ORAL HISTORY OF UTAH PEACE ACTIVISTS UTAH VALLEY UNIVERSITY OREM, UTAH

INTERVIEW WITH BRUCE PLENK

10/12/2006 Tucson, Arizona

Interview Conducted by Dr. Kathryn French

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Interviewee: Bruce Plenk Interviewer: Kathryn French Date: October 12, 2006 Subject: Utah Peace Activists Place: Tucson, AZ

KF: Tell me a little bit about yourself. When were you in Utah?

BP: I was born in Utah. To make it short, I grew up in Utah. I went to high school here then I went away for college. Then I came back and was in Utah for a little while. Then I lived elsewhere again. Then I came back to Utah and taught high school and went to law school. I was a lawyer in Utah for about fifteen years. Then I moved away. I’ve lived out of Utah for the last 12 years.

KF: Where did you grow up?

BP: Salt Lake.

KF: You went to all your school in Salt Lake.

BP: I graduated from Olympus High in Holladay. Then I went to college in Massachusetts and came back to Utah and got a masters degree at University of Utah in teaching education. I taught high school in Murray for a while. Then I went back to University of Utah and got a law degree. After that I was a lawyer in Ogden for a while and then in Salt Lake.

KF: Tell me how you first became a peace activist.

BP: In college I was involved with...

[tape interrupted]

KF: Let’s go back and how did you become a peace activist?

BP: I was in college at Williams College, which is in Massachusetts in the late sixties. I graduated from high school in Salt Lake in 1965. I was in college from 1965 to 1969. That of course was the height, the beginning of moving into the height of the Vietnam War. While I was in college, after learning about the war in Vietnam and being exposed to the potential for being drafted, I got involved with SDS which stands for Students for Democratic Society, which was a primarily white, upper class college student peace group that was formed in the mid sixties. There was an SDS group that formed at Williams College where I was a student and I got involved with that group on campus and at other schools that were involved in SDS. The short answer is the Vietnam War and on campus fallout, with classmates getting drafted. KF: What was your role in SDS in Massachusetts?

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BP: It was a relatively small chapter of SDS. People including me that were in the chapter were involved with primarily organizing and sponsoring teach-ins about the war in Vietnam, leafleting on campus and in the town near the campus and going to big demonstrations in Washington, at the Pentagon and in New York. That happened pretty much every spring or fall starting in about 1967, if I remember correctly.

KF: In 1969 then you came back to Salt Lake?

BP: In 1969 I came back to Salt Lake and there was actually an SDS chapter at the University of Utah that I got involved with. You may have already talked to some other people connected with that. That was started by a group of people that were opposed to the war in Vietnam. They were doing various kinds of peace activities in Salt Lake and in Provo before that.

KF: You mean at BYU in Provo?

BP: Yes, there were some BYU students. There were a couple of people from Provo that were quite involved. One of them has since died of cancer, unfortunately, a guy named Willie Cowden who ran a book and record store in Provo. He was involved with putting on one of the first peace rallies in the park in Provo. His ex-wife is still alive. She works for the Salt Lake School District I believe. Her name is Linda Brown.

KF: Was she active also?

BP: Yes, she was involved. She was active. They lived on a farm in like Lindon or somewhere in Utah County and had this little store in Provo. Actually this is the first place I’ve ever heard of that sold the Whole Earth catalog. They sold books and magazines and so forth. They were involved with the peace movement in Provo. There were at least a couple of peace rallies in that park right in downtown Provo on Center Street. I can’t think of the name. It’s sort of by an Albertsons. It’s basically not too far from it. There is a new courthouse that wasn’t there at the time that’s about half a block off center. This park, if I remember right, is basically right on Center Street. I thought it was across the street from an Albertsons. I might not be right. That’s where there were a couple of peace rallies there. I’m sure the Provo Daily Herald would have something. In fact one of the peace rallies that this guy named Willie Cowden put together, the Provo city fathers said you couldn’t have a peace rally in Provo, period. No, we’re not allowing that. A law professor who is still at the University of Utah, his name is Bill Lockhart, represented the people in Provo. I forget if they settled out of court, or if the judge ordered them to allow the rally to go on. It was a pretty blatant violation of first amendment rights to say, “If you want to have an anti-war rally, too bad,” when there were a million other kinds of events happening at that park all the time. Every thing from Boy Scout bake sales to Veteran’s Day parades and so on and so forth. It was very obviously rejected because of the content of what people’s message was, which was unconstitutional. Bill Lockhart was their lawyer. They settled the one case and had a

