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Rosemary Kooiman
by Harmony
copyright 2006 all rights reserved
Recently I found out about a wonderful woman. Her
name, in this incarnation, was Rosemary Kooiman. She was an activist
for Pagan rights. The last thing she participated in was to have
Pagan symbols allowed on grave markers in Veterans Cemeteries, which
are governmentally funded. Witchvox.com had recently posted an
article that went over her efforts in this. As the President placed
an wreath on an unknown soldier’s tomb, she placed a vinyl pentacle
on her husband’s headstone. This was only one of her many endeavors.
From the
Washington Post:
Rosemary Kooiman, 77, a self-described witch
who won the legal right to perform neopagan weddings in Virginia,
died March 5 of a heart attack at her home in Laurel. She was a
former Mitchellville resident.
Mrs. Kooiman, a retired government worker and
the high priestess of a neopagan group in Mitchellville called the
Nomadic Chantry of the Gramarye, sought to marry a Virginia couple
in 1998 but was denied a clergy license after a Fairfax County judge
ruled that Wicca did not qualify as a religious organization. A
judge in Alexandria also denied her a license.
With assistance from the American Civil
Liberties Union, she applied for the same license in Norfolk Circuit
Court and received it by mail in September 1998, allowing her to
officiate at weddings -- known as "handfastings" among neopagans --
anywhere in Virginia. She also performed wedding ceremonies in
Maryland and Pennsylvania, which do not require clergy to have a
license, and was licensed to conduct weddings in the District….
…Mrs. Kooiman was a member of Mensa, a group
that celebrates high intelligence. She compiled a syllabus for a
three-year course of study on neopagan beliefs in response to
questions from fellow members. She also began teaching classes and
holding full-moon circles and celebrations at her Mitchellville
home…
…Her husband, Abe Kooiman, died in 2002, and
recently she had been working to get a pagan headstone for his grave
in Arlington National Cemetery. Her effort was part of a campaign by
pagan religious leaders to persuade the Pentagon to add the pagan
pentacle to the list of symbols approved for Arlington headstones.
She has passed to the Summerlands. We would do
poor justice to her if we did not take up where she left off in
paving the way to the future. Please take a little time to write a
letter to the President and your State reps voicing the need for
Pagans to be represented in our National Cemeteries. We won't forget
you, Rosemary.
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