Spirit in Action
Norman Morrison's Self-immolation - Anne Morrison Welsh
Anne Morrison Welsh was left with 3 kids when Norman Morrison self-immolated in protest of the Vietnam War on 11/2/1965. Anne has written "Held in the Light: Norman Morrison's Sacrifice for Peace and His Family's Journey of Healing" about her experience. It has included continued peace work, a visit to Vietnam, and continued growth and insight.
- Broadcast on:
- 15 Nov 2009
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- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, we're going to speak with Anne Morrison Welch, widow of Norman Morrison, who burned himself alive, self-immolated, as it's called, in protest of the Vietnam War on November 2nd of 1965. Anne Morrison Welch has recently released a memoir, much of which is centered on the experience and her and Norman's witness against the Vietnam War. It's called "held in the light," Norman Morrison sacrificed for peace and his family's journey of healing. Self-immolation in protest war did not begin in America or with Americans, but with Buddhist monks in Vietnam. Though Norman Morrison is the best remembered of the Americans who gave their lives in this way, he is not the only, nor even the first. I know of four others, Alice Hertz, Roger Allen Laport, Florence Beaumont, and George, it spelled W-I-N-N-E, I think that's pronounced Winnie. All of them who self-immolated in protest of the Vietnam War. Norman's self-sacrifice got more notice, perhaps, because he did it in front of the Pentagon right in front of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's office, or maybe it was because his one-year-old daughter, Emily, was nearby when he self-immolated. His widow Anne was left behind with three children to make sense to herself and the world of his self-sacrifice, and to continue to attempt to arouse the conscience of our nation regarding the sufferings of the people of Vietnam, to which we were contributing so importantly. Anne Morrison Welsh explores much of the hopes, pains, and healing in her memoir held in the light. Before we join Anne in North Carolina, I'd like to share a piece of music inspired by Norman Morrison and his sacrifice. It's by Steve Heitzig, and it's from his social movement Ballet. This movement is called "Protest," and will specifically listen to the Quaker Peace Walls. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Again, that's a portion of the Quaker Peace Walls from Steve Heitzig's social movement's Ballet. In memory of Norman Morrison's self-sacrifice during the Vietnam War, Anne will now join Norman's widow Anne Morrison Welsh, author of "Hell in the Light" from her home in North Carolina. Anne, thanks so much for joining me for "Spirit in Action." I'm very glad to be here. Thank you for the opportunity, Mark. When did your book officially come out? When was it officially released? It was October 2008, about a year ago. That's a rather long time for you to wait to write the book. I mean, the events with Norman, of course, happened way back in 1965. Yes, I think I felt for many, many years that it was something that I needed to do. So I kept a lot of memorabilia, rather loosely filed, I'm afraid. But I hung on to it because I felt that this was a story that needed to be told. So finally, after several decades, I began to write pieces of it, then more seriously put it together in the last few years. Finally, reaching a place of strength and healing that allowed me to, so to speak, take the plunge and write a story that is very personal, actually, and was very hard to write. But I feel satisfied and happy that I did that. The title of the book, "The Memoir That You Wrote," is "held in the Light." It has a subtitle, "Norman Morris and Sacrifice for Peace and His Family's Journey of Healing." Held in the light, of course, in Quaker circles, we refer to holding someone in the light in the same way that many religions refer to praying for someone. Why did you choose that for the title of your memoir? Well, actually, that part of the title held in the light was the suggestion and choice of the editor of Orbis Books, the publishing house that published the memoir, Robert Ellsberg. And Robert and I collaborated and we worked on corrections and all the things that a writer and the editor do together. I had a lot of other ideas for titles, but he's a Catholic, not a Quaker, but very familiar with Quakerism. Maybe I had mentioned being held in the light in the narrative itself, but when he came up with it, I just felt at first that, "Oh, that's too old hat for Quakers." We use that phrase all the time. It's not really a very special phrase, not fresh and original. But he said, "Well, it's really one of the themes of the book." And the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. Held in the light is really how I felt on the day that Norman died that evening when I found out. And how I was held in the light of not only God's love, but the love and care of so many people, friends, both personal friends and Quaker friends and strangers in Baltimore and really, even around the world, in the days and weeks and months that