Sally Freedman knows how to get things done.
When she and her husband, Art, moved to the Poconos in 1991, they discovered the nearest Unitarian Universalist church fellowship was in the Bethlehem area, an hour’s drive. For the Freedmans, the church meant family.
Undaunted, she contacted the Bethlehem fellowship, asked for names and addresses of members in the Stroudsburg area, and invited them to a meeting in her home. On Jan. 19, 1992, about a dozen people showed up, and one month later the first public meeting of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Poconos was held on the campus of East Stroudsburg University.
The organization now meets in the YMCA in Stroudsburg, with a membership of 45, and a campaign for new members and a permanent home in full swing.
Freedman, an agnostic, said, “I was the last of my family; the people at the Unitarian Church essentially became my family.” When her first husband, John Doyle, became terminally ill, members of the church took care of her children and were with her around the clock in the hospital, she said.
After Doyle died in 1962, Freedman — again the doer — founded a chapter of Parents Without Partners (PWP).
“I was an awful widow. I fought it every inch of the way. I didn’t think it was God’s will,” Freedman said.
“I learned there (PWP), we could live through it, and the children learned they were not the only ones without a father.”
Born in Aberdeen, S.D., her parents divorced when she was 8. The family moved to Chicago when she was 16, where she attended the University of Chicago, receiving a bachelor’s degree in an accelerated program.
She worked for the Chicago Tribune for 10 years, starting as a copy girl, then college correspondent, then reporter. She met and married Doyle, who also worked for the newspaper, and left a few months before the first of their three children was born.
Later, when her husband became ill and Freedman came to realize he would not recover, she studied for a teaching career at Roosevelt University in Chicago. She received a master’s in education and taught for 17 years in the Park Forest school system.
In 1964, she married Art Freedman, a divorced father of two sons, whom she met at PWP. In 1981, he became a consultant to the water treatment industry, and a year later his business was solid enough for Freedman to leave teaching and follow a long-time ambition — writing.
She wrote six manuscripts the summer of 1982, selling a picture book for children called “Monster Birthday Party” to an Illinois publishing company the following year.
Three years later she sold another book and last year, she compiled a pictorial of the Delaware Water Gap, one of a series of “Images of America” books published by Arcadia Publishing of Dover, N.H.
Because her husband’s work often took him to the East Coast, the Freedmans moved to New Jersey in 1984 and then to the Poconos seven years later.
Her love of the Poconos suffered a blow in 1993 when she heard Ann Van Dyke, a representative of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, speak at a Unitarian Fellowship meeting about hate crimes.
“I was absolutely horrified to learn about hate group activity in Pennsylvania in general, and the Poconos. I never realized the KKK still existed,” she said.
Because of Van Dyke’s visit — and with the help of Bob Hillman, vice president of the local NAACP — Freedman once more took the first step, initiating the Unity Coalition of the Poconos in 1994. The group now has about 200 members, Freedman said.
The coalition’s purpose is to contact victims of hate crimes and offer them assistance and support. Some victims accept it; others do not. They remove hate or racial graffiti, and hold alternate events if a hate group plans a march or public meeting.
At 68, Freedman continues to be a doer. She has served on the board of the Friends of Monroe County Library. She participated in getting the referendum for the new county library, which initially did not have the county commissioners’ support, she said.
She writes the newsletters for the Coalition and the Fellowship. She is on the board of the American Association of University Women, Monroe County Diabetes Society, Monroe County Learning Disabilities Association, and handles the secretarial duties for her husband’s business. She is a member of the Quiet Valley Historical Society and Pocono Mountains Quilters Guild, volunteering her time documenting old quilts, and when time permits, making quilts for the needy.
She says her activities are prompted by her beliefs.
“We’re (Unitarians) expected to develop our own philosophy. I guess it’s that I feel that we are all human beings clinging to the surface of the earth, and all we have is each other, so I should do what I can to help,” she said.