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peace rally. There was at least one other one, I believe after that, in Provo. There was another guy whose name I’m trying to think. His name was Jerry something. I can’t remember. I think he had a little head shop in Provo. He was some sort of peripheral involvement with it. Bill Cowden was really the person that I remember from Provo. Then he moved to Salt Lake and was involved with SDS in Salt Lake. The people that were involved with SDS at the University of Utah were a pretty broad group of students, many people from Utah and some people from elsewhere. There was a guy named Jim Beavers, who is a psychologist in Salt Lake still I believe. He had been involved with SDS either at the University of Michigan or Michigan State. I forget which. He had moved to Salt Lake and was one of the people that had been involved with starting the SDS chapter. I may be repeating stuff you already know.

KF: You are not.

BP: The main people that were involved with SDS for a while were Jim Beavers, a psychologist, Kathy Collard, who is my ex-wife. She’s a lawyer in Salt Lake. A guy named Laury Hammel who is going to be in Tucson tomorrow morning. He lives outside Boston. A bunch of other people. Those were the ones that were my friends. Jim Beavers was involved for a while. There was an SDS chapter at the University of Utah. There’s a lot of stuff written about that in the University of Utah papers, like the Daily Chronicle. There was a pretty active SDS chapter and I got involved with that when I came back to Utah after I was in college. After the draft board decided I was not suitable to be drafted, I didn’t get to go to Vietnam, which was fine with me.

KF: When you say you were active in SDS, what do you mean by that?

BP: SDS was run as a non-hierarchal organization so there wasn’t a vice president, president or secretary. There was a sort of leadership grid. I actually can’t remember the tenets exactly of how that worked. There were a number of people that took on leadership roles. I wasn’t one of the main leader people. But it was a fluid group. Sometimes there would be 100 people in the meeting and sometimes there would be 10 people at the meeting. Meetings were on campus. It turned out later that there were several FBI informants that came to all the meetings. If you really wanted to get the records, they apparently were wired and I guess somewhere, in the FBI office in Salt Lake they have all the transcripts of all the meetings. If you really wanted to dig it out you could go get it. At later times that became clear as I’m talking about how they were working for the FBI and some were getting paid. That’s not too surprising. Anyway. The SDS chapter had a variety of meetings and demonstrations. I came back to Salt Lake in the fall of 1969. I was accepted into VISTA program. I was working in one VISTA program in Massachusetts and was moving into another VISTA program in Oregon when President Nixon canceled all the VISTA money for the fall of 1969. I couldn’t go to Oregon to be a VISTA volunteer. Then I signed up at the University of Utah as a student and was what we used to call a non-matriculated grad student who is a grad student who hasn’t chosen a major. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in grad school. I was going to the University of Utah in 1969 and 1970 and taking classes trying to decide what I wanted to do grad

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school wise at that time. There were a number of demonstrations during that year in Utah and Salt Lake at the University of Utah. In May of 1970 was when the kids were killed at Kent State. That prompted a very large outpouring of students demonstrating at the University of Utah and led to the occupation of the Park Administration Building by, I want to say a couple hundred people. Out of that, 81 people if I remember right, were arrested and charged for trespassing and taken to jail. The group of people, many of the people that were arrested there were people that were involved in SDS. There were also a lot of other people that weren’t particularly involved in the SDS organization but that were upset about Nixon lying and invading Cambodia and the National Guard shooting and killing the kids at Kent State. One of the issues in that was whether campus cops on the University of Utah should carry weapons. At the time everybody was worried that kids at the University of Utah would get shot and killed by out of control cops or National Guardsmen the way kids who had been peacefully protesting at Kent State were shot and killed by National Guardsmen. That was a big demonstration. The people that led that :15 demonstration were people who had been involved with SDS. I’m trying to remember the years. But you may know nationally there was a split within SDS nationally. A group that was connected with the group called the Progressive Labor Party which was more traditional, old left, Marxist/Leninist, and other people that were not as connected to old left politics and identified themselves as New Left. The PL group split and eventually destroyed SDS nationally because people were fighting with each other both over doctrine and strategy. Then nationally the Weathermen had come up out of SDS and had been a split off from SDS too. In the midst of all this going on, the ROTC building was burned down on the University of Utah campus as part of the protest. People were involved with that were never directly identified. It was one of the things that made the University of Utah administration and campus cops all uptight about things. There was some question during this demonstration at the Park building about whether people should demonstrate or should be beat up and dragged out of the building or not. Happily from our perspective, as people that were peacefully sitting-in in the administration building, the cops decided not to do that, so nobody got hurt by cops. People were just taken out, arrested and taken downtown.