followed Norman's death. In the book held in the light, you talk and you describe the events of November 2nd of 1965. Would you care to share that with our listeners? Just say what happened a little bit about what led up to that day when Norman self-immolated, how that came about. I don't really want to ask you to go back and dwell on the hard places, but I think you've come so far into the light because of the sacrifice that Norman made. Would you share what happened back on that day? Yes, I can do that. This was toward the beginning of the Vietnam War. For probably a couple of years, we had become involved, mainly in South Vietnam, supporting a regime that was not popular with the people. Indeed, probably was corrupt. It was gradually becoming a larger war. In the months that led up to Norman's death, we were beginning to send more troops over and it just had the feel of something that was going to be, that was already a catastrophe, but was going to be a really huge catastrophe for our country, as well as for this little third world country. Norman and others in our friends meeting, the Stony Run meeting in Baltimore, where we were living, had become rather active in opposing the war and had done all kinds of things like teach-ins and public meetings to protest the war, to raise questions about it. Norman and others had gone down to Washington to speak with our political representatives and to raise questions about the war. There had been a few public demonstrations, but the peace movement, the anti-war movement against the war in Vietnam was still in its infancy at that time, but it was growing. I think Norman worked so hard on it, but he had this sinking feeling that it was going to be a tragedy not only for our country, but for Vietnam. Some of our servicemen had already begun to come home in those body bags, and it just looked like we were going down a very deep hole. Norman felt, and I felt that it should stop, that we were on such a terrible course. I think somehow he fell into almost a situation of despairing about it, because nothing that was of us who were working for peace, and there were many around the country who were already protesting the war, but it all seemed to be falling on deaf ears in Washington at that time. This was in the fall of 1965. Somehow, on November the 2nd, when Norman was at home nursing a coal, he was a worker, an executive secretary of the Stony Run Prince meeting at sort of a pastoral position. When he was at home that day, he just felt a real ultimate leading to make the statement that his self-sacrifice made, which was a cry from the heart, and a giving of his body as a sort of ultimate protest to try to call attention to the horror and the wrongness of the war. It came upon him as a sense of mission, evidently, and calling, and he just knew what he needed to do. I didn't know about this. Our two older children were at school. I think it was on a Monday. They were at friend school and our baby, Emily, who was almost a year old, after Norman and I had lunch that day, I put her down for a nap, then a little while later on that afternoon, I took the car and went to get the two older children, Ben and Tina. When I got back, Norman and Emily were both gone, but I didn't really think much about it because he wasn't that sick, and I thought maybe they'd gotten a call to go do something in the community, and he had to run an errand and had to take her because I'd left her with him. It was that time of year when it got dark early, and it began to get dark around five o'clock or five thirty, and I began to wonder when they were coming home, but I really didn't worry until the phone rang, a reporter called and identified himself as a reporter, I think it was Newsweek magazine, and said, "Mrs. Morrison, something has happened to your husband in Washington," he said, "I think you'd better call Fort Meyer," which was the Fort Meyer infirmary next to the Pentagon, and he said something had happened, and he thought it was a protest, but he didn't continue the conversation. He said, "Why don't you hang up and call Fort Meyer?" It just took my breath away. I just sort of knew in a flash that whatever had happened had to do with Vietnam because that was what was on Norman's mind and heart so much those days. Before I could turn around and try to figure out how to call Fort Meyer, I got a call from Fort Meyer and someone there, some official, told me that Norman had burned himself. I didn't ask if he had died because I knew, I just knew intuitively that he would have died if he'd ever done such a thing, although it was unimaginable. I asked him if Emily was safe and all right, and he said yes, and she was there, and would I come over, and of course, and so some friends drove me over and other stayed with the children, the two older children, and I went over with my friends to Fort Meyer, God Emily, and identified a few of Norman's things that they had, Emily was fine, thank God. Somehow before we left, my friends and I huddled together and was able to come up with a statement that I felt described what I was convinced was the reason why Norman had taken his life or given