Editor’s note: As Larry Parnass wrapped up nearly three decades at the Gazette, most recently as its editor, he revisited some of the people and places he had written about in days gone by. This is the third installment in his farewell series; the final installment appears Tuesday.
NORTHAMPTON — In the more than 28 years I worked for the Gazette, a tiny woman from Missouri with a fighter’s heart kept making news: Frances Crowe.
When I arrived at the Gazette in 1988, Crowe was 69 and had decades of anti-war activism under her belt, including leadership of the American Friends Service Committee, founding roles in pacifist and anti-nuclear groups and years of draft counseling.
I stopped by her house on Langworthy Road this fall to visit. Crowe was expecting to host an affinity group that night. At 97, she is bowed, but unbroken.
“I have about seven women who are on my case to keep me going,” she said.
We spoke in her large living room, beside a table stacked with magazines — The Nation, The Progressive, The New Yorker, the Washington Spectator. She recommended I check out the last one. “It’s Ralph Nader who sends that to me, he feels I need to read that. It has some good things in it.” Crowe once received the Ralph Nader Award, adding to many accolades for her political work. “He keeps in touch with me about what he thinks I should be doing. His sister down in Connecticut is in touch with me, too. They are very good.”
I mentioned to her that I’d written a story for the Gazette about her 80th birthday, on March 15, 1999. Friends had come up with a perfect gift: 3,000 letters signed by local people addressed a slew of politicians, from President Clinton on down.
At the time, Crowe was on trial for trespassing at Raytheon Corp. property in Andover. She and others had attempted what they called a “citizens weapons inspection.”
Anna Megyesi of the Friends chapter told me people spent 10 days signing and addressing the letters, which argued against military action in Iraq. “Diplomacy, not war and humiliation, is the answer for creating lasting peace in Iraq,” one sentence read. Crowe hauled them all to the post office.
She expressed thanks for our coverage. “I think the Gazette is an important part of building community and that’s what I’m about.”
I kept asking questions, and she kept providing answers.
Question: I agree with you about building community. I think the role of the newspaper is to inform people in ways that allow them to find solutions together. Do you agree?
Answer: Exactly. And to work together. And also with community television now and radio. I think Northampton is in good shape with the community access television, although I have to get after Al Williams (of NCTV) today because, with the film festival going on, he hasn’t gotten “Democracy Now” on this week. And it’s supposed to be on at noon and 7 o’clock and midnight.
Q: What happens if community is not built?
A: The Trumps emerge. People get so angry that their dreams are not fulfilled that I feel that’s what happens. My mission in life now is to live simply so that others can simply live. There’s a lot going on here for you to live simply. You know, like I eat local food only and I use taxis, I no longer drive my car. I sold my car. I no longer fly. I’m really trying to make this lifestyle contribute to the community.
Q: Do you think the anger you mention comes when people feel they can no longer be part of a solution through government? If you get to that point, what is your way out?
A: To go out and talk to your neighbors. Try to come together and find viable solutions. Maybe just your street, your neighborhood.
Q: You have long experience speaking with people who hold opposing views. How do you communicate with them, reach them and reason with them?
A: I try to hear them out — what they are opposing. Like we have the film series at Forbes Library on the second and fourth Wednesday night. And last night we had a wonderful film about people in the rest of the world and what they’re doing about climate action. We co-sponsored it with the Climate Action group and we had 30 people come. They stayed for a long discussion afterwards. People are hungry for information about what they can do. People are looking for others who agree with them, I feel.
Q: Imagine you are speaking with a Trump voter. Do you listen for reasons to adjust your thinking?
A: I listen for what I might do to meet their needs. And try to hear them. I think that they have many legitimate complaints. They were promised a lot of things that haven’t been fulfilled. I’m the result of the good life, too. After World War II we all thought that if we bought enough stuff we’d solve the problems.
Q: You say your son Jarlath was just visiting to help with chores. What did you ask him to do?
A: One of my problems is I fall a lot and I fell at the front door when I opened it to get the Gazette in the morning. The mail basket is very close to the door. I lost my balance and fell flat on the floor. So I said, “Could you put up a handle next to the door so I can hang on to something and reach out and get my mail?” And he did. He went all over town to find the right kind of handle to put there that was brown and matched the woodwork. He said he’d figure out what else needs to be mended or fixed and come back next week.
