Child of the ‘60s Pins His Hopes on World Peace

James Stofan longs for the 1960s as he pushes peace in the ‘80s.

Stofan recently designed and manufactured a “Peace Pin,” replete with a dove and two hands--Russian and American--reaching out for the other. He is also proposing to build an Institute of World Peace at a California university.

All he needs is money.

Stofan acknowledges that he hasn’t made a dime yet. He has sold only a handful of pins. But it’s early. There’s room for everyone in the peace business.

Perhaps if he can get President Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to show off his pin at their summit meeting later this year.

“Yes, that’s my fantasy, to see them both with the pin on,” Stofan said. “I sent it to both of them a few weeks ago, but I haven’t heard anything back yet.”

Stofan, who owns a lecture service firm in Pasadena, got hooked on the idea of helping to achieve harmony between the two superpowers after a visit to the Soviet Union in September, 1983.

The trip came soon after the Soviets shot a Korean jetliner out of the sky for invading their air space.

Stofan said he was impressed by what he saw in Russia--”the cleanliness, the subways. And also, they have good vodka, very good vodka.” He said he was less impressed with long lines of people waiting to get basic necessities.

“I knew nothing about Russia, but I met this guy and we talked, and we had vodka and we decided that the people, the people of Russia and America, wanted peace. Maybe not the governments, but the people did,” Stofan said.

Stofan concedes that his peaceful quests first emerged in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, back in his student days at California State College in Pennsylvania when he worked for Robert Kennedy and then George McGovern.

“I’m a Democrat all the way,” he said proudly. “I remember driving voters to the polls in Massachusetts,” the only state McGovern carried.

“I miss the commitment we all had then,” Stofan continued. “I feel sorry for the people who missed all that, for the people that just seem to want the big bucks and don’t really care about anything else.”

To launch his peacekeeping venture, Stofan sold a house he owned in Ohio. He took half of the $10,000 profit and put it into the design and manufacture of the pins, as well as a slick brochure showing the pin in the lapel of a dark pinstripe suit.

“I’m trying to appeal to the yuppies,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to show or give an impression of people in power that’s exhibited by the suit and tie.

“I just hope that all those yuppies wear (the pins) to show that they’re for peace, not just the material things.”

Stofan said he has sent the brochures with pins attached to the media, the 100 top college bookstores and to various peace organizations.

He expects the pins to sell well in the Soviet Union no matter what their marketability is here.

“They’re pin crazy over there,” he said. “You see pins everywhere--people wearing red pins with a picture of Lenin on it. Yes, they’re everywhere.”

Asked if he really believed his project would be well-received, Stofan replied, “I have to have faith that it will. What can be more important in our world than this?”