VUU’s 2020 Recognition Sunday Honoree has been announced!

The Special Funds Committee is pleased to announce the 2020 Recognition Sunday Honoree of 2020.  Mary Logan Rothschild has been a member of VUU since 1985 and has had a significant impact on VUU congregational life since the day she arrived.  No one can tell her story better than Mary herself!  She provided her motivating story when she was notified of her nomination.  Please read on to get to know Mary a bit more.

When my 14 year old son, Toby, asked me to “take him to church” on Thanksgiving Day 1985 and we decided to try the Unitarian Universalist church on Warner Road, I didn’t realize that a whole new world of friends, learning and opportunities would follow.  Valley UU Church dazzled me and I joined that first Sunday, because I knew I was HOME.  And my sons fell in love with VUU, too.

I jumped right in and within a couple of weeks was teaching Sunday school to 2nd and 3rd graders which began the first decade or so of my life at VUU.  Eventually I taught most grades and for several years I was co-adviser of our youth group, YRUU, as well as a member of the Religious Education Committee.

I was elected to the Board of Trustees and served for several years before I was elected Vice President and then President of the Board in 1997.  Although I had given sermons and services several times before we organized the Worship Associate Program, my focus increasingly has become worship and how, as a lay leader, I could be part of making worship services have a significant lay presence and increase my own theological understanding of Unitarian Universalism.  My primary love is of being a Worship Associate, but I have also been a leader and participant in many Covenant Groups/Chalice Circles, and have taught some adult Faith Formation classes, too. I have served on various committees, like co-chairing the committee to find a new building and as a member on the last search committee for a settled minister.  Along with Rebecca Riggs and Anne Schneider, I started our ongoing Adult Faith Formation discussion group, Spirit of Life Reading Circle, which has just begun its seventh year and which has deepened both my spiritual life and friendships in the congregation. 

I am incredibly grateful for Valley Unitarian Universalist Congregation for the ways in which it has developed my spiritual life and given me life-long friendships the likes of which I could only have imagined that first day I walked into the church on Warner Road.  Truly, my gratitude for VUU abounds!

– Mary Logan Rothschild

Please watch for a Special Funds Committee letter regarding Recognition Sunday with a Pledge form for your opportunity to honor Mary Logan Rothschild!  Coming soon into your USPS mailbox.

Special Funds Committee

Joel Sannes, Rick Hinrichs, Anne Schneider, Carl Anderson, Joanne McGrath