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Sesquicentennial Interview: Nan Sparrow

When: 1974

This interview was conducted in 1974 as part of the I Remember When television series produced by the Ann Arbor Public Library.

Transcript

  • [00:00:11] CATHERINE ANDERSON: We're talking with Mrs. Nan Sparrow, a former member of the City Charter Commission. I think we'd just like to start out with asking you to describe your experiences and how you got involved with the City Charter Commission in 1955.
  • [00:00:24] NAN SPARROW: Well, if anybody's to blame, it's the League of Women Voters. I was asked to be the Chairman of Local Affairs way back in, I think it was 48 or something like that. Little knowing what I was getting into, I said yes. [LAUGHTER] It kept me busy for oh, I should say, six or seven years, almost full time. But it was worth it, and it was a great experience.
  • [00:00:51] CATHERINE ANDERSON: How did the suggestions for the City Charter come about?
  • [00:00:55] NAN SPARROW: Let's go back a bit. Ann Arbor had been operating under a very old city charter. Actually, it was the City Charter of 1889. Through the years, amendments had been added to it. Changes had been made. Finally, in the '40s, it had got so cumbersome and out of date that concerned citizens, realized the only way we could have an improvement would be a complete revision of the charter. Up to 1940, two attempts had been made. Actually, the revised charter had been submitted to the electorate and they had been turned down. By 1940, the League of Women Voters nationally, became very much interested in improved local government. Particularly in studying the manager, city manager, form of government. It seemed to be better adapted to modern times. The local unit here went right along with it. We got busy on it and had a committee to study the needs. We got together with other groups in town, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, the Democratic Party, some very fine liberal Republicans and other concerned citizens. We got started studying, we even got as far as putting out petitions for charter change. When all of a sudden, it came to us that the city wasn't ready for it. We kept hearing grumbles from the conservative business group downtown, that this was radical, and we didn't need it, and that sort of thing. We took a poll of the members of council at the time and found that the majority of the council members were against it, including the mayor. We did a quick retake and said, perhaps this is not the time. We had a committee it was called the Charter Revision Citizens, wait a minute. Let me get it. It's the Citizens Committee for Charter Revision. We said, well we won't do it right now, but we'll go underground. We'll try to get a majority on the council and let the council take the responsibility for studying a new charter and putting it on the ballot. We persuaded all four or five of our own members to run for the council. We were successful. Before you knew it, we had a majority on the council. They in turn, asked for a charter study committee of the Common Council to study this whole matter, which was done. They since they had the majority, they got the consent for that. They got a local attorney by the name of Louis Andrews, who's still practicing here in town to do the study. He naturally came up with the same demand almost for charter revision as our committee had. This was presented to the council, and they adopted it, and took a vote and decided to go ahead with charter revision. The steps were that they first had to get the public to accept the idea of a charter revision. Then elect nine Charter Commissioners. The Charter Commissioners then would study, the old charter and propose a new one, and then present that to the public and have them vote yes or no on the new charter. This was done and with our strategy, we got accepted. I don't know whether you're interested in the dates or not, but this stretched from 1948 right up to 1955, what I've been talking to you about.
  • [00:05:42] CATHERINE ANDERSON: What exactly in the charter did you see needed revision? What did the new charter provide for?
  • [00:05:51] NAN SPARROW: The main points were that the charter was all right for the 19th century and early 20th century. It was not usable, really, not as usable for the mid 20th century, and particularly for the burgeoning community here. Ann Arbor was expanding at a great rate. They had an old idea, old system of running the city by volunteer boards and commissions, which was fine. It involved a number of fine citizens but at the same time it divided the authority. Some of those commissions, for instance, would have charged the business of certain departments. This was time consuming because actually, it wasn't centralized. There was no centralized purchasing, no centralized budgeting, no centralized system of hiring personnel at the time. Each department did their own. It was a much more efficient city government.
  • [00:07:11] CATHERINE ANDERSON: The new charter provided for appointed boards and commissions and the city manager?
  • [00:07:17] NAN SPARROW: No, they did away with that. They did away with the boards and commissions. Actually, those boards and commissions had been appointed, but they revised it to committees of the council itself. Having connections with the different departments so that it all funneled into the business of the city funneled into the council itself. The council before that, had to take up a lot of detail. It was brought to it by the boards and commissions, whereas we hope that the council will be more of a policy making group rather than tending to little details of small amounts of money for this and that and the minutiae of government.
