Darlene Jackson Elected

Co-President Of CWU In Connecticut

By Shannon Hicks

Founded in 1941, Church Women United (CWU) is a national volunteer Christian ecumenical women’s movement initiated and carried out by women in the United States and Puerto Rico. It is a movement that brings together women of diverse races, cultures, and traditions in closer Christian fellowship, prayer, advocacy, and action for peace with justice in the world.

CWU engages millions of women representing 26 supporting denominations and participating Christian women representing Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and other women.

It is the ecumenical mission of CWU that attracted Newtown resident Darlene Jackson to the movement years ago.

“Church Women United respects all Christian faiths,” said Mrs Jackson, who was recently installed as the co-president of Church Women United in Connecticut.

Mrs Jackson and JoAnn Cromwell of Newington, who recently served three years (one CWU-CT term) as co-vice presidents, decided to take on the co-leadership position together.

“We agreed that we were only going to do this if we went in as a team,” Mrs Cromwell said. “We knew that going in, that we did not want to be single presidents.”

“I’m excited about this, and a little nervous too,” Mrs Jackson admitted. “But I do believe in what Church Women United does, the betterment of women and children around the world.”

 “It’s a very good balance. She and I do different things very well,” said Mrs Jackson. “JoAnn and I work together very well, too, which is good.”

Mrs Jackson is a member of Newtown Congregational Church. Mrs Cromwell is a member of Grace Episcopal Church in Newington.

“She’s the strong part of the pair,” JoAnn Cromwell said this week. “I like behind the scenes, and Darlene is very good at being in front, at being the leader.

“She is very good at keeping all of us on task,” Mrs Cromwell continued. “She’s very good at making the agendas, and boy, she’s really good at keeping us on track. I’d be the one going off. She keeps us focused.”

Mrs Jackson became involved in Church Women United when she was introduced to the organization by friend and former CWU-Newtown unit president Jeane Roberts.

She eventually served as co-president of CWU-Newtown with Mrs Roberts for three years, and has been the local unit’s president since July 2005.

Mrs Roberts, who currently serves as historian for CWU-Newtown, remembers seeing a dedicated member of Newtown Congregational Church who she felt was “more than qualified to be part of Church Women United.” That was when she approached Mrs Jackson to become involved in the local unit. She is not surprised to see the advancements of her friend.

“She is what you call a born leader,” Mrs Roberts said. “I don’t think there is anything that she has been involved in that she doesn’t end up being a leader because of her ability. And she is also a great church woman.”

By the mid-2000s Mrs Jackson also began attending CWU state board meetings, joining friend and then-CWU-Greater Danbury unit president Elizabeth Ricci on rides to the gatherings.

“She initiated coming to the meetings with me,” Mrs Ricci said. “Newtown and Danbury units would work together, and at one point she decided to come with me to the state meetings.

“She listened very objectively to everything that went on,” continued Mrs Ricci, who never imagined where those early trips with her friend would lead.

“I’m really surprised at how far she went,” Mrs Ricci said. “But I think having the background that she has — she is a previous writer — and she’s very objective. She can also be, organizationwise, she knows when to get things going. She’s a mover. She’ll be a good leader for the state.

“She already is a good leader with the Newtown group,” she added. “I’ve seen that myself. She’s just being herself.”

Mrs Jackson has been increasingly busier with Church Women United’s state and even national programs in recent years. She attended the 2008 Ecumenical Women’s Gathering of CWU in Independence, Mo. There, she attended a number of workshops and programs and was, she told The Newtown Bee that July, “privileged to be one of five Connecticut members of the state board” to represent her home state at the event.

“That meeting really impressed me,” Mrs Jackson recently reiterated. “I was quite impressed with that.”

In April 2009 Mrs Jackson’s home church was the site for the statewide spring assembly. Newtown Congregational Church hosted the annual event, with special guest Dimples Armstrong and a program that was coordinated by then-state president Jonnie M. Lewis-Thorpe and the state’s co-vice presidents — Mrs Jackson and Mrs Cromwell.

This past winter Mrs Jackson was among the 500 people who attended the CWU 70th anniversary event, which was held in Atlantic City, December 1–3.

“It was quite a grand occasion,” she said. “We were so busy that I never played a slot machine, or got out to the boardwalk. They had workshops on so many things.”

One of the event’s keynote speakers was the Reverend Susan Sparks, the pastor of Madison Avenue Baptist Church in New York. An attorney as well as a minister and cancer survivor, the Rev Sparks is widely known for her preaching skills and comedic commentaries.

“And she’s a biker,” Mrs Jackson pointed out with a laugh. “She was one of the funniest, and most inspiring, speakers I have ever seen.”

Most recently Mrs Jackson was at the CWU state assembly, held on April 21 in Glastonbury.

“That went very well,” she said. Jacqueline Garcia was the keynote speaker, and the event included a number of programs for the local CWU units on history, leadership, and financial contributions.

During the next three years, Mrs Jackson would also like to see CWU-CT better define the roles of its leaders. Since February she has been looking at the organization’s bylaws and job descriptions, looking for clearer definitions of who does what.

“We should be able to tell people what their roles will be,” she said. “I was recruited without a proper job description, and that should never be.”

Advancing The Quadrennial

Church Women United has a strong sense of identification with the needs of women, children, and families, and seeks ways to provide impacting support.

Every four years CWU adopts a quadrennial priority, an area of concentration to focus its social justice advocacy and action. The priority is embraced by the movement and is used to guide CWU’s work at the local, state, and national levels. CWU’s priority during the current quadrennial (2008–2012) is “Building a World Fit for All God’s Children.”

Church Women United units at all levels have been prayerfully informed and proactive in addressing the issues of health, environmental care, peace, and economic justice from the perspective of women, children, and families around the world since 2008.

Mrs Jackson would like to see CWU-CT “focus even more on preventing and helping women involved in human trafficking,” she said recently. “I have a lot of ideas floating around. I just don’t know where they’re all going.”

In addition to Church Women United, Mrs Jackson remains very active within her church. She recently finished serving as NCC’s moderator for two years, following a four-year run as assistant moderator. She has been nominating chair, music chair, and historian, volunteers at the church’s outreach thrift ministry of gently-used clothing and household items (Cornerstone), and has long been a member of the NCC Senior Choir.

She has also been involved for a number of years with Fairfield East Association, which includes about 20 local United Christ of Church member churches where ministers have their standing.

She also remains active with the Newtown CWU unit and will be participating with the unit when it presents its next event, May Friendship Day at C.H. Booth Library on Sunday, May 6 (see related story).

She is also the mother of two grown children, Amy and Dale, both married; and grandmother to five children. She plays tennis, and takes piano lessons (“But I don’t practice enough,” she admitted).

And this is, she says, after she let go some of the other volunteer work — years of time devoted to Danbury Child Advocacy Center (now Family & Children’s Aid), United Way, Literacy Volunteers of America, Camp Fire (née Western Council Campfire Boys & Girls, Inc), and even two years of meeting weekly on the NCC Search Committee while her church was looking for its new senior pastor.

“I have pretty much cleared the boards,” she said.

When Jonnie M. Lewis-Thorpe decided to hand the lead reins for CWU in Connecticut over to someone else, she reportedly cited her career as part of her decision.

“She is still working, and she told us she just didn’t have enough time to do everything she wanted to do” for CWU, said Mrs Jackson.

“I may not have enough time either,” she said with a laugh, “but we’re sure going to give it a try.”