Category: Obituary: W

The Rev. Dr. Walter “Walt” F. Wieder died on December 22, 2025, at the age of 81 (1944−2025).

Walt is survived by his wife of 38 years, Janet Wieder; his daughter, Gina Gerger; and his siblings, Joan Wieder, Theresa Wieder, and Mark Wieder.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Phoenix, 4027 E Lincoln Dr, Paradise Valley AZ 85253, or the Desert Botanical Garden, 1201 N Galvin Pkwy, Phoenix AZ 85008. UURMaPA will contribute to the UUMA Endowment Fund in honor of our colleague’s ministry.”

Notes of condolence may be written here.

A more complete obituary will be forthcoming after biographical research has been completed. It will be published in an upcoming issue of Elderberries and posted on the UURMaPA website.If any readers would wish to contribute information or reminiscences, we would welcome them. Please send them to UURMaPA’s clergy obituary editor, Rev. Jay Atkinson – jayatk40@gmail.com

The Rev. John Richard “Dick” Weston died on January 4, 2025, at the age of 89 (1935-2025).

Dick was born on December 13, 1935, in Schenectady NY, to Robert T. Weston and Ruth Boddy Weston. His father was a minister of the First Unitarian Society of Schenectady. Throughout his childhood, the family moved frequently, living in Lexington MA; Jacksonville FL; Morris Plains,NJ; and Brockton MA, before settling in Louisville KY. There, Dick pursed his education, earning a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Louisville (1960). After college, he worked as a publicity writer for a Louisville radio and television station.

Throughout his college and working years, Dick remained deeply connected to the church, finding purpose and fulfillment in church-related work and community affairs. As his commitment deepened, he realized that the most meaningful life for him could only be found in the Unitarian Universalist ministry. He believed that the UU ministry would allow him to live a life that was both honest and meaningful, while helping others do the same. After three years in his publicity role, he resigned to pursue his calling and enrolled at Starr King School for the Ministry, receiving his Master of Divinity degree in 1963.

The Rev. Weston was ordained on October 13, 1963, by the UU Fellowship of Los Gatos CA, where he served as the Fellowship’s first minister (1963–1966). He then continued his ministry at the UU Congregation of Whittier, CA (1966–1970); the UU Fellowship of Centre County PA (1971–1976); and the UU Church of Jacksonville FL (1976–1981). In 1981, he accepted a call from the North Shore Unitarian Church, Deerfield IL, where he would serve until 1988. He then went on to minister at the First Universalist Parish of Santa Paula CA (1989–1991) and the UU Church of Ventura CA (1991–2000). In recognition of his years of dedicated service, the Ventura Church honored him as their minister emeritus in 2000.

From 2002–2003, the Rev. Weston took on the role of an interim minister at the Auckland Unitarian Church, New Zealand. Upon returning to the U.S., he continued his ministry at the UU Congregation of Lynchburg VA (2003–2006), and later served as a consulting minister for the UU Congregation of Hillsborough NC (2006–2008).

In addition to his parish and interim ministries, the Rev. Weston was engaged in denominational affairs and leadership. He was the founding president of the Pennsylvania UU Legislative Lobby (1971–1972), served as Continental Newsletter Editor and Executive Committee member of the UUMA (1975–1977), and was president of the Florida Chapter of the UUMA. He also served as president of the Alumni Association of Starr King School for the Ministry (1985–1986) and as a consulting minister for the UU Fellowship of Conejo Valley, Thousand Oaks CA (1990). Additionally, he was on the planning committee for the Pacific Southwest District UUMA Chapter Retreat (1990–1991).

Dick was involved in the broader community leadership as well. He served as President of the ACLU of Central PA (1975–1976) and the Chicago Area Liberal Ministers (1982–1983). He was Vice President of the U.S. Chapter of International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF, 1984–1987), and a board member of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, Chicago (1985–1988).

