Great Peace March, Peace Cruise Cross Paths

Today the Great Peace March crosses the Mississippi.

Having made their way across the heartland over the past two months, the marchers are leaving the West and heading for Chicago and the final third of their walk across America to Washington for global nuclear disarmament.

The march, which currently numbers about 600 participants, not all of whom are in camp at any given time, has made its way from Los Angeles, having come 2,271 miles since March 1 and having pitched camp at 106 sites.

The march has been plagued by precarious finances, lack of credibility and attention, a seeming indifference on the part of the nation, and internal problems almost every step of the way.

Welcome in Iowa

All the more reason why the all-out welcome the marchers have received from Iowa--”Iowa Where Peace Grows” as the signs say--has meant so much to them.

On Wednesday, the Great Peace March met the Mississippi Peace Cruise in what the local papers proclaimed on the front pages as the “crossroads of peace.”

Call it coincidental or providential--the marchers were tending toward the latter--but it happened that the Great Peace March reached the outskirts of Davenport as the Delta Queen pulled into port with 46 Soviet and 130 American citizens on board. The mixed group, sponsored in this country by an organization called Promoting Enduring Peace, was on a seven-day cruise from St. Paul, Minn., to St. Louis, Mo.

When the peace marchers heard of the cruise’s stop in the Quad Cities area of Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, and Moline and Rock Island, Ill., they wanted to be involved in the ceremonies, and the Quad Cities--Davenport in particular--accommodated them. Ann Drissell and David Patton, directors of the march’s community interaction department, spent two weeks working with local governments and peace groups on the plans.

At the morning dockside landing ceremonies a delegation from Peace City, the marchers’ camp, joined the local dignitaries and well-wishers. Peace City’s honorary mayor, Diane Clark, made welcoming remarks as did the other four mayors.

In her welcome, Clark referred to the irony of calling the Mississippi “ours” since its waters eventually flow over the planet.

“What great American river? Are we not all one planet?” she called out to a large cheering ovation. Later, marchers were elated with her speech, proud of her and the impression they felt they had made.

Davenport Mayor Thomas Hart welcomed the marchers along with the peace cruise, and invited the delegation to the backyard picnic lunch he was hosting for the cruise at his home.

Meanwhile, for the majority of the marchers, the Great Peace March was proceeding forward, walking 14 miles that day from Wilton to Walcott, near the Quad Cities area. Once in Walcott they would be bused to the river for the special ceremony with the Peace Cruise.

While still marching, however, they were visited by one of the Americans on the cruise, Adm. Gene LaRoque (ret.), director of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information. Forgoing the John Deere Tractor Co. tour, LaRoque made a quick trip to the march, catching several hundred marchers at the second rest stop of the morning.

His back to a sound truck, the marchers sitting in the grass at his feet, a huge banner from the march proclaiming, “The Soviets have stopped testing. Why don’t we?” to his side, he looked out over a cornfield and told the marchers, “We work in Washington. It’s pretty damn dull there compared to what you’re doing.”

Stupidity of War

Having fought in three wars, having spent part of his military career planning to use nuclear weapons, he told them, he was in a position to know how “very stupid” war is.

“If you ever think while you’re marching that maybe it’s not worthwhile, remember you’re doing nothing less than saving life on this planet,” he said.

On the way to the campsite, marchers in the bus with him had shown him the march’s list of objectives, and asked his advice on what to do when they arrive in Washington on Nov. 15, something increasingly on their minds and under discussion.

At the rest stop he urged them, especially as they neared Washington, to “strip the message down to its essentials. Of your goals, the test ban treaty is the most important. Don’t get drawn off trying to solve all the world’s problems.”

Guessing they were often asked “But can you trust the Russians?” as they contacted local communities with their message, he told them his answer to that question now was, “Yes, you can trust the Russians. You can trust them to act in their own self-interest and it is in their own self-interest to avert a nuclear war.” It takes time for the message to get down to the American people, he said, that the Soviets have stopped testing. He praised them for marching across the country with that message.

He told them of his contacts with the Reagan Administration and the Kremlin, for a moment bringing the world where the decisions are made very close to the people marching through the cornfields of Iowa. They did not want to let him go, flocking around him with questions, requests for help and thanks after giving him a standing ovation.

Watching him leave, Jolene DeLisa, 58, of Hawaii said of his visit, “These things do so much for us. So many days I wake up and think, ‘What am I doing here?’ ” Having reached their campsite at Walcott in the early afternoon, marchers were bused to the river and assembled north of the Delta Queen. From there they proceeded along the levee, carrying the flags of Iowa, the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Nations and the Great Peace March in front of them. At the same moment the Peace Cruise members were just returning to the dock from a tour of the Caterpillar tractor factory. They cheered, greeted and photographed each other and proceeded to the welcoming crowd of Iowans and the brass band on the landing platform.

