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"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather." -- John Ruskin
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August 28, 2008 | |||||||
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 Detox for the Spirit by Michael Wallach Posted August 8, 2002 What's the purpose of summer camp? Barefeet, bunk beds, new friendships, and youthful crushes, to be sure. One inspiring visionary knew with all his heart that it was also the perfect place to sow the Seeds of Peace. NEW Reader Responses are a goodthing! Join the conversation! Editor's Note: The following piece was originally published as an open letter to youth participants and alumni of Seeds of Peace, a non-profit, non-political organization that helps teenagers from regions of conflict learn the skills of making peace. This excerpt appears here with permission. Dear GoodLetter readers, On July 10, 2002, my father, John Wallach, died. He was a journalist and the founder and president of Seeds of Peace. I am slightly overwhelmed right now, but I hope I can convey to you how deeply he loved and passionately believed in every youth who ever participated in Seeds of Peace. Each person knew him from camp in their own way and in a shared way -- as the inspirational leader, the man who insisted each person work harder, reach out more, and believe more deeply in themselves and their friends. He felt this with his whole being. He had no regrets after spending time and talking with young Seeds, after building this program. He knew they were his dreams come true. He was the son of Holocaust survivors, who had escaped from Europe only by the smallest margin of luck. He used to share the story of my grandparents escape with me, always ending it with the phrase, "It's amazing that we're alive!" My father used to tell me that when he was little, he would lay awake in bed, sneaking the radio under the covers. Late at night, listening to jazz, he would wonder how amazing it was that he was here. He would think to himself about all the people in the world who had died, about all the adults who had been killed before having children, about all the children who had never grown up to be parents. He told me many times, how he wondered what he had done to deserve his chance on this earth. He didn't want to be a journalist at first. He wanted to be an actor. A big New York City director named Elia Kazan watched him playing King Lear once and said, "That man is going to be a great actor someday." Six months later, he was kicked out of drama school because "his head was too much in control of his heart." Perhaps that's why he approached his life with so much heart. He had a radio show where he pretended to be on an airplane with the people he interviewed and made the airplane noises himself. He had an antique store in Washington and sold antiques to a young woman lawyer named Madeleine Albright. Not long after, he became a reporter, and his first big story almost got him fired. He had heard that the American President Lyndon Johnson had considered stopping the Vietnam War but decided against it. My father wrote a front-page story. President Johnson was so upset at the bad press that he asked the head of the newspaper to "get rid of that whippersnapper." I don't think it was the first pro-peace thing my dad did, and it certainly wasn't the last. In 1985, my father began working for peace in a different way, starting both a dialogue program between US and Soviet diplomats and an exchange between American and Soviet artists. It was called the Chautauqua Conference, and thousands of Soviet citizens came to a small town in New York to meet Americans for the first time. Together, they listened to bluegrass music and talked about the future. Soon after, my father started a newspaper called "WE," which was the first paper published in both the Soviet Union and the United States. To raise publicity for the paper, he brought American jazz singers to Moscow. People were so excited that they filled the thousand-seat auditorium night after night. I remember them singing -- I was fourteen as I stood in the back of the theater. By the end of each show, their hearts had been so touched by the message and their excitement so built up by the music that they stood on their chairs cheering, screaming, and demanding more. Seeing that was the first time I ever cried out of happiness. In 1993, my father was invited to Moscow by Mikhail Gorbachev to receive the Medal of Freedom. As Gorbachev left the stage, my dad pulled him aside and opened up his coat. Inside my dad had hidden five baseballs! Strangely, he asked Gorbachev to sign them. "I have this friend in Washington," Dad said. "He loves baseballs, and I owe him a favor because he gave me money to help start a new project I have..." That new project was Seeds of Peace. In the middle of a cocktail party, he had chimed his glass, stopped the chatter, and publicly asked the Israeli, Egyptian, and Palestinian ambassadors if they would each send him twenty kids to meet each other. My father had written three books about the Middle East, and he knew that to get some real progress, he was going to have to put people on the spot. Embarrassed in front of the crowd and trusting my father, they one by one said yes. He didn't want them to even consider taking it back, so he wrote a story in the newspapers about it the next day. That first year, they put together camp with forty five kids, and in September, the kids were on the White House lawn. Yitzhak Rabin said, "Witnessing these young people standing here together gives me hope that one day we will have peace." As Rabin and Arafat walked by, my dad, in his usual way, jumped out and stuffed the Seeds of Peace t-shirts in their hands. Before they knew it, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton were standing together holding Seeds of Peace t-shirts, poster boys for peace. But in 1994, my dad had to make a decision -- he couldn't continue his career as a journalist AND run Seeds of Peace. He had been a journalist for twenty-six years. He was a member of the White House press team -- the top of his profession. His articles were printed around the country. Seeds of Peace was a summer camp with fifty kids. But it had heart. It promised something that nothing else in the world could -- a chance to end killing, to end generations of sadness, to give people hope. He chose Seeds of Peace. He worked night and day to make Seeds of Peace a reality. He called hundreds of his friends, asking if they could help in any way. Some people donated sports items, some people donated paintings, some people donated vacation time in their homes -- my dad held auctions to sell the gifts and give the money to Seeds of Peace. Slowly, he built up enough money to run the program every year. Every June and July, we would have camp. Every September, John would go back to his friends and ask for something more. Slowly, his friends began to rally around his effort, and Seeds of Peace grew to be more and more secure. Musicians began to donate their time, and soon we had concerts and shows to support Seeds of Peace. For the last three years, Seeds of Peace has sold out Carnegie Hall -- a two-thousand-seat auditorium -- in what is probably the biggest American pro-peace rally