FFRF Lifetime Member Dick Hewetson, 95, who chose his own date with destiny, dying by doctor-assisted suicide on July 19, was the cheerfulest man I ever met. My husband, Dan Barker, who shared Dick’s path of going from minister to atheist, can attest that Dick even died cheerfully.
Friend and San Francisco chapter activist Dana Treadwell notified us as we were traveling from Wisconsin on Thursday, July 17, to the Scopes Centennial Conference in Tennessee that Dick had decided to depart that Saturday, and would very much like Dan to sing one of Dick’s favorite songs. Dan accordingly left the conference ballroom Saturday to phone Dick that morning, just a few hours before his scheduled termination of life.
Dan says the conversation was surreal, not because it was weird, but because it was so . . . ordinary. They told stories, remembered past experiences, compared their deconversions from the ministry, joked and laughed, both knowing Dick would be dead in a few hours. Dan jokingly told him he was finally going to see what is on the “other side,” and Dick replied, “It’s like the old song: If I get there before you do, I’ll drill you a hole and pull you through,” chuckling heartily like he always did. Dan asked Dick if it was a hard decision, and he replied: “Not at all! I’m ready to go.”
Dan relayed that the FFRF Executive Board, which had been informed of Dick’s decision, had expressed its appreciation for all he had done for the organization over the decades and affirmed that they respect and admire his decision. “I’ll tell them you said ‘Hello,’” Dan offered, and Dick replied, “No. Tell them I said ‘Goodbye.’” Dan sang “Nothing Fails Like Prayer” to Dick, and said it was hard to finally hang up, knowing it would be forever. How do you say “farewell” for the very last time? But Dan admired Dick’s unflinching control of his own destiny.
Dana later told us that as Dick was resting before falling into a final slumber, he requested that a recording of “Nothing Fails Like Prayer” be played several times. Dick, poignantly, wiggled along with his toes.
We’re glad Dick went out on his own terms, after being in hospice for some months, as we should all be allowed to do, and that he was lucky enough to be living in California where medical aid in dying is lawful. But it’s sad commentary on the times that in the third-person obituary he composed himself, he wrote: “He had a wonderful life but was discouraged with the state of the world and the USA. At the age of 95, he was ready to go.”
Dick was born in a suburb of Chicago on March 31, 1930, and died at Brookdale Senior Living in San Jose, Calif. At the age of 42, he became involved in the budding gay rights movement. He emerged from the closet (“ripping the door off its hinges,” according to a friend). He was instrumental in getting a gay rights ordinance passed in 1977 in St. Paul, Minn. Because lesbian Carla Messman and he were active union members, Minnesota state employees had the first union contract protection for LGBTQ-plus employees in the nation.
He helped his then-partner, David Irwin, in establishing Quatrefoil Library. Opening in February 1986, it is one of the largest LGBTQ-plus libraries in the country, and it has become the de facto LGBTQ-plus Center for the Twin Cities.
As Dick wrote about himself and David, “Together, they reached the conclusion that the greatest enemy of LGBTQ-plus people was religion.” He and David joined FFRF in 1978. Dick continued a life of activism including mental health issues, women’s rights, LGBTQ-plus rights and for the separation of state and church.
At the age of 80, he met the love of his life, John Vu, a Vietnamese refugee. Dick is also survived by his beloved niece and nephew, Kim and Ron Spawn, and countless cherished friends. He generously suggested donations in his memory to Freedom From Religion Foundation and Quatrefoil Library.
I first connected with Dick at the 1979 national convention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, where his ever-ready chuckle and beaming smile put everyone at ease.
In a speech at our 1985 convention, he reported that he had been favorably impressed at his first FFRF conference by three things. The first was that the membership was “older and wiser and wonderful people who thought sensibly.” The second was appreciation for being at a convention where “everyone wasn’t plotched” on booze. His third observation was that “David and I arrived as a gay couple, and it didn’t matter, there were no waves, no nothing, no judgmentalism. We were here and we were welcome.” Well, of course, what else would one expect from a roomful of freethinkers, even back in 1979? But what a sorry reflection on society that he had been afraid of his reception.
As Dick noted in his own obituary, “He grew up in a world where homosexuality was considered illegal, immoral, and an illness. For the first 42 years of his life, he did everything to fit in.” That included having a steady girlfriend from ages 16 to 20, and eventually choosing the Episcopalian priesthood as a career in part because he thought he would be accepted as an unmarried man.
It would take years before Dick learned to crack his favorite joke: that he joined the ministry so he could “be among men who put on dresses on Sundays.” Dick explained that he blamed his chronic doubts about religion upon himself. “So I prayed and I prayed, and I tried to have faith. And as Anne Gaylor has said so well: Nothing Fails Like Prayer.” (My mother asked Dan to turn her aphorism into a song, which is now sung at every FFRF convention nonprayer breakfast.) As Dick stated in his 1985 FFRF talk in a panel of ex-clergy he titled “The Queer Road to Atheism,” he truly hoped to do some good in the ministry. Then he realized, as he told us during a Nov. 1, 2008, interview on Freethought Radio (ffrf.org/radio), that the church was getting in the way of doing good.
Dick later gave another talk, “From Christian to Human Being,” at FFRF’s San Francisco mini-convention in 1999, where he confessed, “I didn’t really believe any of this Christian stuff. … The hardest time I had every week was preparing a sermon because what are you going to say to people when you don’t really believe it?”
Dick was able to retire with a pension from the Episcopalian Church, but always encouraged FFRF to do something about the privileges religion is given by the government, including the housing allowance. FFRF gave it a valiant try in federal court, to Dick’s delight, fighting hard and winning a major federal court ruling by Wisconsin Judge Barbara B. Crabb that declared the parish exemption unconstitutional and made international headlines. Unfortunately, our victory was thrown out by the appeals court.
Dick bid in his farewell: “Please remember the good times we had together.” Dan and I and so many FFRF members and friends around the country who looked forward to seeing Dick for four decades at national conventions, will indeed remember the many good times together and greatly miss his cheerful, rational presence and passionate commitment.
Disclaimer: The views in this column are of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