  • [00:08:11] NAN SPARROW: I must say that I think that on the whole, it worked out very well. In fact, the auditor for the city who had followed the whole procedure, said two or three years after the new charter was in effect, that he didn't know how the city would have got along without the new charter, but I must tell you a few things. You might be interested to see some of the material that I got out of the archives. One of the reasons that we gave up the first referendum on the charter was that there was a great deal, as I mentioned, a great deal of opposition to it. We put out several pamphlets and one in particular that infuriated the more conservative members of the community because it looked as if we were making fun of the old city charter, and this was sacrosanct to some people, but here is one that infuriated some of the conservatives, because we depicted the city government as a big modern van being pulled up hill by a rickety old horse. Did you get that?
  • [00:09:43] CATHERINE ANDERSON: That's off now.
  • [00:09:45] NAN SPARROW: Would you be interested to know what who some of the personalities were interested in the revision?
  • [00:09:58] CATHERINE ANDERSON: First let me ask you.
  • [00:10:00] NAN SPARROW: I thought you might be interested to know the names of some of the people who are still around, who had a great part in this move toward charter revision. I'm just reading here now some of the members of the Citizens Committee for Charter Revision. There's Mrs. H. R. Crane, Florence Crane, who's on one of the governor's committees now. Would you be interested in know what these people have done since or not?
  • [00:10:27] CATHERINE ANDERSON: If it pertains.
  • [00:10:29] NAN SPARROW: Mrs. Ivan Duff, who was executive director of Planned Parenthood here in town. Franklin Forsythe, who was still a practicing attorney. Mrs. Ronald Freedman, who went on and got her PhD, I believe in political science. Kenneth Heininger is still in town. Gene Maybee, he was one of the ones that we had run for council, by the way. He is retired now. He's principal at the Tappan Junior High School. Lawrence Ouimet was on the council and was the chairman of our Charter Commission. He is deceased now. John Roth is still in town. He works for Bendix. Russell Smith is a retired professor of law, and so on, and myself. I think those are people that are still around and still known in Ann Arbor.
  • [00:11:29] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Now I think you've been pretty modest about telling me about the works of the commission. How about if you tell me how you functioned in the commission as being working with the Women League of Voters?
  • [00:11:39] NAN SPARROW: Would you like to know who were members of the commission?
  • [00:11:42] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Yes.
  • [00:11:44] NAN SPARROW: Well, Larry Ouimet was our chairman. We were elected. I must tell you something about the election, too, why I came to be elected. I was the chairman for the League of Women Voters Study Group. We put out a really, very fine study on the charter. We decided we needed a woman on this charter commission. We knew if two or three of us ran, not one of us would get it. Since I had been on the Citizens Committee for Charter Revision and been very active in that and was fairly well known in town, had been here a long time. They asked me to run for it. That's something to remember. If you really want to have somebody representing a group, don't spread your votes too thin, just pick one person. That's the reason I know that I was elected, the only woman on it. Otherwise, we would never have got a woman on it if two or three of us had run, but there was Larry Ouimet, Russell Smith, Cecil Creal, Robert Angell, who's here still in town, Max Frisinger, Dean Stason from the law school, who's now deceased, Henry Conlin, who lives just down the street from me and Paul Kauper, who just died within the last year. What we did.
  • [00:13:17] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Can we hold one here? On minute here, Patty? I'm sorry. You personally did.
  • [00:13:21] NAN SPARROW: Surely. I was a member as I said of the League of Women Voters Charter Study Committee. We put out a report and you might be interested in know the names of the women who are instrumental in getting that report out. Jean Campbell, who's very active here in town now, Lolagene Coombs, Allison Myers, all women who've been outstanding in their contribution here to Ann Arbor. Louise Stevenson, now deceased, and myself, and we put a lot of time into that into a voluminous report. As for the commission itself, we spent almost two years hacking away at that, you know, studying the old charter, seeing what parts we wanted to keep. It wasn't a case of throwing the whole thing out, keeping what was valid and yet finding the things that needed to be changed. We had professional help. We interviewed all of the departments, the officers, the elected officers. Different organizations were asked to come and give testimony, but it took us about two years or so, really, year and a half or two years to get it into shape. In the meantime, our Citizens Committee for Charter Revision was very busy writing letters to the Ann Arbor News, getting editorials in there. We had a speakers bureau, too, where we went around and presented our case to different organizations. We solicited, really.
