George Wiloughby, longtime peace activist, dies at 95

THERE WAS the time George Willoughby watched as his 88-year-old wife was shaved bald in front of the Independence National Historical Park.

"I've never seen her like that," George commented, "but I like it."

The idea behind the demonstration by HAIRpeace Action, a Quaker group protesting the war in Iraq in March 2003, was, as a placard put up by the group proclaimed, "Make War Unfashionable."

George and Lillian Willoughby were legendary peace advocates going back to the Vietnam War who were often arrested and jailed.

Nobody was arrested at the hair demonstration, but a park ranger commented, "We've had a lot of protests, but this is probably the strangest one we've ever seen."

George Willoughby, who took his peace advocacy around the world, including showing up in Red Square in Moscow to confront Nikita Khrushchev, marching thousands of miles on peace treks and leading other, often dangerous, anti-war protests, died Jan. 5. He was 95 and lived in Deptford, N.J.

His wife, Lillian, died on Jan. 15, 2009, at the age of 93.

"George and Lil were always there for peace," wrote Bob Smith, of the Brandywine Peace Community in the War Resisters International publication. "And, it seemed, would always, like rocks, be there for us. They were our touchstones, and our teachers. Now, both are gone."

In 2002, George flew to New Delhi to receive the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation award for promoting the nonviolent ideals of Mohandas K. Gandhi. Past winners included Archbishop Desmond Tutu, of South Africa.

In 1963, he participated in a 4,000-mile hike through India and China to protest the Vietnam War.

When he and other members of the Committee for Non-Violent Action arrived in Moscow in 1961, a walk that began in San Francisco, they urged an end to nuclear proliferation.

They didn't get to see Khrushchev, then the Soviet premier, but they did talk with his wife, Nina, who promised to convey their message to her husband.

George was a conscientious objector during World War II. He worked in a mental hospital in Chicago, and, after the war, helped ferry cattle and horses to Europe as part of a United Nations relief effort.

The Willoughbys were also tax-resisters, withholding their federal taxes to protest their use for military purposes.

The IRS tapped their bank accounts to pay the taxes, but when the accounts ran dry, agents seized their 1966 Volkswagen. Friends, brandishing balloons, party horns, cookies and lemonade, invaded the IRS office in Chester and bought the car back for $900.

In 1957, when employed by the American Friends Service Committee, George was with a group of nuclear protesters who tried to invade the nuclear testing site in Nevada.

A year later, they set out on the 30-foot ketch Golden Rule to try to stop bomb tests at Eniwetok in the South Pacific. They were stopped by the Coast Guard off Hawaii and jailed.

George, a health nut, said the worst part of their 60-day stretch in a Honolulu jail was that he had to eat white bread.

George taught Ghandian nonviolent protest techniques all over the world, including Asia where some of his students were Buddhist monks.

He and his wife formed the Movement for a New Society in Philadelphia, where he trained 2,000 people in nonviolent conflict resolution.

Both George and Lillian were natives of Iowa. They met at the University of Iowa where George eventually earned a Ph.D. in political science. They came to Philadelphia in 1954.

He is survived by three daughters, Sally, Anita and Sharon; a son, Alan, and three grandchildren.

Services: Memorial service 2 p.m. Feb. 6 at the American Friends Service Committee at 15th and Cherry streets.