Meredith Sue Willis & Alice Robinson-Gilman: Personal Reflections after 25 Years at the Ethical Culture Society

Sue will interview Alice about various issues facing Essex Ethical Culture. They will share their thoughts about having a leaderless society; what does “ethical culture” mean in our current culture; is unanimity on this important and, if so, how do we get to that agreement. Various past and current leaders will be cited. Since one of the few tenets of Ethical Culture is that “no one speaks for Ethical Culture,” how do we address some of these issues?

Meredith Sue Willis and Alice Robinson-Gilman are both long-term members of the Essex Society. Both have served as trustees on the Board and Sue is a past- president of the Board. In 1995 they created the Family Issues Platforms which served for over 10 years to provide a forum for members and friends to participate in panel discussions. Topics ranged over a wide variety of issues involving parenthood, grandparenthood and children. Later, Alice and Sue continued the panel series with discussions on books dealing with, among others, genocide in Rwanda, mountaintop memoval in Appalachia, and How Race is Lived in America.

Sue is a professional writer who has published 22 books, most recently, Their Houses. She teaches novel writing at New York University’s School of Professional Studies.

Alice is a retired social worker and office manager. She participated in the first AEU Summer School in 1996.

Sue’s son, Joel Weinberger, and Alice’s daughter, Molly Gilman, both graduated from the Ethical Culture Sunday School in 2002.