Q: I know that you supported Jill Stein as a presidential candidate. What are your hopes for our country?
A: I think Jill and Bernie are changing the thinking of America. They won’t go away. And Jill and Bernie will be there helping people see what the problems are and what we need to do. I think they will be changing the culture. I feel, you know, that Trump reflects the culture of part of America, which is not good.
Q: How does Donald Trump reflect the culture?
A: That the only thing that matters is my comfort, my happiness, my style.
Q: You haven’t done draft counseling for a long time. Do you foresee the need for that ever coming back?
A: I get kids of the people I draft counseled. They send their kids back to talk to me about whether or not they register, and what they should do.
Q: How do you counsel them?
A: I try to help them find their conscience and follow their conscience — what they need to do. And tell them the law. To those who are opposed to registering, I say it’s alright to not register but maybe before you are 26 you should register because that helps you to be eligible for any possible loan you might want to have for a house or education.
I think the issue of education is a big one. I had new signs made that I will be using saying “The Bomb = Your Health Care for Life and Education through College.”
People have to understand that almost every other place in the world you get a free college education. Here, the kids have to go into debt. Terrible, terrible debt. So I feel that’s what we really need to work on.
Q: What community-building project do you feel was brought fully to fruition, and what project stands to be completed for Northampton?
A: I think the shutting down of Vermont Yankee. I worked for five years on that. I was arrested 11 times up there, and others too. Finally it was shut down. But it isn’t completed. Now, the spent fuel rods are still there in open casks and are polluting the area, so we feel they should be put in dry casks and eventually all of those should go deep underground. They’re very dangerous.
Q: What’s another project that involved community-building that you think was successfully resolved?
A: I think the attitude of people in Brattleboro has changed a lot. We have groups that are working in Brattleboro now but for a long time we could scarcely get anyone in Brattleboro talking about it because they were in deep denial about what was going on there. I think as a culture we are in deep denial.
Like Hillary (Clinton) speaking as a candidate about the $5 trillion in debt we would encounter in building a new generation of nuclear weapons. It’s crazy, absolutely crazy.
Q: Do you oppose U.S. military involvement in the Middle East?
A: We ought to get out of those countries.
Q: You will turn 98 at your next birthday. What is your outlook on what’s ahead for residents of the Valley?
A: I’m very hopeful. I think that Northampton is one of the places of hope. When you go to Boston, people feel so hopeless. And people say they come out here for a feeling of hope and community. One of the vital things is the newspaper, and the local television access channel. And radio.
Q: Do you think that even if people can’t attain a political objective, just the fact that they are working with others lends a sense of hope?
A: Humans need one another. We don’t exist well alone. I think people find the joy of working together and that’s certainly true of the community gardens. So many people have land here where they’re growing food. My little garden in the front yard is kind of a statement about what I believe in. It fed me tomatoes and kale.
Q: Can you identify the source of the perspective on life that you embrace? Is it a writer, an event, a family member? Who made you who you are?
A: It was a lot of people. First of all, it was Hiroshima. My husband Tom had been in the Army as a physician. We had both been kind of moving toward questioning the war and when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, that was it, because he knew the effects of it.
Tom set up the Sane Nuclear Policy Committee here and worked with Physicians for Social Responsibility — he and Ira Helfand and Henry Rosenberg and others — so that slowly, things began to change.
In the beginning, he would be the person going around and talking to the Rotary Clubs and so forth. And then the women. In the ’70s the women’s movement emerged. I spoke to the Kiwanis Club once (the memory makes her laugh) and churches and women’s organizations. My issue was nuclear weapons and power and war. If we had never developed the nuclear bomb it would have been so much simpler.
Q: Do you have a religious tradition?
A: I was brought up in the Catholic Church, which I feel gave me a wonderful moral and ethical background. I am a Quaker member of Mt. Toby, but I attend the Friends meeting in Northampton now because I can walk there and get there easily.
The sidewalks aren’t too good for my walker. That’s one thing we need to work on.