Ritual With Soviets

The marchers went through with the Soviets the rituals they have evolved in ceremonies in countless towns and cities to date. Mayor Diane Clark presented handmade keys to Peace City to representatives of six Soviet cities. Off to the side, marchers planted a Cleveland Norwegian Maple on the bank of the Mississippi in honor of the Soviet people, the 87th “tree of peace” that the marchers had planted, and presented the Soviets with the accompanying hand-carved plaque, this time carved out in Russian.

Daiva Edrehi of Long Beach then carried the eternal flame from Hiroshima to the stage, and from it lit a lamp for the Soviets to carry with them. Although the crowd was in a holiday mood, they followed her direction, joined hands and observed a moment of silence for those who died or were injured at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and in nuclear tests.

The Soviet and American cruise members went back on board and hung over the rails while the marchers began quietly singing, “Give Peace a Chance.” They stood there, hands raised in the peace sign, swaying gently and the passengers on the river boat did the same, calling out, “We love you,” in chorus to the marchers. The band played, “This Land Is Your Land.” From the Delta Queen came balloons, streamers, post cards, anything, it seemed, the Soviets could get their hands on to throw to the marchers.

Swept up in all the emotion, Pam Abdo, a Davenport teacher, cried joyfully to a marcher next to her, “Isn’t this fantastic? God bless you. It’s not too often you see people who practice what they preach.”

The whistle blew. The band struck up another song and the Delta Queen was on its way, leaving a momentarily lonely looking group of people in its wake.

Highlight of March

“I met the Russians in the Elbe River at the end of the war. This is my second time,” marcher Mauriccio Terrazas, 69, of Monterey Park said as he lingered on the landing platform. “This day has definitely been the highlight of the whole march for me.”

Actually, marchers have been describing the entire march through the heartland as a highlight, calling Iowa another Claremont, a reference to the California town of fond memory that took them in and raised their spirits during the early bleak days of the march.

This assessment comes despite the killing heat and humidity they are marching in, weather the Iowans apologize for.

This is the state where the South Amana Volunteer Fire Department, learning that the marchers had been without showers for six days, brought their fire truck to the campsite and turned the fire hoses on the marchers, where the ministers of Oakland showed up at camp with 45 gallons of ice cream, where four churches in Colfax organized to feed them lunch, where a farmer delivered 700 pounds of freshly picked corn to the campsite at Scattergood Friends School outside of West Branch.

Trees on the Lawn

Last Saturday, when they marched from Oxford to Coralville, in the Iowa City area, 250 local people waited for them under the trees on the lawn of the Tiffin Methodist Church and joined them as “marchers for the day,” for the final hot five-mile stretch. Grandpa’s Grocery, across the road from the church, had the “Welcome Peace Marchers, Ice Cold Melon by the Slice: 30 cents” sign out.

When the march reached Coralville it turned into a parade for the final mile from the K mart to the Northwest Junior High. By then, about 500 people were joined by a community band on a flatbed truck, by the Paws for Peace van from West Branch, led by a German shepherd named Elijah and his master, Mark Minor-Nidey, by kids dipping wands into jars of bubbles.

On the lawn at the school the band played parade marches and polkas. When it started on “Rock Around the Clock” Ann and Dick Edelman, marchers from Los Angeles, danced and Ann talked about how the march had changed her in so many ways. She had stopped worrying about whether everyone on it kept up a middle-class image and tried to look good, and started considering herself part of a whole that reflected all of society.

Shelah Notkoff, also from Los Angeles, listened to Edelman and commented, “I’ve become an American on this march. Before I was a displaced person. I was from New York. I moved to L.A. I thought there was nothing between the two coasts.”

More of America was waiting for the Peace March inside the gym where a sweaty night was had by all of the 800 who attended the rally.

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) addressed the marchers, saying he understood he was the first U.S. senator to do so and was proud of that. He would meet them at the city limits in Washington, he promised, and march with them.

The mayors of Iowa City and Coralville came out with their Nuclear Free Weapons Zone proclamations; local musicians performed as did Peace City’s Collective Vision and Wild Womyn for peace, and its comedy group, Bits and Pieces. Little children passed out handmade paper cranes for peace. Two peace marchers became adopted daughters of the two cities, promising to keep in touch by letter with the communities as they proceeded across the United States.