Sun Chronicle

Linked to idea of peace
By Frank Mortimer Sun Chronicle staff
Friday, November 9, 2007

FOXBORO - A chain of names may be a quiet statement about the human cost of war.

But the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. - widely regarded as one of the nation's most moving war memorials - doesn't make much noise, either.

Since last January, Madeline Champagne, 65, of Pond Avenue, has been creating chains of wristbands - each band bearing the name, age, rank and date of death of every member of the U.S. military lost in the Iraq War.

"As I make the wristbands, I look at the names and ages," she said. "At first, the young ages are the worst, as I think about what each one might have had ahead of them. But then I think about the older ages, and what they have left behind."

The chain - actually a curtain of chains, as the American death toll pushes toward 4,000 - is on display at the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, where Champagne has been a volunteer since she retired from Invensys Foxboro three years ago.
She calls the exhibit "The Bondage of War."

But she has no wish to handcuff visitors to her own viewpoints - especially on the hot-button issue of whether U.S. forces should withdraw from Iraq.

"When I am at the Peace Abbey and show this tribute to people, I don't say very much, so that people can deal with their own emotions about it," Champagne said.

"People usually go up and start reading the names and ages," she said.

"I have seen people stand in front of it and start crying."

Many people in Foxboro and elsewhere know Champagne as "the butterfly lady."

Since 1992, she has raised butterflies and does school and adult programs about the fluttery insects. This year alone, she supplied more than 60 classrooms in six towns with Monarch eggs and caterpillars.

"While I continue to talk about butterfly facts to students and to adults, I also try to instill the respect for nature that comes with understanding other creatures," she said.

"In thinking about my activities for peace, I see that they come from the same place - respect for other people, other lives."

At the Peace Abbey, she helps out at events, welcomes visitors, helps maintain the grounds and buildings and does special projects.

Last year, she made a big sign and kept it updated weekly with the war statistics: U.S. military killed in Iraq, the Iraq body count, and U.S. government appropriations for the war.

"Even though I wanted people to be aware of these numbers, I began to think it was too impersonal to just post numbers," she said. "I was inspired by some other tributes, and wanted to create something that would get people to think more about the men and women who have been killed in Iraq in our country's service."

Champagne started making her tribute eight months ago, when just over 3,000 U.S service personnel had died in the Iraq War. She updates the tribute a few times a month. As of last Sunday, the death count was 3,849.

She gets the military information from www.icasualties.org, reformats the data, prints it out and cuts it into strips to make wristbands.

She intertwines the wristbands, each wrapped in clear plastic, into vertical chains. The row of hanging chains now curtains a 38-foot span of wall inside the Peace Abbey at the intersection of Routes 16 and 27, and is open to visitors all day every day.

The tribute is displayed on the lower level of the front building.

The first person on the list she obtained was Marine Major Jay Thomas Aubin, who died March 21, 2003, at age 36.

Some of the American dead, she points out, were 14 years old when the United States invaded Iraq.

Formed in 1988 by Lewis Randa, the Peace Abbey (www.peaceabbey.org) evolved from the Life Experience School, which was founded in 1972 as Randa's non-combatant service as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. The school served children with disabilities.

Its Pacifist Memorial, which has as its center an oversize statue of Indian nationalist and pacifist Mahatma Gandhi visible from the street, is located next to the town's war memorial.

"Peace takes work," Champagne said. "You sort of think that peace is the absence of doing evil. But peace takes work."