While Occidental College classmates of Roberta Taylor...

While Occidental College classmates of Roberta Taylor are going to summer school or working this summer, the San Pedro political science major will be floating down the Mississippi River aboard the Delta Queen, trying to bring an end to war.

With her on the stern-wheeler will be 125 other Americans and a delegation of Soviet citizens. They will participate in workshops and seminars on U.S.-Soviet relations on board and ashore in a trip dubbed “Mississippi Peace Cruise II.” A similar cruise took place in 1986.

Taylor and her fellow peace cruisers will cast off from St. Louis, Mo., on Aug. 5 and make stops at Cape Girardeau, Mo., Memphis, Tenn., Greenville, Vicksburg and Natchez, Miss., Baton Rouge, La., and end up in New Orleans on Aug. 14 .

“I hope to learn more than I can possibly imagine,” Taylor said. “I expect to get a lot of different perspectives from Soviet citizens. I know that will be very interesting. . . . Unfortunately, I know no Russian.”

Taylor, a 1986 honors graduate of San Pedro High School, said she became involved in “peace work” last fall. “It consisted of self-education,” she said. “I started writing away to different organizations and reading books. . . .

“I write to my congressmen all the time, telling them how to vote on the Strategic Defense Initiative, South Africa, the MX missile.”

At the Eagle Rock college she took a number of classes dealing with the Soviet Union. She also joined a group opposed to nuclear weapons known as SANE Freeze and became a member of “Promoting Enduring Peace,” a Connecticut-based organization established in 1952. Through that group she found out about this summer’s peace cruise and applied for a grant to defray the $1,729 expense. On May 11, the group, citing her concern for world peace, leadership ability and creativity, announced that Taylor was one of five American youths receiving a $1,000 grant.

It will be a first for Taylor.

“Gosh, I haven’t gone on a cruise ship,” she said. “I did go to Japan (but) it wasn’t on such an appealing premise. It was with the pep squads of my high school.”