Cross-Country Walk Forged Commitment to Peace, Marchers Say

Blake Ludwig returned home to Fullerton last week after walking for 260 days and traveling 3,700 miles across America in the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament.

Today, said the 26-year-old engineer on a leave of absence from Hughes Aircraft’s Defense Computer Systems in Fullerton, he plans to resign from his job working on computer hardware for the military.

“I can’t go back there,” said Ludwig, who has worked at Hughes for three years. “I can’t continue to work for a company that’s involved with military contracts.”

Ludwig, like many of the 22 other people from Orange County who walked the entire length of the Great Peach March with 400 other Americans, said he has come home to carry on the fight against the arms race. Severing his ties with his employer is the first step.

Many Orange County participants in the peace march said they been apolitical before the 8 1/2-month trek began on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall. It ended Nov. 15 in Washington with a rousing rally at the Lincoln Memorial attended by 10,000.

“I had an awareness of some social issues, but I wasn’t politically active (before the march),” Fullerton teacher Pat Smith, 43, said, echoing the view of eight marchers interviewed after their return to Orange County over the past week.

“It’s hard to put into words why I chose to participate in the march,” Smith said. “At that moment (I set out last March 1), it was just something I felt I had to do.”

Sally Atkins, a 25-year-old secretary from Anaheim, said, “I thought it would be an adventure to go across the U.S.”

Lynnda Strong, a 29-year-old sales clerk at a camping equipment store in Orange, recalled that she became interested after selling camping and hiking gear last January to customers going on the cross-continent walk.

“I didn’t know a lot about nuclear issues,” said Strong, an active backpacker and camper. “But I had reached a point where I needed to do something with my life; I felt I hadn’t done much since graduating from Long Beach State in ’79.”

Since leaving their occupations as engineers, teachers, secretaries, sales clerks and students, the Orange County marchers said the vagueness they once had about the march’s purpose has given way to an ongoing commitment to nuclear disarmament. Some said that as a result, they also have decided to lead less materialistic lives.

Said Sue Daniels, 47, of Fullerton: “I’m now able to live with less, and I’ve already started talking with my family (husband Wayne, 20-year-old daughter Stacy and 18-year-old son Doug) about how we can simplify our life styles. Before the march, my life and my husband’s was tied up with professional success and acquiring stuff--bigger, better, up the ladder.

“On the march I realized I hadn’t been satisfied with the life I’d been leading,” said Daniels, who today will return to teaching the fourth grade at Topaz Elementary School in Fullerton. “I now understand that life is more satisfying by serving others.”

The sponsoring organization, PRO Peace (People Reaching Out for Peace), collapsed because of bankruptcy two weeks after the march began, leaving participants stranded in Barstow. In recalling those difficult days while the march was reorganized, Orange County participants said the turmoil actually brought them closer together because they held open discussions about how they were going to continue the march.

Marchers said their new commitment was slowly and painfully forged as they walked during parched days and bone-chilling nights in the Mojave Desert, slogged through Colorado’s snow-covered Loveland Pass, trudged 20 miles a day past hot, humid Nebraska cornfields, shuffled through the fallen leaves of small Pennsylvania towns, crossed the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan and walked the streets of Harlem.

“When you walk 20 miles a day through cornfields and under clear blue skies, it causes you to review your life,” Ludwig said.

Introspection, discussions with fellow marchers and talks with people they met along their route across America resulted in their decisions on their return home to continue the struggle against the arms race by joining local peace groups, such as the Orange County Alliance for Survival. They also plan to share with county school and church groups what they learned during their walk for peace--their belief that there is untapped support for nuclear disarmament among many average citizens.

Ludwig says he will continue to fight for the peace march’s unfinished agenda by active involvement in such groups in Whittier as Beyond War, the Area Peace Coalition and the Quaker Friends. He said these groups conduct activities ranging from anti-arms-race demonstrations to lectures on the dangers of nuclear weapons.

“Even when I worked at Hughes, I was always thinking about peace,” Ludwig said. “I went on the march because I wanted to do more than just talk about peace. Now that I’m back, I plan to continue the same kind of commitment for peace that I brought to the march.”

When Smith returns to teaching kindergarten today at Bennet Elementary School in Inglewood, she’ll seek to incorporate studies on nuclear dangers, nonviolence, conflict mediation and other peace issues into the curricula.

“And I’m going to become involved in the local peace movement,” added Smith, who was accompanied on the peace march by her 20-year-old daughter Kilty, a former student at Fullerton Junior College.

“I want to stay in contact with the people on the march, to keep a network going so that we can come together in the future on nuclear issues, whether it’s through demonstrations or supporting candidates for office,” Smith said.

Marchers are particularly pleased about the consciousness-raising on nuclear issues they have accomplished among family members.

“My mom was about as naive as I was on nuclear issues when I started the march,” Strong said. “But she drove out every weekend to where we were until we reached Las Vegas; she did it because she was real proud and supportive of what I was doing.

