Faces of Joining Hearts & Hands: “So Great a Cloud of Witnesses”

The First of a Series

“Why Me, God?”

August 2006

Grace First Presbyterian Church member, Eunice Sato, asks the eternal question and gets some new answers

Eunice Sato always felt that God was leading her on a path, even if she didn’t always know where or why.

The native Californian, of Japanese heritage, faced her first major change of course with the Ethnic Japanese Evacuation of 1942.  After she and her family were evacuated from California in March 1942, Sato continued her education in Greeley, Colorado, where she earned her degree and teaching certificate.  From there, Sato moved progressively east, first to take her first teaching post in Alpha, Michigan, and then to New York City’s Columbia University to earn her Master’s degree.

But Sato’s eastward travels would reach their pinnacle in her call to mission service in Japan.  In 1948, she was sent not by the United Methodist Church, the church in which she was baptized, but by the Dutch Reformed Church to teach in that denomination’s oldest mission school.  “The Methodists feared for my safety,” Sato said.  “Fear?  Those students of 50 plus years ago are still among my best friends.”

While it was in Japan that she married and had her children, Sato wanted to raise and educate her family in the United States.  Upon returning home to her native California in 1956, she immediately established herself in the Long Beach community, becoming involved in school and church life.

In the mid-1970s, when a member of the Long Beach city council was convicted on corruption charges, Sato was encouraged by her school and PTA colleagues to run for office.  “Why me,” Sato wondered even as she agreed.  “I don’t know anything about politics.”

In a February 1975 special election, Sato was the top vote getter in a field of 21 candidates, easily winning the post.  She served on city council from 1975 to 1986, and was elected by her fellow council members to a two-year term as mayor in 1980.  Sato was the first woman and the first non-Caucasian to hold the mayoral office in California’s fifth largest city.

“I didn’t promise my constituents anything,” Sato said of her campaign platform, which was grounded firmly in her own Christian principles.  “I promised them only integrity.”

A Methodist all of her life, Sato eventually became disaffected with her church, leading her to seek out a new faith community.  When a friend from her former PTA days invited Sato to Grace First Presbyterian Church, Long Beach, she found herself at home in the multicultural church of 700, becoming a member in 2004.

Immediately recognizing Sato’s many gifts, the Rev. Steve Wirth, pastor of Grace First, asked her to join the steering committee for the church’s $2.2 million capital campaign, $1 million of which will flow through Joining Hearts & Hands to redevelop Presbyterian churches on the Gulf Coast.

“Why me,” Sato again asked as she rose to the challenge.  “I’m new.”  Since her appointment to the task, she has missed only one of some 30 committee meetings.  “This is a strong, committed group, which has gone about their work very carefully,” she said.  “Everyone has stepped up in great faith and hope.  I just feel privileged to be a part of it.”

The campaign has moved everyone at Grace First to give sacrificially, from a struggling single mother to a pastor’s widow. Before the public phase had even begun, $750,000 of the $1 million goal for Joining Hearts & Hands had already been pledged.

Sato finds inspiration for daily living in Matthew 25:40, “…just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

“I never dreamed I would be a missionary, I never dreamed of being a politician,” Sato said.  “God is opening up new leadership opportunities.  God put me here, and I’m happy where I am.”