In his leisure time, he found joy in writing poetry and collecting art objects and works. He also enjoyed jogging and camping as ways to stay connected with nature.

Dick is survived by his children Alisse W. Fisher, Chris Weston, Bruce Weston (Kim), Brian Wilkinson (Valerie), and David Wilkinson; 21 grandkids, and 13 great-grandkids; as well as beloved Westons, Wilkinsons, friends and colleagues. He was preceded in death by his wife Mary Weston-Jones; stepson Jeff Wilkinson; and brother Robert T. Weston, Jr.

A memorial service was held on Saturday, June 28, 2025, at Community Church of Chapel Hill UU, 106 Purefoy Rd, Chapel Hill NC 27514. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association. Notes of condolences may be written here.

The Rev. Beth N. Williams died on August 1, 2024, at the age of 72 (1952-2024).

Beth was born on March 25, 1952, in Perth-Amboy NJ. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Rutgers University NJ in 1974 before embarking on a successful career as a systems analyst, software developer, and project manager. She specialized in financial accounting mainframe computer systems and worked for a custodial bank in Boston and a consulting firm with offices in Boston, Chicago, and New York. 

During her time in Chicago (1979–1983), she was introduced to the UU faith and social action. Beth became involved with the 2^nd Unitarian Church of Chicago volunteering in Religious Education. This sparked her passion for faith and community service and planted the seed of her calling to the UU ministry. Over ten years, her calling grew stronger and deeper. In 1993, Beth returned to Chicago to attend Meadville Lombard Theological School. In 1997, she graduated with her Master of Divinity.

Following graduation, the Rev. Williams served the First Unitarian Society of Chicago IL (1998–2000) and the UU Church of Greater Lynn, Swampscott MA (2000–2002) as a Minister of Religious Education. From 2002–2010, she was the UUA’s Religious Education and Music Leadership Credentialing Director. In this role, she counseled candidates of the Religious Education and Music Leadership Credentialing program relating to progressing through the program.

The Rev. Williams provided her services to the First Parish Church in Beverly MA (2006–2008) as a worship committee chair, as a member of the Flower Committee and Parish Council, occasionally taught church school, and sang in the choir. She then served as a Director of Religious Education at the Unitarian Church of Baton Rouge LA for six years (2012–2018). She retired from professional ministry in 2017. After retirement, she moved from Baton Rouge to Tucson AZ, and became active with the Mountain Vista UU Congregation AZ. She was involved with the Care Group there.

The Rev. Williams was active in the denomination serving on the board of the LREDA, on the Executive Committee of the Mass Bay District RE Team, and as a co-director of RE Week at Ferry Beach.

Beth extended warmth and care to everyone she encountered and valued fairness, inclusion, and compassion. She cared deeply about children and youth, including those who were on the margins or often left out.

Beth was an occasional knitter and a Red Sox fan. She enjoyed traveling to Latin America and teaching ESL. She had an interest in Spanish language and culture and volunteered with refugee families who transitioned through Tucson. She spent her last year at Brookdale Oro Valley (assisted living facility) where she made friends with the staff and residents.

Beth is survived by her brother, Doug Nuber, as well as several cousins. A celebration of life service was held at the Mountain Vista Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 3235 W Orange Grove Rd, Tucson AZ 85741.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the following:

• Mountain Vista Unitarian Universalist Congregation
• Arizona Public Media
• The University of Arizona, Modern Language Bldg, Room 223, 1423 E University Blvd., Tucson AZ 85719.

UURMaPA contributed to the UUMA Endowment Fund in honor of our colleague’s ministry. Notes of condolences may be sent to Kristi Lewis, 14090 N. Lobelia Way, Oro Valley AZ 85755.

The literary community of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, lost one of its most active and passionate members when Maia Williams, 69, died on July 30, 2024. She was born in 1955.

Maia was the Co-Director of the San Miguel Writers’ Conference from 2014 to 2020.