his life, you might say, because of his great concern about our military involvement in Vietnam and all the human suffering that it was bringing, and that it was a kind of call to make a witness out of his conviction that everyone should speak up about this war. So we came home to a new life, our life was just changed in an instant, and that happens with a lot of people when tragedy strikes or when an accident happens and a loved one is gone, and in our case, too, our life which had been a private life up to that point, then to some degree became a public life. That's what happened on November 2nd, 1965. There's so many parts of this I want to ask you about, but they're really answered in your book held in the light. When Norman died, you didn't know it was coming, you might comment in the book that he perhaps had heard something on the news that crystallized to him, and he sent you a letter following well before he died that you received after his death. Did you feel like when you received that letter that you understood? The thing that's difficult about being left behind is there's a need to have sense in what he did, I mean he was making a sacrifice of his life, but to a great degree, you and your three children were carrying a burden that was left behind. So to be supportive to him, and then to deal with the grief and the loss that you suffered must have been really difficult. Well, yes, it was. It was very difficult. When I got this letter, which was written, he had apparently written it maybe before he left the house that day, and anyway, it was mailed in Washington. And when I got it, there was this incredible moment that I felt it had all been a dream, you know, just for a moment I felt it wasn't true. It didn't happen because here, here's his handwriting on the envelope, you know, it was a personal letter and just sharing with me how he had been praying for guidance for weeks and months about what more he could do to stop this war, this horrible tragic war. Then he unexpectedly, he said quite unexpectedly that very morning, that last day we had together, he saw what he had to do, and he asked me to please not to condemn him, we're doing. That's the way the letter started up, please don't condemn me. And you, excuse me, this is, you know, after all the years, it's kind of hard to answer this question, to share this, but I knew how passionate he was about the war and how right he felt in opposing it, and also how much he depended on this inward guidance that he said he lived his life by, he called it sometimes whimsically, called it the guided drift. He said sometimes it was more drift than guide, but that he really depended on inner guidance. What I think was a combination of conscience and the sense of divine guidance. He said he knew, without a doubt, what he should do that day, to please try to explain to the children, and that he did it because of, he needed to act on behalf of the children of the priest's village, and that reference was something that we had talked about at lunch that day because we had gotten a newsletter that contained an article from a French magazine about what had happened in South Vietnam, not long before that, where the Viet Cong, whom we were fighting, had apparently come through a village or reportedly come through a village in South Vietnam, and right after that, our bombers started over and bombed the village and decimated it pretty much. There were a few survivors, of course the people in the village were mostly women and old men and children because most of the young men were in the South Vietnamese army, or maybe some of them were Viet Cong too, I don't know, but apparently the Viet Cong may have gone through the village and the villagers may have given them rice or something, and so then boom, we were going to decimate the village. It's unfortunately become a familiar story that has modern applications now with our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and so on. The reporter for the French magazine had interviewed a priest, a Catholic priest, that was a missionary priest for that little village. He was in a hospital, he had been very badly wounded, and he talked about what had happened, he told the reporter what had happened, and how most of his parishioners died and the church was in shambles. He had retained the crucifix from the church or a little cross of some sort, he had in his hand and he had taken it to the hospital with him, carried it, and the reporter said he rose up from his hospital bed and said about us, about Americans. He said, my God, they would murder the host itself, meaning the Holy Spirit within the church, and they must settle their accounts with God, he said. Norman had taken that article out of the little newsletter that we had received and had discussed that morning and had circled it in red, that story, and closed it with his letter to me. Those were the children he was dying for, so he ended his letter, know that I love thee, but I must act on behalf of the sake of the children of the priest village, and I think that was the spark that created his decision to go to Washington and to do something, and