The Rev. Ted Webb

The Rev. Ted Webb, parish minister, Universalist scholar, and lifelong activist for civil rights, economic justice, and abolition of nuclear weapons, died on October 6, 2014, aged 96.

Already in his younger years, Mr. Webb actively promoted and worked for peace, justice, and public education. During a student pastorate in the little town of Sherman Mills, he organized a committee to establish a community library and “worked tirelessly on this project” throughout the remainder of his brief time there, though the vision took another fifteen years to be realized. In the 1950s he and his wife Marguerite provided sanctuary in their home to demonstrators opposing United States nuclear arms in the cold war with the Soviet Union. He spoke out against the Korean War and later counseled young men on avoiding the draft during the Vietnam War. In 1965 he traveled to Selma, Alabama, for the interfaith peace and voting rights witness that followed the infamous “Bloody Sunday” massacre. With others he went back for a month that summer to sustain an ongoing UU presence in Selma, writing that he returned north from this experience a more “confirmed progressive and committed Democratic Socialist.” In later years, during his ministry in Sacramento, Mr. Webb hosted a peace fair that drew Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, served as president and board member of the local chapter of United Nations Association, and in 1988 received a distinguished life achievement award from California State University, Sacramento. He was still protesting at age 85 when the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003.

Theodore Albert Webb was born in Bangor, Maine, on 23 August 1918 to Harold and Annie Cushman Webb, but spent much of his teen years in Norway, Maine, where he contributed to family support by working in a shoe factory, rather quickly concluding that the industrial arts were not what he was cut out for. In the fall of 1938, at age twenty, he enrolled for concurrent college and ministerial studies in a program offered jointly by Bangor Theological Seminary and the University of Maine. While there he served successive student ministries in nearby towns: at the Union Congregational Church in Ellsworth Falls (1940-41), the Universalist Church of Old Town (1942-43), and the Washburn Memorial Church (Congregational, now UCC) in Sherman Mills (1943-44). Ted sang in the seminary chorus and discovered a soulmate in its pianist, Marguerite Elfreida [sic] Wilson, from nearby Calais, to whom he was married in 1943. He finished course work for his B.D. at Bangor in 1943, but the degree was contingent on completion of his baccalaureate studies. Mr. Webb moved to a pastorate at the First Universalist Church of Stafford, Conn (1944-47) and was ordained there on 22 January 1946. Meanwhile, with transfer of his undergraduate credits to the University of Connecticut, he earned a B.A. in history and government in 1948, at which time his B.D. was finally awarded.

The Rev. Mr. Webb continued in parish ministry at the First Universalist Church of Dexter (1947-51), the First Universalist (now UU) Church of Canton, New York (1951-56), and the Universalist Unitarian Church of Haverhill, Mass (1957-62). An eight-year stint as the first Executive Director of the Massachusetts Bay District of the UUA (1962-70) then intervened before he resumed parish ministry with a call to the UU Society of Sacramento, California, in 1971, where he remained until 1983 and was named Minister Emeritus in 1985. Beginning in 1984 Mr. Webb took up a series of interim ministries in Iowa City, Baltimore, Minneapolis (First Universalist), and Atlanta (Northwest) before his final retirement in 1990.

Ted Webb was committed to the wider UU movement and its public presence in a number of roles. He served many years on the UUA Program Committee and as President and Board Member of the Pacific Central District of the UUA. In conjunction with his ministry in Stafford, he founded and edited a short-lived journal, The Connecticut Universalist, an “official organ” for the Connecticut Universalist Convention. While serving the UU society in Sacramento, he spearheaded a program of lectures—The Forum—by local intellectuals, government officials, and religious leaders.

Ted Webb spent much of his free time researching the lives of the prominent and politically active (and mostly Universalist) Washburn family, especially Israel Washburn and his seven sons, who numbered among themselves, in the 19th century, two state governors, two U.S. senators, four congressmen, a Civil War general, an envoy to Paraguay, and an ambassador to France. He was invited to speak about this research at the UUA General Assembly in 1984 and published a preliminary sketch of it in Men of Mark: The Washburn Brothers of Maine (Boston: UU Historical Society, 1985). After retiring, the Rev. Mr. Webb collected this research more fully in two further books: Seven Sons: Millionaires and Vagabonds (Trafford Publishing, 1999) and Impassioned Brothers: Ministers Resident to France and Paraguay (University Press of America, 2002).

Ted was a world traveler, and shared this interest with his daughter, Christine. He was also an avid reader and a great communicator. He enjoyed conversing about politics and current events, and he hosted a series of such conversations in his living room. Because of the group’s growing size, it was moved to the UU Society of Sacramento, and much to his embarrassment was lovingly dubbed “Ted’s Web.”

Of her father, daughter Christine Webb-Curtis remembers: “He walked the talk. But he rarely expressed his own personal humanist convictions from the pulpit. He never wanted to impose himself on others in terms of their spiritual beliefs.

Marguerite, Ted’s wife of sixty-two years, died in 2005. Ted Webb is survived by daughters Bobbie Webb and Christine Webb-Curtis, sons Theodore Ford Webb and Noel Webb, grandchildren Rob Gilbert, Renee Cahill, Randy Gilbert, Seth Forester, Patrick Curtis, Sam Curtis, Justin Codinha, Tucker Ford Webb, Parker Ford Webb, Jessica Webb, and Alexandra Webb, six great grandchildren, and one great-great grandchild, Penelope, born on Ted’s 96th birthday.

A memorial service was held 13 December 2014 by the UU Society of Sacramento. Memorial donations are encouraged to the Unitarian Universalist Society of Sacramento, 2425 Sierra Blvd, Sacramento, California 95825. Notes of condolence may be sent to: The Family of Ted Webb, 1137 Amberwood Road, Sacramento, Calif. 95864.