  • [00:15:19] NAN SPARROW: All organizations in town just said this was available and could we come, the service clubs and so on. We had learned our lesson. We had the groundwork pretty well taken care of so that by the time the citizens of Ann Arbor voted on whether there should be charter revision or not, it went through very easily.
  • [00:15:44] CATHERINE ANDERSON: How did the first group get together about charter revision? Whose idea was it to start running people for council and to get together?
  • [00:15:53] NAN SPARROW: Two or three of us. [LAUGHTER] They met right here in this living room for many meetings and I should say, though, it was a few of us leaders in the League of Women Voters and in the Junior Chamber of Commerce, Citizens Council, Democratic Party, and as I said, a group of liberal Republicans.
  • [00:16:21] CATHERINE ANDERSON: How about what happened when the charter was finally passed? What happened to the resistance then? Were those people still fighting it very firmly?
  • [00:16:31] NAN SPARROW: Yes. Actually, Mayor Brown, who was in office at the time, said that he was very disappointed in many of the aspects of the new charter. There were grumbles from the more conservative elements. But in the long run, I think some of those people who were in office even took credit for it, even though they had opposed it first place.
  • [00:17:08] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Why don't you think that there had been a charter study before this? Was there something in Ann Arbor politics that tended to suppress a new look at the charter?
  • [00:17:20] NAN SPARROW: You mean, before we started on this? As I told you, twice before that, they had presented a new charter that had been turned down. But Ann Arbor was a pretty conservative community on the whole. It was really run by a group of conservative Republicans and they had things pretty well in their pocket.
  • [00:17:56] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Could you describe going back a little bit further, when you went to college here and when you first moved here before you became really active? Could you describe what the political maybe a little bit more? I'm not talking about specific names, but how you saw the political atmosphere in Ann Arbor?
  • [00:18:13] NAN SPARROW: That's a good question because I don't know. It doesn't seem to me there was the public interest in city government at that time. I think, great many people just voted straight tickets to either Republican or Democratic, and left it up to the elected officials to take care of things. Whereas a number of things got so obvious, so services and this sort of thing. More and more people began to realize that a change was needed.
  • [00:18:56] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Has the League of Women Voters always been a pretty active political force in town?
  • [00:19:03] NAN SPARROW: Yes, not always as respected as it might have been because I'll be very frank with you, the conservative group that ran the city at one time had their suspicions about the League of Women voters. They felt that we were idealists and didn't know what we were talking about, weren't very practical, and perhaps that was true at first. But we learned a lot on how to be practical and yet to get what we wanted to change. Does that answer your question?
  • [00:19:43] CATHERINE ANDERSON: In this case, you were the only woman on the commission. But have there been women very many up to now, very many women council people?
  • [00:19:54] NAN SPARROW: That was slow. This Mrs. Crane, Florence Crane was one, Mrs. Towsley was another. I must tell you after I got into this and had won one election, I was asked by both parties, I'm an independent voter myself, both parties to run for the council, which I thought was rather amusing. But a few and of course, right now, the condition has changed completely. I'm not familiar right now with how many women are on the council now. Are you? Do you know?
  • [00:20:30] CATHERINE ANDERSON: I think there's two right now.
  • [00:20:33] NAN SPARROW: We've never had 50/50. I know that. But women have run for the school board. I'd say it is improving a great deal right now, but it was slow business for a while. Very slow process of getting women first to run, and then to put the effort out, and then to win.
  • [00:21:04] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Do you think that the politicians discouraged women from doing this?
  • [00:21:10] NAN SPARROW: I think so at first. Yes, at first, they did. But now, of course, the National Democratic Party has its new platform of parity for women and blacks and so on. Well, there's a big breakthrough.
