HARD TIMES s Among those walking for the first time was Southern Baptist minister Bill Cusak. Bill proudly wore a square sign, reading ‘Peace Now’ on all four sides, above a straw hat on his bald head. It could be seen unmistakably from any direction. The sign did make Bill look a little odd; his wife thought he resembled Carmen Miranda carrying pineapples. But he liked its visibility and stood fast on local roots, dating back to before the British shot his ancestor, Adam Cusak, for refusing to let them use his ferry to cross the nearby Pee Dee River. Bill’s concern began after the initial Hiroshima bomb, while he was still a young seminary student at Georgia Tech. The knowledge of what had occurred and might occur again frightened and pained him. But since no one seemed to share his apprehensions, he placed them on a back shelf until, in early 1982, he heard a group of British and American scientists—including several who had worked on the original bomb—express fear that an atomic war was entirely likely by the year 2,000. Bill’s first grand-daughter was two at the time. He couldn’t think of her and remain silent. It was his phone call to a Francis Marion biologist that led, nearly two years later, to this march. The day almost had the air of a Sunday school picnic—men and women in jeans and walking shorts, clean-cut teenagers in Black Sabbath t-shirts. Although the surrounding culture ceded these teachers and nurses, ministers, counselors, and other respectable professionals far greater right to question than it did the men and women who worked in the surrounding farms and mills, they wondered where challenging government leaders might lead. Their actions suggested that the world was gravely threatened, not only by external barbarians, but by our own society’s actions and choices. Some were jittery, like the young Methodist min- J ister who nearly cracked up his blue Dodge pickup while driving over from a small town forty miles away. Others took heart because everyone seemed so wholesome and ordinary. A pastoral assistant who was here at the request of a daughter dying of Hodgkin’s disease, said, “I guess blacks started this marching—I realize they went through a lot worse.” A young social worker marched with a Sony Walkman and a sign, made jointly with a mildly retarded client, depicting a soccer-ball planet, colored in oblong continents of orange, yellow, blue and green, and the words “Save The Earth, Stop The Bombs” in strong black letters. Most nursed tired feet, chatted with neighbors and friends, and hoped they would be heard. As Episcopal minister Ingram Parmellysaid, “now they know there are others who care as well.” At the end-point rally, a rabbi led an ecumenical prayer and a local historian recalled the day the bomb fell. Ingram, who also taught sociology at Francis Marion, filled in for a hoped-for congressman-salving possible disappointment by saying this was a movement determined not by star speakers but by ordinary citizens, “insisting that we don’t wish our children incinerated.” He ended by quoting Isaiah, promising a day “when nation shall not lift up sword against nation.” They all knew the quotation. They’d learned it in fourth-grade Bible school, then consigned it to the domain of ideals or distant futures. But given that the marchers feared being tarred as pawns of evil empires, it rooted them in familiar traditions. The bomb's TNT trigger, detonating on impact, dug a hole 100feet across and! thirty-five feet deep, sheared off surroundi trees, and caved in the adjacent house as if a giant had kicked in its side. The blast wounded three children playing in the yard 1—1 ow is a movement born in a place J. JL where none existed before? How does a community of conscience oppose a once-accepted culture? A year and a half before the October 1983 march, Florence had no peace movement. Fears of the atomic arms race remained mute. Then a Francis Marion biologist named Jack Boyce got a Common Cause mailing detailing the consequences of a nuclear war, the developing weapons buildup, and suggestions for citizen action. Boyce began researching the issue In books, ■................ .... .. ' and-publications like 77K Atomic Scientists. He wrote lette of the local paper on the MX vote, the chances of surviving an atomic blast, and the escalating global crisis. Around this time, Bill Cusak saw the scientists speaking on nuclear war. It was an hour-long public TV discussion filmed by the British, and it stirred him to consider the almost incomprehensible possibilities they discussed. Remembering a few of Boyce’s letters in the paper, he decided to call Jack to talk. Although the two had not spoken previously, they began meeting Thursday mornings from 7:30 to 9:00 at the office where Bill did religious-based counseling. Bill also invited the educational minister of a rural Baptist church, and Jack brought his Methodist minister and a Francis Marion drama teacher. Bill got thirty people at his church to view a Physicians for Social Responsibility film, The Last Epidemic, which counterposed Hiroshima footage with testimony on the consequences of a nuclear war presented by doctors, scientists, statesmen, and even a former admiral. Clinton St. Quarterly 9
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