By Sharon Abercrombie
Staff writer

For the first time since its inception in 1989, Catholic Charities of the East Bay’s annual Catholic Woman of the Year award will be given to two recipients instead of one. The twin honors are going to Judith Murphy, recently retired director of the Soda Foundation, and Anne Symens-Bucher, co-founder of the Nevada Desert Experience.

CCEB decided this year to begin recognizing outstanding Catholic business women who model the best in religious ethics, in addition to those women who espouse community service and social justice issues, said Matt Gibson, communications and development assistant.

The new award is relevant and timely, said Gibson, in view of the recent lack of ethics in the financial and home mortgage scene.

Judith Murphy

Judith Murphy, CCEB’s first outstanding businesswoman of the year, believes that good ethics “should be as natural as breathing in all aspects of life and business.” Retired earlier this year after serving for 18 years as director of the Soda Foundation in Moraga, Murphy said the world of philanthropy is required to exhibit high ethical standards.

During her tenure, the Soda Foundation grew its assets from $45 million to $150 million, increased its staff from one to eight, and acquired a permanent home in Moraga. It granted more than $79 million to education, health and human services programs in the East Bay, including St. Mary’s College in Moraga where the Soda Activity Center is part of campus life and the Soda Aquatic Center at Campilindo High School in Moraga.

St. Vincent’s Day Home in Oakland, FACE (Family Aid-Catholic Education), Mercy Care and Retirement Center, and the Kmhmu Catholic Community in Richmond have also received Soda Foundation grants.

Murphy’s association with the foundation started in 1979 when she went to work for Y. Charles Soda, a businessman and an original co-owner of the Oakland Raiders. Soda, an active Catholic and member of the Knights of Malta, and his wife, Helen, had established the foundation in 1964 to provide financial support to educational, religious and community organizations.

After Soda’s death in 1989, Murphy was selected by the foundation’s board of directors to serve as executive director. Now serving on the foundation’s board, Murphy said that “my belief in the good works done by such unselfish people in this world remains as awed as it was on my first site visit (to grantees).”

Murphy credits the Soda staff and board of directors for “working tirelessly to build the foundation into what it is today. In the beginning, we visited many other foundations and did extensive research. Our philosophy was: Never quit learning and always be open to new ideas.”

Her successor, Bob Uyeki, has lauded Murphy for her firm belief “that a foundation needs to be a member of the community and not above it or separate from it. That’s a very different perspective from a lot of other foundations out there that don’t engage as deeply with their community partners. By developing enduring relationships with our grantees and treating them as equal, we can better support their work.”

As a result, said Uyeki, “We have a big vision of a healthy, just and caring community, where everyone understands and accepts their responsibility to be their brother’s and sister’s keeper.”

Judith Murphy is a native of Los Angeles and attended UC Berkeley. She married Roger Murphy in 1959. The couple moved to Moraga and became members of Santa Maria Parish in Orinda. They have five children, four of whom live in the Bay Area.

Murphy is currently serving as a Regent at Saint Mary’s College, where her husband, father-in-law and son graduated. She is also working as a consultant to help a local hospital district set up a grant program.

Anne Symens-Bucher

When Anne Symens-Bucher was in high school at Bishop O‘Dowd in Oakland, she often wondered why there seemed to be such a disconnect between what she was being taught in religion classes regarding peacemaking and how most Christians were living it out.

After studying for three years at UC Santa Cruz, she decided to work as a volunteer at Dorothy Day’s New York Catholic Worker House.

When she returned to Oakland three years later in 1980 to complete her religious studies major at Holy Names University, Symens-Bucher and a group of friends founded their own Catholic Worker house dedicated to sheltering refugees from Central America. The mission continues today on International Boulevard and is known as the Oakland Catholic Worker.

Both experiences set the stage for the young woman’s future work. In 1981 she became secretary to Franciscan Father Louis Vitale, then provincial minister of the Santa Barbara Province. Together with GTU student Michael Affleck, they organized a prayer vigil at the U.S. nuclear testing facility 40 miles from Las Vegas to celebrate the 800th birthday of St. Francis of Assisi.

They planned it as a witness against ongoing nuclear and ecological violence stemming from bomb testing on the homeland of the Shoshone Indians. Nineteen people attended. Anne Bucher met her future husband, Terry Symens, at the vigil.

The prayer event gradually evolved into the Nevada Desert Experience, an organization which continues to draw thousands of pacifists each year to pray and protest U.S. involvement in nuclear testing.

Symens-Bucher, Father Vitale and many others have been arrested there numerous times. Over the years, she has served as chair of the organization and currently is a board member.

As a co-director of the Franciscan’s Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation office for many years, she was involved in efforts to bring about nuclear disarmament, to provide sanctuary to refugees, to support the rights of farm workers, and to encourage organic gardening.

A home gardener herself, Symens-Bucher had read how gardening in jails and schools was transforming lives. With start-up funds from the Franciscans, foundation grants and private donations, she started The Garden of Learning at St. Elizabeth School in 1998.

The garden is part of a hands-on curriculum in which students cultivate seeds, care for the plants as they grow, wash the vegetables and fruits, bag them and take their produce to the parish food bank. Symens-Bucher co-directed the garden for several years.

While working at the JPIC, she also organized a “Swords into Plowshares Gun Bake” at St. Elizabeth Church in which gun owners surrendered their weapons which were publicly hammered and melted into art work. A hammered melted gun from which a dove emerges still hangs on the side of the church.

Currently, she and her husband of 22 years, Terry, an attorney for the Alameda County Office of Child Support Services, are collaborative trainers with Bay Area Nonviolent Communication, teaching nonviolent communication to couples and parents. She also works as a personal assistant to noted Buddhist eco-philosopher Joanna Macy. The Symens-Buchers and their five children are members of St. Elizabeth Parish.

The awards luncheon is named for Monsignor John T. McCracken, the first director of Catholic Charities of the East Bay. This year’s event takes place Nov. 5 at Santa Maria Church hall in Orinda.

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