Today's six-mile walk was the culmination of a walk which had crossed the world. We hoped to bring our message to the ambassadors in the UN that people of the world want an end to nuclear weapons.

But David managed to get even today off on a sour note. Last night the monks announced that we must get up early. David woke everyone at 5:15 by turning on all the lights. After a few minutes, one of the monks turned them off, but David immediately switched them on again, shouting, "They are the ones who are laying this early trip on us, and by God we're going to get up early." A few curses were directed toward "Tinker Bell", but more sleep was hopeless and we got up.

The New Orleans walkers left for the starting point of their ceremonial arrival, the Battery, and arrived just a few minutes before 8 o'clock. We began our walk almost immediately. We were joined not by local people but by Martin Romantchuk and by Greenville friends Carroll and Edith. Martin, a Finnish biochemist that year at East Carolina University, had joined the Webbers with his wife, Ylva Lindholm, on the 550-mile bicycle trip from North Carolina. The four had ridden from Princeton, aided by the Staten Island ferry and Manhattan subway, the day before. Now their bikes were in Teaneck, NJ.

Also almost immediately, I had to ask Ray, one of the Peace Pilgrims, to stop asking people for donations. He told me that he was not asking for money. I told him that it was a matter of principle for the World Peace March never to ask for money. We depended on people's good will, but we never begged though ready to accept what was offered freely.

Almost an hour later I had another complaint that someone was asking people for money. I again went back to talk with Ray. This time he did not deny soliciting money. He said that he had done this everywhere as part of the Peace Pilgrimage. I asked him either to quit asking people for money for the Peace Pilgrimage or to stop walking with the Peace March. He agreed to stop asking for money. Anyway, I don't think he was having much success.

As we got to the park at 42nd street, we were joined by many people from the Japanese delegation to the UN Special Session. They were carrying a wooden box with a huge stone inside. On it was the image of a man's face in tortured agony. The image had been burned into the stone by the atomic blast at Hiroshima. At the park we were also joined by Fuji and his entourage of thirty monks and nuns. Soon our overall coordinator, Pamela Blockey O'Brien, was there too, hugging us all.

We walked with the L.A. walk just a few blocks before we arrived at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, where we met all the other walks -- from Bangor, from San Francisco, and from Montreal. There were now a half dozen Buddhist prayer banners flying together.

At the opening ceremony, four walkers representing the many groups in the Peace March were presented to Jan Martensen, Deputy Secretary of the UN and the presiding official of SSD-II. I represented the US walkers. Then the Olympic torch was brought in to light the flame for SSD-II, and the Special Session was officially open.

The program continued for the whole day, including brief statements from elder statesmen in wheelchairs of whom Nobel Peace Prize winner Lord Philip Noel-Baker was the youngest at 92, and a Children's Walk for Life by children around the age of seven. I was to speak, but the time kept shifting. It was 4 o'clock when I got one and a half minutes to give my impression of the walk. All I attempted to say was how the walk had changed some people in the towns we passed through and how it had changed me.

After the program Doug and I met Joy Bannerman, a friend from Chapel Hill, at the YWCA, and went to a coffee shop to warm ourselves with a cup of hot coffee. On the way over, we passed a small group of Hare Krishnas dancing on a street corner. I walked up to one of them and asked whether they were Japanese Buddhist monks. They made no reply. I once told Morishita that I hoped someday soon there would be so many Buddhist monks leading peace marches in the US that the Hare Krishnas would be mistaken for Buddhists.

Joy was staying at a friend's apartment. Doug, Bill, Jimmy, and I accompanied her to the apartment and then decided to stay there to rest for a few hours more. The first thing was to take showers. Soon, we realized that we were hungry. We had not eaten anything except yogurt early this morning. So Doug, Bill, and Jimmy went out to buy some pizza and beer to bring back to the apartment. We no longer cared about the rule of no alcohol. We ate supper sitting on the floor, listening to records. The food did wonders for both bodies and spirits. In reflecting on the day's activities, we had a great sense of accomplishment. We had made it! We congratulated each other and talked about different events of the walk. It seemed to have lasted for years, not just five months.

I gave Tim McGloin a call to let him know that we were in NYC. He told me that our arrival had been the lead-off story on today's NPR's "All Things Considered" with several good interviews with walkers. Tim said he would be at the US mission to the UN on Friday to present petitions demanding that nuclear weapons be withdrawn from the Philippines. Plans were made for Doug and me to meet him there

_ It was late when we got to Our Lady of Victory CatholicChurch, where we were to stay during our visit to New York, but a meeting was called to talk about tomorrow's schedule. The priest asked to speak to us first. He told us that five walkers had been mugged outside the church tonight. Warning us that this was a tough neighborhood, he advised against stopping to talk to anyone, surprising advice coming from a priest.

After this meeting Bill and I were asked (along with two other people from each of the other walks) to attend yet another meeting tonight. It was past 11:30. At the meeting, Bill was asked to facilitate tomorrow's meeting and I was asked to represent the New Orleans walk. We were given a list of questions to consider. I was asked to have a report written to present at the meeting in the morning.

It was now past midnight. I was too tired to think, much less try to write a report detailing the events of the major cities that we had walked through. It was an impossible request, and I did not feel at all guilty about going to sleep without thinking about the report. go to page 52