On Sunday, October 15th, the UUCM Women’s Group honored Anita Wald-Tuttle’s legacy to Unitarian Universalist values with a certificate of membership to the Clara Barton Sisterhood. The UU Women’s Federation awarded Anita the honor
a UU San Diego celebration
In the early 1990s, Northern California Unitarian Universalists living in Grass Valley and Nevada City had to travel 30 miles to the Sierra Foothills Unitarian Universalists church in Auburn.
When Anita Wald-Tuttle became Board President at SFUU and realized just how many people from the North County gave their support, she proposed a once-a-month Sunday morning “Great Ideas” meeting, with the first one in her living room in Grass Valley in 1994. That was the very beginning of what is now the Unitarian Universalist Community of the Mountains, a thriving congregation of 130 UUs and friends.
Anita has served UUCM in about every capacity, from helping to obtain the UUA charter in 1995, to being elected President of the Board in 2001, to working on the ministry teams, to bringing her famous deviled eggs to gatherings. The number of committees on which Anita has served is long, and she is the first to volunteer, just to show how it’s done. To boost contributions to the Endowment Fund, for example, she initiated a new tradition of writing a check for the number of years she celebrates each birthday. A simple but meaningful effort that has caught on.
Anita’s contributions did not start and stop at the walls of UUCM. There were decades of contributions to her previous UU churches and to her many community and justice activities (Grandmothers for Peace, League of Women Voters, Ministry for Earth, Stop the Mine Task Force, just to name a few). She has served on numerous nonprofit community boards and shows up and speaks up loudly for justice again and again. Among her many areas of service, Anita:
- volunteered in a secret abortion clinic in a small community in the Midwest
- successfully worked to get UUCM awarded as a Green Sanctuary
- is a member of the Governing Board of 211 (Nevada County regional information and resource organization), where she was also the very first recipient of Gold Country Stage’s Golden Ticket, a free transit pass for seniors over 80 years old.
- and so devoted is she to supporting UUCM, she even lived in the apartment upstairs at the church for a time to serve as a caretaker for the building.
Anita’s reputation for energetic activism is well known throughout Nevada County. Listen to this recent interview on KVMR, a local radio station, for additional insight into Anita’s life.
At 96, Anita continues to be the soul of UUCM, a true “Treasure of the Sierra Madre” cherished by all for her leadership, enthusiasm, service, and wisdom, in addition to embodying the history of our area and this grateful congregation.