Twenty railroad coaches filled with women—tweedy, well-shod matrons for the most part—arrived here yesterday in a driving rainstorm to picket and demonstrate for peace in front of the White House.
Ink ran on their placards, their fur hats collapsed and hung limp over their ears, their tweeds constricted and steamed, but they marched on in the rain—for about an hour. There were 1,700 of them.
Most of them came from New York City, Westchester and Rockland counties, Long Island, and Fairfield County, Conn. They filled a chartered Pennsylvania railroad train that left New York about 8:30 a.m. with stops at Trenton, N.J. and Philadelphia to pick up more women.
The only men aboard were the conductors, the sandwich man, the engineer presumably, Abe Stafansky and myself.
Mr. Stafansky, a seventy-year-old butcher, saw something about the trip in a newspaper and decided to take the day off and come along.
“Fifty years I’m an American and I thought I’d like to see the White House,” he said. First discovered just outside New York, the women threatened to throw him off, but they relented under Mr. Stafansky’s charm.
Four reporters were thrown off before the train left the station. But it was through no lack of enterprise on their part, just a snafu in signals. They were at the front of the train where the policy at the moment was strictly no men. I was making my way forward and by the time I got to the front, we were speeding through New Jersey. (The women were sorry about leaving the others behind.)
The trip was first conceived at a meeting of women in New York last month. There is no formal organization, no officers, no dues, no rules. The women are just linked in their desire “to do something” for peace and disarmament.
Mrs. Ruth Chenven, of Manhattan, called the Pennsylvania Railroad and asked about chartering a train to Washington. Get 550 persons, she was told, and it could be done. The cost would be $12.50 per person round trip, including a box lunch.
The women called their friends, the friends called their friends, and the result was 1,300 women at Gate 12 in Pennsylvania Station yesterday.
The train started, then braked to a stop as shrieking late-comers from Roslyn, L.I., came running along the platform. They boarded and the trip resumed.
For the first two hours, women surged back and forth through the cars looking for seats. There were not enough. They made do with arm rests and took turns in the seats.
Mr. Stafansky and I did the best we could.
He found a seat and perused his “Morning Freiheit.” I retired to the men’s room—the only seat available—to eat my box lunch. Sanctuary there was brief. Within minutes the women were clattering at the door. Since it was a women’s train they assumed (Why shouldn’t they?) that both the men’s and the ladies’ rooms were at their disposal.
Mr. Stafansky showed me the article in the “Freiheit” saying that men, too, were permitted on the train. It was in Yiddish. He said he had called his boss and told him he was not feeling well, and could he take the day off?
Wouldn’t it get him in trouble if it came out in a newspaper that he was not sick, but on a women’s peace train to Washington?
“How could he know? My boss, he reads nothing. The stock market maybe. Put my name in the stock market, he might see it.”
The women chattered and worked on their placards (“Peace is the only shelter,” “No tests, East or West”) and blew up white balloons inscribed “Peace or Perish.” Others passed out tracts and booklets. One woman was collecting letters. “Any letters in here for the President?” she asked.
The majority of the women were thirty to fifty years old, almost all of them mothers, with a middle and upper middle-class background. But the rich were also represented, as were some humble homes in Brooklyn.
“Very few of these women ever dreamed they would be walking in a demonstration carrying signs,” said Mrs. Ruth Gage-Colby of New York, one of the powers in the movement. “They went along leading their happy, secluded lives and suddenly they’ve been jolted by this thing, this spectre of the holocaust. Their children come home from school and ask about shelters, and ‘Are we going to be burned up, mother?’”
Another marcher, Mrs. Valerie Delacorte, wife of Dell publisher George T. Delacorte, said, “I don’t know whether what we’re doing will have any effect or not. What can we do? Maybe the war will come but at least we protested, we cried out…”
The train arrived at 12:45 p.m. and the women took chartered buses to the White House. The President did not come out to greet them but at his press conference later, he said he had seen them.
