We officially welcomed eleven new members at a New Members Ceremony during the May 18th Sunday service. Please meet UUSM’s wonderful new members and enjoy the bios that they wrote.
Cheryl Armon was born and raised in Los Angeles without any form of religion. After a few years of traveling in the US, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, she lived in Panama where she had her first child. She spent six years in grad school at Harvard U. and then moved to Santa Monica. She worked as a university professor for over 30 years. Her teaching and research area is moral reasoning and moral development.
In retirement, she is exploring photography and painting, recently creating politically-related critique pieces. Cheryl now has three grown children who live nearby.
Steve Chin was born in Bakersfield and raised on a small family farm — also without religion. He then attended UC San Diego and UCLA. He worked several jobs until choosing a career. He found a good match for his interests and skills working with large computer systems from which he retired after 35 years. He has a beautiful daughter, Katherine, who lives nearby. He’s now learning about becoming a Buddhist.
Steve and Cheryl Armon met in 2007 and have been together in Santa Monica ever since.
Jeanne Black joined the UUSM choir last fall and unexpectedly discovered that she had finally found her people. She is a lifelong choral singer who has sung with groups ranging from the Cleveland Orchestra to the Mit Gezang Yiddish Chorus. Originally from the East Coast, Jeanne moved to Los Angeles 27 years ago to get a late career PhD in health policy and management. After retiring in 2021, she surprised herself by becoming a community activist in Culver City, where she lives with her rescue pitbull, Luna.
Kysa Christie grew up in Connecticut, and came of age at the Unitarian Society of Hartford. She lives in Culver City with her wife Lauren and their daughter Harrison. She works at the VA, as a psychologist. She is happiest when planning and going on trips, near or far – and also loves coffee, bread, and women’s soccer.
Thomas Eidson was born in Thomaston, Georgia and went to college at Georgia Tech in Aerospace Engineering, followed by graduate school at Princeton Univ. and Univ. of Michigan in Mechanical Engineering. He has worked in Experimental Research and Computational Science at a number of National Labs, universities, and companies.
He has two children and two grandkids — and is interested in biking, gardening and tournament bridge. He found the UU church eight years ago in Jacksonville and then Charlotte, before moving to Sherman Oaks.
Carrie Manaugh says she’s sort of a recycled UU! She started with the Burbank Fellowship, moved to Neighborhood Church and looking for community in the Venice/Santa Monica area found UUSM with the help of a couple friends who are members. She enjoys reading, learning, meeting new people and Needlepoint.
She’s happy to be a new member here helping with UU the Vote.
Mike Manaugh was born in Santa Monica; lived in Venice for the last 40 years. He’s a retired Aerospace technician and a 31-year member at Ocean View Farms Community Garden. He enjoys live music, reading, gardening, and Vintage Motorcycles. He experimented with Meditation and Buddhism in the 60s.
Mike is 80 years old and has Parkinson’s. He had been looking for community and is happy that he and his wife, Carrie, found UUSM.
Betsy Rowe is a birthright UU. She earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Duke, and has had a successful career in scientific and medical research, pharmaceutical development, and writing.
She is the author of Sailing Downwind, a book of verse and stories, centering on family and the science and wonder of the world around us. She is also a sailor, painter, sculptor, pilot, horsewoman and avid reader. She and her husband Bud Rowe live in Shawnee, Kansas — and Santa Monica — to be near their two sons and five grandchildren.
Bud Rowe was reared in the mountains of North Carolina. He was an undergrad and medical student at Duke. He trained at Johns Hopkins and served as a Research Associate at the National Institute of Health. He taught at University of Kansas Medical School and founded the MidAmerica Neuroscience Institute. He formerly flew to rural clinics in the Midwest, which he has described in his writings. He serves as the CEO of Verrow Pharmaceuticals — and his collection of poems is titled Sea Creatures.
Bud is married to Betsy Rowe and they have two sons, who are writers in Los Angeles.
Alice Stek was introduced to UU at her mother’s Unitarian fellowship in Northern California more than five decades ago, but after a few years she moved to Amsterdam for university/medical school and only recently became involved again.
She has lived in Venice for 28 years, engaging in various local, regional, and global leftist efforts.
For the past 32 years, she has been working at USC School of Medicine and LA County Medical Center as an OB/Gyn, specializing in Maternal-Fetal Medicine and as an HIV specialist. Her main academic, research and clinical focus is HIV in pregnancy and in women, a field she still finds very exciting and rewarding.
Cole Spitler grew up Roman Catholic and didn’t know anything about UU until his mid 20s. He and his first lover were living in the small resort town of Traverse City, Michigan and he was disenchanted with any religion. He wanted to feel a part of a church community who would accept him as a gay person and an acquaintance pointed him to the UU church in Traverse. He was quite involved there until he left to study acting at the University of Louisville.
He was an English and Spanish teacher in Michigan; received his MFA in Louisville and moved to L.A. in 2001. Not able to make a living in acting, he went back to teaching and retired from La Cañada High School in 2023.
He visited UUSM when UU the Vote was gearing up, and spent the summer and fall of 2024 writing post cards instead of attending services. He is now inspired by and enjoys the services and is happy to have found this congregation and community and hopes to get more involved.
He loves dogs; last year he lost his great dog companion of 14.5 years and hopes to volunteer regularly with a dog rescue.
A warm welcome also to new members Cynthia Littleton and Nashua Meña who were not able to join the May 18th ceremony.
