Leona Handler Light—A Sometimes Shadowy Figure
Leona Handler Light (1915-19921) is an impressive and puzzling figure in the history of
twentieth-century Unitarian Universalism. She capably served the Western
Unitarian Conference in Chicago from the mid-1930s to the early1940s and
then did hazardous duty in Hungary and Transylvania before and during
the outbreak of World War II. In Lawrence, Kansas, she revitalized the
historic Unitarian society. She then abruptly dropped out of sight for
over two decades and apparently re-emerged to take a prominent role in
the Black Empowerment Controversy in the late 1960s.
And with raised eyebrow you ask, “Apparently re-emerged?” Ministry
candidate and research sleuth Jon Jasper Coffee is almost certain that the “Leona H. Light” of the
1960s was the Leona Handler active in the 1930s and 1940s, but recognizes that more digging
needs to be done. All the same, he has uncovered enough information, most of it from primary
sources, to sketch a fascinating portrait of someone whose career should pique the curiosity of
anyone interested in the history of women—or anyone—who capably served liberal religion. The
following condenses his findings.
Origins and Early Work
Probably born to a Baltimore family, Leona Handler studied at Tufts College, Tufts Theological
School, Boston University, Northwestern University, and the Unitarian Collegium in Kolozsvar,
Transylvania. Before becoming office secretary for the Western Conference of the American
Unitarian Association (AUA) in Chicago, she worked as an assistant in Massachusetts
congregations.
Europe
Living in Hungary and Transylvania from late 1939 to late 1940, she served as the European
Representative of the Unitarian Ministerial Association. Articles in Hungarian publications
suggest she led worship services, attended meetings in Unitarian churches, and spoke on topics
such as “Modern American and European Ideas of Women.” In a 1942 interview with the
1
Dates are inferential. The Web site findagrave.com gives terminal dates of June 30, 1915 and October 13, 1992 for
a “Leona K. Handler Light” who is interred in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Los Angeles:
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=85906849
2
Lincoln (Nebraska) Star, she said her purpose there was “to study the problems of the people
who were in the minority in their social and religious beliefs. No matter what stand these
minority groups took on any current issue, they were tossed back and forth between their own
government and the Nazi Advance agents, bullied, persecuted, taxed and imprisoned without
mercy or justice….”
She relates one incident in which prisoners were released only to be gunned down as they ran
toward freedom. When she left Europe—just a few months before US entry into the war—she
reported harboring feelings of “tense suspicion and futile hatred.”
Upon her return to the United States, Handler would regularly speak on the atrocities of World
War II and how it affected the people of Hungary, Transylvania, and Romania.
Lawrence, Kansas
From the summer of 1941 until the fall of 1943, Leona Handler served and revitalized the
Unitarian Society of Lawrence, Kansas. This congregation had taken a prominent role in the
state’s history, serving as an antislavery center and establishing the first public school, but it had
fallen on hard times. The minister had left and the dwindling congregation had appealed to the
AUA for financial help in paying a successor.
The AUA responded with a plan to provide a parish worker who would keep the congregation
running as a “collegiate preaching” center for the nearby University of Kansas. A parish
worker’s salary would be less costly to the AUA than a minister’s. The Society’s members, who
were facing possible closure of the congregation, gladly accepted the plan.
Leona Handler was a likely candidate for this position. Her work as office secretary of the
Western Unitarian Conference had impressed Lon Ray Call, the Conference’s Executive
Secretary, and George G. Davis, the AUA’s director of extension. When she visited the
Lawrence congregation, she impressed them as well. In a letter to Call (May 5, 1941),
congregant Joe Butram wrote, “There has been more and more reason for encouragement. Miss
Leona Handler certainly impressed everyone with her ability and energy. Personally, I feel that
she could do a great job here.”
Starting in September 1941, Handler administered the society and revitalized it, e.g., by finding
speakers for the coming year and planning participation in the Christian World Forum that would
3
take place in Manhattan, Kansas, the following February. Revitalizing would not be easy. The
once-prominent Unitarian Society was scarcely known to most citizens and membership was tiny.