One memorable event was when the Literary Sala entertained the daughter of Diego Rivera, Guadalupe Rivera Marin, for a weekend. In her honor, Maia created a formal banquet using recipes from a book Guadalupe wrote called, Frida’s Fiestas: Recipes and Reminiscences of Life with Frida Kahlo.

Maia was founding editor for San Miguel’s bilingual arts and culture magazine Crossroads, published from 2015–2020. She also founded the Prose and Poetry Café, a monthly reading series featuring accomplished local and visiting writers. She conducted writing workshops called “Wild Muse: Show Up and Write,” offering inspiration to several hundred aspiring authors over the years. They grew to include year-round, in-person and online courses for writers of short-form creative nonfiction, resulting in the publication of the anthology, Memory as Muse: Then and Now.

Maia and her husband, Rev. Wyman Rousseau, arrived in San Miguel in 2011 from Charlotte NC, for what they called “a year of living creatively,” and they never left. Maia topped off her U.S. career as CEO of a sales and management consulting firm in the Carolinas, growing annual client revenues from $500 to $750 million over five years. She volunteered across North Carolina as an advocate for creative arts organizations, including the board of Charlotte’s renowned Arts & Science Council and as annual fundraising chair for The Echo Foundation, an educational organization focused on social justice, with strong ties to the late Elie Wiesel, humanitarian, literary icon, and Nobel peace laureate.

The common threads throughout her career were building community, growing businesses, supporting social justice efforts and the arts. Maia celebrated love, laughter, friendship, equity, and kindness in all she did.

We offer our condolences to Wyman, son Landon, daughter-in-law Tracy, and three grandchildren.

Contributions to the GoFundMe campaign for Wyman’s ongoing care needs will be greatly appreciated. The site also allows you to leave words of support and sympathy, which Wyman will see.

The Rev. Susan K. Weickum died on October 8, 2023, at the age of 75 (1948-2023).

Susan is survived by her husband Michael Rich; her children: Scott (Kelly) and grandsons Michael and Nicholas; Jessica Ribeiro (Rich) (Daniel) and granddaughter Avielle; and Mareike Dieplinger (Hoermann); as well as exchange daughter and her family. Susan was big sister to Patty, Diana, Janice, Sally, and their families. 

A memorial service will be held at noon on November 18, 2023, at the UU Church of Indianapolis, 615 W. 43^rd Street, Indianapolis IN.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to a charity of one’s choosing. UURMaPA will contribute to the UUMA Endowment Fund in honor of our colleague’s ministry. Notes of condolence can be written here.

A more complete obituary will be forthcoming after biographical research has been completed. It will be published in an upcoming issue of Elderberries and posted on the UURMaPA website. If any readers would wish to contribute information or reminiscences, we would welcome them. Please send them to UURMaPA’s clergy obituary editor, Rev. Jay Atkinson – jayatk40@gmail.com. 

Joe Wesley died on August 29. Joe was the Rev. Alice Blair Wesley’s husband, the father of Becky Bell-Wesley and Hope Wesley Harrison, and the grandfather of their four sons. Joe was an able and conscientious engineer, engineering manager, and environmentalist for the DuPont Company. He subsidized his wife’s ministry in the Unitarian Universalist Association for twenty years, plus another ten years of her writing and lectures.

Joe had a beautiful baritone voice. He sang in choirs and played guitar in many a church service. He repaired church buildings and built church furniture. He was much beloved in his and Alice’s Seattle retirement community for his ready smile, his sense of humor, the stories of his Kentucky upbringing, and the countless repairs he made in the woodshop for other residents. He was a prince.

A more complete obituary will be forthcoming after biographical research has been completed. If any readers wish to contribute information or reminiscences, we would welcome them. Please send them to (include only relevant person) UURMaPA’s partner obituary editor, Eleanor Richardson, grandmoot@aol.com.

