The Reverend Dr. Kay Jorgensen—beloved and dedicated community minister, professional street & theater performance artist—died peacefully on 15 January 2018 in Berkeley, CA, aged 86.
Walking through San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, Kay was led, at age 66, to her deepest and truest calling. With Carmen Barsody, OSF, she founded the Faithful Fools, inviting thousands of others to make “street retreats,” walking through the neighborhood, open to the homeless and marginalized people they encountered.
Kathryn Alice Johnson was born on 9 January 1932 in St. Paul, Minnesota, to Detlof Emanuel Johnson and Alice Otilia Palmquist Johnson. She earned a B.A. in 1953 from St. Olaf’s College (Northfield, MN). Turned down as a woman for Lutheran ministry, she married Ronald Leland Jorgensen, a medical student, in 1955 and they had three children.
After a divorce in 1974, Kay moved to Minneapolis, discovered the First Unitarian Society there, and plunged more deeply into mime and theater. This led her to California for further work and study in mime and clowning. But by the 1980s she once again felt the pull of ministry, now as a UU, and received her M.Div. from Starr King School in 1987.
Ms. Jorgensen was ordained on 16 October 1988 by the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis shortly after beginning extension ministry (1988–93) to the nearby Northwest UU congregation. By 1996 she had returned to California, later secured ministerial affiliation with the San Francisco UU Society, and in 1998 began the Faithful Fools ministry for which Starr King School awarded her an S.T.D. honoris causa in 2004. In 2010 Kay was named minister emerita by her church and in 2015 she received the Patti Lawrence Distinguished Service Award from the UUA’s Pacific Central District.
At her death, Kay was survived by her children Andrea, Joel, and Erik, and her Faithful Fools co-founder and partner in ministry, Carmen Barsody. A memorial service, complete with clown noses, was held on 11 March 2018 at the First UU Society of San Francisco.