Peace in all time: one couple’s legacy of activism

Story by TAYLOR NICHOLS

Photos by MATTHEW ROLAND and courtesy of WHATCOM MUSEUM

Howard and Rosemary Harris are well known in the community for their activism and dedication to peace and education.

On a December night in 1966, three people stood in silence in front of the Christmas tree on Railroad Avenue. The sign clutched in one of their hands read “silent vigil for peace.” In the Quaker tradition of silent protest, Howard and Rosemary Harris and Colleen Dickinson protested the Vietnam War without saying a word.

Congress had approved President Lyndon B. Johnson’s request to invade Vietnam two years earlier. Protests against the war started soon after, but the majority of Americans still supported it.

Standing in the frosty December cold, those protesters had no inkling it would be the spark that illuminated a half-century of weekly peace vigils in Downtown Bellingham. After the first vigil it was moved to the corner outside of the Federal Building on Commercial and Magnolia Streets. Now, protestors holding signs for peace are a staple on that corner. They stand there every Friday afternoon, met with appreciative honks for peace from passing cars and the occasional middle finger.

To say Rosemary and Howard left behind a legacy when they passed would be an understatement. What they are known for depends on who you ask. Howard is often remembered as a founder of the vigil, which the pair started six months after they moved to Bellingham so Howard could teach at Western.

“The funny thing is at first our dad was a little bit hesitant about whether he wanted to do that or not, but our mom and Colleen were totally determined,” Heather Harris Ezzre, their daughter, says. Howard vowed to continue holding a vigil every Friday afternoon until the end of the war. He went every week until he couldn’t stand long enough to be there.

Fifty-two years later, it is now the longest-running weekly vigil in the nation.

Others know them for their second labor of love: education. Howard taught anthropology at Western for 26 years before retiring in 1992. Rosemary founded and ran the Rufus Jones School for children ages five to 18, an alternative school that emphasized respect between students and teachers and peaceful cooperation which did not give students grades.

“She was always an advocate for children, she wanted to make sure they got off to the right start,” Heather says.

Rosemary was a very loving person, not just to her children but to everyone she met, Heather says. She was a lifelong learner, constantly studying nutrition and education, the subjects she was most passionate about aside from peace work.

Rosemary was a midwife from the 1960s to 1990s, and delivered 11 of her 13 grandchildren, and many other children as well. Howard had a myriad of different jobs in academics and as a minister. The family moved so much that just two of the six Harris children were born in the same state.

All of the Harris children were homeschooled at different parts of their lives. Howard and Rosemary were passionate about education and had strong convictions about how children should be raised and taught, with an emphasis on nonviolence. They didn’t believe in spanking, Holly Harris, another daughter, says.

“What was it Dad always said?” she asks Heather, trying to recall the phrase. “He didn’t want an obedient child, he wanted a thinking child.”

Rosemary and Howard were not the first in the family to act in the face of injustice. Howard’s ancestors helped slaves escape north through the Underground Railroad. They built a homestead in Springdale, Iowa with fake walls and hidden rooms to hide slaves in, Holly says. They would blindfold themselves when they helped slaves so that when slave catchers came through town, they could honestly say they hadn’t seen the person. “We call that a Quaker Lie,” Holly says, laughing, because then it’s not technically a lie.

Howard himself carried on the family tradition when he registered for the draft in October 1940 as a conscientious objector during WWII. He dedicated part of his life to counseling others on how to become conscientious objectors starting in WWII and continued doing so through the Vietnam War. Howard talked about his intentions to continue counseling conscientious objectors during the first Gulf War in a Bellingham Herald article published January 17, 1991 written by Carolyn Casey. He encouraged people to become conscientious objectors at a rally on Western’s campus that week, the article said.

Rosemary and Howard imparted on their children the importance of social justice and protests at an early age. Photos from the first year of the peace vigil show Howard, Rosemary and five of the six Harris kids lined up in front of the federal building on West Magnolia Street in 1967, dressed in their Sunday best and looking solemn. Their signs read “Escalate Peace Now!”

The first march Holly remembers participating in was the march for peace from San Francisco to Moscow, Russia in 1960. Howard and Rosemary packed the kids up and drove 64 miles from Ann Arbor, Michigan to join activists as they marched through Toledo, Ohio in the sleet.

Neither Howard nor Rosemary can be seen on the corner, signs in hand, anymore. Rosemary died in 2009, and Howard died in 2014. They carried the torch of peace and justice throughout their lives, and passed it on to those who stand on the corner today.