  • [00:21:26] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Just looking at the politics again in Ann Arbor, what do you see? I think the charter that you worked on was one of the major impetus forces in the politics. But what do you see as some of maybe the most inventive, the most forward-looking programs or ordinances or services that the city has undertaken since you remember coming to Ann Arbor?
  • [00:21:55] NAN SPARROW: Since I remember, well, of course, I think it's the charter revision itself and what was contained in it.
  • [00:22:06] CATHERINE ANDERSON: How about, I'm thinking now.
  • [00:22:08] NAN SPARROW: Well, now, wait a minute. There's one thing in there I should have mentioned before. One thing that we put in there in the charter that was permissive and we would hope that there would be fair housing ordinances and human rights commissions and so on. I must say that answers your question. Because of some of the provisions in the revised charter, we've been enabled to have housing commissions, as you know, and right now, Fair Employment Acts, and several others that have opened up the whole field of human rights. I would say that is the one big change that has come about, besides the provision in the revised charter.
  • [00:23:17] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Have there been any real moments of discouragement or anything in your own participation? Is there any events you can recall that?
  • [00:23:27] NAN SPARROW: Any discouragement you mean?
  • [00:23:30] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Right.
  • [00:23:31] NAN SPARROW: No, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that if you want change, you have to realize it's going to take a long time. I think probably here in town if you wanted any fundamental change it would take at least 10 years. You can't get change overnight. If it's political change, you have to acknowledge the realities, the nitty gritty of hard hard work, never giving up. That answer your question?
  • [00:24:14] CATHERINE ANDERSON: You mentioned before when we talked that you'd like to talk about how people can go about initiating change as public pressure groups. How would you advise, let's say, any group that would like to see some change initiated to go about it?
  • [00:24:34] NAN SPARROW: Well, I think to begin with, you have to belong to a group, such as League of Women Voters or Junior Chamber of Commerce or AAUW or in a matter of students, some student group. Then getting a small group within the larger group to study and make recommendations, have a larger group adopt it, and then get other organizations to join you, and then really putting on a campaign. You might be interested to know that before you can put the charter on the ballot, you have to have the governor's approval and this is what we did. We sent the copies of the proposed City Charter of Ann Arbor to the governor, and he and his experts went through it and approved it. This is a copy of it and this is a picture of the governor signing it. He has to sign it. Then after that, it has to come up to the public of the city and on Monday, April 4th, 1955, the new charter was adopted three to one. That is the charter that the city has been operating under ever since. With some amendments of course.
  • [00:26:11] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Have you been involved in political campaigns other than the Charter Commission?
  • [00:26:16] NAN SPARROW: Oh, yes. Every once in a while, there's a candidate that I'm very much in favor of, and I get right in there and get busy and work for that candidate.
  • [00:26:32] CATHERINE ANDERSON: Why do you enjoy campaigning and being in political life?
  • [00:26:37] NAN SPARROW: I'll have to be very personal with you about that. I am a convicted Christian, and I feel that it is our duty and privilege as religious people to take part in the Democratic process and work for what is best for human beings and for our communities.
  • [00:27:11] TED TROST: Tell us, how did the Church Women United get organized?
  • [00:27:16] NAN SPARROW: You mean nationally?
  • [00:27:18] TED TROST: Yes. That would be a good idea, and also how it got over [OVERLAPPING].
  • [00:27:21] NAN SPARROW: You probably know that the World Day of Prayer was nationwide, actually international for years. It started at the dateline in the Pacific and followed the 24 hours right around and it was started by a group, I think, of Methodist women, to worship together, and they called this the World Day of Prayer. It was usually the first Friday in Lent and from that, it was ecumenical, and from that there was a desire to do more together than worship.
  • [00:28:06] TED TROST: Then on the local level, the idea came to a number of different people or a number of different churches in Ann Arbor.
  • [00:28:12] NAN SPARROW: There were four or five women who had taken part in World Day of Prayer, who decided that we should have a unit of Church Women United actually was called United Church Women for years, and then they changed the name. They formed a council. Actually, it was 32 years ago in 1942.
  • [00:28:38] TED TROST: 1942, that was the year that it began. As you look back, over those 32 years, there must have been some outstanding programs that took place that may come to mind.
