Horace F. Westwood World War II Letters

Horace F. Westwood was a minister and Reverend of the Unitarian Church and served the Church throughout the United States and Canada. Westwood graduated from the Crane Theological School in 1938, during which time he served as a minister to the Unitarian Church in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts. In 1941-42, he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve Chaplain’s Corps. Soon after the completion of his training in Michigan, Westwood was assigned to duty in a Marine Corps unit that was to be stationed in the South Pacific. He spent 21 months, from spring 1943 to Christmas Eve 1944, in the South Pacific; the largest period of time being spent at Tulagi in the Solomon Islands. From the conclusion of World War II until 1950, Westwood served as Reverend to the Unitarian Memorial Church in Fairhaven, Massachusetts.

From 1950 to 1972, Reverend Westwood served the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Houston, Texas. He oversaw the building of a new Church, which was completed in March 1952, there and became a community leader in the movement to desegregate the city of Houston. The First Church voted to desegregate its services in June 1954, becoming the first church in Houston to take such a step. In 1962, he published a collection of sermons and prayers called The Search for Understanding. He moved to Vermont in 1972 and would go on to serve in Unitarian and Universalist churches in the region, as well as taking up services as interim minister at a number of churches in the United States and Canada.