Parish to Prison : A Nuclear-Age Martyr Takes Leap of Faith

An OZ light flashed at Launch Control, which in itself was not so scary. Sensors detect anything that pierces the Outer Zone around a missile silo, and that could mean birds, rabbits or a trickle of water. But then the IZ light blinked on, too. What the heck is that? Someone was tampering with the access hatch to an American nuclear weapon.

There are just two officers down in Control, 70 feet underground, living in a capsule the size of a school bus. Come war, they’d verify the codes and turn the keys. The 10 missiles they command would surge through the heavens on a half-hour spiral to hell. But ordinarily the men just watch the computers talk to the silos. How are you? And almost always they are fine.

This time, one officer shook the other out of bed. An IZ light! We’ve got a Security Situation 4 over at Mike 10, he said. They dispatched a response team from topside.

The silo itself was 7 miles away, just off Route 131 near Holden, Mo. The four airmen did not pull up too close. First they stopped, hitched on their body armor and clipped the magazines to their weapons.

Three intruders were huddling inside the fence, civilians by their looks. The airmen edged closer. There was a bed sheet hung on the fence. It said: “Swords Into Plowshares, an Act of Healing.” So that was it; these were protesters. And soon there was an update from Control. Two more were over on Highway 58 at Mike 6. Same deal.

“All personnel on site please exit immediately with your hands up!” the sergeant called over the loudspeaker. And out they squirmed, through a hole they’d cut in the fence. One of them looked like somebody’s grandmother. The two men were frisked and cuffed; but the older lady was told to just toss her coat to the ground. I have a runny nose and I need to get my handkerchief from my coat, she told them. Don’t you dare move! But she got it anyway.

Her name was Jean Gump--a suburban housewife from Morton Grove, Ill., mother of 12, grandmother, age 58 at the time. She had come to confront the bomb that morning, Good Friday, 1986. And she would remember the voice over the loudspeaker and that cold word: personnel. Isn’t that the gist of it? she’d say. The war machinery regards people as personnel. It would bring down the skies and never see a teardrop on a human face.

Yes, she had tried other means, worked for the candidates and marched in the rallies. She had lain down in the lobbies of important buildings and prayed at the gates of military bases. But year after year the bomb lived on, and so now she moved to the front lines, indifferent to consequences. On stage in the nuclear theater: we must change the way we think, she said.

She saw the busy world in simpler terms than the great strategists with their graphs and printouts. To her, they had over-complicated things. “Nothing means a hill of beans if we nuke each other,” she said in the same firm voice she might have used to scold a child.

Plenty Disagree

Of course, there would be plenty around to disagree. In the months ahead, she would have to explain herself in court and she and the four others would be like small birds in the stiffest of winds.

Our nuclear defenses are in the able hands of presidents and generals, the prosecutors argued. And Jean Gump replied, no, their grip has failed us and now it’s time for everyday citizens to undo the booby traps.

Countered the prosecutors: Have you ever heard anything so egotistical! Do you think you know more than all the people in the world’s greatest democracy? She replied the people didn’t seem to realize they had a choice.

On it went like that, two lines of diverging logic. How can you break the law? How can we not? What if everyone else did? What if they don’t? Where would it all end? The end is what frightens us.

We will send you to prison.

So send us.

For a long time!

OK.

They were all devout Catholics, and Good Friday seemed to Jean just right. The way she read the Gospels, Jesus, too, had been deemed a political criminal. He accepted crucifixion as a sacrificial act of love. So what better day to confront the ferocity of nuclear weapons--and then be locked away?

For six months, she and the four others had anguished during weekend retreats. They meant to commit a felony and do actual damage to missile silos. Still, the weapons themselves would be impregnable to their hammers--their act of disarmament only symbolic. So what would be accomplished?

Probably not much, Jean knew. Their action would be a call to others to do the same, but similar gestures had disappeared into the ether like balloons on a dangle of string. Mostly, it would free her conscience. Buildups might go on--and bombs might go off--but no longer in her name.