  • [00:28:50] NAN SPARROW: Yeah. It's been a matter of steady growth. A Mrs. Peter Stair, who was a Methodist here, was the first president, and it has been a very active movement ever since. Actually, it is a movement rather than an organization, a movement toward unity, toward ecumenical unity.
  • [00:29:13] TED TROST: In the beginning, were most of the congregations in Ann Arbor?
  • [00:29:17] NAN SPARROW: No, it started, I think with five or six and then it's grown so that now I think we have about 23 different churches. Not that many denominations, as you know, but about 23 churches represented.
  • [00:29:34] TED TROST: In addition to supporting the World Day of Prayer, what are some of the other programs?
  • [00:29:42] NAN SPARROW: I might tell you what the purpose is to begin with.
  • [00:29:45] TED TROST: A good idea.
  • [00:29:46] NAN SPARROW: Actually, it's a movement of Protestant, Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox women who meet together, to worship and to enjoy fellowship and to serve the community, the local and the larger community.
  • [00:30:09] TED TROST: How have Church Women United served the community here in Ann Arbor? I know that.
  • [00:30:15] NAN SPARROW: Let me say first what the worship consists of now. We still have the World Day of Prayer in March and then you asked what the activities were. We have three celebrations, as you probably know. In the fall, we have World Community Day in which we all meet together to worship and to consider some world issue. This last time, for example, this last fall, the whole meeting was devoted to world hunger and the CROP organization that we've supported for many years and the migrants. Then in the spring, in May, we meet together for May fellowship, which considers the local scene, the local needs.
  • [00:31:09] TED TROST: It's interesting. At the when you meet together to discuss some of these great issues such as hunger. Do you usually have a speaker come in from the outside?
  • [00:31:20] NAN SPARROW: Yes. We had the director of the Michigan CROP. I forget what they call it. He's a member of the Michigan Council of Churches. I can't recall his name right now, but he came and spoke and showed pictures of worldwide hunger and told what we might do about it.
  • [00:31:46] TED TROST: How is Church Women United supported?
  • [00:31:51] NAN SPARROW: By individual churches giving gifts and by individuals as well.
  • [00:31:58] TED TROST: I suppose then you have an opportunity to meet at each other's churches.
  • [00:32:03] NAN SPARROW: Oh, that's the point. Yes, indeed. We go around, as you know, we meet in different churches. I must say too that right from the beginning, the emphasis here in Ann Arbor, particularly has been on international understanding in close cooperation with the Ecumenical Campus Center, which gives us a great opportunity to broaden our field there. Would you like to know what we do in that regard?
  • [00:32:31] TED TROST: That sounds very interesting.
  • [00:32:34] NAN SPARROW: Every year, the Church Women United prepares and serves a dinner for international students in cooperation with the Ecumenical Campus Center. Not only that, but during term, every Tuesday noon, different women from different churches prepare and serve a luncheon down at the International Center for international students. Did you know that?
  • [00:33:03] TED TROST: No. I didn't know about that.
  • [00:33:07] NAN SPARROW: Then we have a very good relationship with the Board of the Ecumenical Campus Center in which we go down and meet the students. We get to know them. A number of us are on the board.
  • [00:33:20] TED TROST: That's what I was going to ask you. There is an opportunity to become personally acquainted.
  • [00:33:25] NAN SPARROW: That's right. It's not just an impersonal thing. We do get to know some of the students. Then another emphasis that you might be interested in is that right from the first, the Church Women United has been interracial. We've had one black woman who was president. We have representatives from all of the black churches and we have different studies as well. Two year study one time was on the racial equality.
  • [00:34:00] TED TROST: How do these studies take place? Is there?
  • [00:34:03] NAN SPARROW: They're put out by the National Church. The National Organization of Church Women United is excellent. They put out three or four years ago on human rights and what we do is get a group together or presented at one of our meetings, or something like that.
  • [00:34:26] TED TROST: There's an opportunity for discussion.
  • [00:34:28] NAN SPARROW: Yes, that's right.
  • [00:34:30] TED TROST: Now, go ahead.
  • [00:34:33] NAN SPARROW: I have found and I've been with the Church Women United now for about 30 years that they're way ahead of the community. They've got some very perceptive women at the head of it in at national. The studies and books that they put out are forerunners of really what the problems that confront our society a little later.