the extreme to give his life. One of the very confusing things about what he did that day was what led him to take your one-year-old daughter, Emily, with him, and whether he had intended to immolate not only himself, but Emily with him, and in the end she was nearby when he died. In reading your book, I had the sense that that never fully made sense until you reached Vietnam in the 1990s. That's right. That is the most confusing and puzzling part of what Norman did, the way we normally live our lives. It was outrageous to have taken your life in the way he did, although it was not outrageous for the Vietnamese Buddhist monks to do that from time to time to oppose great evil, but it was certainly out of character for anyone in our country and culture. That in itself was very extreme, but it was a terrible thought to think that he put Emily in harm's way by taking her and exposing her to the scene of his death. I've wrestled with that, and I finally had to just accept it as a mystery. I can't really come out with a rational explanation for it. On the one hand, on a superficial level, he was in charge of her. I left the house. She was asleep. He was resting. He had to do what he was called to do, and so he took her. He could have given her to a neighbor or made some arrangements if he'd had the time. There was not a whole lot of time in that between the time I left and the time I got back with the children, but it was clear to me that in reading his letter that he felt called also to take him with her, but it was not at all clear that he intended to take her life, that he was expressed some puzzlement himself as to why he felt led to take her, but that was just what he felt called to do as well to have her accompany him. As time has gone by, knowing how much he delighted in Emily, she was our youngest and a kind of miracle child in a way because I had had a very close brush with German measles at the early stages of pregnancy with her, so we had really agonized and prayed over whether that pregnancy should be aborted or whether we would go on with it, and both came to the conclusion that we should have this pregnancy no matter whether she was handicapped or not as a result of probability of having German measles, but thankfully she was fined and normal and a beautiful child and was kind of a wonder to us. As time has gone on, I've thought about that and how you have to be very brave to go take your life or give your life if you're a soldier, you know, stepping in front of a hand grenade or something for the sake of someone else. You have to be brave, but maybe there was a part of Norman that wanted somebody to be with him, somebody that he loved from the family, and so, irrationally, it's easy to say, totally irrationally, he let her go with him. But I'm convinced that Emily was not in danger because when I got her, there wasn't a single mark upon her of being thrown, dropped, singed, or hurt, she was physically, perfectly, perfectly well, so I think that what happened, although there were no cameras to record it, and the bystanders' comments vary, but I think that he either set her down, he couldn't have dropped her without a bruise, I mean, she was just a baby, but he set her down and burned himself nearby, or he gave her to someone, maybe, and then did that. But you refer to our trip to Vietnam, you know, which happened 34 years after Norman's death. I are finally being able to say yes to invitations that we had gotten many years earlier to come to Vietnam. Even though we knew that the Vietnamese people were very aware of Emily's presence near her dad when he died, not until we got there, did we really realize what an icon and a symbol she was for the Vietnamese people. People wanted to stand next to her, I mean, we got a wonderful reception, we had an incredible two weeks of travel anywhere we wanted to in Vietnam and to meet all kinds of people, and to go wherever we asked to go, we were allowed. We experienced such hospitality and really love and delight, and a lot of this was showered especially on Emily because of this poem that was written and memorized by so many of the Vietnamese people, both in the north and south we learned after Norman's death a poem about what had happened in Washington that night. It was written by a well-known poet, and it was called Emily My Child, and in the poem is a dialogue between Norman and Emily that the poet imagines. I think Emily for the Vietnamese was a symbol of a miracle, of survival, of hope, a symbol of hope, a symbol of the future. There were so many children who died in Vietnam as a result of the war, either indirectly, unintentionally or intentionally. What was evident to us was that they really felt pretty hopeless during most of the war that they could win, except that they were willing to fight as long as it took to get us to leave the country. I mean, to throw, we were a colonial power in their minds, and we were occupying their country, and decimating their villages, and spraying their crops and trees with Agent Orange and poisons, we suffered enormously with the loss of 58,000 troops and many more wounded, and they suffered in the