The Rev. Dr. John H. Weston died on August 9, 2023, at the age of 77 (1945–2023). He was a provocative teacher, a dedicated institutional builder, and an effective mentor and pastoral counselor.

John was born on October 20, 1945, in New York to Norman B. Weston and Anne C. Weston. He was raised in the Birmingham (MI) Unitarian Church, the fellowship that his parents helped establish, which later grew into a thriving society. John attended grade and high school in Birmingham, graduating in 1963. In 1967, he received his A.B. degree in English literature from Dartmouth College NH, following which he earned his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University NY (1973).

John spoke proudly of the dramatic career changes over the course of the 40 years of his professional working life, changes that he said gave him different ways of experiencing the world and his place in it. In his 20s, he worked as a teacher and professor of English (1968–1977); in his 30s, he worked as a financial planner and estate planner (1977–1986). After ten financially successful but spiritually dry years, he decided to sell his business in order to attend Meadville Lombard Theological School at the University of Chicago. 

He graduated with his Master of Divinity in 1988 and was for the rest of his professional life called to his various ministries. Ordained by the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington VT on June 12, 1988, he then served as a chaplain at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago (1989–1990) and as an administrator and chief operating officer at Park Lane Nursing Center in Chicago (1990–1992).

In 1992, he accepted a call from All Souls UU Church, Kansas City MO, where he would serve until 1998. At All Souls, John helped the church develop a more cost-effective organizational structure and fostered the congregation’s mutual care among its members. He increased the per-pledge-unit giving and encouraged a successful fundraising campaign, raising $800,000 for a significant capital renovation. 

In Kansas City, John was also very active as a community activist. He was a founder and board member of Clergy United for Justice, advocating equal rights for gays and lesbians, and a founder and president of Congregational Partners, an anti-racist community organization. He served on the ethics committees of two hospitals, on the Banking Committee of Concerned Clergy Coalition, a predominantly African American clergy group, and on the religious affairs committee of the local Planned Parenthood. He regularly served as an escort at the Planned Parenthood clinic, where his ability to engage calmly and diplomatically with angry protesters was a gift to everyone concerned.

In 1998, John was appointed as Transitions Director at the UUA, a position he held until his retirement in 2010. As Transitions Director, John sought to increase the transparency of the UUA’s search and settlement process, exploring avenues by which congregations and ministers could conduct their searches with more information about each other. Those changes are still in effect today, as is the important work he and his team performed in professionalizing the Interim Ministry Program, promoting the recognition of the importance of interim ministry to congregations in transition. John and his team created the Accredited Interim Ministry program and trained ministers in the specialized work of helping congregations navigate their transitions.

John served the denomination in other ways throughout his long career: as a member of the Steering Committee of the Society of the Larger Ministry (1989–1993); helped organize Missouri UUs Against Discrimination and secured a grant from the UUA Fund for Social Justice on behalf of gays and lesbians (1993–94); as president of the Prairie Star District Chapter, UUMA (1995–1997), then as Good Offices person (1997–98); and as chair of the UUMA Guidelines Committee (1996). He also served on the UUA Task Force on Community Ministry and the Panel on Theological Education (2002– 2010). In 2010, he was named Meadville/Lombard’s Alumnus of the Year.

In his retirement, John remained active on behalf of social justice causes, including reproductive rights and anti-racism. In his leisure time, John enjoyed music (opera, jazz, and rock), theatre, long-distance hiking (he hiked the Appalachian Trail from Mt Katahdin to the Delaware Water Gap), and canoeing. During the last decade of his life John became an avid bicyclist. He bicycled from his home in Providence RI to his 50th high school reunion in Birmingham MI, a distance of almost 900 miles on his old Schwinn bicycle. In 2017 he biked on the same aged Schwinn from Sioux Falls SD to Rochester NY. (He had intended to bike home to Providence, but felt tired and bored, so he called his wife to meet him in Rochester. She did and they had a lovely, relatively short drive home.)