  • [00:35:02] TED TROST: There's an eye on the future.
  • [00:35:04] NAN SPARROW: Sort of prophetic in a way.
  • [00:35:08] TED TROST: As far as service is concerned, is that where some of the work for the ecumenical students?
  • [00:35:15] NAN SPARROW: Yes, that's one of them. Some of the others are services here in the community. We have a group of women that go out to Maxey School to counsel and help the boys out there. Another group that goes to Ypsilanti State Hospital.
  • [00:35:39] NAN SPARROW: Then, of course, we help with the migrants here in the state.
  • [00:35:44] TED TROST: What do you find is particularly exciting about this year's program, you tell us what's going on.
  • [00:35:49] NAN SPARROW: This year's program is very interesting, particularly as I mentioned, the emphasis on world hunger. Right now, I can see that we're going to take part in a statewide emphasis on man's greed, to study. In what way Americans are really greedy? But we can do about it.
  • [00:36:19] TED TROST: Discussion.
  • [00:36:20] NAN SPARROW: My own interest at present, I have been past president, but I'm the chairman of Leadership Education and we just finished a two session course in perspect women's perspective.
  • [00:36:41] TED TROST: Tell us about that.
  • [00:36:42] NAN SPARROW: How can we use our time and energy to the best effect.
  • [00:36:47] TED TROST: Have they got or found some solutions or some?
  • [00:36:50] NAN SPARROW: Kind of shook us up.
  • [00:36:53] TED TROST: What went on? Tell us about.
  • [00:36:54] NAN SPARROW: Della and Ken Cowing were our consultants, and by using the latest group techniques, and so on. They got us to examine our own attitudes. Where are we really wasting our time and energy? What are our priorities?
  • [00:37:20] TED TROST: Although those insights would definitely be helpful.
  • [00:37:23] NAN SPARROW: They're very good. In the past, we have given courses in group dynamics and group decision making and also personal enrichment, until then.
  • [00:37:43] TED TROST: Are you facing any particular challenges now in terms of the movement on the local scene that.
  • [00:37:50] NAN SPARROW: On which movement?
  • [00:37:51] TED TROST: At the Church Women United, the group is still strong and active?
  • [00:37:56] NAN SPARROW: Very strong, very active. We have a group of young women. I must say when I first went into it, it was a middle age to old age group. Now we have so many women with children that we have to have babysitters whenever we have any meetings. We have 10 or 12 youngsters come with their mothers.
  • [00:38:19] TED TROST: I suppose the membership, of course, has increased over the years to include?
  • [00:38:23] NAN SPARROW: Yes, it has.
  • [00:38:25] TED TROST: Probably the majority of protestant congregations.
  • [00:38:28] NAN SPARROW: By, yes. That doesn't mean that all of women and all of the churches, of course, are active. But I should say that, I have happened to have upstairs a file of women who have done things in the last three or four years, who've gone. We also have ecumenical coffees around in homes.
  • [00:38:51] TED TROST: What happens there? Just opportunity for fellowship or?
  • [00:38:54] NAN SPARROW: It usually something some theme or discussion of some sort, around usually before one of the celebrations, and they've been very successful and we enjoy those very much.
  • [00:39:14] TED TROST: I was thinking being so actively involved in 32 years, there must have been a number of personal satisfactions that you derived from this.
  • [00:39:25] NAN SPARROW: Particularly from the ecumenical point of view. I am a strong supporter of the ecumenical movement, both in the Council of Churches and among Church Women United because I think that denominational barriers are a scandal, utter scandal. When you are working with a group of women like this from different churches, after a while, you don't know, you can't remember what church they belong to or what denomination. I don't see a great deal of difference as far as people's attitudes. You can't spot them. They're all Christians and they all, if they're women of goodwill, they're all pretty much the same.
  • [00:40:19] TED TROST: This definitely is a personal satisfaction.
  • [00:40:22] NAN SPARROW: Very much.
  • [00:40:24] TED TROST: You would, I'm sure also probably say that, the community also has benefited?
  • [00:40:31] NAN SPARROW: The community, I think has benefited by Church Women United. Yes, I do. We have stood for a number of things in the community when we were trying to get a human rights commission, for example. Church Women United went down and then testified at the City Hall because we felt this was right and the fair housing law. Were you here at that time when we had the housing?
