Peaceful Warriors

Oct. 5, 2005

They fought for their country in a time of war and they’re fighting for America once again, but this time for the cause of peace.
They’re the National Veterans for Peace (VFP), an outfit of military veterans who number about 120 in the Northern Michigan chapter and 8,000 nationwide.
What brings these former soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines back together? “Just a knowledge that war is really no answer,” says U.S. Navy veteran John Lewis of Traverse City. “We want to show people that there are other ways to go, especially with this war in Iraq.”
Lewis, 78, is the new president of Michigan Chapter #50, which was established in 1991. He succeeds Bruce Sanderson, a WWII combat veteran and noted peace activist from East Jordan who has served as president since 1991. Sanderson, who is approaching his 90s, was a captain in the U.S. Army’s infantry during WWII and served in North Africa, Sicily and the Pacific theaters of the war. He served in the FBI after his discharge.
Lewis is modest about his own time in the service even though he enlisted at the age of 17 and rose to the rank of 1st class petty officer by the time he was 19.
“I’m very humble,” he says. “I was in the Navy in 1945 and ’46, but I didn’t go overseas. They were looking for typists, so I ended up at a discharge center in New Orleans, processing those returning from the war and telling them about the G.I. Bill.”
Upon his discharge, he became an accountant and office manager, eventually settling as the business manager of a small school district. He and his wife Betty settled in Traverse City 12 years ago from the town of Marshall.
Many local members of the VFP have had combat experience which disillusioned them about the use of war and violence as solutions for the world’s problems.
“Most of them are Vietnam vets, which means that most have had unpleasant experiences with war,” Lewis says.
The VFP was launched in 1985 by several Vietnam vets with the hope of uniting U.S. military veterans in the cause of world peace. The group was founded in Maine and has spread across the country over the past 20 years. Coincidentally, Vietnam vet John Nelson, who serves as baykeeper for Grand Traverse Bay, was working as a teacher in Maine when the group got started and became one of its early members.
The VFP does more than talk about peace; it gets involved. Nationally, the group has been active in the following actions:
• Repairing schools and establishing health clinics in Vietnam and participating in rescue missions in the country.
• Monitoring elections in Nicaragua.
• Raising $4 million for medical aid in Iraq and assisting in the restoration of water treatment plants and rebuilding schools and health clinics after the Gulf War.
• Launched the Children of War Rescue Project, which brought more than 100 wounded kids from Bosnia and Serbia to the U.S. for medical treatment.
• Work with Iraqi war veterans who have suffered severe injuries.
The group sets high goals, outlined in a statement from Lewis:
“We will work to increase public awareness of the costs of war, to seek justice for veterans and victims of war, to restrain our goverment from intervening in the affairs of other nations, to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons and to abolish war as an instrument of national policy.”
With those goals in mind, the VFP has taken an active stance against the war in Iraq. In March, the group called for the impeachment of President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, an initiative which Lewis concedes went nowhere.
More recently, local VFP vets marched in parades on the Fourth of July and at the National Cherry Festival. Members of the group also traveled to Crawford, Texas to support anti-war mother Cindy Sheehan in her vigil outside the President’s ranch. Members, including outgoing president Sanderson, were also on the scene in Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities on Sept. 24, for a massive protest against the war in Iraq.
Members of the group also speak at anti-war rallies and participate in counter-recruitment activities, hoping to dissuade young people from enlisting.
“We have been involved in counter-recruitment activities, primarily to ensure that prospective recruits are not given false and misleading information, and are fully informed about the truth and risks of military service,” Lewis says.
Do they ever get hassled by other veterans for their pacifist views? “Sometimes,“ Lewis says; but the VFP vets also got respect from the crowd when they marched in last summer‘s Cherry Fest parade, and horn honks of support when they‘re out protesting the war on area street corners.
For info and a membership application, he can be reached via email at johnbetty@bignetnorth.net.