The rest of the group packed up the gear and moved it to St. Ann's Catholic Church in Norfolk; we got there around noon and found a big meal prepared for us. The six of us were now eating for twelve. MacArthur Park was not far from the church. Bill and I walked to the Park to spend the rest of the day with the fasters.

The weather was cold and windy, but the fasters seemed to be holding up okay except Mary. She was wrapped up in her sleeping bag. Without food she found it hard to stay warm.

A couple of school buses drove up to the Memorial and the kids were immediately drawn to the vigil but their teachers turned them around and marched them into the war memorial. Bill and I handed out literature and talked with people as they walked past.

After supper, Rose Marie O'Connor took Molly, Bill, and me to a conservative Catholic church in Portsmouth to hear a debate on disarmament between Congressman William Whitehurst and Parker Teague, pacifist running for the U.S. Senate as an Independent. I think the Congressman was surprised to see so many there who favored disarmament. The moderator encouraged the audience to be part of the debate and think of some good questions. He also laid down ground rules. We were not to talk about nuclear weapons because people can get this information anywhere. Unfortunately Teague agreed to this, and the "debate" on nuclear disarmament went for two hours without nuclear weapons being mentioned.

   April l3, Rest day in Norfolk #2
Our only scheduled activity was to talk with students at St. Paul's Catholic school in Portsmouth, where we had stayed on Easter Sunday. We addressed an assembly of 250 students and talked with 8th and llth grade classes. Almost all the students had relatives who worked with the navy or at the shipyard, a large defense contractor. In the two and a half hours we were there, we spent a lot of time listening to the students and letting them talk among themselves. Clearly they had talked about nuclear war among themselves before.

Undoubtedly the Tidewater area would be targeted for destruction in the event of a nuclear war between the two superpowers. We did not mention this, but we heard their awareness; one young student asked whether it was true that a person can be vaporized. His voice was full of horror. We found school children more aware of the nuclear threat than most adults think they are.

Later in the afternoon Langdon ran in, visibly shaken, and called the police. She had just seen a fight outside the church in which a young man had been stabbed twice in the chest. As is too common, no one had tried to stop the fight or assist the victim.

   April l4, Rest day in Norfolk #3
This was the last day of the prayer fast. Sadly there was still some small dissension in the group. Carole and Jane were unhappy about the lack of rest in the Norfolk area. Carole decided to catch a bus to Virginia Beach. Jane decided to go ahead to Canterbury House near Old Dominion University, where we were to spend the night.

We walked from St. Ann's Church to ODU, just three miles. Now there were only five walkers on this branch of the World Peace March, a pitifully small number. Two carried the banner, the other three behind. We were joined by Curtis, an ODU student. Curtis was our ODU coordinator and came to help provide us with directions to the campus. He made a slight detour to show us the headquarters of the Jacques Cousteau Society. >p> We arrived at ODU shortly before noon and our student center program was to start at noon. A room had been reserved for us at a far off corner of the building. In ten minutes it was evident that no one was coming to the program, and matters were shaping up as at Paine College in Augusta. We moved the program outdoors and set up a photo display and literature table at the entrance to the building. Then we had lots of people to talk with, and many signed our petition. One professor, seeing our banner. "World Peace March l982" said seriously, "You need a new banner. It is now April."

At l:00 o'clock I was scheduled to do a radio interview at WHRO, a community radio station. Slated to last only five minutes, it went for half an hour. One of the technicians asked Curtis to come to the interview also. I overheard him tell Curtis, "Just because this guy can walk doesn't mean he can talk, or know what he is talking about." This is true, but not an encouraging thing to hear as you are going in to an interview. At the end of half an hour I was pleased at how it had gone. The reporter had asked some thoughtful questions.

All afternoon the monks would visit the stove to do something to the meal they were cooking to break their fast. It was mainly cabbage soup with salt plums and a half-dozen other vegetables. Langdon told me that she had to go to fourteen different stores before she was able to buy the ingredients. (Bless our coordinators. Most of them did absolutely everything they could possibly do to make us comfortable and to ensure the success of the walk.)

Morishita and I sat on the front porch, talking of the European peace movement. He had personal experience working with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the International Peace Bureau, and the World Peace Campaign (mandated by First Special Session on Disarmament). We talked too of some problems the walk would face as we went through the large cities, toward the end of the walk. We knew that once past DC, our numbers would be much greater. We wanted to be sure the walk remained peaceful and were also concerned that no drugs be used. We had come a long way already; so far, the walk had been very successful.

It was spring and the weather was great. Everyone was in good health. It was less than a month until we would arrive in DC -- then only three weeks more to New York City. We could begin to see the end.

When I called Tim McGloin (NC coordinator) that evening, he said that the walk had had a tremendous impact on the peace movement in North Carolina. Nothing like this had ever crossed the state before. Many people were getting involved in the peace movement for the first time in their lives.

    April l5, Walk from Norfolk to Virginia Beach
We walked 16 miles along six lanes of traffic. Most of the time the area looked like one endless shopping center. We crossed very busy intersections and walked along roads that had no shoulders. The police had declined to provide us with an escort. A young man ran up to us and asked where we were going. I said New York. He then wanted to know when we were leaving. I told him we were on our way now. His face showed disbelief, then excitement. He said he would catch up with us later in the day.

We stopped for lunch break at the edge of a churchyard. Somehow lunch had not been planned. It had been a long time since this had happened. We found a couple of heads of lettuce in our food box.

A while later Sam, the young man whom we had met earlier, arrived carrying the same gear as when we first saw him, a couple of small bags. He was in the Navy and had been hitchhiking back to the navy base. He had taken only a couple of hours to think us over, then crossed the street and started hitching away from the base. Langdon and Sam talked softly but intently for a long time. She wanted to be sure that he knew the consequences of his decision to leave the Navy and join the walk. She also began to explore his motives for wanting to join us. He had no previous experience in the peace movement. It looked as though his major motive was to leave the military. He was returning from leave and said that he had tried to kill himself last weekend. That was how much Sam said he hated to go back to the Navy.

We told him he could join us for the rest of the day. We would have to wait a couple of days to talk with him further about joining us to New York. This was agreeable to him.

We really had to use extra caution in walking along the road today. Once I tripped badly and flew headlong about twenty feet, my head two feet from the ground, but kept my balance, dodging the cars to the right and the mail boxes to the left. It gave me a glimpse of my own mortality to be at eyeball level with a car's bumper going past at sixty miles an hour. go to page 35