May 26, 1970
Page 17142
STANDING UP FOR PEACE
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, a column by Michael Kernan in the May 14, 1970, issue of the Washington Post, describes one man's courage and conviction, and reminds us of how important it is to demonstrate these human qualities.
I refer to John M. White, a Commerce Department employee who has chosen to stand up for peace, because in his words: You have to start somewhere.
I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Kernan's article, which describes Mr. White's reasons for his stand, be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
STANDING UP FOR PEACE
(By Michael Kernan)
"'PEOPLE COME BY AND TELL ME THIS ISN'T THE BIGGEST ISSUE, AND I TELL THEM THEY ARE RIGHT. BUT IT'S THE ISSUE FOR NOW. YOU HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE"
A 44-year-old GS-14 stood in front of the 14th Street entrance of the Commerce Department yesterday, wearing a lightweight gray business suit, his attache case at his feet. He came at 8:30 a.m. and would go home at 5p.m., just as he had done Monday. He went inside only when it rained. He ate no lunch. He planned to be there, just standing, today and tomorrow and the next day and maybe some more days after that.
The large placard on his front said, "Another Fed for Peace Now." On his back a smaller card identified him as a Commerce Department employee.
John M. White is a career government official. He is former deputy director of the Peace Corps in Thailand. He lives comfortably in the Chevy Chase section of Washington. He has a master's degree and a salary of $21,081. He and his wife are Catholics, with a son in college and a son and daughter at home.
Last Saturday, he went to the rally at the Ellipse carrying a flag (green and white, with a peace symbol instead of stars) that he had sewed himself. Before that, he had marched in the November moratorium and had observed the peace fast. But it took Cambodia, Kent State, and the weekend rally to bring him out of his office and onto the sidewalk.
At first; White was unable to get three weeks of annual leave to protest, but after a talk Monday with Robert A. Podesta, assistant secretary for economic development, he got his paid leave – and with a certain amount of admiration for a man who does his thing.
One stipulation was that he leave "Commerce Department" off the sign.
When he spoke, his soft voice barely could be heard over the roar of traffic.
"I was frustrated in the other efforts. I felt this really was a call for action to support the students. Suddenly it seemed as if token things were no good. The President appears to be listening but not understanding. He doesn't seem to understand that he has been given a mandate for a new kind of leadership toward international brotherhood."
In the early 1960s, White had written Robert Kennedy, urging that he recognize that American military involvement in Southeast Asia was a mistake, but there was no answer. At the time he was with the Agency for International Development in Bangkok, having just finished a two-year tour of duty in Laos. It had been a tough stint, for Laos exploded in a coup six months after his arrival. Mortar shells landed on his house, which was next door to the commander of the administration forces. The family was evacuated, but White served out the term.
In 1962, he joined the Peace Corps and spent five more years in Thailand, three of them as deputy director. In 1967 he returned to Washington, where he now is a program officer on the American Indian desk of the Economic Development Administration.
"My years in Asia convinced me there need not be a bloodbath if the war is terminated in an urgent manner. The United States should protect the integrity and aspirations of these peoples, but we seem to have a short-run policy. I've seen it in Laos, fragmenting groups setting one faction against another for our narrow ends of security, for our immediate goals."
A native of New England, White was raised in a pleasant, genteel upper-middle milieu, the son of a teacher at Portsmouth Priory, a Catholic boys boarding school, which he attended His mother was from a well-to-do New York family.
At the age of 16, John White calmly announced that he was quitting the Priory. He liked farming better. So he became a farmer. It was an act of preference, not of rebellion.
Until he was 27, he worked on farms in Vermont, Rhode Island and Massachusetts for wages of $20 a month and up. When he finally entered the University of Massachusetts, his parents were dead and the income gone, so he worked his way through to a master's in agriculture. But long before then, after his war service – (he never saw combat), he married a girl he met while at the Portsmouth Priory.
Eleanor White, 40, works at Lord & Taylor in women's sportswear. "I think it's a great thing," she said: "He has a lot of guts. I told him he might lose his job, but he just said, ‘So What.' I called our son in college (John, Jr., 21, a University of Wisconsin junior) and told him about it and he approved. He's against the war, too."
The younger son, Robert, 18, left Wilson High School last fall, has been doing some carpentry since and has taken an interest in cooking, especially baking bread, but now he has his eye on a circus school in Sarasota, Fla.
“I wish more people were doing what my father is,'' he said. "I was going to apply for conscientious objector but I never filled out the forms. I'll probably wait it out, now. My brother and I both feel the same way, but my father feels it the most strongly." There is also a daughter, Michelle, 8.
"The students understand. Some of the Cabinet members, too. I just hope the President will realize that we have to take great risks to avoid violence rather than risks to increase it. You can't use violence to seek peace.”
All day long, John White stands at his post while his colleagues rush past in their navy blue suits. A few are antagonists. Many smile, but most don't respond. Now and then someone flashes a shy "V" sign. From a passing car comes a shout: “Right on!"
During Tuesday's downpour, he took shelter because he felt it would be needlessly melodramatic for him to stand there dripping. Somehow that didn't seem to the point, he said diffidently. He also carries salt and water, and his deeply bronzed. face gleams with suntan lotion.
"I hope it will encourage feds to do positive acts for peace. Also, I'm concerned with Brian McDonnell up there in the park, dying peacefully (on a fast) to protest the violent deaths caused by the war. People come by and tell me this isn't the biggest issue, and I tell them they are right. But it's the issue for now. You have to start somewhere."