Rev. Toni Stephens Coleman celebrates her mother’s rich life in honor of what would have been her 100th birthday

The first time Rev. Toni Stephens Coleman met Rev. Hypatia Hasbrouck was in a Los Angeles courthouse. It was Coleman’s 10th birthday, and she was a ward of the city. The social worker who had driven her there sat her beside a beautiful, very composed woman on a bench outside the courtroom.

Hasbrouck smiled and said, “Hello, Toto.”

Coleman says that Hasbrouck already seemed to know her, that there was something familiar about her—her hands, in particular. When the judge called Coleman into his office and asked her if she wanted to live with Hasbrouck, Coleman said yes.

“Then we drove from Los Angeles to Santa Cruz and my new life began,” Coleman says. Though she was never legally adopted by Hasbrouck and her husband, there was no doubt that this was her family or that her parents would do anything they could to support their new daughter. “I had never felt so wanted and safe and cared for in my life—including by my new brother, who was a year older than me.”

One evening not long after she’d arrived at her new home, Coleman looked around the house and saw that her mom, dad, and brother were all busy reading. “Does everybody in this family have to read?” she asked incredulously. They all answered in unison: Yes!

“I discovered it would be endless! I would never know everything,” Coleman says.

A Gift to Many

Hasbrouck lived a rich life, and Coleman describes her as being “many different people.” Born in 1921, Hasbrouck grew up reading Wee Wisdom magazine and was eventually ordained in 1974. She led churches, served as the Unity ministerial education program’s dean, and collected prayer techniques for her book Handbook of Positive Prayer.

Along the way, Hasbrouck graduated Phi Beta Kappa with her master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and was valedictorian of her class. She worked as a researcher for Cecil B. DeMille films. She taught acting to earn money for her children’s own lessons. She started a community theater program. She marched with Cesar Chavez. Her first visit to the Holy Land was a solo trip in 1966.

“There’s a value in diversity, even in the same life,” Coleman says. “She was a gift to so many people.”

As an actress, teacher, and minister, Hasbrouck was a strong leader. She tended toward the methodical and had a deep appreciation for ritual. Every day, she said her morning prayers, read the Daily Word, and blessed her coins to the highest good and dropped them in a Silent Unity prayer box. At the end of the month, she counted the coins and, with an affirmative prayer, wrote out a check for that amount to send to Silent Unity. Coleman says this was a practice Hasbrouck maintained for more than 40 years.

“I think that she would most like to be remembered by the world as a master teacher and by her friends for the vulnerable, kind, always engaged side of her,” Coleman says.

Teacher of Unconditional Love

Hasbrouck had a flair for the dramatic. While studying speech and drama at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), she worked as a researcher at Paramount and was “discovered” as an actress there. Before she could get a contract, however, the studio performed a face analysis and created a plastic surgery proposal. In addition to reshaping her “chipmunk cheeks,” they wanted to redo her nose—and that’s where Hasbrouck drew the line.

“She liked her nose and didn’t want to look like everybody else,” Coleman says. “Sharing stories like this, she taught me to be myself and like myself.”

Hasbrouck also had a demure side, with a sensitivity that she often reserved for her family and close friends. “That is the side of her that took me in, to save my life, to raise me,” Coleman says. She was skilled at “giving advice without strings attached,” one of the lessons Coleman most appreciated.

“She taught me unconditional love and support,” Coleman says. “After my mom’s death, I learned how deep her friendships went; her closest, oldest friends were from when she was 5 years old, her babysitter and her grade-school best friend. She still had their letters, recounting 75 years of life lived and shared!”

Connecting Through Prayer

In Handbook of Positive Prayer, Hasbrouck says that positive prayer is more than deliberate communication with God for some specific purpose—it is a constant and unceasing prayer (following the teachings of Paul) that helps us “form a permanent attitude of mind that reflects the eternal, benevolent activity of God.” This, Hasbrouck writes, is how we can express our truest nature as children of God.

Coleman, minister at Unity Lincoln in Lincoln, Nebraska, also teaches that we should pray constantly. She likes to post prayer reminders where she can see them each day, often using many of her mom’s “lovely phrases.”

“I like to borrow her script since I am more likely to bobble the words,” Coleman says.

Coleman is delighted that her mom is having a renaissance a century after her birth. She says that Hasbrouck is still a guiding force in her own life—and for all who knew her or read her books.

“My mom’s never very far away.”

About the Author

Mallory Herrmann is a copy editor and proofreader at Unity World Headquarters. She has an English degree from the University of Missouri and a graduate certificate from the Denver Publishing Institute. She lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she is a reader, writer, and flaneuse.

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