millions. But Emily was very, very special to them, and Norman was too, and this was just something that surprised us over and over and over again. It was almost a little uncomfortable for our family, and Emily particularly to be in the spotlight that much, but we finally kind of understood, this was just a very special thing for the people of Vietnam, that the person that they had memorized, the poem, many, many, many, many people memorized that long, long, long poem, many verses, and to finally meet someone who was in the poem, that they had recited when they were young. It meant so much to them. Perhaps it would be good to share the poem we're talking about, so I'll do that. It's on page 102 of "held in the light" in case any listeners have the book in hand already. It's by Vietnam's revolutionary poet laureate Tohu, and it's called "Emily My Child." Emily come with me, so when grown up you will know the way and not be lost. Where are we going, Daddy, to the river, the Potomac? What do you want me to see, Daddy? I want you, dear, to see the pentagon. O my child with your round eyes, O my child with your golden hair, ask me no more questions, darling. Come, I will carry you, soon you will be home again with mommy. Washington, twilight; O souls, living still or having gone before, blaze up truth, blaze up, Johnson, your crimes are piling high, all humanity is outraged, you the great dollar devil of our world, you cannot borrow the mantle of Christ nor the saffron robe of Buddha. McNamara, where are you hiding? In the graveyard of your vast five cornered house, each corner a continent, you hide yourself from the flaming world as an ostrich hides its head in the burning sand. Look this way for this one moment, look at me. Here you see not just a man with a child in his arms, I am today, and this, my child, my Emily, is the life of all our futures. Here I stand, and together with me, the great heart of America, a light to the horizon, a beacon of justice. You gang of devils, in whose name do you send be fifty twos, napalm and poison gases from the White House, from Guam Island to Vietnam, to murder peace and national freedom, to burn down hospitals and schools, to kill people who know nothing but love, to kill children who know nothing but going to school, to kill with poison fields covered with flowers, and leaves all our four seasons, to kill even the flow of poetry, song, music, and painting. In whose name do you bury our American youth in coffins, young men strong and handsome, able today to release the power of nature, to bring happiness to men, in whose name do you send us to thick jungles, full of spike-pits, of resistance swamps, to villages and towns which become elusive fortresses, where day and night the earthquakes and the sky-rocks, O Vietnam, strange land where little boys are heroes, where hornets are trained as fighters, where even flower and fruit become weapons, to hell, to hell with you, you gang of devils, and listen, O my America, to this anguished voice, the never-dying voice of this son of yours, a man of this century, Emily my darling, the night is falling, tonight I cannot take you home, after the flames have flared, mommy will come and fetch you, will you hug her and kiss her for me, and tell her, Daddy's gone gladly, don't be sad, Washington, Twilight, oh souls, still living, or having gone before, now my heart is at its brightest, I burn my body so the flames may blaze the truth. That was Emily my child, dedicated to Norman R. Morrison by Vietnamese poet Tohu. We're talking today to Anne Morrison Welsh, she's the author of a book called held in the light, Norman Morrison's sacrifice for peace, and his family's journey of healing, she joins us from North Carolina. This is spirit in action, and I'm your host Mark Helpsmeet for this northern spirit radio production. If you want to hear this recording again, you want to find links to Anne Morrison and my other guests, you can go to my website, northernspiritradio.org, and please drop us a comment when you visit, we'd love to hear from you, because we like communication to be both ways. We're visiting today with Anne Morrison Welsh, back in 1965, her then husband, the father of her three children, self-immolated in front of the Pentagon, giving his life in an effort to try and convince America to step back from its disastrous involvement with the war in Vietnam, as we've come to know it. Anne, I wanted to ask you, I mean you've had a lot of years to think about this, you talked about how the Vietnamese reacted to Norman's self-sacrifice. The American people did not react, I think there's probably a lot of people who don't know about Norman's sacrifice, although it certainly was in news at the time. Did it feel like it was effective, I mean I don't think you can ever say it's worthwhile to have lost your husband, but was it effective, was it a worthwhile effort that he put forth? Did you see change that happened in this country? Clearly, the war went on for several more years, so they didn't turn around and reverse their opinion right away. How do you think about that whole area of effectiveness? Well, just in terms of