The following people signed the Member Book at UCF during our 2020-2021 Fiscal Year. We welcome them and value their contributions to the life of our church!
Linda Rudd
Welcome, Linda Rudd, a Unitarian since the early 1980s and recent new member at Unitarian Coastal Fellowship. She and her husband (since 1992), Tom Wentworth might be familiar faces to those participating in our Sunday worship services via Zoom. Her belief in the power of love, in all forms, and in the importance of respect and consideration for all other living beings, may well have sprung from her grandfather, a resident of Maine and a Unitarian.
Widowed in 1986 with two daughters, Addie and Beth, Linda continued an active professional career that included positions as a clinical microbiologist in the hospital setting; laboratory supervisor at NC State University and a science writer and editor. Her educational background (BA in Microbiology from Ohio Wesleyan University; MS in Science Communication from NCSU) and work experience left her well suited for working
part time with the NC Natural Heritage Program as a writer/editor and work on special projects as needed, in retirement. Linda also enjoys reading, knitting, quilting, gardening and home canning as hobbies.
Daughter Addie, her husband and daughter live in Indianapolis where as an Impressionist artist, she teaches and creates art in her own studio. Linda’s granddaughter, Emmaline is 14 and LOVES SUUSI, which they all attend every year. Beth lives in Raleigh, is learning disabled, lives in her own condo and works in the service sector.
Linda’s first imperative is to live a moral life of love and service while drawing from the earth-centered tradition, believing as long as it harms none, do as you will. She strives to live a life filled with joy, love, compassion, honesty, and community while relying on in our personal intellectual and emotional resources, and each other. We are delighted you have chosen UCF as a place to support and nurture these gifts you bring to our family.
Tom Wentworth
Tom Wentworth recently retired from NC State University, becoming Professor Emeritus in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, where he taught for over forty-two years. He holds a BA degree in biology from Dartmouth College and a PhD degree in plant ecology from Cornell University. Tom has shared his knowledge of the flora and vegetation of the southeast with thousands of students through field trips for his ecology courses at NC State and for field courses offered through the Highlands Biological Station. With Dr. Stephanie Jeffries, he is co-author of Exploring Southern Appalachian Forests: An Ecological Guide to 30 Great Hikes in the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee, and Virginia (University of North Carolina Press, 2014). Tom has served in many professional service capacities, and he recently collaborated with a diverse group of plant scientists to create the Plant Science Decadal Vision 2020-2030, with the goal of “Reimagining Plants for a Sustainable Future.”
Tom, and his wife Linda, are planning to move in the near future from their property in Raleigh to an apartment in a retirement community in Cary. For the foreseeable future, they plan to spend much of their time at their Beaufort cottage with a “fleet” of small boats and their cat! They had visited UCF several times over the years and enjoyed the friendliness and caring community of our congregation as well as Rev. Sally’s sermons. In the early fall they added a membership in UCF to their existing membership with the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh. Tom has already joined the Green Sanctuary Committee and we look forward to some wonderful local hikes with him after the pandemic. I thoroughly enjoyed my more than two-hour long interview with Tom, and I am sure you will enjoy getting to know him too! Welcome to UCF Tom and Linda!
Bob Thomas
Hi, I’m Bob Thomas. Some people in the congregation may know me as Mr. Barbara Thomas. I’ve always been married (53 years).
I grew up on Long Island – my mother was Irish Catholic and my Dad a laissez-faire Protestant. So I was brought up Catholic and even attended Catholic school for two years when I was in Elementary school. By the time I was a teen, I was done with the dogma of the church.
When I returned from Viet Nam in 1969 (Barb and I were already married), we moved to upstate New York and built a cabin on a dead-end dirt road. We loved the “homesteading life” and had a great group of friends who were doing the same thing. Our two children (Justin and Mattie) were born there. We were planning on spending the rest of our lives there until I spent a winter reading cruising magazines and books – I was bitten by the sailing bug which would dominate the rest of our lives.
We sold our house and moved to Beaufort, NC, bought a 36-foot wood schooner and moved aboard full-time, cruising the East Coast of the US and spending two winters in the Bahamas with our children. The spirituality of a night watch sailing on the ocean with my family sleeping down below still touches me all these years later.
In the late 80’s we built a steel 42 foot schooner (Rhiannon). We moved aboard in 1989. I had been a welder for 20 years but at this point, I made a small course correction and went to nursing school. I spent most of my nursing career as an ER nurse. I loved being a nurse. My career as a nurse and Barb’s as a Respiratory Therapist also allowed us to spend seven winters in the Bahamas on Rhiannon over the next 20 years. We now have four teenaged grandchildren who all live in Maryland, and Dory, our enthusiastic and loveable dog.
It was somewhere during the late 80’s that I accompanied Barb to UCF at the Galley Stack restaurant. To say that I started sporadically would be generous. At what could be described as a glacial pace, I became more and more attached to the UCF family. The people are our church and whenever or however we meet they raise my spirit, touch my soul and put a smile on my face. I hope as a member I can, in a small way, touch them.
Kate Reavis
Welcome back to Kate Reavis, former member who has returned to eastern North Carolina and rejoined our fellowship. Born and raised in Swansboro, Kate spent 25 years as a social worker, then decided to make a life change and went to live and work at Southern Dharma, a 40-year-old Buddhist silent meditation and retreat center, in Hot Springs, NC, from 2016-2019.
She is currently deeply engaged in the work of social justice, in the form of antiracism action and education, participating in training for Zen Chaplaincy through New York Zen Center For Contemplative Care, chair of our Social Action Committee and a member of the Pastoral CareTeam, a new member of Citizens For Diversity in Education, and a sitting member of the board of Great Tree Women’s Zen Center, in Alexander, NC.
She is a live-in Mimi to a beautiful grandboy, Landon, a mother to Ashton and Zack, a yoga instructor, a visual and musical artist, a writer with a book in process, a cat lover, a trained chef, and the daughter of a commercial fisherman.
She believes in community care and the value of well and intentionally cultivated relationships that support us from birth to death. She is a practicing Buddhist.
Liz Morningstar
She will tell you that her presence here in Eastern North Carolina is all due to her husband’s desire for a shoulder bag when he attended nursing school orientation in Denver, Colorado. Her weaving together of seemingly disjointed events puts her humor and thoughtfulness on full display…be sure to ask her to tell you all about it.
Liz, her husband, Adam, and her dog, Savannah, moved to Eastern North Carolina in the fall of 2019. After spending her youth in Saint Louis, Missouri (where she became involved in issues of racial equity), she spent time in such disparate environments as Columbia, Missouri (to study journalism) Boulder, Colorado (PhD. In Sociology) and San Diego—as well as a stint in a tiny country known as the Warm Heart of Africa, Malawi. Liz never expected to live in North Carolina, but Adam’s career as a Navy Nurse means that adventure is always around the corner.
While in Boulder, Liz was a member of a UU church, but admittedly she found a Sunday hike in the Rockies provided spiritual renewal, too. After moving to Swansboro in the fall of 2019, Liz began to explore UCF. Self described as an “extrovert with purpose”, Liz is much more comfortable with deep, challenging discussions than idle chatter, so not surprisingly, she joined one of the anti-racist book study groups. She admits to initially being very challenged by Eastern North Carolina, but happily reports being helped by a particular conversation after one of our Sunday services.
In addition to finding new ways to get involved at UCF, Liz is trying to learn to play the djembe drum, working to convince herself to turn her dissertation (on young adult children growing up with parents with mood disorders) into a manuscript, and exploring the waters of NC in her kayak.