Pushing for Peace After a Lifetime of Minding His Own Business

If you’ve never heard of Hugh D. Slocum, you’re not alone. A retired printer who celebrates his 88th birthday today, he has lived for 60 years in a section of Canoga Park that was called Lakeside Park when he moved there 60 years ago.

Slocum never was the type to make headlines. For 39 years, he operated print shops he owned on Sherman Way and Remmet Avenue, raised two daughters with his wife, Alice, and was a faithful soldier for the local Chamber of Commerce and Kiwanis Club.

These days, age and failed eyesight mostly confine him to his hillside bungalow, where he spends most of his time listening to the television and radio, and thinking.

And he doesn’t like what he hears.

Every night the evening telecasts serve up a potpourri of rapes, murders and assaults. Slocum is particularly pained when he hears about young people whose lives are cut short or ruined by the violence that has become frighteningly commonplace in our society.

That is why, after a quiet life of minding his own business, Slocum has started a peace initiative that he hopes will snowball into a nationwide public-awareness campaign.

Slocum is asking newspapers to print free advertisements that readers could clip and paste in their windows. The sample flyer he created reads:

“Neighbors, meet on a regular basis to encourage and educate the community to: Be Somebody. Join the Club. Live and Let Live.”

A visit to Slocum’s 1920s-era bungalow is like stepping into a bygone era. A red, wooden sign carved with the letters “SLOCUM” greets visitors at the entrance to the driveway, near a decorative windmill.

A station wagon with faux-wood side panels stands before the house, which is the color of mint ice cream. Visitors must edge around an old oak that leans across the driveway, but continues to sport lush foliage despite its fall from majesty.

Like the tree, Slocum finds it easier to be in a horizontal position these days, as he meditates on what an old man can do about society’s mounting problems.

He was spurred into action in early 1993 when two students, one at Reseda High School and another at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, were shot and killed by other students in separate incidents a scant month apart.

“The violence was getting too rampant. I just got to thinking, ‘What on earth can be done to start a movement?’ ” said Slocum, who wears his striking white hair brushed back and was somewhat formally dressed in a peach and gray plaid jacket, light blue shirt and gray slacks. Pinned to his lapel was a brown “Live and Let Live” button.

“All I can do is sit at home and lie down and think,” he said in a quiet, slightly quavery voice. “I thought I’d get the ball rolling for other people to do more than I could do.”

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So he designed and ordered 5,000 “Live and Let Live” buttons, which he donated to the two schools, hoping that students would wear them to spread his message of peace and tolerance. He would like to supply each incoming class of every high school with a batch of buttons, but he can’t afford to do that. That’s where others--such as a service club, a philanthropist or a concerned parents group--could help him, he hopes.

Slocum’s dream is that his buttons will eventually be out there encouraging a forbearance from murder in every school in the nation.

The buttons have had mixed success.

At Fairfax High School, school officials gave about 200 buttons to teachers to give to students as rewards for academic excellence or good behavior. The rest have been temporarily misplaced as a result of dislocations due to the earthquake, an official said.

At Reseda High School, students wore the buttons and understood their message, Assistant Principal Dimitri Vadetsky said. The administrator said the gift of the buttons dovetailed nicely with a program created at the time that encouraged students to inform school authorities if they knew of a student possessing a weapon.

“It was a very fine gesture,” Vadetsky said.

Slocum has received positive reactions to his charitable deeds in the past. In 1991, after he donated buttons with the slogan, “Yearn to Learn,” to Canoga Park High School, the school awarded him an honorary high school diploma. Slocum was forced to drop out of school in the ninth grade to help support his family.

Born in South Dakota in 1906, Slocum grew up in the South before moving at age 16 to Oklahoma, where he worked for the Bartlesville Morning Examiner, 60 miles northwest of Tulsa, learning to set type.

Moving to California in 1930, he opted for commercial printing because of its greater creative possibilities, he said. After working for other printers in Long Beach, Inglewood and the San Fernando Valley, he opened Slocum Printing in Canoga Park in 1946.

One of the greatest regrets of Slocum’s life is not completing high school, he said, because he sees education as the antidote for many of society’s ills, including students killing students.

Violence among young people could be tamed, Slocum feels, if leaders and concerned residents could find ways to keep youths in school and make sure they have something to look forward to when they get out.

As far as Hugh Slocum is concerned, one doesn’t have to be young, rich or powerful to make a difference. An old man thinking on his couch can attack evil too.