“I recognized why they were here,” he said. “There were a great number of them. It was in the rain. I understood what they were attempting to say and therefore I consider that their message was received.”
After the march, the women gathered for a rally at the Metropolitan A.M.E. Church and then separated into small groups to call on their Congressmen.
One group paid a call at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency where they were given an audience by the deputy director, Adrian Fisher. Others picketed the embassies of the nuclear powers—the Soviet Union, Great Britain and France. They left Washington at 5 p.m.
June 19–22, 1962
This four-part series ran on consecutive days at the top of the Herald Tribune’s local section.
Tuesday, June 19, 1962
Those Awkward Moments with a Room Full of Smoke
YONKERS, N.Y.
Tobacco is a dirty weed. I like it.
It satisfies no normal need. I like it.
Graham Lee Hemminger
(1896–1949)
A heavy calm lies over the Bates Memorial Medical Center, for it is midafternoon and rest period for those of us embarked on the Five-Day Plan to Stop Smoking.
This morning we drank a lot of fruit juice and water, did calisthenics and something called rhythmic breathing, had a vegetarian lunch and then went for a walk. Soon a nurse will come tapping on a door and we will file into a room to hear Dunbar W. Smith, M.D.
I smoke two packs of Camels a day and have no real desire to quit but J. Wayne McFarland, M.D., said, come on out anyway and we’ll motivate you. (There’s the call for the lecture.)…Just got back. Dr. Smith talked about chewing and digestion, using a big set of dentures to illustrate. (Said chew food thoroughly.)
Dr. McFarland and the Rev. E. J. Folkenberg, the originators of the Five-Day Plan are Seventh-Day Adventists, forbidden to smoke.
“We’ve had a lot of experience in helping people stop smoking in our church,” said Mr. Folkenberg, “so we decided to give others the benefit of our experience.” For the past two years they have traveled the country, giving their “group therapy” course, which involves no proselytizing for the church.
There are 12 of us enrolled in full-time, day and night courses here, for which the fee is $100, for room and board. Another 25 or so come out each night for the free session.
Art Rosenthal, who had the room next to mine, just came down the hall eating jelly candies from a bag and looking pained. A middle-aged man from Newfoundland, N.J., he said he smoked cigars during all his waking hours until Sunday night, when he checked in here. “I’ve got withdrawal pains,” he said. “Headaches, perspiration.”
Then Dr. McFarland looked in, and it was a little awkward because my room was full of smoke. “You ought to go get a prune to suck on to keep your blood sugar up,” he chided.
The hospital, a former tuberculosis sanatorium, is located on a hilltop, and there are a lot of woods and birds. The Seventh-Day Adventists bought it last year and are now refurbishing it. It will be open soon as a center for general medical treatment.
The Adventists also discourage eating meat, which explains the vegetarian diet. (Mr. Folkenberg said it was part of the course, since eating meat causes a craving for tobacco.) For lunch there was corn, broccoli, a nut cup, scalloped potatoes and a round slice of some grayish material.
“How do you like the food?” asked Miss Rosalie Naderson
, of Manhattan, who is the gamest and most cheerful one in our group. Miss Naderson applauds at all the lectures and films, and she jokes around a lot. I said it was fine, except for the gray object. She laughed and said it was soya cheese, and was very good with some of the no-meat gravy on it. The gravy helped some.
Upstairs there is a big display of vegetarian food, including cans of Nuttena, Nuttose and Vegeburgers.
Along with the physical regimen of deep breathing, exercises and drinking a great deal of water (“to flush the nicotine from the system”) there is also a form of Coueism in the course. Instead of saying, “I will stop smoking,” which shatters the will, if you do light up again, you repeat over and over again, “I choose not to smoke again.” This is supposed to be more effective.
You also avoid smoking companions, and get up immediately after meals and go for walks to avoid the after-meal craving for a smoke. I don’t have the motivation so far, but Dr. McFarland says I will after I see a terrifying film on lung cancer coming up tonight.