No biography of John would be complete without mention of his wide-ranging reading of philosophy, theology, and world religions. In his 20s he was a Joseph Conrad scholar; later, he read widely in theology and philosophy. He became an avid student of Hinduism, working his way through the Ramayana and the multi-volume Mahabharata. Reporting appreciatively on his trip to India in 2016, he described the sudden outbursts of noisy, chaotic parades: “If I were a Hindu, I’d be a Shivite. In addition to giving credence to the chaotic cyclicality of being, they have the best parades and drummers.” Such a remark captures one dimension of his personality: cherishing the most recondite with the most mundane, finding the philosophical perspective couched in the street-specific nugget.

John is survived by his wife Susan (Brown) Weston, whom he met at Columbia University and married in 1968; his sons Stephen and Nathaniel Weston; his three siblings, Mike, Carol, and Mark Weston; as well as by his four teen-aged grandchildren.

A memorial service is being planned in early October for the residents of Cathedral Village, the life-plan community where John and Susan have lived since 2016. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

Notes of condolence can be sent to Susan Weston at susanbweston@gmail.com or 600 E. Cathedral Rd, # D–203, Philadelphia PA 19128.

The Rev. Robert “Bob” E. Wolf died on April 23, 2023, at the age of 87 (1936-2023).

Bob is survived by his wife, Mary; children Jonathan Wolf, Carol Wolf, Pamela MacMahon, Adam Wolf, and Franklin Wolf; and stepchildren Lynn Moriarty and Patricia Ybarra, along with ten grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his parents and his brother Roger.

A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday, June 17, 2023, at The First Church in Belmont, 404 Concord Ave., Belmont MA 02478.

Memorial donations may be made to The Greater Boston Food Bank. UURMaPA will contribute to the UUMA Endowment Fund in honor of our colleague’s ministry.

Notes of condolence can be sent to Mary Wolf, 102 Brooksby Village Dr., Unit 118, Peabody MA 01960.

A more complete obituary will be forthcoming after biographical research has been completed. If any readers would wish to contribute information or reminiscences, we would welcome them. Please send them to UURMaPA’s clergy obituary editor, Jay Atkinson – jayatk40@gmail.com. 

Michelle “Mickey” Worth, 75, died peacefully at Northern Light Maine Coast Hospital, Ellsworth, on Friday, Feb. 24, with her husband, Mark Worth, holding her hand, and surrounded by friends. Mickey was born in Newport, R.I., May 21, 1947, the daughter of Sherwood Barry and Elizabeth Johansson Barry.

She grew up in Pittsfield, Mass., and graduated from Pittsfield High School, Class of 1965. She had a B.A. from National College of Education (now National Louis University, Chicago) and an M.A. in counseling from the University of Southern Maine.

During a brief first marriage, Mickey’s daughter Kimberly Evans was born in 1965. Mickey married Mark Worth in 1979. They moved to Ellsworth in 1991, where Mark was a pastor serving the Unitarian Universalist churches in Ellsworth and Castine. Mickey was a social worker employed by Community Health and Counseling Services from 1991 until her retirement in 2016.

She loved to travel and learn about other cultures. During their 45 years together, Mickey and Mark visited Greece, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Italy, Canada and Mexico. Mickey was active in the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ellsworth, and in A.A., where she made many dear friendships. She was famous for her cookies and made the best carrot cake anyone has ever eaten.

She is survived by her husband, Mark, who represents Ellsworth and Waltham in the Maine House of Representatives, her sister Sandra Barry of Waukesha, Wis., brother Dennis Barry and sister-in-law Sharon Barry, of Pittsfield, Mass., sister-in-law Carolyn Barry of Chesterfield, Va., and her grandchild Darwin MacDonald of Pittsfield, Mass. She was predeceased by her parents, her daughter Kim Evans and her brother Stephen Barry.

There will be a celebration of Michelle’s life on May 13, 2023, at 1 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ellsworth.