The First Fellowship Service — Brief and with Coffee

The only description that we have of the first service of the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship at 8:30 pm. Oct. 30, 1955 at the Morristown YMCA was that it was brief, included a business meeting and a social hour (In Fellowship parlance, the last meant coffee was served).

The service was called a meeting, the naming practice used during the first year or two.

While the topic is unknown—and the first recorded subject found so far is for the service on November 28—the person who gave it is known: Vincent Lewellyn Richards. In a newsletter article in a series on Fellowship history in late 1962 and 1963, Robert McCready described Richards as a lay minister. What that meant is not known and the only other record of Richards being involved as the main participant in a service came early in 1956 when he read a sermon from a famous Unitarian mnister, a practice in those early days before the Fellowship had its own minister.

Born in Cardiff, Wales, Richards (May 10, 1917-May 2, 2004), was the son of Gwendolyn Lewellyn and believed to be the illegitimate son of Peter Dray, who died in Flanders during World War I. Vincent was adopted by David and Lydia Richards and took their surname. He enlisted in the British Army when he was 17 and at some point was stationed in Bermuda where he met New Jerseyan Wilda Townend about 1938, who was on the island on a senior high school trip with her father.. Later, he joined the Canadian Air Force and became a bomber navigator during World War II. Details of his service are not known but he visited her at least twice, and then while on leave, he flew to LaGuardia Airport and went to Wilda’s home in Arlington, N.J., where they were married on May, 13, 1944.

Richards attended the University of Toronto and earned a degree in mechanical engineering and would go to work at the then Lever Brothers. Vincent and Wilda moved to Morristown. Besides serving on the steering committee that organized the Fellowship, he would join the building and equipment committee after its formation.

The Richards’ association with the Fellowship would be short. Both joined on Jan. 8, 1956 and resigned in September. The couple separated and he took a job with the Dow Chemical Co., in Baton Rouge, La. They reconciled briefly but then Wilda filed for divorce on July 24, 1964 in Florida. Both remarried. Despite the moves, Vincent remained a Unitarian while living in Bergen County although for a while he was a member of to the Ethical Cultural Society, The newspaper, the Record, reported he would present a service for the society on May 30, 1976, titled “:Life Against Death” based on a book by Norman Brown. On May 13, 1977, his was among the signers of a petition that ran in the record urging Gov. Brendan Byrne to abolish the death penalty. By June 17 1983, he was a member of the Central Unitarian Church and was to give a poetry reading in a service that featured the thoughts of Thomas Merton and he was a member of that body when he died.

Wilda joined the Broadmoor United Methodist Church in Baton Rouge, but continued to donate to the Unitarian Church in Baton Rouge, according to her daughter, Carol. Richards Tusa (who remains a Unitarian).

This first sermon set the pattern for several years. Minister-led services were on Sunday evening as lacking its own minister, the Fellowship had to recruit those who had their own congregations. Sunday morning services were lay-led and sometimes featured panel discussions and sometimes, as in Richards’ second appearance, members read a sermon from a Unitarian minister.