The Fellowship-Before the Beginning

It began with these words, “We are interested in joining one of two not-so-distant local churches and before long we hope to participate with some of our many local Unitarian friends in the formation of a Morristown Unitarian Fellowship.”

That was written by Marshall Deutsch, a chemist, to the Rev. Richard Gibbs of the American Unitarian Association (AUA) on May 11, 1955.

Marshall and his wife Judy, both native New Yorkers, had moved to Morristown after living briefly in Detroit. In response to a letter from Deutsch to the AUA, Gibbs on March 14 wrote, inviting the couple to join the Church of the Larger Fellowship. But Deutsch rejected that idea in favor of creating a new organization.

The Rev. Munroe Husbands

The work kicked off in earnest when the Rev. Munroe Husbands, the pied piper of the Fellowship movement, wrote to Deutsch on July 11 that he would be making a field trip to several states with the goal of organizing more Fellowships. Husbands visited New Jersey to plan and stayed at the Deutsch’s house.

By the late fall, plans had been finished and on Oct. 11, 1955, an article appeared in “The Daily Record”, headlined “Unitarianism Talk Topic on Next Tuesday” with a picture of the Husbands and the note for anyone interested to contact Marshall Deutsch of Franklin Village.

Deutsch had a well-thought-out publicity plan as in the next day’s edition of the Record, October 12, there was a letter to the editor from Winfield Greenleaf, which noted he had read the article about Husband’s upcoming talk. “The purpose of this meeting, as I understand it, is to discuss the formation of a Unitarian Fellowship in the Morristown area,” Greenleaf wrote.

On October 17, Deutsch’s letter was published in the Record noting he had read Greenleaf’s which promoted the thought that Unitarianism was of particular appeal to “engineers, scientists and other professional men of this area”.

By the time Husbands made his presentation, there had been three articles about the formation of the Fellowship published in less than a week. Husbands spoke to an audience of 50 to 60 individuals who gathered in the community room of the Morristown Trust Co. His topic “Who Are These Unitarians?” was a theme he used repeatedly over the next few years.

No list of attendees was published nor was any text from Husband’s speech reported. But things began happening rapidly.

Attendees immediately formed a steering committee aimed at creating a congregation. The committee was chaired by Greenleaf and included Eleanor Mason (listed as Mrs. R.L. Mason in the communications in that era) as secretary; Doris Babson (Mrs. Arthur) membership chair; Robert McCready, treasurer; Gerald Quinlan, religious education chair; R. Marsh Steiding, bylaws and publications chair; Anthony Parella, corresponding secretary; and Deutsch, publicity chair. By mid-December, Deutsch would hand off those duties to John Zieger.

The Deutsches were fresh from founding the Morristown Cooperative Nursery School where Marshall chaired the teachers and workshop committee and Judy handled publicity. According to Eleanor Mason’s memoir notes, it was at this school that Judy asked, “If I would like to help found a Unitarian Fellowship”. This was one of the key organizations from whose members were solicited for their possible interest in a Fellowship.

Not that the Deutsches weren’t busy elsewhere. Marshall was chair of the educational committee of the Lackawanna subsection of the American Chemical Society and was a Democratic County Committeeman.

In interviews in 2015 and 2023, Judy said she had just joined the League of Women Voters, another important source of prospects, and missed the Fellowship meeting because she felt had just joined the LWV and needed to attend its meeting