Notes on Two Hundred Years (and More)
by Douglas H. Parkhurst
Continued from July-August 2026…
The Unitarian Fellowship of Ridgefield made significant progress during its first eighteen months, from mid-1964 to the beginning of 1966. Sunday services were offered weekly as was religious education for youngsters. Childcare was available. The congregation found a home in a refurbished and attractive rental space at a convenient location at 21 King Lane in downtown Ridgefield. The group’s active social concerns committee was in service to both local and area communities.
William Webb, president of the Ridgefield NAACP and a lay minister, spoke at the fellowship’s service on January 9, 1966. The following week Dr. Morton Bard, professor of psychology at The City College of New York, was guest speaker. Both addressed racial discrimination. Later in the month Fred Campbell, a U.S. Navy veteran and student minister at the Westport Unitarian Church, gave a talk on “the evolvement of many people into Unitarian Universalism [and] a system of affirmative meaning around which we may build our lives.”
In early February Rev. Ralph Bailey, recently called as parish minister to the Danbury Universalist-Unitarian Church, spoke to the Ridgefield fellowship on the topic “A Unitarian Looks at Lincoln’s Religion.” Later in the month Connecticut state representative William Ratchford, a member of the Danbury church, presented “Liberal Religion – A 20th Century Way of Life” [see note below]. On February 25, the Ridgefield Unitarians took part with local Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Congregational, Baptist, Christian Science, and Methodist congregations in a World Day of Prayer service. Rev. Bailey returned in March; his sermon “Pilgrimage to Reality,” told of the journey of a man from the Protestant ministry to the Unitarian ministry.
Sunday evening concerts to benefit the congregation’s piano fund continued into the new year. In January a trio of musicians playing French horn, piano, and violin offered selections from Saint-Saens, Beethoven, and Brahms. A woodwind quintet in February featured Martha Salzman and four members of the United States Military Academy Band performing music from the classics to the present-day. In March mezzo-soprano Zelda Manacher offered works by Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, and Benjamin Britten. All performances took place at the Unitarian Meeting House on King Lane. Later in March a Saturday evening of folk dance instruction, led by member Evelyn Bernstein, was planned for teenagers and adults. Admission would be fifty cents for teens and one dollar for adults, with free refreshments available.
The work of the social concerns committee continued as an effective way for the Ridgefield fellowship to reach out to the larger community. Members continued periodic visits to Canaan House patients at Fairfield Hills Hospital in Newtown, providing musical entertainment and refreshments. The Ridgefield District Nursing Association reported that the Unitarians “outfitted a large family with clothing from head to toe,” as part of the DNA’s charitable efforts at Christmastime. The tutoring program for 7th to 12th graders in the Ridgefield schools, initiated by the fellowship the previous fall and chaired by Jon Aron, had grown to 24 adult volunteers, from both in and outside of the congregation.
Sunday morning programs were wide-ranging as winter turned to spring. Readings of and commentary on the poetry of William Butler Yeats; “Photography and the Perceptive Eye;” “The Way of Zen;” “The Religious in Religious Education;” and a two-part presentation on “The Idea of God in Western Civilization” were among these. Guest speakers included Rev. Brooks Walker from the Unitarian Fellowship in Mt. Kisco, New York, and Rev. Albert Ciarcia of the Universalist Church of Greater Bridgeport. A family Easter service on April 10 was directed by Albert Halsband and Janice West, director of religious education. Readers were fifth and sixth graders and a quartet of the Bakamjian family provided music. On May 8 Rev. Dale Dewitt, for many years a regional executive for the denomination, spoke on “The Spitritual Values of Equality.” Later in the month, Rev. Mounir Sa’adah visited again from Choate School in Wallingford. His talk “Ourselves, Vietnam, and the Religious Conscience” came at a time of increasing controversy and continuing escalation of the Vietnam war. At the June 5 service, Episcopal priest Rev. James Breeden of the National Council of Churches addressed the question of civil rights.
Officers elected at the congregation’s annual meeting in the spring of 1966 were: Albert Halsband, president; Robert Hufnagel, vice president and treasurer; and Cynthia Aron, secretary. Among committee chairs chosen were Janice West, director of religious education; Jon Aron, social concerns; Sam Ward, worship program; and June Volckhausen, membership.
