Distant Memories Begin to Stir
By J. William Semich, TAB Columnist
As I look up at the statue of Gandhi and start to read the inscriptions
on the Walls of Names that surround the statue, a distant memory
begins to stir inside me.
I remember that Gandhi and his teachings used to be a very big deal
for me and for hundreds of thousands of others in my generation.
I remember when, in the distant past, I read the works of Gandhi
and of Martin Luther King and tried to live a life based on their
ideals. It dawns on me that I had even once thought of myself as
a "pacifist," had acted on those thoughts for nearly a
decade.
How is it, I am asking myself, that I had forgotten all that?
And so I begin to think thoughts, and feel feelings, that had somehow
gotten buried over the years, buried under real world problems like
graduate school, career, finding and fixing and paying for a home,
raising kids and paying bills, and the other daily details.
I remember 1961, marching across the Potomac along with thousands
of pacifists, religious leaders and other naive young idealists
like me, carrying Ban The Bomb and Student Peace Unions signs, hoping
and praying we could convince President Kennedy to stop the open-air-testing
of nuclear weapons, then to ban nuclear weapons for ever.
Idealistic? Sure. But Gandhi proved that it's the idealists who
can change the world.
Today with open-air-testing banned for decades, we don't worry about
nuclear fallout. Back then we had nuclear fallout around us all
the time -- in the air we breathed, the food we ate, in our bones,
in the bodies of unborn babies -- and in everybody's mother's milk.
Strontium 90, they called it, a deadly nuclear material with a half
life of 28 years that, like lead, replaces calcium in your bones.
It was there thanks to the arms race between the US and the Soviets.
And I remember how great it felt when we won that one, when President
Kennedy announced, first, a temporary ban, and then a permanent
ban on atmospheric testing.
Today as I stand under Gandhi's statue, I see Martin Luther King's
name on the Wall of Names and I remember something else I had forgotten:
the Freedom Rides.
Like the night in 1962, when I was in a young college professor's
living room watching two African-American students (gently) pummeling
and shouting at a fellow black student who has gone limp on the
floor in the classic pose of passive resistance. I had forgotten
- but now I remember - this, my first lesson from the nonviolent
black civil rights group, the Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
in Gandhi's and Martin Luther King's teachings on the use of nonviolence
to change unjust laws.
Now the rain lets up a little here at The Pacifist Memorial and
I watch as the ceremony finally begins with spirituals and gospel
songs. The songs bring me back to another night long ago, after
a full day of "sitting in" (black and white together)
at the many whites-only restaurants that then lined the highway
between Baltimore and Washington, DC, trying to use Gandhi's teachings
to peaceably force them to serve all races of people. 
That night, we all gathered at the Baltimore AME church to celebrate
our victory. No one had been arrested, no one had been asked
to leave, and some had actually been served in the restaurants.
We all joined hands in the church to sing spirituals, "We Shall
Not Be Moved" and "We Shall Overcome" and, right
then, as we crossed our arms and held each others' hands and swayed
to the music, we really believed it.
But it had a larger sacrifice than all that. It took the assassination
of President Kennedy late in 1963 to shame Congress into finally
passing the Civil Rights and the Voting Rights Acts of 1964.
I remember all this -- and more, much more - as I stand there in
the rain looking at Gandhi. I recall that Gandhi himself had died
at the hand of an assassin. And then I see John Lennon's name on
the Wall and his "War is over if you want it".
I remember how I never could reconcile myself to that unexplainable
tragedy - the violent haphazard death of John Lennon, the peace
lover, the gentle man, the metaphor for my generation.
Whew! These are powerful memories of a tragic era in our national
consciousness, memories and feelings I had successfully held in
check for 20 years, now rushing back in a jumble of emotions here
in the rain at The Pacifist Memorial.
What is it about a statue and some piece of brick - the image of
Gandhi, the Walls Names -- that can generate such strong emotions.
I begin to understand. You've seen those pictures of tearful veterans
with their hands pressed against the names carved on the walls of
the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial? For me, The Pacifist Memorial in
Sherborn has just that effect. It is more -- a whole lot more --
than just a statue and list of names with nice quotations.
It is a gathering place for memories, a lens that magnifies and
refocuses our emotional recollections of forgotten friends, fallen
heroes, of time long past, innocent lives cut short, and of now-distant
ideals. A place to relive, to remember, and to mourn and to reconcile.
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