She also knew that the locally pervasive religious conservatism and growing pro-war sentiment
did not provide a promising environment for a liberal congregation.
Nonetheless, in a report to the congregation submitted later in 1941, Handler noted increased
attendance as well as participation by University students. Cultivating relationships with local
groups, she was regularly asked to speak in the community about her time in Europe and had
begun a weekly forum with students. In four months she became a ministerial presence in the
Lawrence community, providing administrative oversight, pastoral care, pulpit supply, and
public witness. Reasonably enough, she felt her title of parish assistant understated her role, but
she could not get it changed to parish director.
In 1943 Handler and other Society members wrote letters addressing racial discrimination at the
University, including University cooperation with a Red Cross policy that required labeling of
any blood from “Negro” donors. Handler alerted Frederick May Eliot, president of the AUA,
regarding the matter. She also organized faculty members to petition for rejection of the policy.
The congregation’s youth apparently shared her values. On March 4, 1943, an order of service
for ‘Youth Sunday’ sets racial equality as the discussion topic and includes the words to “Lift
Every Voice and Sing.” University students conducted that evening’s vesper service and chose
“The Race Question” as the theme.
Leona Handler Drops from Sight
In April 1943 Handler hinted in a letter to Curtis Reese, Secretary of the Western Unitarian
Conference, that she might change careers, and suggested that something might “develop to take
[her] to Chicago in the fall.” She expected the congregation to continue with or without her
leadership. In another letter she told Reese she felt some urgency about gaining credentials as a
Unitarian minister. Later, Reese wrote to a colleague of his surprise that Handler had departed
for Berkeley, California, without telling anyone in the congregation of her intentions. After she
left, the congregation called Homer A. Jack, who attempted to revive it. He left at the end of
summer 1944 and the Unitarian Society dissolved soon afterwards.
4
There is one more mention of Handler, in the AUA’s Christian Register, for this decade: “Miss
Leona C. Handler, formerly parish assistant in The Unitarian Society of Lawrence, Kansas, was
married to Lieutenant Jacob S. Light, U.S. Army, on August 20 [1944] in Denver Colorado.”
Aside from the failure to give notice, Handler’s course is understandable. Working for the
Western Conference and then reporting to Boston, she may have gathered that female candidates
for ministry were not warmly encouraged. There can be no doubt she was aware that her work in
Lawrence had been rewarded with a demeaning job title and low compensation, around a
hundred dollars bimonthly.2 In that era, a woman contemplating marriage was expected to drop
her career, no matter how promising or distinguished. But for Handler, who had lived in Europe
as Nazis were advancing, who had struggled to build a liberal congregation in a racist and
politically reactionary town on the Plains, and who was facing her thirtieth birthday, the offer of
marriage from Lieutenant Light may have looked like a needed and timely change of direction.
Did Leona Reappear in 1967?
During the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Black Empowerment Controversy, which began
in late 1967, a Leona H. Light is listed as a founding member of the group Full Recognition and
Funding for the Black Affairs Council, or FULLBAC. She is also listed as the secretary of
Supporters of Black Unitarians for Radical Reform, or SOBURR. “The secretary of SOBURR,
Mrs. Leona H. Light of Beverly Hills, California and Ann Raynolds of Springfield, Vermont
would both be designated ‘temporary Co-chairmen’ [sic] in company with David B. Parke of
Philadelphia and the Rv. Jack Mendelsohn of Boston.”
This is probably the same woman as the one described in the rest of this piece. More research
would confirm her identity and make her role better known.
Who will take the challenge?
2
Assuming a forty-hour week, this comes to about $.30 an hour. Typical pay for a female factory worker in the
Northeast during World War II was $.50 an hour (personal communication).
5
Sources
“1855 - Unitarian Church.” 2016. Lawrence, KS.
http://lawrenceks.org/lprd/parks/sesquicentennialpoint/steps/1855unitarian.
