Memorial Minute for

Stephen Chapman Matchett

Born: May 10, 1957, Seattle, Washington;

Died: May19, 2020, San Francisco, California

San Francisco Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

July 18, 2020

Stephen Chapman Matchett was born into a Quaker family, son of William Henry Matchett and Judith Wright Matchett, and was raised in University Friends Meeting in Seattle, North Pacific Yearly Meeting, where he was introduced to the social activist traditions of Friends. He moved from Junior to Adult Membership in University Meeting and then transferred to San Francisco Monthly Meeting in December 1983.

As a child, Stephen loved drawing, reading, and playing recorders, piano and the oboe. Stephen’s father was an English professor who read to his children every night before bed. Stephen’s love for writing and the theatre was nourished by the family’s annual summer trips to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. They traveled for William’s sabbaticals to Italy in 1962–3 and to London in 1970-71, Stephen attending school in both places. At age 19, Stephen dropped out of Swarthmore College in order to work with the United Farm Workers in California, where he served as an organizer and paralegal and became fluent in Spanish. Moving from there to attend college at San Francisco State, he came out to his friends and family and formed a loving partnership with Calu Lester. In the early 1980’s Stephen, Calu, and Calu’s adopted son Damon moved to the building on Fell Street, which Stephen called home for the rest of his life.

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In 1986, Calu was an early victim of AIDS, leaving Stephen, in effect, a widower with HIV. Damon returned to foster care, but he and Stephen stayed in touch. After graduating from San Francisco State, Stephen went on for a law degree from Berkeley, clerking for a State Supreme Court judge. The exposure that job gave him to what he called the sordid workings of California’s death penalty statute, led him into a career representing convicted capital and noncapital defendants on their appeals, first with the public defender’s office and later in private practice. 

Stephen began traveling in the ministry in 2001 under the sponsorship of College Park Quarterly Meeting’s Ministry and Oversight Committee, leading "State of the Meeting" workshops along with various Friends from different meetings within the Quarter, through 2008.

In 2003 Stephen read Robert Barclay’s An Apology for the True Christian Divinity. Stephen had also been doing a thorough reading of the scriptures starting about ten years earlier. Stephen said he was amazed how his understanding of his Quaker faith broadened and deepened as he read the scriptures and the writings of early Friends.  Two ministries came out of this experience. The first, which he called "Going to the Well," studied Barclay and other early Quaker writings, and shared the story of Stephen’s personal awakening to Quakerism’s essential and historic Christian message and its significance today. He first led the program over a weekend at Ben Lomond Quaker Center in 2004 and subsequently at eleven other groups, including one in North Pacific Yearly Meeting and one at Berkeley Friends Church, in addition to those in Pacific Yearly Meeting. 

The second ministry was his leading of personally-focused Bible study at Quarterly and Yearly Meeting under the title "Come As You Are," which he began in 2005. Stephen also led this form of Bible study almost every time he attended a program at Quaker Center. In 2012, he adapted this into a weekend program for Quaker Center focused entirely on the Bible, titled “Come as You Are: Reading the Bible with Friends.” This was followed by a second one a year later, and after that a workshop by the same name at the 2013 Friends General Conference summer gathering, then for a third weekend at Quaker Center in January 2019.

Around fifteen years ago Stephen decided to take a leave from his law practice. He had recently ended a long-term relationship and sought help in a 12-step recovery program. It was there that Stephen realized that his well-developed self-reliance was not enough for him to overcome his problems and that he needed to turn to a higher power to accomplish that goal. He found this imperative of submission to God completely resonant with his developing understanding of his Quaker faith and embraced the practice as best he could.

At the same time, Stephen was becoming increasingly involved in the California affiliate of the Alternatives to Violence Project, becoming a facilitator, coordinating the program in the Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, training trainers, and assuming a number of administrative responsibilities for the organization including serving as treasurer.

In collaboration with Dorothy Henderson of Grass Valley Monthly Meeting, he developed a program called "Speaking Truth to Quakers," combining elements of AVP with those of NVC (Non­violent Communication) using a Quaker understanding of Gospel Order to help meetings address issues of interpersonal conflict. 

Ministry and Oversight provided him with support committees to inquire about and acknowledge the service to which he found himself called at two different times, in 2007-8 and again from 2014 to this year.

Stephen served his monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings in many capacities over the years, being on and clerking a number of committees, including several terms as clerk of Meeting. Meanwhile he was constantly finding more ways to live his beliefs. This led to his decision to stop riding in private cars or flying, relying on his bicycle, buses and trains for getting around. He became a vegetarian and then a vegan. He made a daily practice of yoga, devotional reading and meditative prayer. For nineteen years he attended the weekly Thursday noon peace vigil at the Federal Building, started in 2001 to protest the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan.

Nor does this complete the list. For many years Stephen sang in the San Francisco Bach Choir and continued his long involvement with Black and White Men Together.

In September 2019, Stephen joyfully completed something he had long wanted, the legal adoption of Calu’s son Damon (now known as Leo Vega).  Stephen cherished this official recognition of a relationship which meant so much to him and felt their reconnection to be one of his most important life accomplishments.

From the end of March, Stephen shared the experience of his final illness — diagnoses, treatment and his thoughts — through a blog at CaringBridge.org. Keeping in touch and the warm messages in response meant the world to him. That blog has had over 11,000 visits.

Stephen retained the friendship of two former partners, Barry Bell and Al Cunningham. He is also survived by his parents, William and Judith; his brother David and wife Carol Snow; his sister Katherine Mallalieu, her husband Chris, and their children Helen, Beth and Ben; Damon and his wife Landsly Vega and their two children, Osiris and Isis, and Damon’s two older daughters, Natasha Garcia (and her daughter Eva Mae) and Makaela Vallecillo.

We are so grateful for the chance of having shared in Stephen’s life and to witness the richness of his ministry to the Religious Society of Friends, and the world. Stephen touched the hearts of so many both in and out of the Society of Friends and he will be deeply missed.