the word effective, I'd have to say no it was not effective in terms of effecting an end to the war or a big change. If you think about effective in the small ways, what I found out after Norman died by receiving letters from so many people was how deeply they had been moved by his self-sacrifice. As they would write to me, often they would say, "I've been against this war, but I haven't really done anything," and now here in our family, we're thinking about what we can do to let our political representatives know how we feel about it, or if we're already doing some of that, people would say, "I'm going to work harder." People were moved in a whole variety of ways to become more involved and to consider where they were in their lives. I know of a few cases where people changed their jobs and got into something that was more directly connected with social change. I was very moved by these letters and also very encouraged. People sent me so much encouragement to be strong and brave and to be proud of the sacrifice of Norman. That was part of what it means to be held in the light. I was held in the light of this kind of friendship and encouragement and love. I imagine one of the really hard aspects of this is that I'm sure that a number of people reviled Norman for his sacrifice as if he was giving comfort to the enemy and when we go into war, that mentality strikes and right away, "If you're not for us, you're against us." I think that his sacrifice is such a deep sacrifice of his own life without harming anyone else. To have that reviled by a certain number of people must have been really hard for you to take. How could you respond to those kind of people? Well, you know, that was part of the amazing thing. You know, I got a lot of letters and I think out of maybe several hundred letters, I think I only had one that took real issue with what Norman had done and implied that it was unpatriotic. So no one wrote hate mail to me. No one wrote that kind of a letter that you would call reviling or blame. I mean, I'm sure that many of the people who did communicate with me didn't agree with what he had done, but there was this real element of respect that came through. I think it was really amazing that I didn't have to deal with what you might call a hate mail. Thank God, I did not have to do that. Maybe it's because he gave his ultimate and when someone gives their life, even if you don't agree with why they did it, there's a way in which you have to respect that. For several days and actually weeks and weeks after Norman died, there was a conversation in the media about such a death and such a protest as he made in the Baltimore papers in particular, in the Washington Post, and then people would send me articles from around the country from their locations. Sometimes there was a sense of criticism that he was temporarily insane or he was mentally imbalanced and that he was crazy and that it was futile. It was a terrible thing to do and it was futile. There were certainly editorials and articles that would make those claims, but then on the other hand, people would write letters to the editor or that in some cases there were essays and editorials like in the Christian century and other magazines that said we're standing in respect for this person and for this passion that he had for ending the war and what can we do to end the war? What is this saying to us about our involvement? I wouldn't describe the reaction of the wider public as rancorous. I think there was shock and disagreement, but I never felt despised or pitied nor did I feel that he was despised or pitied. As a matter of fact, someone told me something that had happened, a friend of mine had just come back into town in Baltimore right after Norman died and they had heard about it already, they knew about it. So it was maybe a couple of days later and they called a cab from the airplane or the train station, they called a cab to their house. The cab driver was just driving them along and they had been out of Baltimore for a while and anyway they said something what's going on or something like that, you know what sort of thing, you talk with the cab driver. This person, the cab driver, the friend said, just tell them about Norman. I mean he said, well this guy, I don't know how he described it, but he told him his version about what Norman had done and then he ended his statement about it, his description of it, he said, now whatever you think, there was a guy who really cared. And my friend said this had a big impact on them because this person, the cab driver wasn't a Quaker, he wasn't a pacifist, he wasn't an activist against the war or anything, but he got it, he got the message of caring and that's what was conveyed to the people of Vietnam and we didn't really realize how deeply they got that message of being cared about as a third world country by somebody from the number one country in the world so to speak, we didn't know that until we really felt it and saw it and heard it 34 years later. You mentioned in the book that there are other people who self-immolated in protest of the war and it started with Buddhist monks in