During the dawn ride to Mike 10 she felt remarkably calm and assured. It was as if someone had pricked her skin in a perfect place and all the anxiety was siphoned away. Cows were grazing in the Missouri countryside, and the land seemed to breathe in gentle rhythm.

The five had split up, and Jean went along with Ken Rippetoe and Larry Morlan, both in their 20s. Terrific young men, she thought. They lived in Catholic Worker houses in the Quad Cities area on the Illinois-Iowa border--helping the poor.

Up the Highway

Just up the highway, amid the sprawl of the farms, the silo held a Minuteman 2. Jean had read up on it: 57 feet long, 36.5 tons in heft, a speck racing across the firmament at 15,000 m.p.h. It could devastate an entire city, incinerating brick, steel and flesh, then tossing the fine dust skyward to float around for decades.

America has 1,000 like it, encased in concrete and sunk in the fertile black prairie of seven states. For so long now, these weapons had dominated Jean’s thoughts like an occupying army: Science had outpaced wisdom. Where in the sacred books could anyone find a Jesus who would live with such bombs?

She kept a close eye to the side. Mike 10 is visible from the road but easy enough to miss, unguarded and indistinct. Inside a chain-link fence are three periscope-like sensors and a flat slab--the silo lid. Not much juts out of the ground.

The car pulled in just before 6:30.

In the quiet she could hear the crunch of gravel as they jogged up the short access road. She hollered to slow down. What is the rush? But it was so good to be there after all the talk, to finally close all distance between what they believed and what they were willing to do about it.

She and Larry hung the awkward bed sheets, and Ken cut an opening in the fence with bolt cutters. They squeezed through. Larry began smashing away at the electrical outlets and chiseled a cross into the maintenance hatch.

Poured Blood

Jean poured blood from three baby bottles, fashioning another cross--maybe 5 feet long--on the concrete beside the massive silo cover. Near it she spray-painted: “Disarm and Live.”

Hey, look at this! She was proud of the neat, symmetrical shapes. Then she sliced the thin wiring on the sensors. Holy work, she told herself.

She watched Ken swing the 8-pound sledge, trying to bend the geared tracks over which the silo lid opens. He was into a steady cadence, but he hammered so hard he busted the tool’s wooden handle. So be it.

Their idea had been to stop after 15 minutes, anyway. They wanted time to reflect before being arrested. They sat and sang a hymn: Everyone ‘neath their vine and fig tree will live in peace and unafraid and into plowshares turn their swords.

Never had Jean felt such clarity of purpose. Right there beneath them was the 1.2-megaton idol itself. The sky was a cold blue silence, and from the ground she could hear the hum of the missile’s air conditioning.

They talked somberly, like awed visitors in an anteroom beside the end of the world. How could America have allowed this buildup? Where were the good people? Where was the church?

Then a voice shattered the calm, as if someone were shouting at Mass. Three men had come up the road, but instead of rifles they had a TV camera. Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes” was at the fence. What! Who? How?

The crew had been in Missouri, working on a different story. Someone--a confidant of the protesters--had tipped them. Now Wallace was tossing questions in that tough, skeptical voice.

“Do you really believe that this puny manifestation . . . is going to make any difference whatsoever?”

Should they try to explain? Could they? One by one they began. A symbol . . . Disarmament . . . My grandchildren . . .

But then the Air Force arrived, and there wasn’t the time.

They were released without bail, which was a surprise. They had all decided not to post bond and simply begin their time behind bars. But then the magistrate said they could go, no money down.

Jean immediately wanted to head home, as if obliged by some nesting instinct. That led to tension. Larry, for one, thought they needed to stay united, at least for awhile. This was no fling. They had done something profound and needed to plan together.

For the first time, words sharpened into barbs. Yes, sure, I believe in community and blah, blah, blah, Jean remarked dismissively. But there also comes a time to be on your own; everything now is anticlimax. “If I thought I had to marry all of you, I never would have done this,” she said.

Sunday was Easter. Maybe she wouldn’t be able to bake her traditional pound cakes in the bunny-shaped pans, but she would at least be in Morton Grove. She called her husband. Joe, come get me at the airport.

