Shari Loe

Shari Loe is a retired attorney, mother of three and grandmother of two, a lifelong Unitarian Universalist who was an Army brat, raised in the faith across continents. Her family found UU congregations in Alexandria, Virginia, Paris, France, and several places in California and Texas before settling in Houston, Texas when Shari was 12. There, they attended the First Unitarian Church.  Shari became active in Liberal Religious Youth (LRY), which brought her into community with youth in two other congregations in the Houston area and eventually into leadership with SEAFOAM LRY, a regional group that held conferences across Texas and Oklahoma. Shari also began work for racial justice early, joining the Houston Youth Council on Human Relations at age 12 and continuing activism led by her parents’ antiwar work and her father’s work in helping found the first Community Center in Houston’s Third Ward, bringing a community focus to health care and health education.  The Involvement Committee at First Church was initially a strong support for this work, but sadly the discomfort of the church leadership with what was then regarded as radical empowerment of community, and also discomfort with actual inclusion of Black members, led to her father becoming disenchanted with the faith.  Her parents’ support of the Black Caucus and the frustrating end of the Empowerment movement also contributed to her parents’ disillusionment.

But Shari has kept up with her passion and struggle to make us better. She ended up in New Jersey and raised her children UU, first at the Unitarian Church of Montclair and then at her current congregation, Morristown UU Fellowship, where she has been a member for 26 years.  She taught in Religious Education at all levels, and then settled into her first love of teaching ages 11-14 (ish). She helped develop Coming of Age curricula and led the Rites of Passage team at the Fellowship for many years, and also was lead advisor for the Neighboring Faiths program.  She also was the Envoy to the UU UNO (now UUA@UN) for about ten years.  Shari first began creating UU worship as a teen in LRY, and has served as the Summer Services co-chair at the Montclair church and enjoyed creating UN Sunday services as UU UNO Envoy, and especially loved helping youth and teens create worship as part of their Coming of Age. She has served on Board at MUUF multiple times, most recently as President, ending her term June 2021, during which time she led the revision of the Fellowship’s Bylaws. She’s been on the Finance committee and is now co-chair of the Capital Campaign, which has raised almost $8M towards the revamp of the MUUF campus, including a new Fellowship hall, and is a member of the 8th Principle Task Force (the Fellowship adopted the 8th Principle during her tenure as President).

Shari graduated from Yale with a degree in Poli Sci in 1977, and got her JD from New York University in 1983.  She started her legal career as a litigator at two different firms, and then joined AT&T’s legal department in 1988, where she specialized in international commercial and regulatory work for AT&T’s Business side.  Retired at the end of 2020, she lives with her husband, David Matsushima (also a retired AT&T attorney), in a townhome community in Whitehouse Station, NJ with their Labrador Retriever, Gigi.  She is fluent in French and pretty good in Spanish. Shari enjoys retirement for many reasons, but especially because it means she can stay up late reading as much as she likes!