KF: Were you one?

BP: Yes, I was arrested. A number of other people that were involved with SDS were arrested. Another guy that you may want to talk to that was pretty active at the time is a guy who is a lawyer from Bountiful. His name is Reid Davis. People were arrested and basically pretty much everybody got bailed out. I’m not remembering exactly. Most of the people that were involved with SDS, not everybody, because some people weren’t there. But most people that had been involved with SDS were involved in that sit in and got arrested.

KF: Was it SDS had led this sit in?

BP: Sort of. It’s hard to explain this now because SDS was a pretty visible group. It started with a small group of core people and then a whole lot of other people that would come

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and go. It wasn’t like you signed up, paid dues, wore a t-shirt and were a member. It was like people that were supportive of the idea. There were several hundred people. I’ve now forgotten the numbers. It was really huge demonstration that went from the University of Utah Union Building. I don’t know if you know the geography there, but one of the more humorous aspects of this is that there used to be a big flat lawn which was the place where very large student demonstrations took place against the war in Vietnam. Props would be set up right in front of the Union building and there would be a place for hundreds of people. There were several demonstrations that had many hundreds of people there. After the sit it and after things cooled off a little bit, University of Utah decided to spend a fair amount of money doing what they called new landscaping. They took this very large flat open area that had been a place where all of the anti-war demonstrations took place and put up a lot of little hills and trees and mounds of landscaping, so there was no longer anyplace where there could be a large demonstration.

KF: Is that where the parking lots are now?

BP: No, it’s on the back side. There is still grass there. But instead of having a big open space, where you could have 500 people that could see one another and marching and having protests and speeches, now you couldn’t see over the trees and over the hills. It was creative landscaping by University of Utah that concluded large demonstrations. That big demonstration that ended up with a sit in, essentially there was a student strike, they went around campus including me, going through the halls trying to get people to boycott classes. It was partially successful. It wasn’t as major as some of the universities that really were shut down. A lot of people walked out of classes and some professors canceled classes. But others didn’t. This huge protest started at the Union Building and then people walked down to the Park building which was the Administration Building, and went in and sat down and had a list of demands that I’ve now forgotten. The gist of it was closing the university out of respect for the students who were killed in protest of President Nixon’s illegal move into Cambodia and his lying about what he was doing. Then there was the campus stuff too. The idea was to get universities, particularly the University of Utah, to disengage from the whole war machine. The slogans were things like, “No business as usual,” and “Don’t continue to go to class or go to work. That’s just aiding the war machine that was basically killing people in Vietnam by Vietnamese people and US soldiers who have been drafted.” That got us up to the spring of 1970.

After that I was a VISTA supervisor and a junior college teacher in Massachusetts for the summer. I came back to Utah and started my masters program. There was still some anti-war stuff going on. And we had a trial for all the people who were arrested. A couple lawyers that handled that case, one of whom is still around town named Jerry Kinghorn. He’s still in Salt Lake. We had a trial. In the end we were acquitted. I’m thinking that it was an odd case. The judge died during the case. There were other weird things about it. I wasn’t really into law stuff then. But we were acquitted so nobody had a fine. Then the next few years I’m a little hazy on. There was still ongoing anti-war stuff in Salt Lake. But nothing as big and dramatic as the big protests at the University of Utah in the late sixties. The main thing I remember in the early seventies was that Vietnam

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vets really came out and started joining the protests. There would be a bunch of marches downtown and maybe it’s just that I wasn’t attending the University of Utah anymore, but it seemed like protests started happening more at the federal building downtown and not so much on University of Utah campus. I stayed involved with that. That was pretty much through the early, until the war ended in 1975, it seems like there were periodic protests in Salt Lake at the federal building that me and other people were involved in. That’s pretty much that period.

