obituaries

Drusilla Cummins was declared legally blind when she was only 34, but she never lost the vision she had for what women could do and become within the Unitarian Universalist Church.

As the wife of the Rev. John Cummins, the now-retired minister of First Universalist Church in Minneapolis, "Dru" charted a different course for women in the church at a time when the minister's wife had a fairly proscribed role. She believed in empowering women and led the charge to allow them to assume leadership roles.

"She helped a generation of women find their voices," said the Rev. Justin Schroeder, minister at First Universalist Church. "She saw the power of women coming together and tending to their growth and leadership development. She left quite a legacy in the church."

Cummins, who had suffered from a dementia-type illness for the past several years, died from complications from adhesions that had formed on her intestines. She was at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis when she passed away Nov. 29 at age 84.

A top scholar and prize-winning public speaker in high school, Cummins graduated from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., where she majored in English and drama. She also studied at Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College in Vermont, where her mentor was poet Robert Frost, her husband said. She taught high school for six years before they were married and later moved to Minneapolis.

Cummins served on the Unitarian Universalist Women's Federation, an organization that promoted equal representation of women throughout the denomination.

By 1973, she was elected its president, and the following year went to the church's national assembly in Philadelphia and asked for space to present the first Ministry to Women Award. She was told no, so she rented a nearby church and 55 buses to transport assembly participants to the ceremony so she could present Ms. magazine editors Gloria Steinem and Pat Carbine with the award. Cummins won the denomination's highest award for women in 2000, John Cummins said.

She was elected to the Unitarian Universalist Association and led the effort to eliminate sexist language from hymnals and education materials and pave the way for women to become ministers. She also led a campaign to elect the first woman president of the denomination, her husband said.

"She transformed the whole denomination," John Cummins said. "She inspired a number of young women to do things with their lives."

She was the first woman to serve on the board of the Meadville Lombard Theological School at the University of Chicago. Locally, she held several leadership positions within the church, including being a trustee of the Unitarian Universalist church district that covers five Upper Midwestern states and parts of Canada. She also was a teacher at Whittier School in Minneapolis.

In addition to her husband, Cummins is survived by a son, Clyde, of Minneapolis, and a daughter, Carol Cummins, of Golden Valley.

A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at First Universalist Church, 3400 Dupont Av. S., Minneapolis.