  • [00:41:05] TED TROST: How would you go about this? How would you, I don't want to say mobilize, but how would you get this opportunity? Tell us about that, that should be interesting.
  • [00:41:15] NAN SPARROW: What you do is bring a resolution before the board of Church Women United, present it, have discussion, and then ask if it would be acceptable. And then when it's passed, you present that just from the board, you can't speak for every woman and every church. But it does mean that the board of Church Women United has passed a resolution.
  • [00:41:49] TED TROST: Certainly of those that didn't necessarily agree with it, participated in this.
  • [00:41:54] NAN SPARROW: It's been interesting. I don't know whether women are like a lot of sheep or what, but by the time we present it, we usually get unanimous vote on it. Of course, we don't bring up anything that is too controversial, for instance, like abortion, because we have Roman Catholics on it, and there's no sense of trying to get unanimous decision on abortion. But there are some things that you can, you see.
  • [00:42:27] TED TROST: As we go into 1975, what things would you like to see the Church Women United do that maybe they haven't done before or some things that they have done that you'd like to see strengthen?
  • [00:42:41] NAN SPARROW: Yes. I think that we could put on what they call a forum every so often on some issue, and we're planning to do that, I think, on greed and on world hunger, at which we would invite other organizations to come in on it. We'd have a speaker. It would be an all day affair, give everybody a chance to examine her own thinking, her own priorities and come up with some personal decision. I think this is one thing. We also have in the past, and we're going to do it again this year, have a quiet day in which we just set some time aside for meditation. We usually have someone who leads us. I would hope that we would have more of those because I don't think that any program should go one way or another too far. I think it should be balanced.
  • [00:43:59] TED TROST: Again, looking back now, this being an ecumenical venture, and programs having been established which invite people in from the outside, both men and women, who are some of the interesting and committed christian personalities that you may have met through the years that have impressed you by their commitment?
  • [00:44:23] NAN SPARROW: You mean men and women?
  • [00:44:24] TED TROST: Women, yes. Perhaps women especially, the people who've spoken to you or with whom you've become acquainted.
  • [00:44:33] NAN SPARROW: You mean here in town?
  • [00:44:34] TED TROST: Here in town or outside on the larger scene.
  • [00:44:39] NAN SPARROW: A Pearl McNeil, whose husband was minister in Detroit who's had a great influence on my life, a black woman. She's now getting her PhD. I think at George Washington in Washington, a fine woman who came out here and spoke to us many times. We had Rosa Page Welch here one time, the singer. So far as the group here in town is concerned, it's hard for me to pick out because I have met some of the finest women I have ever known through Church Women United with a serious attitude toward life, not just the chit chat that you get at cocktail parties or at teas. You get under the surface, and I've made lifelong friends in that way. But it's hard for me to pick out any that I can tell you some of the presidents who have been outstanding. Lucy Reedy is president. Doris Rumman was president before her. You know her, I think. She was Executive Director of the Ecumenical Campus Center when it was another name. Elizabeth Fox, who is very active in the Word of God group. Just a string of very outstanding, interesting people.
  • [00:46:24] TED TROST: I guess with all this ecumenical fellowship you, the words blessed be the tie that binds is very meaningful to you.
  • [00:46:31] NAN SPARROW: Yes, that's right. That's not an Episcopal's hymn, but I'll take it.
  • [00:46:39] TED TROST: That's right.
  • [00:46:40] CATHERINE ANDERSON: I have only one other question, and that is, do you have any qualifications for letting members join your group?
  • [00:46:49] NAN SPARROW: No, except that they are Christian. That's all.
  • [00:46:53] CATHERINE ANDERSON: But you have Jewish people in your group?
  • [00:46:55] NAN SPARROW: No, we don't, but we have a relationship with them, but they're not members. I don't suppose you want to go into the unitarian bit. But they used to be members, but when there was a change at the National Council of Churches, when they excluded the Unitarians, that must have been 10 or 15 years ago, then we were forced because we were a part of the National Council of Churches to go along with it. But within the last five or six years, the Church Women United is entirely divorced from the National Council of Churches, so we're on our own.