KF: Was the Peace and Freedom Party around then?

BP: Yes, you should talk to Earl Jones. He was an art instructor at the University of Utah. He ran on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket and immediately afterwards was denied tenure, very obviously because of his political activity. The art department said his trees in his paintings were not as good as they had been before he ran for office.

KF: What did he run for?

BP: As I recall he ran for US senate if I remember correctly. I have this memory that Utah Phillips also ran for something on the Peace and Freedom Party too.

KF: I’m a little hazy on the details on that. I’ll have to go back and check on things like that. Then I don’t remember very much about the 1972 election campaign in Utah when George McGovern ran as a Democratic candidate. That I don’t remember much about.

KF: What was Salt Lake City’s response to all of this?

BP: I think things were split. I think it’s not too different a place. Obviously Utah is a conservative place and was just as conservative or more in the sixties or seventies. But there was a whole counter culture happening in Salt Lake City the same as in other parts of the country. You had hippie restaurants with funny names like The Old Man And The Famished Woman…Morning Star. There were … and vegetarian restaurants. There was another one called Mama Eddie’s Right On Beanery near Sears. The Cosmic Airplane started. There was a book and record store. Salt Lake City was not so hostile to counter culture things. That included peace posters and advertising for rallies that would be put up in those restaurants and Cosmic Airplane and Smokey’s Records. There was a counter culture happening in Salt Lake City which was connected to and a part of the peace movement. The peace movement was part of the counter culture. Obviously the rest of Salt Lake went about its business and did its own regular stuff. The LDS Church never really, that I’m aware of, never said to people, “Do not participate in peace marches.” The church was relatively supportive of the government and the war. It wasn’t like the entire city was turning out for these peace marches. But a lot of people would come out for marches, much more so than just students. I’m not sure if he’s still alive and you may have already talked to him, Wayne Holley. Do you know him?

KF: He just died. So regretful.

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BP: He and some of the people that were old time steelworkers from Utah County, from Geneva were way involved in a lot of peace things. There were these segments of Salt Lake and Utah that were supportive. You’d have some foreign students, some hippies, some professors, some union people, some old time radicals, that were all involved. I remember people yelling stuff, counter demonstrators yelling stuff at these protestors. I don’t think I remember anybody being totally out of control.

KF: Do you remember any names of other Utah County people besides those? You mentioned Wayne Holley and a couple in the Provo demonstrations. Wayne is dead. Some of his companions may also be dead.

BP: Let me think about that for a sec. I can’t really think of anybody else right off the bat. As we talk maybe someone else will come. There would almost always be some people from Utah County that would come out to demonstrations in Salt Lake. There were at least these two anti-war protests in the park in Provo that I mentioned in the late sixties, early seventies. I was trying to think if I know anyone? Not right off the bat. There were definitely people. I’m just not thinking of the names. There wasn’t much of a BYU presence. I’m trying to remember if UVCC had started then. If it did it sure wasn’t on the radar with me. I can’t remember. I don’t remember kids from Utah Valley Technical College or some other name. I don’t really remember. There were definitely other people that were connected with Wayne. I’m not sure if you have talked to Ethel Hale and Paul Wharton.

KF: I haven’t heard of Paul Wharton. Ethel and I have been emailing. :30 BP: Paul Wharton and Ethel Hale have lived together for a long time. I’m not sure if they’re married or not. He’s a retired lawyer. They live on 8th or 9th south in Salt Lake. They’re real old time folks. There’s a whole other strand of this that we haven’t talked about. I did have the chance to meet Ammon Hennacy. That was the whole Catholic worker GROUP. You know about Ammon Hennacy, Joe Hill House. Rosalie Sorrels and Utah Phillips were a bit involved with that. Paul Wharton and Ethel Hale were connected with that. There is that whole Catholic Worker, Ammon Hennacy strain that was the old time peace movement. I had a chance to go to the Joe Hill House a couple of times. It’s a whole other world. It was a whole world of what some people would call bums, hobos or homeless people. It was before that term really came into play. That’s what Ammon Hennacy was doing, running a place where homeless people could stay and get meals. Ammon Hennacy in addition to doing that would be picketing against capital punishment. Those of us that were younger were connected with that a bit. We were aware of that, but not something. At the time it was like the new left is throwing away the whole old left communist party, Marxist/Leninist analysis and going in a new direction, which looking back on it was naive and foolish. But at the time it was like we didn’t want to be connected with any of that old time stuff. The Catholic Workers strand was rolled into that old left irrelevant perspective.

