BULLS HEAD-OSWEGO
Present: Mary Cadbury, John Perry, Sybil Perry, Denise Sherman, Karen Snare, Valerie Suter, Bob West,
Nettie West
Meeting began at 12.30 with a brief period of silence.
2011-05. A. MINISTRY & COUNSEL: Friends received a Memorial Minute for Chris Cadbury, which
was approved as attached with minor changes. The clerk will forward the minute to the QM with the
recommendation that it be forwarded to the YM.
B. Friends receive a report about the theft of the cell phone. Bill Leicht and Kathie Scanlon met with the
young man involved and his mother for a RestorativeJustice session at the Dutchess Mediation Center. They
determined that he would perform 12 hours of community service for the Meeting, which Leif Anderson has
been facilitating to this point. When his service has been completed, Kathie, Bill and Leif will meet with him and
send him a note to document the successful completion of his service.
2011-06. TREASURER’S REPORT:
Val submitted the attached 2010 end of year report:
The funds over which we have control without restriction (Checking account, General Fund and Maintenance
fund) have been depleted by almost half: In 12/2006 the combined funds were $44,568; in 12/2010 they were
$22,846. During that time, approximately $7000 was spent to maintain the Bulls Head Meeting house, and
$9000 was spent to maintain Oswego Meeting house.
2011-07. Laid over from January Monthly Meeting, we enter a consideration of how to move forward as a
Meeting to address our visibility, diminishing numbers, lack of funds, outreach, etc. Friends float various ideas
about how to reach out, as well as different ways of looking at the concern:
Engage (and invite the community, the quarter) in some kind of Quaker education like Quaker quest.
Explore as a quarter doing an ‘information push’ to let the surrounding community know about us and about
Friends in general.
Use community bulletin boards, local restaurants, motels, libraries, periodicals, etc, to alert the community and
visitors to our presence.
Offer community suppers, soup or breakfasts to invite others to get to know us.
If new people do come, what will they find? Have we been thoughtful about how we welcome or inform
newcomers about Friends. Is our physical environment inviting or helpful?
Find a way to help people who are supported by the food bank come together to make food with Meeting
members.
Have informal work mornings on Saturdays to work on various aspects of the building.
A concern is expressed that people do not know how much Friends have to offer spiritually.
The issue of worship vs silence vs meditation needs to be explored.
It is noted that there are 8 people today at Monthly Meeting, which is a very small number of people to tackle so
large a question. Our ‘people resources’ seem to be used up. What have we got to deploy?
Queries for each of us to ask ourselves: How could each of us personally be engaged in addressing the larger
concern. Is there something that I am doing now that I could omit to open up more time for the Meeting?
Val will write something for the newsletter expressing her concerns.
Friends who are present today are asked to let at least 1 other Friend know about this discussion and ask that
others come to Monthly Meeting next month so that more people can engage the conversation.
Friends agree to continue this discussion at next Monthly Meeting.
Monthly Meeting ended at 2.40 with a brief period of silent worship.
Karen Snare, clerk
Denise Sherman, recording clerk
ATTACHMENTS:
Memorial Minute
Christopher Joel Cadbury
September 5, 1921 – October 1, 2010
Christopher Joel Cadbury, 89, died on Friday, October 1, 2010, in Rhinebeck, New York. Born
September 5, 1921 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was the son of Henry Joel and Lydia Caroline (Brown)
Cadbury. He was the second oldest and last surviving member of a close group of siblings: a brother, Warder
Henry Cadbury, and two sisters, Elizabeth C. Musgrave and Winifred C. Beer. In addition to his wife Mary of
Rhinebeck, New York, he is survived by a daughter, Vivian C. Cadbury of Rhinebeck, two grandsons, Anatole
Christopher and Maksim William Malukoff, and several nieces and nephews.
Chris graduated from Westtown School and Haverford College. As a student at Westtown he
experienced what he described as the "dense social network of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting," and he later
found similar networks among Midwestern Friends in Chicago and again in New York Yearly Meeting. On the
occasion of his 50th reunion at Westtown, Chris wrote:
“I recently saw a report about me that had come to my parents from Westtown that said I was
democratic. Were they referring to my packing sixty boys in my room (to see if it could be done), or the
dates I had (to the consternation of my friends) with girls three classes below me?
