Board of Directors

Co-Presidents

Rev. Viola Abbitt

Rev. Viola joined Coastal Virginia Unitarian Universalist in August of 2020. She entered professional ministry after working for over twenty-five years as an attorney in New York State.

She was previously the minister at the First Unitarian Society of Westchester and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Poughkeepsie, and has served in various voluntary and paid positions in congregations in the Hudson-Mohawk cluster of UU congregations in New York State. In addition, Rev. Viola has had the honor to preach at congregations in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Ohio. She is currently a member of the Nominating Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Board of the Meadville Lombard Theological School Alum.

In her spare time, Rev. Viola likes to be in nature, and she is especially fond of the beach. She enjoys music and dance of all kinds, biographical books and science fiction movies. She also likes to think of herself as an amateur photographer.

Rev. Viola was awarded a BA in economics from the State University of New York at Binghamton, an MS in library science from Long Island University, a JD from the Fordham University School of Law, and an MDiv from Meadville Lombard Theological School.

She has one adult son, who is a classical musician living in New York, and two rescue cats named Cricket and Fluffy, who reside with her in Hampton Roads.

Rev. Margalie Belazaire

Rev. Margalie Belizaire is a soul-stirrer and spirit-mender — a Unitarian Universalist minister with the heart of a poet and the courage of a prophet. She weaves justice, grief, hope, and ancestral gratitude into rituals, sermons, and blessings that matter. Rev. Margalie honors struggle without glorifying it, and she doesn’t flinch from hard truths — about race, identity, or addiction. She is as comfortable invoking Maya Angelou and John O’Donohue as she is quoting from the movie “Encanto,” and somehow, she makes all feel sacred.

Rev. Belizaire walks tenderly with those she accompanies spiritually through endings and beginnings, grief and grace. And in all of it, her voice says: “The worst thing is never the last thing.”