Sunday, June 7, 2009

Life stories : Peace activist Schroeder fought for her beliefs

The Arizona Daily Star

http://www.azstarnet.com/allheadlines/294900

 

Published: 05.29.2009

Life stories : Peace activist Schroeder fought for her beliefs

By Kimberly Matas

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

"She (Betty Schroeder) believed the country could change, but she believed we needed to get out there

and do what we could, whether it was go out there with signs or sing silly songs. Whatever we could."

Connie Graves, activist

the series

This feature chronicles the lives of recently deceased Tucsonans. Some were well-known across the community. Others had an impact on a smaller sphere of friends, family and acquaintances. Many of these people led interesting — and sometimes extraordinary — lives with little or no fanfare. Now you'll hear their stories.

On StarNet

Did you know Betty Schroeder? Add your remembrance to this article online at azstarnet.com/lifestories and find a collection of photos at azstarnet.com/slideshows

 

Betty Schroeder was an angry woman — and she made sure people knew it.

 

As a member of the Tucson Raging Grannies, she railed against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, getting arrested at a local recruiting office when she tried to enlist.

 

Her protests at Raytheon Missile Systems added two more arrests to her rap sheet.

She drove around Tucson with a model of a missile strapped atop her car, emblazoned with the message: No more weapons. Free healthcare. Free education.

 

Her general philosophy, said longtime friend Pat Birnie, was: "People are no damned good!"

Yet, it was her deep compassion for people that made Schroeder so determined to make the world a kinder and safer place.

 

Her mission now is in the hands of others. Schroeder died of cancer May 8. She was 78.

Schroeder was born in Cincinnati, the middle of 13 children. Her father was a bailiff. Her mother was a homemaker. Everyone in the family worked the fields or in the greenhouse on the family farm.

 

While attending high school, Schroeder got a job as a nursing assistant and made a career of the work.

 

Her future husband, Gene Schroeder, was an engineering student when they wed. They started their family while still living on campus in student housing. All the while, Betty continued to work.

After her husband graduated, they moved to New Mexico, where Gene worked for agencies developing radioactive weaponry for the military.

 

"These guys played football on the fields after they tested atomic weapons and they were all told there'd be no harm," Schroeder said in a 2005 article in The Sunday Times Online in the United Kingdom. "These were brilliant engineers — my husband had an IQ of 160 — yet they were out playing in the sand."

 

Though her husband never faulted the government for the chronic health problems he suffered after leaving New Mexico, Betty Schroeder believed his ailments and his cancer death in the early 1980s were linked to work with radioactive materials, according to the Times article.

 

Four years before her death, Schroeder developed a chronic lung disease associated with the inhalation of beryllium, a mineral with atomic properties. Schroeder suspected her illness stemmed from washing her husband's work clothes decades earlier, Birnie said.

Schroeder's interest in environmental and social issues began when she was working as a nursing assistant in Baltimore. She saw babies of servicemen born with severe birth defects, which she attributed to the effects of Agent Orange. U.S. planes dumped tons of the herbicide on the jungles of Vietnam where American soldiers were fighting.

 

Her interest turned to action when she met Birnie in the mid-'80s. The widows decided to pool their finances and share a home and living expenses. Birnie was active in the peace movement and introduced her friend to direct, nonviolent action.

 

In the Times article, Schroeder said it was her activism — and her occasional stints in jail as a result of her protests — that led to a 20-plus-year estrangement from her four children.

 

After Schroeder retired, the two women lived in Florida for several years before they relocated to Tucson in 1994.

 

Schroeder and Birnie joined the local peace movement, protesting outside Davis-Monthan Air Force Base over the use of depleted uranium in weapons, attending vigils to promote peace in the Middle East and getting arrested — twice — during marches on Raytheon.

 

It was while sitting together in the back of a police van after a 2003 arrest at Raytheon that peace activist Gretchen Nielsen got to know Schroeder and Birnie.

 

"That was better than tea at the White House any day," Nielsen said. "I was honored to be there with those women."

In the summer of 2005, Schroeder was one of five Raging Grannies — peace activists in their senior years — arrested for trespassing at a military recruitment center in Tucson when they tried to enlist in the Army.

 

The women became international media sensations, appearing on NBC's "Today" show, where they sang protest songs, and making headlines in newspapers throughout Europe and as far away as South Africa.

 

"We went in asking to be sent to Iraq so our kids and grandchildren can be sent home, but rather than listening to us, they called the police," Schroeder said in a 2005 Arizona Daily Star article. "It was their place to tell us the qualifications, but they wouldn't even speak to us."

 

Birnie and Connie Graves also were arrested at the center.

 

"Betty was a tough lady. She was stubborn. Pretty much unmovable," Graves said. "There was a soft part of her, but . . . she was very blunt. You always knew where you stood with Betty."

 

Added Birnie: "Everything she did was with gusto. Everything she did was with her whole heart.

"She felt very strongly about peace and justice issues, but she was a difficult person to get along with because she always spoke her truth," Birnie said.

 

"She wasn't in this world to make friends, but she had a lot of them."

 

When Schroeder wasn't planning vigils, protesting war or calling members of Congress, she hiked in the desert with her dogs, toured her West Side retirement community as part of a neighborhood watch group and put her nursing skills to use, caring for ailing friends and neighbors. On Easter, she donned a bunny suit and delivered baskets of goodies to neighbors and their visiting grandchildren.

 

"She was really direct, but it was complemented by the genuine concern and encouragement she would give you," said activist Jack Cohen-Jopa, who received a huge box of food and groceries from Schroeder and Birnie to help ease his recovery after he broke his arm a couple of years ago. "It clearly came through that she was a nurturing and loving person in her personal day-to-day life."

It was that passionate concern for the welfare of others that drove Schroeder to activism.

 

"She stood by her beliefs," Graves said. "She believed the country could change, but she believed we needed to get out there and do what we could, whether it was go out there with signs or sing silly songs. Whatever we could."

Schroeder's life, it seems, was fait accompli, as she told The Times in 2005:

 

"One thing I'm certain of is, I'll be doing this with my life until they carry me away. That way, the day the missiles start coming over, I can look up to the sky and say: 'By damn, I did all I could.' "

 

"She (Betty Schroeder) believed the country could change, but she believed we needed to get out there

and do what we could, whether it was go out there with signs or sing silly songs. Whatever we could."

Connie Graves, activist

 

the series

 

This feature chronicles the lives of recently deceased Tucsonans. Some were well-known across the community. Others had an impact on a smaller sphere of friends, family and acquaintances. Many of these people led interesting — and sometimes extraordinary — lives with little or no fanfare. Now you'll hear their stories.

 

On StarNet

 

Did you know Betty Schroeder? Add your remembrance to this article online at azstarnet.com/lifestories and find a collection of photos at azstarnet.com/slideshows

 

To suggest someone for Life Stories, contact reporter Kimberly Matas at kmatas@azstarnet.com or at 573-4191. Read more from this reporter at: go.azstarnet.com/lastwrites


All content copyright © 1999-2009 AzStarNet, Arizona Daily Star and its wire services and suppliers.  

Donations can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218.  Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

 

No comments: