Peace Pilgrim’s Journey--’on Foot and in Faith’ : Hemet Couple Make It Their Project to Continue Mildred Norman’s Work

I shall remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace, walking until I am given shelter and fasting until I am given food.

--The Peace Pilgrim

With the humility befitting one whom others called a saint, Mildred Norman--a woman widely known as the Peace Pilgrim--used to refer to her heroic journey as her “retirement project.”

Norman covered the United States on foot from 1953, when she first set out from the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade, until 1981 when she was killed in a automobile accident near Knox, Ind., at age 73. Her message was that if world peace ever was to come, individuals must first attain personal peace.

Now a Hemet couple, who were one of the many people to shelter Norman in their homes over the years, have made it their own retirement project to continue the work of the Peace Pilgrim by distributing her teachings in written form.

Ann and John Rush, both 68, have participated in organized peace rallies and vigils throughout their lives, but today they believe that keeping the spirit of the Peace Pilgrim alive is more important than any other peace-related work they could be doing. Their mission even takes precedence over spending time with their three children and eight grandchildren.

“The beauty of Peace Pilgrim was that she was able to reach people the peace movement could never reach,” said John Rush, a former Whittier postman who moved to Hemet two years ago. “The peace movement might have turned these people off, but here was this woman. . . .”

Norman’s style of speaking was much like Lily Tomlin’s sagacious bag lady, or Maude of the cult movie “Harold and Maude.” Her message was so simple, her delivery so effusive, that sometimes she was judged to be “completely off the beam,” as she put it.

She accepted no money. Her only possessions were a blue work shirt, blue trousers, cheap tennis shoes and an often-patched cotton tunic with PEACE PILGRIM lettered on the front, and, 25,000 MILES ON FOOT FOR PEACE on the back. (She passed the 25,000-mile mark in 1964, and stopped counting.) In the pockets of the tunic she carried a toothbrush, a comb and correspondence from admirers around the nation, which had been forwarded to her at a post office box in Cologne, N. J. She also carried copies of her aphorisms, which she insisted were not “impractical religious concepts,” but “laws governing human conduct, which apply as rigidly as the law of gravity.”

John Rush was not impressed the first time he heard Norman speak.

Raised a peace-respecting Quaker, Rush was drafted as a conscientious objector during World War II. It was while he was serving in a forestry camp in Glendora that he met Ann Trueblood at a folk dance. Trueblood’s ancestors were among the early Quaker families who settled Whittier.

The two married and had a child. (Ann had two children from a previous marriage.) They moved to the backwoods of British Columbia, on their own “walk” to simplify and purify their lives, Ann Rush explained. They wanted to raise their brood away from the influences of television, materialism and militarism.

In 1957, the Peace Pilgrim passed through British Columbia (in addition to the United States, she walked in 10 Canadian provinces as well as parts of Mexico). She spoke to the Rushes and four other Quaker families who had gathered on the shore of Kootenai Lake.

John Rush recalls: “My attitude then was, ‘Why are you traveling around the country like this? You’re not saying anything new.’ ”

The Peace Pilgrim freely acknowledged that hers was not a new message. John Rush eventually came to understand Norman’s point that what the world needs is not new ideas, but more diligent practice of the ancient truths taught by all spiritual leaders.

Today, John Rush says that Norman affected him more than anyone he’s ever met. She’s the one person he’s known whom he felt had achieved what many aspire to: inner peace. “But she didn’t just leave it at that (personal contentment),” he said. “It inspired her to do something for world peace. She combined the two (inner and world peace) in a beautiful way.”

Gaining Momentum

Under the Rushes’ stewardship, Norman’s pilgrimage continues to gain momentum four years after her death. In response to requests, the couple mailed 50,000 copies of her booklet “Steps to Inner Peace” in 1984-’85 alone.

They continue to receive letters from people all over the world who were moved by a chance meeting with the white-haired, blue-eyed vagabond at a truck stop or freeway on-ramp. The letters liken Norman to Gandhi, Martin Luther King, St. Francis of Assisi. . . .

A note from Texas said: “She literally brought heaven onto Earth. She brought the divine qualities into her life here. She changed lives all over America.”

The Rushes have filled requests for almost 30,000 copies of a book they helped to compile after Norman’s death. Called “The Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words,” it contains excerpts from her talks and writings.

Some of the material is from the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, which has assembled newspaper articles about the Peace Pilgrim as part of their chronicle of the peace movement. Swarthmore also has one of Norman’s tunics and a pair of sneakers worn on her journey. “She had her own distinct way of working toward peace,” said curator Jean Soderland, explaining why Norman is included in the collection.

The Rushes are committed to distributing the book as freely as Norman gave away her philosophy, and will send a copy without charge to anyone who requests one. It sells in bookstores for $6. The address is Peace Pilgrim Center, 43480 Cedar Ave., Hemet, Calif. 92344.

Mildred Norman never revealed her given name, or the facts of her pre-pilgrim life, to anyone, even the reporters who sometimes tried to bully the details out of her. A Newton, Kan., editorial writer who encountered Norman early on her sojourn was convinced the pilgrim’s mission was sincere only when she managed to fend off “all the wiles of a dubious newshound barking on the trail of truth.”

Although she probably spent more time with the Rushes than any other family during her pilgrimage, even they had to be satisfied with Norman’s insistence that it was her message, not her past, that was important. “For all we knew, she came from outer space,” John Rush said.

It was only after they received news of Norman’s death in 1981, that Ann Rush found out that the New Jersey address where Norman had her mail forwarded belonged to the Peace Pilgrim’s sister, 70-year-old Helene Young.

Young told the Rushes that even as a child Norman had a bearing that made other children listen to what she had to say.

She was captain of the debating team at her Egg Harbor, N. J., high school. She fancied makeup and expensive clothes as a young woman, making special trips to Atlantic City to have her shoes dyed to match her hat and gloves. She was a popular dance partner at the local Grange hall dances, Young remembered.

In contrast to her later Spartan vegetarian diet, the young Mildred Norman ate an ice cream sundae everyday for lunch, and she loved meat. Although she would later preach tolerance (“Be concerned that you do not offend, not that you are not offended”), as a youth she disapproved of some of her sister’s friends, particularly those of other races and classes.

Norman eloped with a man her family did not approve of--a thwarted businessman who struggled to start a trucking firm in the midst of the Depression.

Two years after her father’s death in a car accident, Norman and her husband were having troubles that soon would lead to their divorce. Norman was pained that her father had died worrying about her future with her unsuccessful husband.

The Rushes speculate that it was this combined unhappiness that caused Norman to walk in the woods alone all of one night, “in desperation and out of a very deep seeking for a meaningful way of life,” as the Peace Pilgrim would later write. It was not a traditional religious impulse that led her to the woods. Norman had had no religious training as a child, and did not read the Bible until after she had begun to speak in churches as the Peace Pilgrim.

During her all-night vigil, Norman had a revelation that she was to devote her life to service. It would be another 15 years, during which time she worked with emotionally disturbed adults and volunteered with peace groups, before she discovered the precise nature of that calling.

Appalachian Trail

Standing on a New England mountaintop just after hiking the length of the Appalachian Trail, she envisioned herself on “a pilgrim’s journey undertaken in the traditional manner: on foot and in faith.”

The war in Korea was on and the McCarthy Era was at its peak on Jan. 1, 1953, when Norman set out. She would later say that any time there is apathy in the midst of great danger, a pilgrim will come forth.

In the early days the Peace Pilgrim was unknown. Yet she never missed more than three or four meals before someone offered to feed her. Shelter also was given most nights. When it was not, she slept in haystacks, drainage pipes, cemeteries, wheat fields, under bridges, by roadsides and once on the seat of a fire engine in Tombstone, Ariz.

Averaging 25 miles a day, and sometimes covering as many as 50 miles, she ranged north in summer and south in winter to avoid the worst weather. Some nights she stuffed newspapers under her thin tunic to keep warm. When it was really cold, she’d walk all night.

There were what other people would call bad experiences along the way; Norman called them tests. She was arrested twice for vagrancy, but found behind bars a receptive audience for her philosophy and songs. Once a disturbed teen-age boy, set off by a thunderstorm, began to beat her, but Norman said she was able to contact “the spark of good” in him, and avoided serious harm.

Norman never claimed to represent anyone but herself when she spoke to college classes, church and civic groups and television and newspaper reporters. There was no Peace Pilgrim organization or cult.

“Some have asked if I accept ‘disciples,’ ” she once wrote. “Of course, I do not. It is not healthy to follow another human being.”

She also said that she never expected anyone else to make a pilgrimage because of her influence. Yet the Rushes have come in contact with several peace walkers that have been inspired to some degree by Norman. One was an officer on a nuclear submarine who is now working on the mass PRO-Peace march planned for this spring.

Norman felt that her message was more readily accepted as the years went by. Peace-preachers were often scoffed at when she began her walk; and not many people were concerned with inner peace. But by the late ‘60s and ‘70s, it was more fashionable to work for peace; and people were becoming aware of the need for psychological or spiritual harmony, as well.

Had to Accept Rides

In the later years of the pilgrimage, Norman began to receive invitations to speak as much as a year in advance. She spent fewer nights in haystacks, and had to resort to accepting automobile rides to keep all her engagements.

Her seeming ability to work without rest was a consternation to hostesses who wanted to coddle the aging pilgrim. On one of her trips through town when the Rushes were living in Whittier, Ann Rush remembers inviting Norman to relax her road-weary muscles in their new tub. “I’m always relaxed,” Norman told Rush, and took a shower instead.

Plugged into a source of endless energy that she claimed was available to everyone, Norman showed no sign of weariness on her seventh crossing of the United States in 1981. Before she completed the crossing she was killed by an inebriated driver who struck the car she was riding in while en route to yet another stop on her pilgrimage. The day before her death she appeared on radio station WKVI in Knox, Ind.

She closed the interview this way: “I certainly am a happy person. Who could know God and not be joyous? I want to wish you all peace.”