“When we reached Baltimore, she flew out,” Strong said. “My 92-year-old grandfather lives there, so she and he got in this rented car and followed us as we marched from Baltimore to Washington.

“At first my grandfather didn’t completely understand what we were trying to do, but my mom explained things to him; he got a real thrill out of it,” Strong recalled.

“He called a couple of nights ago to say how touched he was by what I had done. He said he’d wanted to tell me then (in Washington) about how he felt, but he couldn’t because he said he was afraid he’d have started crying.”

Jennifer Vassos, a 23-year-old file clerk from Irvine, has been involved in various nuclear freeze movements from high school through her graduation from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1985.

“But the march has given me a deeper commitment to the cause for nuclear disarmament,” Vassos said. “Every Easter they have a protest vigil at the Nevada (underground nuclear weapon) test site outside Las Vegas. I’m planning to be there next year and get arrested (with the other demonstrators).”

Though the organizers of the Great Peace March had announced at its inception that the goal was to force the government to adopt a policy of nuclear disarmament, most of those interviewed said they never actually believed the goal would be accomplished. Instead, they joined the march out of a vague sense that somehow their action in time would help build political support among the American people for a curb on the nuclear arms race.

“When we started out, I didn’t know what to expect or what we would achieve,” Ludwig said. “All I knew was that it was something I should be doing.”

Added Smith: “I don’t think we felt that we’d cause the government to take down the (nuclear) bombs tomorrow. What we were trying to do--and I think we accomplished this--was to show that the individual should have some say in how nuclear policy is made in this country rather than just leaving it to the politicians and military.

“I can make a difference; you can make a difference. It’s not right to let others make decisions for us when it comes to nuclear weapons. How else am I going to make the world safe for me, my family, my friends--and the world?”

Smith said the march was an emotional experience. “You’d be down one day. Then you’d walk by people in tears, embracing you and shaking your hands and thanking you for what you were doing. That would be enough to lift your spirits to take you for miles. I get goose bumps even now thinking about it.”

Kevin Henry, 23, of Laguna Beach said, “We did our greatest work--75% of it--in America’s heartland . . . in small towns that are hurting because farmers are in bad shape and in economically depressed cities like Gary, Ind., and Youngstown, Ohio, where . . . steel mills have closed and people are out of work.

“Our outreach and educational programs really had impacts there. In the big cities like New York, we were lost; people there were cynical and snide.

“I was really surprised that we got our best reception in places that are supposed to be conservative,” said Henry, who has worked at odd jobs while writing a novel since graduating from University of California, Irvine, in 1985.

“It really restored my faith in the American people,” he said. “I remember one day about 600 of us marched into this little town in the northeast corner of Colorado called Sedgwick. No more than 300 people lived in the place. The people there were understandably frightened; they’d heard we were coming and were a bunch of hippies. Then we met them in restaurants, Laundromats, bars and in the streets.

“They saw that we were every age range; 40% of us were over 50,” Henry said. “We talked and debated with them. We inspired a lot of them to do something about global nuclear disarmament--even if it was nothing more than writing their congressman once a month.”

Echoing this view, Vassos said: “The people in Iowa, Nebraska and farm states like that were totally different than I expected. I thought they’d be wrapped up in their own problems and be real conservative.

“Well, I had a total misperception of these people. They were really open. A lot of them would come out to see us march through their area. They’d stop their trucks and get out and talk with us. They offered a lot more support for the movement than I ever expected.”

Said Vassos: “I think these people were receptive to our message because they realized that nuclear weapons not only aren’t necessary, but that by building more, this is draining resources that could build a wonderful economy for this country.”

Having experienced deprivation on their long march and witnessed the economic troubles of farmers facing foreclosures and workers slipping into poverty because of closed manufacturing plants in the Midwest’s “Rust Bowl,” marchers said they have returned determined to lead simpler lives.

“The march lasted nearly nine months,” Ludwig said. “Ironically, that’s the gestation period. I feel that I’ve been reborn--that I’m starting life over again. . . . I want to lead a simpler, less materialistic life.” He is considering becoming an organic farmer, he said.

Since his return last Monday, he has already been through his closets to give away most of his clothes to the poor and homeless.

Vassos had a similar view. “When I was at the airport in Washington to fly back here, I checked in my tent, sleeping bag and backpack--my whole house for nine months. I looked around and realized I had less luggage than everybody else getting on the plane.”

Ludwig said he learned lessons in kindness and giving along the way. “I didn’t realize people could be as open. In the smaller communities, especially, the people were always having us in for dinner, a hot shower or to let us do our laundry.”

However, he, like other marchers, does not believe that these people necessarily shared the march’s goals.

“People did this a lot of times just because they got joy out of helping others. But I think this is the first step to building peace in the world. You can’t have peace if people are just worrying about themselves.”