“Amerikai Vendeg Oklandon.” 1939. Unitarius Kozlony. http://www.unitar.hu/Tudastar/Kozlony/1939.pdf.
“Az 1939. Evi Fotanacs.” 1939. Unitarius Kozlony.
http://epa.oszk.hu/02100/02175/00545/pdf/Unitarius_Kozlony_1939_12.pdf.
Baer, Florence. 1941a. “Memo For the Files December 19,1941.”
———. 1941b. “Memo to George G. Davis April 15, 1941.”
Butram, Joe. 1941. “Letter to Lon Ray Call May 5, 1941.”
Call, Lon Ray. 1941a. “Letter to George G. Davis April 5, 1941.”
———. 1941b. “Report to Committee on Church Maintenance and Unitarian Extension March 5, 1941.”
“Church People in the News.” 1944. The Christian Register 123: 425.
https://books.google.com/books?id=KPPmAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Leona+C.+Handler%22&dq=%22Leona+C.
+Handler%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjclIO9zsXKAhUGdD4KHShZAFgQ6AEIKTAB.
Davis, George G. 1941a. “Letter to Leona Handler September 15, 1941.”
———. 1941b. “Letter to Leona Handler September 2, 1941.”
———. 1941c. “Memo to Mr. Fritchman April 30, 1941.”
Dreisziger, Nandor. 2009. “Transylvania in International Power Politics during World War II Nándor Dreisziger.”
Hungarian Studies Review XXXVI: 1–2. http://www.epa.hu/00000/00010/00043/pdf/HSR_2009_1-2_085114.pdf.
Gard, Rachel. 1941. “The Unitarian News-Letter.” Lawrence, KS.
Handler, Leona C. 1941a. “Letter to Florence Baer December 11 1941.”
———. 1941b. “Letter to George G. Davis August 29, 1941.”
———. 1941c. “Letter to George G. Davis September 11, 1941.”
———. 1941d. “Report on the Unitarian Society of Lawrence, Kansas November 23, 1941.”
———. 1941e. “Second Letter to George G. Davis September 11, 1941.”
———. 1943a. “Letter to Curtis Reese April 12, 1943.”
———. 1943b. “Letter to Curtis Reese April 16, 1943.”
———. 1943c. “Letter to Dr. Fredrick May Eliot April 14, 1943.”
6
“In the News.” 1941. The Christian Register. Boston: American Unitarian Association.
“Kulturünnepély Sft.-Gheorghe-N.” 1940. Unitarius Kozlony.
http://epa.oszk.hu/02100/02175/00549/pdf/Unitarius_Kozlony_1940_04.pdf.
Lawrence Journal World. 1943. “Unitarian Church,” September.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2199&dat=19430904&id=1yRdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=v1oNAAAAIB
AJ&pg=3801,5383456&hl=en.
Lincoln Star. 1942. “Nazi Pressure in Rumania Was Thing of Horror.”
https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/63601948/.
“News of Churches and Church People.” 1940. The Christian Leader. Boston: American Unitarian Association.
Office of the President of Meadville Theological School. 1941. “Letter to Florence Baer December 20, 1941.”
“Order of Service for Youth Sunday March 14, 1943.” 1943.
“Order of Service for Youth Sunday Vesper Service March 14th 1943.” 1943.
Reese, Curtis. 1943a. “Letter to George Davis September 22, 1943.”
———. 1943b. “Letter to Leona Handler April 13, 1943.”
———. 1943c. “Letter to Leona Handler April 9, 1943.”
Seaburg, Alan. "Homer Alexander Jack." Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography, an on-line resource of
the Unitarian Universalist History & Heritage Society. http://uudb.org/articles/homeralexanderjack.html)
Unitarian Universalism and the Quest for Racial Justice. 1994. Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association.
University Daily Kansan. 1943. “Negro Blood Designated - Red Cross.”