Rowe Center Post

Arnold Westwood One of the pillars of the Rowe Camp & Conference Center, the Rev. Arnold F. Westwood, died Aug. 16, at age 88. Arnold held a special place in the Rowe community. Over the years he had served as both a member and the chair of the Board of Trustees and his children all went through Rowe camp. Arnold received his Master of Sacred Theology from Tufts University in 1948. While serving as a student minister at the Theodore Parker Unitarian Church in West Roxbury, Mass., he fell in love with the minister’s daughter, Carolyn Freeman Arnold, and married her in 1945. A Unitarian Universalist minister for 40 years, Arnold served congregations in Urbana, Ill., Westport, Conn., and Cleveland, Ohio before returning to New England in the early 1970s, concurrently leading congregations in Manchester, Conn., and Amherst, Mass. Each named him Minister Emeritus. His ministry was hallmarked by the organizational development and membership growth of the congregations he served. What follows is an excerpt of the eulogy, Rowe C& CC executive director, the Rev. Douglas Wilson delivered at his funeral, August 29, 2009 at the West Cummington Congregational Church.

I have had three mentors in my life and Arnold Westwood was one of them. He started out as the wise middle-aged gentleman and I was the younger guy, but over the years we became friends as well as colleagues.

Arnold and Carolyn sent all four of their kids to Rowe Camp and six of their seven grandchildren came, too. One, Adrienne, founded her own dance company and Phoebe the Younger was the co-director of our junior high camp this summer, and she did a terrific job. John, Jefferson, and Phoebe went to camp before our tenure, but Hal was with us all the way. Hal is Arnold and Carolyn’s “love child.” They already had three kids. Maybe, it they had paid more attention to the UU “About Your Sexuality” curriculum, they’d have learned that if you rub your bodies together in a certain way, you can make a baby, even if you’re in your 40s. Prue and I always loved Hal, and we always will.

In the early 80s, the Rowe Board of Trustees formed a group called the Blue Ribbon Committee, including MaryGail Benford, Bruce Robbins, and Arnold, all from the Manchester Church, to look into the past, present, and future of UU Rowe Camp and Conference Center. Eventually they put out a report what had a profound and far-reaching impact, but Arnold and Bruce weren’t just consultants, they were committed to implementing their vision. Arnold became our head fundraiser and then our President and Bruce served on the board for 21 years. They put us in the big leagues.
Arnold was a very smart man who made great choices in his life, especially marrying Carolyn and buying four or five hundred acres of land just up the road in 1961, when it cost about $1.29 an acre. Three of his four kids live just around the corner on land Carolyn and Arnold gave them, and most of the rest they gave to the Audubon Society.

Arnold had a unique characteristic I came to believe caused whiplash. I’d be talking to him on the phone and toward the end of the conversation all of a sudden he wasn’t there anymore. I talked about this with Barbara and Hal and I learned that Arnold talked about what he called “vestibule paralysis.” He didn’t suffer from this.

There was no use arguing with Arnold. You couldn’t win. I don’t happen to agree with Arnold that breakfast is the foundation upon which a successful day must be built. I like breakfasts sometimes, but if Prue and I had an Italian dinner, eating around nine in the evening, the next morning I’m ready for an Italian breakfast: a cup of espresso and some bread. But I didn’t argue.

When Arnold was taken to the hospital two weeks ago, Hal called me. It was touching to be invited into this most intimate of moments and I feel deeply grateful for this confidence.
True to form, Arnold checked out of this life in the same way. When the time came, he was out of here. Those close to the process felt shocked, but this fine and gentle man, this kind and courtly man, this elegant and eloquent man, stepped off the stage in the same fashion with which he ended his phone calls.

Before any of us knew it, he was no longer with us, but we are better for having had him with us. Of this there can be no doubt.

Builder of Congregations and Communities

By the Reverend Douglas Wilson