Founding a Fellowship? It Helps to Be Young

The Morristown Unitarian Fellowship had a quick start when it began organizing in October 1955.

The energy probably came from the fact that this was a young congregation with most of the adults under the age of 50 plentiful supply of children, who met in a large room in the basement of the YMCA starting that October. Many founders were from the generation that parented Baby Boomers and the men were veterans of World War II

Only one of the 52 founders, Margaret Pond, was more than 60 years old. (She joined at age 92 and lived to be 102 years six months, the oldest person ever to be a member.) The closest in age, Grace Zieger, turned 60 in March 1956, and she was one of only five founding members between 50 and 59 years old

On the other end, the youngest was 17-year-old Dennis Dalton (Alive in Portland, Ore., Dalton, a professor emeritus for Barnard College, is an internationally recognized expert on Mohatma Gandhi). Dalton joined, along with his father, Andrew Dalton, age 58, when he joined)

There were five members aged 20 to 29 (including surviving member Judy Deutsch and presumably surviving member, Doris Babson Thomas.)

The biggest group was the 28 individuals from 30 to 39 years old, with the next biggest the 12 members from 40 to 49—40 of the founders were between 30 and 50.

And if energy meant anything, note that Marshall Deutsch, who spearheaded the founding of the Fellowship was 34 years old when he became the first person to sign the membership book on Dec. 18, 1955, and his wife, Judy, was 26 when she was the second to sign

The couple had already organized the Morris Plains Cooperative Nursery School and at the time they signed the Fellowship book had children aged two years old and five months.