Bill Petersen

(Eulogy delivered 12 October 2003, by Fred Herman at Bill's memorial service in Santa Rosa.)

Bill Petersen was many things to many people. Computer expert, worm farmer, trumpeter, poet, dad - lord, was he a dad - and above all, minister.

I still see Bill as an intense, perspiring young dude in his early 40s. But, born in 1929, he was a year older than I am. He died too soon last Tuesday after a short losing struggle with a massive cranial malignancy that left him brain-dead even before loved ones could painfully call it time to pull the plug.

Bill would not have wanted a life prolonged on a machine. He discussed themes like that in the old UU church where the Stanislaus Memorial Society, which dealt with such issues, began.

In my little valley hot spot - Modesto - the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship still thinks of 1969 to 1975 as its Camelot. One shining moment; don't let it be forgotten!

The Rev. William J. Petersen was a hard act to follow. He walked on water; parishioners still wonder why his successors can't. They take just one step into the pool and sink almost at once.

For half a decade Bill was guru to a ragtag bunch of freethinkers who gathered on Sunday mornings to deal with cerebral and esoteric issues. And if any time was left over, we might at least maybe have discussed Saving The World.

He was "discovered" at Starr King in Berkeley, a midlife seminarian who decided not to spend his life computing. Fellowship President Cliff Kenney told us Bill was a very special person who deserved to be our first full time minister.

In November 1969, Bill preached his first sermon, on the theology of naturalist John Muir. Other Petersen themes: responsible Christmases, salvation as found inside us all, Jesus as One Committed Dude, what prayer means to the atheist, church-state matters, birth to death life cycles, self-enlightenment, religious decision making, the supernatural, survival of the soul, alienation of the individual from his society, the gospel according to The Beatles and "Whither The Church?".

He loved to challenge us with "Who are we?"

Bill was single when he first arrived, but on September 1, 1970, five Modesto couples attended his San Mateo wedding to the former Mary Ann Brewer, who later made quite an impact on her own.

Bill and Mary Ann each had two children. When his sister died in an auto accident, three nephews joined the clan. They called the rural Ohio Avenue setting La Dirolda Bima Stalda. People asked what that meant. The first syllables of seven kids' names.

Today, incidentally, there are 11 grandchildren.

In the heart of the Bible belt, other temples had bar mitzvahs and first communions. When our kids hit puberty, we took them skiing - or to see "Hair."

Bill and Mary Ann took an explicit experimental curriculum called "About your Sexuality" and brought it to life for kids and adults. In Madison, Wisconsin, hardly a hotbed of conservatism, a politically ambitious district attorney attempted to prosecute UUs who spread such information.

Our aging building was plastered with butcher paper on which we wrote synonyms for the words which got folks jailed elsewhere in the nation.

The Petersens also launched encounter groups, which became extended families, and Mary Ann took on religious education and feminist causes with a vengeance.

Bill was always ready to champion progressive ideas. He and I defused a "Mayor's anti-porn rally," we and an ROTC kid who said that real pornography was students in uniform. I still believe that if we hadn't asked a few of the right questions that night, a mob would have stormed out of the MID auditorium and torched the nearest adult book store - which, incidentally, housed my barber's shop.

Bill loved poets Robinson Jeffers and e. e. cummings, UU genius Buckminister Fuller and theologians Buber, Bonhoeffer and Teilhard de Chardin. Bill shared his insights on the Bible, but once he suggested that the Whole Earth Catalog might offer the more useful information.

One Petersen sermon to stick with me was when the Unitarian Universalist Association office for gay and lesbian concerns began. Bill wasn't all that happy about it. He saw it as another way to divide people from each other. Even today, I think that in a perfect world, he was right.

On Sunday, March 23, 1975, the Rev. William Petersen startled his congregation by resigning. He did it his way - asking if we needed a minister at all, or perhaps ought to be our own ministers.

The ministerial role, he said, seems to be that of father figure, or preacher, priest, pastor and prophet. It is a role he cannot fill, he said. And besides, he added, it is sadly out of date.

The fellowship movement shows UUs can gather without clergy, he said, and the world's fastest growing religion, Islam, has no paid ministers. Some kind of peer counseling arrangement could better fulfill the ministerial function, he added.

Bill cited Mohammed, who when asked by his followers for a sign, said "Signs are all about you", and Buddha: "Be ye lamps unto yourselves."

Bill left Modesto's UU pulpit on June 30, 1975 to raise worms on the family farm, but left Modesto a very few years later, with a gaping void - one which the whole world now feels.

I had only five years, a quarter century ago, to know this man, so I surely spoken long enough. Others have memories to share, poetry to read, anecdotes of Bill, and I invite you to do so now.

[Fred Herman is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County.]

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