The fellowship’s June 12 service was lay-led and titled “Truths Drawn From the Well of Being.” It was described as an “examination of poetry, literature, painting and music to show how they discover, not create, truths that are ‘perpetually verified by the experience of mankind.'” The music of Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Bach was performed by oboist Martha Salzman, pianist Grace Bakamjian, and violinist Thomas Kornacher. Advertised as the last service until September, this turned out to be the Unitarian Fellowship of Ridgefield’s final service as an independent entity. A meeting of the congregation that same day authorized the fellowship’s board of trustees to pursue a plan of merger with First Universalist-Unitarian Church of Danbury. The possibility of coming together was already being discussed informally by the leadership of the two groups; the Danbury U-U church conducted a similar meeting on June 12, with similar results. Planning moved ahead quickly and decisively. At a joint congregational meeting on August 13, 1966, these two organizations voted to merge and form the Unitarian Universalist Society of Northern Fairfield County (UUSNFC). The Society was renamed Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Danbury in 2003.
By-laws for the new society were adopted and officers elected for the coming church year 1966-67. Albert Halsband (Ridgefield fellowship) was chosen president; Fred Carpenter (Danbury church), vice president; Cynthia Aron (Ridgefield), secretary; and Bessie Jackson (Danbury), treasurer. Leaders of committees would be: Sam Ward (Ridgefield), worship; Janice West (Ridgefield), religious education; Milton Aronds (Danbury), finance; Grace Bakamjian (Ridgefield), music; Jon Ward (Ridgefield), social concerns; Ronald Campbell (Danbury), buildings and grounds; and June Volckhausen (Ridgefield), membership. Trustees were: Barbara Held (Danbury); Robert Norton (Danbury); Robert Hufnagel (Danbury and later Ridgefield); and Donald Stone (Danbury) [see note below].
The question of where to establish a home for the UUSNFC was addressed. The Ridgefield Unitarians had been meeting in downtown space owned by the local Odd Fellows lodge, and while modern and attractive, it was perhaps too small for the newly combined group, let alone any growth in membership. The Danbury U-Us owned their church at 347 Main Street. Constructed in 1892-93, it was on a city lot with limited off-street parking and some said the building needed major work, particularly the roof. However, the heating system was only about 15 years old and much interior refurbishing, including electrical upgrades, had been undertaken in recent years. The church school, constructed in the basement less than ten years before, had class and meeting rooms and a chapel, ready to house a dynamic new religious education program. Some maintained the Danbury building was too “traditional” and out of sync with the usages of modern liberal religion. Others revered the long liberal religious heritage of and in the building. There were members of the Danbury church who came from multi-generation families that had contributed to and worshiped there for decades. It was pointed out that a new “neutral” church location might satisfy the majority of society members and best serve people from Danbury, Ridgefield, and other area communities.
It was determined to establish new quarters for the UUSNFC elsewhere in the area. The Danbury church parsonage at 37 Pleasant Street would be kept for use by the minister and his family. Rev. Ralph Bailey, settled for the past year in the Danbury church, stayed on [see note below]. There were Danbury church members, some of many years standing, for whom too many changes, and not to their liking, were being made. Sadly, these folks fell away leaving the group with less institutional memory and a diminished feeling for its past. Such was a hard price paid for change.
On Sunday morning, September 11, 1966, the Unitarian Universalist Society of Northern Fairfield County, in business barely a month, conducted its first service in a rented building, the former Connecticut Inn, at 6 West Starrs Plain Road in Danbury, off route 7 north of the Ridgefield town line. Rev. Bailey’s sermon “What Have We Here?” fit the occasion perfectly. It was a “discussion of the purposes and possibilities of the new organization.”
[Note – William Ratchford later served as speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives and three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut’s Fifth Congressional District.]
[Note – Fred Carpenter, the new vice president, was president of the Danbury church at the time of the Ridgefield-Danbury merger. Treasurer Bessie (Pierce) Jackson was senior in membership of the new officers and probably of all the society members. She had joined the Danbury Universalist Church fifty-eight years earlier, when she was sixteen, on April 19, 1908.]
[Note – Rev. Ralph Bailey ministered to the group for four more years, moving on in 1970.]