There are no ash trays at this place, and you have to sneak around putting out butts on window-sills or flushing them down the johns.
Wednesday, June 20, 1962
Half-Way: A Two-Pack Tribune Man Trying to Stop
YONKERS, N.Y.
Well, we’re off coffee now, along with meat and cigarettes, and my head feels like a wheat gluten vegeburger, which was what we had for lunch yesterday.
It was smack in the middle of the Five-Day Plan to Stop Smoking, and a crucial day. Every one was drowsy and mopey. Every one except Miss Rosalie Naderson, who is still up to her old high jinks. During calisthenics, while doing a kind of side-way walk, she kept walking right out of the building. It was a joke.
Twelve of us are undergoing the course here at Bates Memorial Medical Center, a hilltop sanatorium owned by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Another 25 come out for each night session.
The Rev. E. J. Folkenberg and J. Wayne McFarland, M.D., have been conducting the therapy for about two years (with, they say, a success rate of 75 per cent), but this is the first time they’ve done it on a resident patient basis.
Mr. Folkenberg said yesterday that it may not be as effective as the outpatient method. “They may kick the habit here in these surroundings under a programmed routine, but I wonder if it will hold up when they return to work.” Those who come to the night sessions have to fight it alone during the work day, and theirs is probably a more solid victory, he said.
“Won’t it be all right just to smoke one, when it gets so terribly bad?” asked a woman at the Monday night meeting. “Well, we think it’s better to stop completely,” said Dr. McFarland. “It’s rough, I know, but the main thing is to get through that first week.”
Coffee is banned, he said, because it triggers an almost insatiable craving for nicotine with heavy smokers. For a substitute lift in the morning, he suggested a “cold mitten friction.” You take a washcloth soaked with cold water and rub your arms and chest vigorously until the skin has turned pink. This increases blood circulation and approximates the effect of a cup of coffee, he said.
Several reported some success with it yesterday morning.
Mr. Folkenberg gave a persuasive talk on will power at the night session. If you keep on repeating, “I choose not to smoke again,” he said, “and mean it,” it will actually prepare the body for the change and make it easier on the nerves.
One man at the night session said he had fought it all day, but could not afford to have a fuzzy mind on his job, and was there anything to be done about it. No, said Dr. McFarland, but the fuzziness would pass in a few days. “Don’t worry, you’re going to make it.”
I have more or less stopped smoking while here, rather than be a tempter. But I’m afraid I have been a nuisance in questioning others about their smoking habits.
“Will you please stop talking about cigarettes?” one woman told me yesterday. At any rate, no one has dropped out yet.
Thursday, June 21, 1962
Into the Stretch: Who’ll Be the First to Puff? The Man from the Trib, of Course
YONKERS, N.Y.
Another day of lethargy in this bee-loud glade, trying to kick the smoking habit. It appears every one will make it but me.
I did, however, beat a kid at ping-pong three straight games. He had little short arms and all I had to do was tip the ball over the net out of his reach. So much for his nicotine-free lungs. After that I had a romp with a friendly dog named Shep, and batted a few skinners with the softball.
Let’s see, what else: Kathleen Joyce, an English contralto, came in and favored us with some songs at the night therapy session. She sang “Danny Boy” and “D’ye Ken John Peel,” and we all joined in on “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”
In the morning she played the piano to give us the beat for our calisthenics. It was that song that goes “…this is the way we bake our bread, so early in the morning.”
A dozen of us are enrolled here at Bates Memorial Medical Center, a Seventh-Day Adventist sanatorium, in the Five-Day Plan to Stop Smoking. The course ends tonight and, despite my miserable failure, it has been of great help to the others.
Wesley Smith, a young man of 24 from Massachusetts, was smoking up to five packs a day when he came here. Tuesday he got by with a couple of drags, and yesterday he didn’t smoke at all. He has put up a good fight, and he seemed to be coming out of the drowsiness yesterday, which means that the tough part is over.
