Community Stories

On this page, we're creating an archive to document the life of All Souls through first-person accounts, images and reports. To make contributions to any of these sections, please send them to us at archives@allsoulsnyc.org. For additional information about contributing, please see Preserving the Present as a Legacy for the Future.

The documents are in the following categories: Bicentennial Stories, All Souls in the Pandemic, Advocating for Racial Justice and 9/11 Memories.

Sep 25, 2023

David Robb - Memories of my Life in Ministry (audio)

Rev. David Robb addressed the All Souls League on September 14, 2023, giving them a fascinating account of his life story. Click here...

Sep 30, 2022

The 60s: A Tale of Two Churches

By Rev. Dick Leonard. All Souls, like most Unitarian Universalist churches and fellowships in the 1960s, ran noteworthy social service...

Sep 2, 2022

Remembering 9/11, 21 years later...

by Bill Bechman. On August 1, 2001, I flew back to my childhood home from New York City to spend a weekend visiting my parents in Indiana....

Sep 2, 2022

My Memories of 9/11/01

by Harry Miller. I might not have looked at it this way, if I had not been asked for a recollection, but in many ways 9/11 - my 9/11 -...

Aug 27, 2022

Fourth Avenue & 12th Street

by Myat Thi Ha. A typical autumn morning with coffee at the dining table next to the window under a crisp indigo sky. The most peaceful...

Aug 27, 2022

9/11/2001 Remembrances

by Dan O'Neill. I was in a sabbatical from my teaching job. On the Tuesday morning of September 11th I was planning to go into Manhattan...

Aug 27, 2022

9/11

by Laura Pederson. People don’t look like people anymore after they’ve fallen from over a hundred floors above the ground. ―Rebecca...

Aug 27, 2022

How 9/11 Motivated me to Change Careers

by Anne Bradley. On September 11, 2001, I wasn’t working that day. I was sitting at my home computer responding to some emails when my...

Aug 27, 2022

9/11 Story

by Rev. Dick Leonard, from his book Wet Cement, published in 2017. I have two possible routes to go from my apartment to the church, a...

Jan 22, 2022

A Year-End Farewell, an Ode to Those Lost in 2021 - by Timothy Kelley

Here’s to those lost in ’21— our woes continue; theirs are done. At year’s end we salute them, gone (while we contend with Omicron). Our...

Sep 2, 2021

That Horrible Day

by Lois Coleman. On September 11th, 2001, I was a librarian at Barnard College, and lived on the other side of the Columbia campus on...

Feb 26, 2021

Circles of Care News

Gary Newton writes: During one of the weekly Zoom gatherings of Bill’s Soul Circle, Pamela Healey asked about the curious looking animal...

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