The 12 children--ages 21 and up--were scattered about, working here and studying there. The eldest was a senior counsel at Bank of America in San Francisco. Then there was an artist, a carpenter, a seamstress, another lawyer, a waitress.

Jean didn’t expect much from them. Most had gotten a little too yuppie. But in something of a surprise, they were actually full of support: Good for Mom. She’s got guts! Only two thought Jean ought to leave national defense to the experts, and their biggest objection was that she had destroyed property.

Upsetting Questions

Of course, later, when things sank in, there were more upsetting questions. What will Dad do without Mom? She could be in prison 18 years! And what about us? Martha was graduating from Berkeley. And Holly’s wedding was only three months off. “Who’s going to make the Easter ham?” Elizabeth wondered.

In this sea of repercussions Jean was like a sail ship full of wind. She had left port; the smaller boats could fall in behind--or whatever. Up to you!

“If they want to score points in the world, they will openly condemn me,” she had written of her children. “Not me per se, but the Word of God working in me. It has ever been thus.”

She was a bit self-inflated, these trying days. This wasn’t the normal Jean. Rather, it was Jean out on the limb. She had taken the momentous step. “And she wanted us all to go to jail, damn it, be like her,” said close friend Carmen Pappas.

A manifesto had been left on the silo, and in six pages the United States and the Christian Church were “indicted” for “criminal activity contrary to God’s law.” Exactly what does that mean, Jean? people asked.

She let them have it not only about nuclear stockpiles and hypocritical priests, but the empty lives of people in the suburbs. All everybody cares about is shopping at Marshall Field’s! Yes, I will go to prison, she said dramatically. But there I will find the face of Christ on the faces of society’s misfits.

That was radical talk, even for sympathetic ears. So many admired her, but what had become of their Jean? Not so long before, she had been one of them: a feisty protester, yes, but also president of the PTA, a church lady visiting the nursing homes, a good polka partner out on the town.

She has gone around the bend, is what, said her sister-in-law Therese: “How the hell can you change things by going to prison?”

Isabel Condit, with Jean in so many peace campaigns, also questioned the good of it: “Why, it would take 100,000 people doing what Jean did to make a difference.”

You people just don’t get it, do you? Jean responded. “We’re at a critical time in the history of the world.” I don’t want your pity. I don’t want the name of a good lawyer. I just want you to think!

Instead old friends turned to Joe. The Gumps had been married 36 years. Joe was such a level-headed guy. Maybe he could reason with her.

But Jean’s husband wasn’t so sure what good sense meant any more. He was worried and sad and confused. “Will this be the last time we’re together at home?” he asked himself.

Side Trip

He went with Jean to Kansas City for the arraignment and made a side excursion to a missile silo--N-11, over by Odessa. It was about time to see what the darn things looked like.

The effect was awesome. Imagine. Inside that cyclone fence, just below the ground, there was something with power over his survival, his children’s, his grandchildren’s. And how much had he ever thought about it?

He had served in the Army and later become a chemical engineer. He knew about massive weapons systems and the money they cost. How many hungry people could be fed with the dollars squandered on the nuclear landscape? Imagine.

Joe took pictures. Jean wanted to give a talk at St. Martha’s; slides would help. She felt a need to explain herself at the church they’d attended for 32 years. Maybe people would finally see that religion required more than going to Mass on Sunday.

Father Eugene Foucher agreed to let them use the Pine Room in the basement. This in itself was unusual. The priest generally shies away from conflict. Even when the bishops wrote a pastoral about nuclear weapons, he declined to discuss it: “It seems to me unfair to use pulpit time for controversial areas.”

Small Turnout

But he and Joe were friendly, and Father announced the meeting in the newsletter. On a Tuesday night the doors were open to any of the 1,000 or so who regularly attended church. It pained Jean deeply that only five showed.

Of those few who did attend two were the Draths, Peggy and Bob. They stood up to talk, and Jean could see it coming, the counterpunch of satisfied America: Love-it-or-leave-it.

“We’re against nuclear war as much as you,” Peggy said. “But who gave you the right to destroy government property? That belongs to all of us.”