Vietnam, first an individual and then there were a number of monks I understand who did that and you mentioned even that in the United States in March of 65, Alice Hearst was her name, she was a Unitarian and/or Quaker who sacrificed her life by self-immolation, so she did this before Norman took his own life but one of the things that was different about what he did was he did it right in front of the Pentagon, in fact right before the office of I believe the Secretary of Defense, that had an effect didn't it, that he did it there and right near a crucial decision maker in the whole process. Yeah, you're referring to McNamara, Robert McNamara of course, my own sense is that it's a suspicion on my part but I suspect that Norman did not know that he was just apparently about 40 feet below the office of McNamara, he could of course not having discussed this ahead of time with him and neither one of us being familiar with the Pentagon, I don't think he'd ever been there before, I think it was just happenstance or serendipity but I do think it was very important that it was at the Pentagon, that was the place where decisions were made and actions were taken, that contributed to this tragic war and in our name and so that's where he went, I think it's pretty clear years and years and years later that McNamara was aware that he actually saw it, at least I know an aide called him to the window. I think that was a very big difference and then too in terms of Alice Hertz, we only saw a very small article about that in the paper when that had happened and I think it wasn't followed up by any statement from the family particularly or her place of worship, I think maybe that lack of interpretation and support contributed to it being kind of unfortunately kind of ignored, I'm not sure but I do think that Normans going to the Pentagon was an influential thing to make it clear what he was, because he didn't produce a statement, you know he didn't hand out a press release or anything, I mean, but it was pretty clear why he went to the Pentagon to me. One of the other differences between Norman and Alice, although they both took their own lives by fire, Alice was in her 80s and Norman I think was maybe in his 30s, early 30s yeah, being so much younger, I mean Alice was nearing the end of her life, Norman had so much ahead of him, but one of the things that I sit with and I try and understand what is it like to be left behind as the person who has to speak out, I mean you didn't even get a clear statement from him to speak out why he did exactly what he did, although I think you knew much of it. So you became a spokesperson to the American people, you worked with the American Friends Service Committee, you carried on and I think of the people who are left behind, you know, JFK's children or his wife Jackie or Martin Luther King's children who are left behind after he was assassinated, I think of those people who are somehow expected to carry on the message that that person was bearing in their life, somehow you did that and I want to thank you for that and I just marvel at the strength and the one heart that you displayed carrying that on, I mean you're dealing with personal tragedy at the same time trying to prevent tragedy for the rest of the country, so I say thank you for all of that work that you've done carrying on that message. Thank you Mark for those thoughts, I appreciate that and that's the kind of appreciation and encouragement that was so sustaining to me after his death, you're right, it is terribly hard to lose a loved one, to lose a father or husband, especially it's even harder I guess to know that they gave their life freely for a cause and yet this does happen, you know, policemen, soldiers, firemen, other people, ordinary people, give their life sometime for the sake of other people and even people who are not even in their families, I just was able to continue because I, as horrific as this loss was and I felt that I had to uphold that, I had to carry on and to do my own way to try to work towards an end of the war and for peace in Vietnam and you know it was 10 more years before we finally left Vietnam, I think though that his action did have a real effect on the peace movement, as I said a new individual had dug in deeper and made a deeper commitment to work for peace but I think others it was energizing and it had a, it really had an effect on the people of Vietnam, again going back to our visit that we made there in 1999, the amazing thing was the lack of inventory and negative feelings about America, people even though their lives had been so shattered some 3 decades before, people were so friendly and we saw a lot of American GIs there too, sightseeing, taking their families back to see the place where they, they had to go so many years ago and we saw some at Kwang Na and Milai, we saw these veterans being well received and we were so well received, it was just an amazing experience. I wanted to also ask you Anne a little bit about your and Norman's religious background, you mentioned I think he was raised Presbyterian, he's got that strong Scottish ancestry there, at some point he and