The Bainbridge Island Review is currently celebrating 100 years of publishing history and has invited the sharing of locally significant memories from the period. This is especially relevant to Cedars, because we can be thankful for the newspaper error that led to our founding and subsequent presence. 

For many years, the oral history of the fellowship that has become Cedars recalled that the local newspaper inadvertently used “Unitarians” in the headline above an article announcing possible formation of a Unity group, and that disappointed Unitarians responded by forming a group of their own. 

The story is true. The names of those Unitarians are then found as signatures on bylaws for a new Bainbridge Unitarian Fellowship. Those bylaws, dated June 9, 1959, also included a succinct statement of purpose for the new organization: “To study and practice the principles of liberal Unitarianism and to conduct a church school.”