A Brief History of CC&C
October 1999
This brief history of CC&C, Coffee, Controversy and Conversation, is reconstructed, as best as can be, from several memories. The late Barbara and Mort Fosberg were instrumental organizing CC&C along with Dr. Michael Miller and wife Sarah Miller and a young woman who can't be remembered. During the 1971-72 congregational year, they felt the need to feed their intellectual interests and social justice concerns. They were aware that there were so many opportunities in the Washington area to hear from experts and people with unusual experience in so many areas of community and national life; thus they thought that they and members of the congregation ought to be hearing from them. So one day in the Fall of 1971, the five of them sat down in the Fellowship Room and organized CC&C.
The first newsletter announcement of a CC&C appeared in the 1/17/72 issue and read, "Coffee, Controversy and Conversation on Sunday 23 Jan. Wally Edgerton, Deputy Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities will speak on 'Knowledge: A Wasted Resource?' Coffee and doughnuts will be ready at 9:15 a.m. A baby sitter will be available." In the following newsletter, CC&C is listed in the UNICALENDAR for Sunday January 30 at 9:15 a.m. with a note to see page 2 for a description of the program. The Sunday service followed at 10:30 a.m., a format the was to be followed until two Sunday services were started in the 1994-95 program year and CC&C began adjusting program times to accommodate the new service times.
Mort Fosberg chaired the CC&C committee for the first year, and then Barbara Fosberg followed him to be followed by Lou Ravin, who chaired the committee for the next two years. Fran Yankauer and Curt Adams each chaired the planning committee for two years.
Byron Spice recalls that in the following summer of 1972, Eldon Winston "spearheaded" the continuation of CC&C on into the summer. Byron asked him why, and he recalls Eldon saying, "that two months was a long time not to have anything going on during Sunday mornings." So for some years, CC&C was the RRUUC summer program prior to the beginning of the summer services. It was Eldon who got Sallie Toney to do her first "lay led service" that summer and that began Sallie's wonderful series of insightful spiritual and humanitarian homilies from the pulpit of RRUUC. Don Chery recalls that in June of 1980 when he arrived in Bethesda, the CC&C program was the summer "service" for RRUUC and that those programs are what engaged him with RRUUC. He also began picking up the doughnuts early from the old Montgomery Doughnuts on Old Georgetown road and bringing them in to have with the coffee.
During the 1992-93 congregational year, Bill Murry, RRUUC's minister, proposed that a special CC&C program of "Reflections on a Lifetime" be established. His proposal was based on his experience with such a program in Bloomington, Indiana where he was minister before coming to RRUUC in 1980. These "Reflections" were fascinating and have become an extremely popular feature of the CC&C programming. The first reflection was by Muriel Davies, first Director of the RRUUC School of Religion. That first "Reflection" was held in March of 1993 and it had to be postponed because of a big snowstorm. When it was held the following week well over 100 people filled the Fireside Room to hear Muriel recount her story.