you got involved with Quakers and I think you've continued with Quakers since, how did that transition come about and what part did that play in his, I mean was his anti-war involvement, what drove his involvement with Quakers or did it come from a different direction? I think the, his interest in peace and non-violence and his anti-war sentiments really probably came independently of Quakers, he was raised at Chautauqua, New York and came under the influence of a woman named Mabel Powers who taught Sunday school and children's camp classes at Chautauqua in the summertime about the Native American people in the Iroquois nation which sort of headquarters were not too far from western New York state, she really was convinced that there were a number of Native American tribes that were very peace oriented and had, and were very inspired about how to live peaceably, so Norman was quite impressed with what he learned from her and then he was very active in the, although he was a Presbyterian, he was born and raised a Presbyterian, but at Chautauqua the community church there was a Methodist, so he attended as a teenage, young teen, the Methodist church on the grounds of Chautauqua, came under the influence of a wonderful minister, his last name was Hagedorn and he was a pacifist, so I think the influence of Mabel Powers and Reverend Hagedorn coming from different perspectives sort of galvanized Norman's thinking along the lines of non-violence and peace and it wasn't until he was at the College of Worcester in Ohio that sometime during his four years at Worcester, he was headed for the Presbyterian ministry in his own mind and school work, but he came upon a small group of Quakers who were having silent meaning for worship in the library basement there of the school and he started joining them and Quakerism spoke to his condition, even though he went ahead and graduated and started into Presbyterian seminary and graduated from seminary in Pittsburgh three years later, he had already kind of given his heart to Quakerism I think. Now I arrived at it while I was a student at Duke University and I was about a year behind Norman in school, didn't meet him until I was in the middle of my time at Duke and I met him at Chautauqua, it was around that time that I started going to the friends meeting in Durham between the two Duke campuses because I was kind of retreating from Methodism where I had grown up, I was very active in the Methodist Church and Methodist Student Fellowship at Duke but I was in a period of doubt and soul searching and somehow the quiet approach of the non-cretal approach of the Quaker worship appealed to me. So we kind of got together that summer of 1955 at Chautauqua and then began to compare notes about the things that meant a lot to us philosophy and religion and what we were going to do with our lives and all that and it just turned out that we both came from different perspectives that had arrived at an interest in Quakerism although several years later before we joined actually. And you've continued your journey with Quaker since then? I never looked back, I never looked back after starting to go to that little rustic friends meeting there in Durham, North Carolina. I just, I respected my upbringing in the Methodist Church but it didn't, it was sort of like a shoot, it didn't fit anymore. For me I just felt that for me it was the Quaker way that I wanted to pursue and so about four years later I joined the friends meeting in Pittsburgh when Norman was finishing up seminary and he joined too and then we started our work together working for the society of friends and we were married for eight years and worked about six of those for the Quakers. It's a great life of service that you've dedicated. I want to let our listeners know again the title of the book that is written by Anne Morrison Welsh co-written with Joyce Holiday. It's held in the light, Norman Morrison's sacrifice for peace and his family's journey for healing, you can find the link to purchase it from my northernspiritradio.org site or you can simply go to Google and put in held in the light or Anne Morrison Welsh or Norman Morrison, you'll find your way to the book. Again Anne, thanks so much for your life of witness, for the burden that you carried and the way you turned it into a gift for our nation and thank you for joining me today for spirit and action. Thank you so much. I've enjoyed talking with you Mark and feel like I've been talking to some other friends out there as well this afternoon. Thanks again. That was Anne Morrison Welsh author of held in the light, Norman Morrison's sacrifice for peace and his family's journey of healing and we'll finish off this week's spirit and action program with a bit more of Steve Heitzig's ballet in memory of Norman Morrison, the protest movement of the social movement's ballet, a piece called the Quaker Peacewalls. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This spirit and action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host Mark Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. [Music] With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)