Bob continued the scolding: “You’re lucky to be in America! You’d have done this in Russia, you’d be 6 feet under.

“That’s right. Six feet under.”

Jean no longer had faith in the justice system. Courts are not places of truth, she had concluded. They are just rooms where judges and lawyers play their shifty games. Why should she take part in the manipulations?

But the other four wanted a formal trial, and she went along. They would act as their own attorneys, and this meant weeks of preparation. None had a taste for the law. Each meeting took them away from their loved ones.

Their personal lives were in turmoil. Secrecy had once seemed a protection for families. But in the end it only magnified the hurt. How could you have done something so serious without talking it over?

What Becomes of Love?

Darla Bradley, 22, consoled her parents back on the family farm. John Volpe, 39, had a wife and three young children. How old would they be when he got out of prison? Ken Rippetoe was in love with Suzy. What becomes of love, with them holding hands in a visitors’ room once a month?

None expected an acquittal. Rather, the trial was their chance to explain. They were not vandals; they had committed a small crime to prevent a great one. To them, it was like smashing a window to save a child in a burning house.

But agreeing on what words to use in court was hard. Before, each had seemed under an aura of virtue, but now the thick smoke of consequences irritated everyone’s eyes. Jean would dismiss the others as “you kids this” and “you kids that.”

At times, the arguing made them gasp. Soon, they would be on trial: How would they talk about peace and love if they didn’t have it among themselves?

Bob Ulrich, the U.S. attorney in Kansas City, handled the case himself and decided he had better be tough. He didn’t want a rash of these crimes--”people with crucifixion complexes trying to be martyrs at a missile silo.” These five only used hand tools, but maybe the next ones would try explosives.

The charge was “injuring” government property, and he wasn’t about to get into a debate with them about war and peace. After all, everybody wants peace; nobody has a monopoly on that. But foreign policy is made by the President and Congress, not citizens with sledgehammers.

The case he presented was plain and simple as ham and eggs. They’d broken up this and busted up that. Military men testified about transmitters and cables. Damage came to $1,273.43 at Mike 10; $3,343.74 at Mike 6.

“The Constitution of the United States permits people to protest, but it does not permit them to break the law,” Ulrich repeated again and again.

But the defendants wanted to lift things to a philosophical plane. They were surrendering to a cause and meant to consecrate the sacrifice in court. What brought us to the silos--and inevitably to jail, they asked rhetorically. Their answer took two days.

Defendants’ Logic

Their logic: The bomb has loomed for 40 years, and still governments swagger about like gunslingers, their security dependent on the terror at their hip. This is called deterrence.

But sooner or later a shot will be fired in panic, in malice, by mistake. “I look to Scripture for this; it says live by the sword, die by the sword . . . “ Jean Gump said. “Now governments are living by the bomb and so we’re going to die by the bomb.”

People feel powerless on the edge of the nuclear precipice--and maybe they don’t even care anymore because “somewhere deep within . . . we want it to happen because we’re tired of dealing with the fear,” Ken Rippetoe said.

Yet despair is no alternative. Christians must resist evil. But how? “Can we offer nothing else as hope than to write letters to Congress, to vote . . . to do our jobs until the missiles rain down on our heads?”John Volpe asked.

Accumulation of Acts

Their own answer was civil disobedience. They damaged a silo, harming steel and concrete but no person. Maybe an accumulation of such acts could change the shape of the future, as Gandhi had in India.

Experts were summoned. Hour after hour filled with the grimness of nuclear death. Jean questioned radiologist Dr. William Caldicott, a peace activist.

Q: We would be interested now in hearing your opinion on the effects of nuclear war.

A: The Minuteman 2 missile . . . would immediately dig out an enormous crater in the ground and (everything inside) would be . . . sucked up in the mushroom cloud as radioactive dust . . . (In) a radius of 5 miles in every direction from the center of the explosion, the heat and the forces would be so intense that everything would be literally vaporized and turned to dust, and human bodies--made up of about 75 to 80% water--would be instantly turned into molecules of water or steam and disappear and would never be seen again . . .