each year. And Seeds of Peace grew and grew. Every summer, hundreds of young Seeds stood in Maine, side by side, singing the same songs, playing the same games, trying, for the first times in their lives, to discuss the conflict with people "from the other side." For my father, these were the most exciting moments of his life. He had seen the violence up close while he was a journalist. But now, my father was looking out at Israelis and Arabs standing next to each other, playing ping pong, swimming in the lake. When he said, "Look around, think how lucky we are to be here," he really meant it. I think about how lucky WE were to be there with him -- thanks to his belief that we have to live with heart and with courage. We simply aren't awake if we don't. As my dad got older, he grew to understand this idea more deeply. He believed in making one friend a thousand times, because he knew that if you opened your heart to someone, you would see life in a whole new way. You would cherish your friend, you would cherish the grass, you would cherish the lake, the songs -- even the food. Most of all, you would cherish the short time that you had with the people around you, whether at camp, or at home, or anywhere you were in the world. My dad's friend Bernie, who was a reporter with him, told me that all the other reporters were always a little bit jealous of John. No matter where they went in the world, John always knew more people the minute they got off the plane. Dad knew everyone, and he wanted to be friends with everyone. I even remember learning chess, when I was very little, from a Russian spy my dad used to have over for dinner. Vladimir was his name, and he always told me, "You can't just think about one part of the game. You have to think about all the pieces, everywhere, all the time." My dad told me that since he was a little boy, he had always felt like he had a ticking clock inside him, that time was running out. Perhaps that's why he fought so hard to do so much. "Just give me two years," he kept saying, "just give me two years." He died exactly two years from his diagnosis with cancer. While the cancer grew in my dad, his sickness gave him an ever deeper understanding of what it meant to act with heart. He said he always cherished watching the Seeds coexistence sessions, understanding that everyone needed to shout and to yell and to cry and cry and cry. "It's a detox program," he wrote, "to get rid of all the hatred we have built up inside." If only he could have cried away his cancer. As I grew closer to my dad before he died, I began to understand that the greatest gift he had given me was the ability to love. Slowly, effortlessly, he had taught me how to love a thousand things -- how to love Shakespeare; how to love his favorite poet, Robert Frost; how to love newspapers; how to love acting; how to love the sky and the lake and the trees. He taught me how to love Israelis, and Palestinians, and people from around the world. He taught me how to love taxi drivers by talking to them like old friends; he taught me how to love my mom, by seeing how deeply and passionately she cared for him; he taught me how to love Seeds of Peace, and he taught me how to love each of you. I'm not kidding -- I wasn't interested in Seeds of Peace when it started. It was only through my dad that I slowly came to understand what it meant to live a life with heart. I have forgotten a thousand things, I am sure, but the one thing I will never forget is him. He didn't need to teach any of us how to love him. It came too naturally. When my dad fell very ill, we took him to the hospital. He could barely speak and began fighting and fighting. Like each of you starting at Seeds, he didn't want to be there, and he didn't want to think about what he was thinking about. His body grew weaker and weaker, but still he fought and fought. He tried to get out of the bed thirty or forty times, but his body wouldn't let him. His body wouldn't move. He fell into a deep sleep. My mother and my brother and my dad's sister watched him in bed, fighting in his sleep, dealing perhaps with all of the demons in the world -- from the demons that haunted his parents, to the things he had seen happen in the Middle East, to the murder of his personal friends Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin, to the demons that decided to pluck him from the earth at only fifty-nine, giving him cancer in his lungs even though he never smoked. But after a night of fighting and fighting, completely unwakeable and not answering to any shouts we made, somewhere in there, he chose to fight a different fight. He fought to say goodbye to all of us. He opened his eyes just a little bit. He looked at my mom and me and his sister. His friends Bernie Kalb and Aaron Miller sat by his side. They spoke to him, and he understood them. We asked if he was comfortable, and he nodded that he was. We sang the Seeds of Peace song to him and reminded him of all of you. My mother, his wife of twenty-six years, held his hand and asked him to blow everyone a kiss. Softly, but as best he could, he blew four quiet kisses. I looked in his eye and saw a tear forming. I could tell how badly he wanted to say I love you, to everyone who had ever been a part of his life. :: Michael Wallach (Thoughts on Michael's GoodLetter? Inspired by what you've read? E-mail us -- don't forget to tell us your name, where you're from, and if we can use your words in a future GoodLetter or on our Web site.) |
TALK ABOUT IT What will your legacy be? What impact do you hope to leave on the world? What will be YOUR Seeds of Peace? Share your stories and ideas. LEARN ABOUT IT Seeds of Peace has graduated over 2,000 teenagers representing 22 nations from its internationally recognized conflict-resolution program since it was created in 1993. Living together throughout the summer at the Seeds of Peace International Camp in Otisfield, Maine, these teenagers, who were identified by their governments as among the best and brightest, work to develop the building blocks necessary for peaceful coexistence. The organization also provides a safe and supportive environment in which the youngsters can air their views and learn communication, listening, negotiation and other conflict-resolution techniques that allow them to develop empathy for one another. This summer, Seeds of Peace has brought together youth from the Middle East, India, Pakistan, Cyprus, the Balkans, the United States, and, for the first time, Afghanistan. :: Learn more on the Seeds of Peace Web site :: Read an open letter from John Wallach's wife, Janet, the interim president of Seeds of Peace :: An article about Seeds of Peace on CommonDreams.org :: Chautauqua Institution and Conference Other innovative efforts for peace: :: WagingPeace.org :: Peace Action :: Volunteers for Peace :: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace :: Peace Brigades International DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT :: Help send an Israeli or Palestinian teenager -- or a youth from another war-torn part of the world -- to Seeds of Peace summer camp (or support the organization in other ways) Readers Respond Want to share your thoughts or ideas with other people who care about good things? Send 'em our way.
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