Given names, division of maintaining tradition

[Joel S. Berson]

"The Rev. Waitstill Sharp and his wife, Martha, were a young
Wellesley couple busy raising two young children in 1939 when they
received a call from the American Unitarian Association asking for
help."  The couple went to Prague, arriving just a month before the
German occupation in March 1939, "to lead a humanitarian effort to
rescue political dissidents and Jewish refugees from Prague."  They
worked there for over two years, and returned safely to the U.S.

Nearly 350 years earlier, Waitstill (more often spelled Wait Still)
Winthrop was christened; he was a grandson of the early Massachusetts
governor John Winthrop, and (later, of course) a Governor's Councilor
and Chief Justice of Massachusetts.  The American Unitarian
Association was, as we know, a descendant, albeit a bit remotely, of
the dissenting (that is, Congregational) churches of New England, the
church of the Winthrops.

Quotations from "Bringing a heroic chapter from WWII to light,"
Boston Globe, GlobeWest section, Dec. 1, page W1.

Joel

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