Peace Activists Recall March on Washington

They’re older now; some of them could barely make the symbolic walk they took Wednesday around Los Angeles City Hall.

But peace activists who 20 years ago marched from Los Angeles to Washington still had fire in their bellies, even if they were missing some of the spring in their step.

Dozens of the original participants in the 3,600-mile, nine-month Great Peace March returned to the starting point of their journey to commemorate the event they had hoped would bring nuclear disarmament to the world.

They stood once again on the steps of City Hall, where on March 1, 1986, some 6,000 onlookers had cheered and Mayor Tom Bradley had sent 1,200 marchers on their way with an admonition “to deliver a message, not just to America, but around the world.”

Despite its rousing start, the march nearly went bust two weeks later in Barstow, when a cash crunch forced sponsors to withdraw. About 500 marchers managed to regroup and continue their trek eastward. About 400 walked the entire way to the Lincoln Memorial, where the march ended Nov. 15.

“It was wet and dry, hot and cold. It was a way to say, ‘Let’s live on this beautiful world rather than blow it up,’ ” recalled marcher Frank Sahlem, 50, of Inglewood.

Sahlem, who now works for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority distributing timetables to commuters, wore out four pairs of shoes. He became the trek’s poet, chronicling the event in a book called “Road Poems.”

“I was 30. The march gave me self-confidence and a whole new family,” Sahlem said. What it failed to do was deliver a whole new world, he said: “I’m surprised the country is in worse shape now than it was 20 years ago.”

Eighty-two-year-old Ann Edelman of Los Angeles agreed.

“After the peace march I was really optimistic. But I can’t tell you now how bitterly disappointed I am that the nuclear threat is just as real now as it ever was,” said Edelman -- who marched back then with her husband, Richard, now 81.

“Sometimes I get so discouraged. But we must change this terrible direction this country is going in.”

Behind her, a fading 50-foot banner that still bears the names of those who made the trek was stretched out across the City Hall entryway.

“There are thousands of names on there. Some of those people are no longer with us. So we have an obligation to continue, even though we’re a little grayer and tireder,” said Jerry Rubin, a 62-year-old Santa Monica resident who organized the reunion.

Mim Broderick nodded knowingly. The 87-year-old Studio City resident was wearing her Great Peace March shirt and a hat brimming with peace movement pins. “Other than being a mother, that march was my life’s best experience,” she said.

Carlos de la Fuente, an attorney from Newcastle, Calif., near Sacramento, told of how he joined the march in Nebraska and was taken by the “beautiful people” who were demonstrating for global disarmament. One in particular caught his eye.

De la Fuente, 68, ended up marrying a marcher from Los Angeles. Mariana de la Fuente, 57, was at his side during Wednesday’s celebration.

It was a joyous reunion for most. Kay Carlson came from her Santa Fe, N.M., home. “The march changed me. I went from wishing for peace to working for peace,” the 65-year-old word processor said.

She wore her original Great March for Peace ID card around her neck as she embraced Elizabeth Woods, 81, of Long Beach. The pair had met at “tent school” -- a camping instruction and training session held in the San Fernando Valley’s Sepulveda Basin several weeks before the start of the march. They had hit it off and shared a tent all the way across the United States.

Woods studied her friend’s 20-year-old ID card photo. “We haven’t changed much,” she said with a laugh.

Film and television actress Alexandra Paul, who marched part of the way, wore a shirt with “Peace” spelled in sequins as she recalled her initial nervousness at walking across the California desert.

“I was really out of my comfort zone,” she said of her decision back then to march. “But I was more scared of nuclear war.”

Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl stepped from City Hall to talk with the marchers, who broke out in chants of “Peace Now!” after he condemned the Iraq war. “We should have a social contract where people come first, not bombs,” Rosendahl said.

Many in the group resembled the aging 1960s hippies that some of them were. So 25-year-old Evan Austin stood out from the crowd as he videotaped the reunion’s final march around City Hall.

“I married into the Great Peace March family. My wife was in the march when she was 6,” explained Austin, a piano repairman from Ojai. Jessie Austin was at work in a Goleta emergency room Wednesday and couldn’t make the reunion. Her husband was making the video for her.

As the 75 marchers moved slowly down the Spring Street sidewalk and turned onto 1st Street, Mauricio Terrazas, 89, of La Verne, was helped by friend Bruce Campbell as he pushed wife, Jean Terrazas, 73, in a wheelchair. Mauricio and Jean had met on the March in Nebraska and later married, he explained.

And now, one more time, they were taking to the streets to give peace a chance.