Westtown was good for me. In the years before and after I did some stagnating, but at boarding school
l did some growing and defining of myself. It might simply have been my internal timetable, but l am
impressed looking back at how specific the school’s philosophy was, and how it matched my upbringing.
l certainly could not have articulated this then, but it included how to think, when to be unselfish, what is
a lie, what to share with others, how to marry.” (His uncle, Master Carroll told him to marry a Westtown
girl if he wanted it to last. He married a Barnesville girl and it lasted.)
Immediately following his graduation from Haverford College in 1943, he entered Civilian Public Service
as a Conscientious Objector. He wrote of this experience: "l was somewhat cowed by the nation's hostility to
conscientious objectors, but on the other hand I was being tremendously stimulated by the fantastic collection
of idiosyncratic but principled men. They had little in common but their objection to war. My assignments
were forestry in New Hampshire, the care of the mentally retarded in Delaware, and finally a trip with cows to
Bremerhaven for UNRRA."
After he finished his CPS assignments, Chris taught for three years at Friends Boarding School
(now Olney Friends School) in Barnesville Ohio. Of teaching he wrote: "I became discontented with trying to
persuade students to adapt to group goals, and developed more interest in motivation and psychotherapy.”
In 1949 he moved to Chicago, where he studied client-centered psychotherapy under Carl Rogers and
received his Master’s Degree in Human Development from the University of Chicago. He worked as a counselor
for three years but, as he later wrote, “drifted away from that and worked at a number of jobs of a mechanical or
technical nature. Some of them were making equipment for research in animal psychology, and some were in
the building trades."
On June 17, 1950, he married Mary Charlotte Foster under the care of Providence Meeting in Rhode
Island. Mary's three years as a teacher at Friends Boarding School had overlapped his by two years. Their
daughter, Vivian, was born in 1956. The family was active in 57th Street Meeting in Chicago, Chris serving at
one point as Clerk of the Meeting. He also played a large part in the renovation and ongoing care of Quaker
House, which the Meeting purchased in 1952. He worked with the regional office of the American Friends
Service Committee, including supervising work on Project House and responding to the political turmoil of 1968.
In 1970, Chris and his family moved to Clinton Corners, New York. He worked as a clinical psychologist
at Hudson River Psychiatric Center until his retirement in 1990. For his 50th reunion at Haverford College, Chris
wrote the following in reference to his 20 years as psychologist at Hudson River Psychiatric Center:
“I tend to like mentally ill people. Of the many patients I have liked, I definitely have helped a few, and
of course with many it is impossible to evaluate what effect one has had. I weathered the coming and
then going of behavior modification, and when I would eventually start hearing questions from the staff
like, ‘Who was this Freud person?’, I felt I had lived a long time.”
Living on a small dairy farm with several other Quaker families and across the road from Bulls Head-
Oswego Meeting house also gave him full opportunity for agricultural, mechanical, and building work. Inventing
a solution in a crisis was a specialty, and often involved a new use for baling twine.
Throughout his life Chris worked at and enjoyed the family-run resort, Back Log Camp, in the
Adirondack Mountains, which offered another dense social network, this one of extended family, and another
venue for fixing things that needed fixing. Even after moving from the farm to the village of Rhinebeck in 1997,
Chris kept a big collection of objects that might be useful someday. He had to leave many projects undone, but
he remained fully present in his "dense social network" of Friends and family.
The Cadbury family was very active in Bulls Head Meeting. Chris and Mary were unfailingly faithful in
attendance at Meeting for Worship, for business, quarterly Meeting, Yearly Meeting, and most other Meeting
functions. Both served on a number of committees over the years, and each served as Clerk of the Meeting.
Bulls Head Friends were the beneficiaries of the wide range of Chris’s talents. Among his concrete gifts
to the Meeting was contributing to the preparation in the Bentley Farm carriage house of a space for the Sunday
school when it was no longer feasible to hold it in members’ homes. He was deeply involved in the decisions
to build the “new building” and then to expand it, and was one of the most dedicated workers during the two
construction phases.
All who knew Chris knew that they could count on him to be fully present in every conversation, to ask
insightful questions, and to respond thoughtfully. Many Friends particularly valued Chris’s ability to bring a novel
perspective to most topics. He had a remarkable talent for being simultaneously forthright and compassionate.
At least one Friend remembers Chris as the individual who reached out with a warm welcome on her first visit to
Bulls Head.
Friends remember Chris for his integrity, which was remarkable, even among Quakers. His presence
was a gift and he is deeply missed.
TREASURER’S REPORT WILL BE ATTACHED AS 3 SEPARATE DOCUMENTS
