Personal: My Life
I was born in Bethlehem ---- Pennsylvania, that is. My multi-generational household typified German-American culture: my grandparents were hard-working, reliable, and frugal. I lived in that environment for the first eighteen years of my life. A dozen first cousins filled the gap left by the absence of siblings. Some of my relatives remain in Pennsylvania and others have relocated around the United States. Education mattered to my family: I had many opportunities for personal growth in and out of formal schooling. I am a life-long learner. At age seven I started music lessons. Performing on piano, violin, and organ gave my life important focus, identity, and discipline.
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My mother dedicated her professional career to nursing. After earning an advanced degree, she became an instructor of nursing, which undoubtedly influenced my own interest in teaching. She also passed on to me a sense of hard work, generosity, resilience, and follow-through on commitments. Hers was not an easy life: she was a single parent in an era and a culture in which divorce meant social stigma. Nevertheless, she accomplished much. In July 2006, the local newspaper in Allentown, PA carried a front-page feature story on her work as an army nurse in World War II (she served in Paris days after Liberation) and she became something of a local hero for her military service as well as for her outreach to schools and community organizations about the War. She died in 2016 of terminal dementia. .
My father’s family --- the Coeymans --- was Dutch, settling in up-state New York and northern New Jersey in the late eighteenth century. I did not know my father during my childhood: we first met when I was in my early twenties. Coming from the metro-New York City area, his family was rather more cosmopolitan than was my maternal lineage. I visited my father several times in Germany, where he spent his final years until his death in 1976.
The family dynamics I experienced as a child and teen conditioned me to be a survivor. Experiencing marginalization early on because of our different family structure in our conservative Germanic culture, I developed sensitivity to recognizing underdog and oppressed people and situations, and I committed myself to working for justice in the world. I also learned the importance of speaking out and voicing my own personal needs and viewpoints. From my involvement in music in high school, it followed that I major in music in college. After four years at a small liberal arts college in central Pennsylvania, Susquehanna University, I longed for city life. Moving to Wilmington, Delaware, I taught public school music and continued music studies at a conservatory in Philadelphia. Then I pursued graduate studies in music at the University of Pennsylvania, obtaining a Masters degree in musicology in 1977. From Philadelphia, I moved to New York City for doctoral study at City University of New York, which I completed a decade later.
To pursue my interest in European music and the other arts, I chose research in French Baroque opera, which took me to Paris for several extended periods. I shared these academic interests with my partner, Richard Cleary, who majored in French architectural history. After a year of doctoral research in Paris, in 1982 we settled in Pittsburgh, where Richard joined the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University. We married there in 1983. While living in Pittsburgh, I was on the faculty of West Virginia University seventy miles away. At WVU I became interested in academic administration and in 1995 completed a Masters degree in Public Management at Carnegie Mellon in order to be better equipped for organizational leadership. While I never secured a position in university administration, that Public Management degree has served me incredibly well in ministry: I consistently call on my courses in organizational dynamics, ethics, leadership, and accounting in my church work.
To pursue my interest in European music and the other arts, I chose research in French Baroque opera, which took me to Paris for several extended periods. I shared these academic interests with my partner, Richard Cleary, who majored in French architectural history. After a year of doctoral research in Paris, in 1982 we settled in Pittsburgh, where Richard joined the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University. We married there in 1983. While living in Pittsburgh, I was on the faculty of West Virginia University seventy miles away. At WVU I became interested in academic administration and in 1995 completed a Masters degree in Public Management at Carnegie Mellon in order to be better equipped for organizational leadership. While I never secured a position in university administration, that Public Management degree has served me incredibly well in ministry: I consistently call on my courses in organizational dynamics, ethics, leadership, and accounting in my church work.
In Pittsburgh I also experienced the two most wondrous moments of my life: the birth of my son, Patrick, in 1984, and my daughter, Amanda, in 1987. I carry so many fond memories of my time with them as "mom:" cheering them on from the sidelines of many soccer games; making music with them; going on long-distance car trips to Wisconsin. In Pittsburgh I also directed an early music ensemble, the Darlington Consort, and was involved as opportunities arose in teaching and coaching early music. Further, it was in Pittsburgh that I first stepped into a Unitarian Universalist church. I was raised in the United Church of Christ, and for a time as a young adult I identified as Lutheran. Then during my arch academic days in graduate school, I dropped out of religion. However, as a mother of young children, I sensed a need to return to church. I did so carefully and cautiously, until I found the UUs! I knew when I entered Pittsburgh First Unitarian Church that I had found a spiritual home. In the Pittsburgh church, I served on the worship committee. The first time I led worship, something very special was happening that was different from my academic leadership. I now understand that the difference was the spiritual element present in worship that was not in the classroom. Holding a tenured professorship with no intention of changing my home or my career, it never occurred to me that I might become a minister.
But life changes. To keep our family together, in 1996 I gave up my tenured position at WVU and somewhat reluctantly moved to Austin, Texas where my husband joined the faculty of the University of Texas. At First UU Austin, my involvement in worship leadership grew, and I started to hear people make comments about how I looked ministerial, or how I really should consider attending seminary. Finally, I stopped trying to deny this call that I now understand started back in Pittsburgh. In 1998 I enrolled in seminary to study for parish ministry. I chose Austin Presbyterian Seminary, in the neighborhood where we lived, to minimize disruption to our children's routines during their formative years in junior and senior high school.
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In September 2001 I moved to Portland, Oregon for a one-year ministerial internship. While it was tough being away from my children, the extremes of landscape in the northwest, combined with support from many Unitarian Universalists and the ministerial growth I experienced at First Unitarian Church, made this a wonderful year. To be with my children after the internship, I returned to Austin, where I served several ministries. In Austin I also became involved in community advocacy in the Sierra Club and with Planned Parenthood, and continued to play early music and attend social dance groups (contradance and English Country). Serving interim ministries in New England and Long Island, 2005-2008, connected me with yet another area of the country, one closer to UUA headquarters as well as an area rich in the music and dance I love. Living out West then for four years, I experienced yet other ministries in yet another striking geographic area which also afforded ample opportunities for hiking, skiing, and other outdoor activities that kept me in good health physical shape and also fed my spirit. I returned to Pennsylvania in summer 2012 to be closer to family of origin at critical points in their lives. Life in Reston, Virginia for three years was culturally rich, even if somewhat nerve-wracking learning to negotiate driving habits on the Washington DC Beltway. My ministry for four years in south central Pennsylvania returned me to an area rich in agriculture and beautiful scenery, and I have enjoyed yet another contrast of terrain serving here in Indiana these past two years.
Our move to Texas in 1996 stressed an already shaky marriage. During seminary I realized that I could not be honest to my call to ministry while living in a dishonest marriage. Richard and I separated in 1999 and finalized a divorce in 2002. In the long run, this experience has made me a much stronger person, and it also expanded my capacity to empathize with challenges and struggles of other people. A seminary course on conflict management in the church actually helped me through my own personal life changes. My son, Patrick, a computer programmer, remains in Austin after graduating from the University of Texas in 2010. My daughter, Amanda, graduated from University of Massachusetts in 2010, where she met Abbey on the UMass women's rugby team. They married in 2014 and their son Danny was born in 2017. Amanda is credentialed in adapted physical education, a specialty which supports people with physical and intellectual disabilities to engage in physical activity, and Abbey is a teacher with focus on early childhood education.
Grandson Danny: with Mama Amanda Basketball with Grandma Contemplating the Hike