THE PEACE HOUSE
1990-1996
The Peace House was a motor home that I built in1990 to travel around our country to educate about nonviolence and world peace.
The idea and concept first came to me in 1982, arising out of my experience with portable displays I built for our Central America solidarity actions. I was saving income from my carpentry work, my children were out of the nest, and by 1989 I felt I had enough savings to take off time and build my Peace House.
Starting in late November, I began a month of researching motor home equipment and design, searching for the right type of vehicle and a garage space adequate for building the house, and making detailed drawings and plans. It turned out that the old garage at St. Francis Catholic Worker house was the only one I could find with doors high enough for getting my planned house out once it was built.
The idea and concept first came to me in 1982, arising out of my experience with portable displays I built for our Central America solidarity actions. I was saving income from my carpentry work, my children were out of the nest, and by 1989 I felt I had enough savings to take off time and build my Peace House.
Starting in late November, I began a month of researching motor home equipment and design, searching for the right type of vehicle and a garage space adequate for building the house, and making detailed drawings and plans. It turned out that the old garage at St. Francis Catholic Worker house was the only one I could find with doors high enough for getting my planned house out once it was built.
The Process of Construction
Through support from Gene Stoltzfus, a Mennonite friend in our peace activism, Phil Rich, a Mennonite Ford dealer in Archbold, Ohio, agreed to sell us a new Ford F350 truck at dealer's cost, for $14,680. Once the basic house was out of the garage and onto the truck flatbed, I had all the electrical and plumbing rough-in done at Journey Motor Homes in Elkhart, Indiana for $2254.
Including this work, the total cost of building materials and equipment came to about $10,000. Valuing 1837 hours of my labor at $20 per hour, my estimated labor cost was $36,740. This work, from planning to completion, took a whole year.
Through notices in peace movement periodicals, I had assembled a winter and spring itinerary of educational meetings and visits to friends and supporters. My first out-of-town visit was to Milwaukee on December 15. From there, I headed south through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, Alabama and Georgia, with many visits along the way.
On January 16, 1991, the very evening when the Gulf War bombing of Iraq began, I arrived in Columbus, Georgia, to visit my friend, Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois, who spent many years there organizing a mass campaign to close the notorious U.S. Army School of the Americas, where the Army trained soldiers of many dictatorial and repressive governments in Latin America.
The next morning, I drove through the open gates of Fort Benning, to the doors of the School, where the Peace House experienced its first arrest and detention, just one in a long string for me. JAG lawyers determined that no crime had been committed, as the base was an open base at that time, and we were released to continue our journey south into Florida, and to St. Petersburg, where I spent the next three months agitating and organizing against the war with local activists.
In early May, I headed north to Chicago, where I spent the summer and fall working at carpentry and rebuilding my finances, using the Peace House as my work truck. This would be the pattern of my life and travels around the United States for the next five years, before settling in Nashville, and starting the Nashville Greenlands community.
The Peace House had an elegant and unusual design, which attracted much public and media attention wherever I traveled, from the Atlantic states west to California, from the Gulf of Mexico north to Minnesota, probably more for its striking design, than for the message of nonviolence and peace that I carried. Yet, I spoke at many small meetings arranged by my hosts, to many classes from kindergartens up through university classes, and in newspaper, radio and television interviews in many of the cities and towns I visited.
Thousands of people listened to my message in person. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, noticed the Peace House on the roads, viewed the displays when it was parked, and heard something of my message through media interviews. This was in Barbara Deming's phrase "a further invention of nonviolence".
I spent two winters in St. Petersburg, three in Phoenix, and one in Atlanta. In the spring of 1995, I visited many southern cities, before deciding on Nashville as the place where I would settle in 1997 to begin my experiment in urban agriculture and community.
Below is an account of an action near Phoenix, at Luke Air Force Base:
Including this work, the total cost of building materials and equipment came to about $10,000. Valuing 1837 hours of my labor at $20 per hour, my estimated labor cost was $36,740. This work, from planning to completion, took a whole year.
Through notices in peace movement periodicals, I had assembled a winter and spring itinerary of educational meetings and visits to friends and supporters. My first out-of-town visit was to Milwaukee on December 15. From there, I headed south through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, Alabama and Georgia, with many visits along the way.
On January 16, 1991, the very evening when the Gulf War bombing of Iraq began, I arrived in Columbus, Georgia, to visit my friend, Maryknoll Fr. Roy Bourgeois, who spent many years there organizing a mass campaign to close the notorious U.S. Army School of the Americas, where the Army trained soldiers of many dictatorial and repressive governments in Latin America.
The next morning, I drove through the open gates of Fort Benning, to the doors of the School, where the Peace House experienced its first arrest and detention, just one in a long string for me. JAG lawyers determined that no crime had been committed, as the base was an open base at that time, and we were released to continue our journey south into Florida, and to St. Petersburg, where I spent the next three months agitating and organizing against the war with local activists.
In early May, I headed north to Chicago, where I spent the summer and fall working at carpentry and rebuilding my finances, using the Peace House as my work truck. This would be the pattern of my life and travels around the United States for the next five years, before settling in Nashville, and starting the Nashville Greenlands community.
The Peace House had an elegant and unusual design, which attracted much public and media attention wherever I traveled, from the Atlantic states west to California, from the Gulf of Mexico north to Minnesota, probably more for its striking design, than for the message of nonviolence and peace that I carried. Yet, I spoke at many small meetings arranged by my hosts, to many classes from kindergartens up through university classes, and in newspaper, radio and television interviews in many of the cities and towns I visited.
Thousands of people listened to my message in person. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, noticed the Peace House on the roads, viewed the displays when it was parked, and heard something of my message through media interviews. This was in Barbara Deming's phrase "a further invention of nonviolence".
I spent two winters in St. Petersburg, three in Phoenix, and one in Atlanta. In the spring of 1995, I visited many southern cities, before deciding on Nashville as the place where I would settle in 1997 to begin my experiment in urban agriculture and community.
Below is an account of an action near Phoenix, at Luke Air Force Base:
I tell many more stories of the Peace House travels in the full text of my autobiography, Positively Dazzling Realism.
The original Peace House is now set over a shed for tools, as a guest house in the center of my garden. In 2021 I plan to travel again in a new reincarnated version of the Peace House, which is pictured below. Contact me if you would like to arrange for a visit.
The original Peace House is now set over a shed for tools, as a guest house in the center of my garden. In 2021 I plan to travel again in a new reincarnated version of the Peace House, which is pictured below. Contact me if you would like to arrange for a visit.