Rosemary Matson

Rosemary Matson, 97, widow of the Rev. Howard Matson, died Sept. 27, 2014, at her home in Carmel, CA. She was a feminist, humanist and UU leader. She championed human rights, civil liberties and international peace.

Born September 20, 1917, in Geneva, Iowa, Rosemary grew up there and in Fort Dodge, Iowa, where she graduated from high school in 1936. In the late 1930s she attended Omaha University (now University of Nebraska, Omaha) and the University of California at Berkeley. At Berkeley she had her first experience as an activist, becoming an organizer for the Culinary Workers Union and joining a strike for higher wages for waitresses.

During the early 1940s, Rosemary lived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where she protested discrimination against African Americans. She continued her activism after moving to Chicago in 1943, volunteering in the city’s first interracial recreation center. At one time she owned and operating a bookstore in Chicago’s Near North Side.

In the early 1950s, Rosemary moved to Hawaii, where she was a community organizer for plantation workers and dockworkers and helped start a Honolulu chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Rosemary became an active Unitarian in Hawaii, embracing our commitment to social justice and interfaith dialogue. In 1952, she co-founded and served as first president of the First Unitarian Fellowship (now Church) of Honolulu. Early parishioners included Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, who took their grandson Barack Obama to the church’s Sunday school in the 1970s.
In 1955, Rosemary returned to Berkeley to work for the Pacific Coast Unitarian Council. She met the Rev. Howard Matson, a minister at the San Francisco First Unitarian Church. They married in 1957.

In 1962, Rosemary joined the staff of the Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian seminary in Berkeley. She worked at Starr King until 1978, first as a fundraiser, then as an administrator. At Starr King, she became a passionate advocate for women in the ministry. She played a key role in winning approval of the Women and Religion Resolution at the 1977 UUA General Assembly in Ithaca, New York. The resolution called for UUs to examine the extent to which their religious beliefs influenced sex-role stereotypes and to “avoid sexist assumptions and language.” She later helped rid the denomination of sexist practices and promoted related rethinking of theology. Her motto: “We do not want a piece of the pie. It is still a patriarchal pie. We want to change the recipe.”

Active in United Nations organizations, she participated in international conferences on women in Copenhagen in 1980 and Nairobi in 1985. A committed pacifist, she co-founded a US-Soviet peace group in 1980 and helped organize and lead more than two dozen citizen diplomacy trips to the Soviet Union.

Both Rosemary and her husband Howard, who died in 1993, were dedicated proponents of human rights. Howard participated in the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, led by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Both Matsons worked closely with Cesar Chavez and other activists to promote farm worker rights. Chavez lived incognito at the couple’s Carmel Valley home for several months in 1970.

The Matsons received Monterey County ACLU’s Ralph B. Atkinson award for championing civil liberties: Howard in 1980, Rosemary in 1984. Rosemary received many other honors for her work for social justice, humanism, feminism, and international peace. In 2011, the Starr King School for the Ministry awarded her an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

The Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Harvard University, holds an extensive collection of Rosemary’s writings and research materials, documenting her involvement with UU groups and other organizations.

In addition to many devoted friends and admirers, Rosemary is survived by a brother, two nieces, seven nephews, and numerous grand nieces and nephews. Notes of remembrance may go to her nephew, Sam Thompson, 920 East Bay Dr. NE, #3D-102, Olympia, WA  98506. Thanks to Sam for providing UURMaPA with this obituary.