(In an area of 57 square miles) the wind is so intense it would pick up a full-sized man and throw him maybe the length of a baseball field . . . All buildings would be totally destroyed . . . everyone is either killed or lethally injured . . . fractures of every conceivable bone . . . pressure causes rupture of the eardrums so that people are deafened . . . ruptures of internal organs like the liver and the kidney and the spleen . . . very extensive burning . . .

Out to much greater distances the heat would still be such that asphalt would spontaneously melt, that wood buildings and dry wood and paint and clothing would spontaneously catch fire and there could well be a firestorm which extended over an enormous area burning at temperatures of 5, 6, 7, 800 degrees Fahrenheit, where literally everything that burns catches fire . . .

Even just one bomb on one large metropolitan area would produce a casualty rate that the medical profession would just have to throw its hands up in the air . . . But then no one has ever really believed that a nuclear war could be limited to the use of one bomb in one city. And if you think in terms of five bombs on five cities . . .

Accidents Inevitable

Dr. Paul Francis Walker, a weapons expert and former Defense Department consultant, testified that nuclear war is imminent. Accidents are inevitable in the “most complex system ever in the history of the universe,” he said. Forty years had passed without one. But look at the warnings: the space shuttle Challenger, the meltdown at Chernobyl.

Q. If nuclear war is inevitable, in your mind . . . why do we continue to build (the weapons)?

A: It has tremendous bureaucratic inertia . . . a lot of jobs . . . technological momentum . . . And we are also dealing with a mid-20th Century phenomenon known as the arms race and there’s . . . a very, very deep paranoia in both the United States and the Soviet Union . . . We’re all under tremendous psychic trauma . . .

Such doomsday talk was horrifying. But what did it have to do with damaging government property, Bob Ulrich demanded to know. In cross-examination, he always pulled things back to the nub: to the law.

Q: You’re an educated man, Dr. Walker, and . . . you can see, can you not, the danger in allowing each individual to determine which laws they will follow . . .

A: There is danger . . .

Q: It would be anarchy, would it not, sir?

A: Yes, sure. But that’s what society is all about. I mean--

Q: Well, is it, sir?

A: . . . Democracy also encourages very widespread active debate, ferment and grass-roots action . . .

Q: But you are trying to change the situation, too, aren’t you, doctor?

A: Absolutely.

Q: But . . . even though you probably comprehend better than anyone in this room the potential destructiveness of these weapons . . . you haven’t gone out to a nuclear missile site . . . and attempted to destroy it or harm it . . . have you?

A: No, I haven’t . . .

The jury was out only an hour and 39 minutes, including its lunch break. In sentencing, U.S. Judge Elmo B. Hunter told the five they were among the most arrogant people with whom he had ever dealt.

You possess no “straight wire to heaven” he reprimanded, and you don’t know more than the United States government. Unilateral disarmament? That’s foolishness, he thought. Our enemies would roll right over us.

Hunter said he intended to give them eight (later reduced to six) years in prison, followed by five more on probation--release contingent on paying damages. That was $424.47 each for Gump, Morlan and Rippetoe, $1,671.87 for Bradley and Volpe.

Nevertheless, it pained him to sentence them. He was a grandfather, too. And they were not bank robbers, not drug fiends. He said he was willing to halve the prison time if only they would make some promises.

“Will you state and agree that at all times when you’re either in custody or on probation or parole to remain completely law abiding?”

“I will never obey an immoral law,” Jean Gump answered. “The laws that protect those missiles are immoral . . . “

“Are you willing to make restitution?”

“Certainly not.”

One after the other they refused; no judge would recalibrate their consciences. After all, the sentence was also their deliverance. Principle had taken them to the silo and principle would now take them to prison. They were handcuffed and led out the door.

Joe Gump watched it all unfold from the pews. It was no deliverance for him. That stern old judge! The way he played with them, it was like someone pulling the wings off flies. And for what? Because they cared about peace?

He was furious, though by then that could have been expected of Joe. By then he was already deep into it. He had begun the reading, the reflection, the preoccupation.

By then Joe, too, was lit with a premonition of the nuclear flare.