Some years ago Jan, auntie & I were in Washington DC, doing some serious national tourism. Among the many interesting, sometimes moving, sometimes, well not, are the collection of one hundred statues from the states, two each.
We wandered around until we found the one we most wanted to see, Thomas Starr King.
A Universalist minister who ended up serving the First Unitarian church in San Francisco, King was a person of enormous importance in tilting California to the abolitionist side as it became a state. He worked tirelessly, campaigning up and down California’s length. He continued this march to keep Californian eyes of the ball during the Civil War. The commonly held sense is that exhausted by this work he contracted diptheria, and in his weakened condition, on this day in 1864, he died. He was thirty nine.
Normally I like to note Unitarians, Universalists and Unitarian Universalists on the days of their birth. Recognition on death days is in the tradition of honoring saints, who after their labors, have returned “home.”
By all accounts there was a hint of sanctity about this man. And somehow, honoring this secular saint of our nation’s battle to reclaim its soul, recalling Thomas Starr King on this day feels right…
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