Amanda Meiggs, an actress, was one of the lightest smokers of the group. She smoked only one pack a day but decided to take the course because she was having trouble with her throat. She stopped Sunday and has not weakened yet.
The craving, though, seems to be just as strong in light smokers as in heavy ones. Yesterday, she said, was her worst day.
“I’m absolutely dying for a cigarette, and I know you’re sneaking out and smoking,” she said.
What to do when the urge becomes irresistible? The Rev. E. J. Folkenberg, who is giving the therapy, along with J. Wayne McFarland, M.D., suggested the following:
1. Invoke your willpower by saying, “I choose not to smoke. I choose not to smoke.”
2. Calm the nerves with a minute or so of steady rhythmic breathing.
3. If you’re inside, go out and walk, and ask for divine aid.
4. Take out your watch, keep an eye on the second hand, and force yourself to go without smoking for two minutes.
By the time you’ve done all this, he said, the craving peak has been reached and is falling off. “And you should be able to manage it then.”
The evening sessions are growing. About 40 persons came Tuesday night for the therapy.
At that session, Dr. McFarland asked for a show of hands of all those who no longer had a craving for tobacco.
No one moved.
Then the ebullient and ever-helpful Rosalie Naderson raised her hand and said she had whipped it. She stood and gave a moving testimonial to the efficacy of Dr. McFarland’s methods.
“It’s not so hard,” she said. “After all, we were not born with cigarettes in our mouths.”
Friday, June 22, 1962
As Confidently Predicted, He Puffed First
YONKERS, N.Y.
The how-to-stop-smoking course ended yesterday and the graduates were sent home with warnings ringing in their ears. Our ears, I should say, although I was the only one in our class of 12 who failed.
“All right, you’ve beaten the Number 2 health hazard in America, and now you’re wide open for the Number 1 hazard—overweight,” said Dr. Henry J. Johnson. “Food is going to taste a lot better to you now but you’re just going to have to restrain yourself. If you don’t, those pounds will creep up on you before you know it.”
Dr. Johnson, medical director for the Life Extension Examiners in New York City, was a guest speaker for the occasion. Someone asked him what the Number 3 hazard was. He said he didn’t know offhand.
He seemed to think that too much fuss is made ove
r the act of quitting cigarettes. “I’ve had heart patients tell me, ‘Well, Doc. I guess this means no more smoking.’ I say, ‘Yes, that’s right,’ and they stop, just like that. I did it myself.”
Don’t dwell on your addiction and don’t pamper your weakness, he said, just stop smoking.
“We’ve helped you break away from smoking,” said the Rev. E. J. Folkenberg, “but only for a short span of time. What are you going to do next week, or three months from now when the craving suddenly hits you? Well, we hope we’ve bolstered your will power enough to handle those situations. When will it be safe to take a drink, or start on coffee again? I don’t know. That’s one of the things each of you will have to work out in your own way.”
Mr. Folkenberg and Dr. J. Wayne McFarland are administrators of the five-day course, which is sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It was conducted at the Bates Memorial Medical Center, a sanatorium here that was recently taken over by the church.
Dr. McFarland advised us to increase our intake of vitamin B-1 and several other B vitamins, for their beneficial effect on the nerves. Wheat germ, he said, is a very good natural source of B-1.
Miss Rosalie Naderson, a classmate, said it had been her practice for some time to take a teaspoon of wheat germ oil daily. That, she said, is equivalent to five pounds of wheat germ, which sounded like a lot of wheat germ to me, but she stood by her figure.
Dr. McFarland also said that fear was not the best motive for kicking the habit, but that it had its value, like the use of a switch in disciplining a child.
“We’ve come in for a lot of criticism for showing this film One in 20,000 (a color picture showing a lung removal operation), and don’t think we haven’t given a lot of sober consideration to the criticism. But we’re going to continue using it, and anything else we think will galvanize people to act.”
A testimonial was given by Miss Esther Renner, a secretary from Des Moines, who took the course seven months ago. She had tried to stop smoking several times before, she said, but she had no luck until she undertook this plan.