op on Main Street. They had a limit on the number of times a group could use their public meeting room, so we shopped for another place. We chose Cathy Nixon as our first President. She led us to providing food and other aid to victims of a local flood. Chad Spring was never President, but he served as the devotional leader almost until the year of his death at the age of about 86 (at which time, he and his brother were thought to be the oldest twins in the country). He survived Janet, his wife of over 60 years, by a very brief time. I think the next meetings were in rented upstairs rooms near the M&M Drug Store on Big Hill Ave. At one of those meetings, we had a speaker from the Lexington UU Church, who led us in appreciation of elemental foods of bread and wine (several people brought red wine. I brought white for the benefit of those who didn’t like blood). I prepared a weekly one-page newsletter, using a ditto machine, and sent it out mainly by EKU campus mail, supplemented by the US Postal Service. Later, I made out the newsletter, and Joan Boewe sent it out. From Big Hill Ave, we moved to rooms above the Medical Arts building on Main St., and then to the Women’s club. Next came the property on St. George St., where we stayed for several years. The president’s job was passed around, with very few serving more than one year at a time.
