by Drs. Edwin K. Ang & Therese Stewart-Poughkeepsie, NY
On the occasion of her 79th birthday, members of the Hudson Valley Senior Association offer the following tribute to a dear sister and friend.
Sarah M. Witt: Jewish mother; World War II veteran, Women’s Army Corps; musician; free-lance writer; radio evangelist and counselor.
Born in Chicago in 1918, Sarah grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family. Nine months after her mother died in 1943, she joined the Women’s Army Corps and served for two years during World War II. After being discharged from the Army, Sarah attended college, during which time she met her husband; they married and had two sons. After her divorce in California, Sarah returned to Chicago with the two boys, one four years old and the other only 13 months, and raised them alone. She worked as a typist for the late Earl Nightingale, famed Chicago radio personality for 40 years, and later worked as a proofreader for the Chicago Sun Times.
Mrs. Witt has the distinction of being the first Jewish member of the Unification Church, having joined the movement in October 1965. She has been active in the Unification Movement for 32 years. In the 1960s she assisted Dr. David S.C. Kim by editing and preparing the copy for the publication of his book, Individual Preparation for His Coming Kingdom. During the past two decades Sarah served as Director of Public Relations at the Unification Theological Seminary. "The Unification Hour," a weekly radio program presenting The Divine Principle, inaugurated by her in 1977, continues to the present day. A collection of her letters to local newspapers, in many of which she played the role of apologist for the Unification Church, can be found in Trumpet in the Wilderness, published in 1991.
Sarah is a regular piano accompanist for daily worship service at the Seminary and has been a performer on the accordion on many festive occasions. She is affectionately known as "Granny Sarah" by many of the Seminary students whom she counseled over the years.
Sarah received the Single Blessing on April 7, 1989. She is in the process of arranging for the republication of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward and has written an Introduction and Epilogue for the book relating it to Unification teaching.
We offer her our congratulations, deep love and appreciation. She has enriched our lives and those of countless others.