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KF: What would you call the new left direction?

BP: Do you know what the Port Huron statement is? In 1964 I believe a group of people, mostly students, met in a town in Michigan called Port Huron. The Port Huron statement, which was like the philosophical document that was sort of most significant to the new left and particular to SDS. It mostly talks about participatory democracy, avoiding hierarchy, trying to do things cooperatively and peace not war. The Port Huron statement is the big philosophical document of the new left. The biggest difference was the new left saw students and youth and counter culture as the primary force that would be changing the country. The old left, the traditional Marxist/Leninist analysis focused on labor and workers as the force that would change society. In the late sixties, many workers, the most visible workers were construction workers who were usually the ones that had American flag stickers on their hard hats and would fight and bust up demonstrations and attack peace demonstrators and hippies. There was a pretty big anti- labor sentiment among a lot of new left people. That’s why people like Wayne Holly and other people that came out of a long term old left union movement were really important. It was breeching that perceived gap where you had middle class college kids who had long hair and were involved in counter culture things, understanding that they didn’t need to necessarily be antagonistic toward working class people and labor union people. That’s where the new left started by staying the new left is different. It’s not the old labor union analysis and working class analysis. It’s a different perspective.

KF: You were in VISTA. You are working for legal aide. You grew up in Utah. What accounts for you being not only a peace activist, anti-war activist, but really peace and justice.

BP: Those go together. It’s like that bumper stick. If you want peace, work for justice.

KF: Why are you different from all the other Utah people who grew up in Utah?

BP: I don’t see it quite that way. To me I see it like KRCL radio has been around for 25 or more years. I don’t see myself as the lone ranger. I think there’s a big segment of people in Utah that have been out of the Utah mainstream for a long time. There are probably a lot of different explanations for that. Part of it is my parents are both immigrants from Europe. My mom is from Hungary and my dad’s from Austria. They were involved in political activities in Europe before Hitler moved into Austria where they were living. That part of my background is parent’s perspective and philosophy and understanding some of the political perspective. My mom is 90 and my dad is going to be 90 in a few months. The last demonstration in Salt Lake when President Bush was in Salt Lake a couple of months ago, I was looking at the Tribune to see what the demonstration looked like around the time when Rocky Anderson was giving his speech, I saw my mom in the crowd at the demonstration. Here she is 90 years old still going out to these demonstrations. Obviously there is a family part involved. My brother has been active in peace and justice issues for a long time too. He lives in Boston now. I would say it’s a combination of family. I think also in Salt Lake there has always been a dissenting,

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actually in the whole country, a dissenting voice and peace movement. It just played out in Utah the same as it plays out elsewhere where there are some people who just don’t like the regular mainstream perspective, which also has religious overtones from the Mormon Church in Utah. I will say that one of the times where the people on different sides were shaken up quite a bit was when a bunch of us were involved in fighting the MX missile coming to Utah which was happening in the late seventies. That was about the only time I can remember where the Mormon Church took a pretty active role in letting everybody know that they were opposed to the MX missile. That plan went away when President Reagan was elected. That with the Mormon Church and a number of people in the Mormon Church were on the same side as the fight for peace and justice, to reduce the arms race, not have those in Utah and not ruining the environment in the West Desert. In that case you could say it was the Mormon Church as well as peace activists. You could say that was a mainstream peace and justice thing. It was the Mormon Church. I certainly wouldn’t say that I am different from everybody else. There has always been a dissenting pro-peace, pro-justice strand through all Utah history. Part of us feel fine about doing it and don’t feel like it’s just me. It’s always been a pretty healthy movement that’s waxed and waned. You mentioned that you talked to Dane Goodwin who is a perfect example of guy who was very involved in the anti-war movement and was involved in the peace and justice group in Central America which I got involved in also in the eighties. I got a chance to go to Guatemala and Nicaragua. It’s the same old thing. It’s basically large scale US corporations connected up with people in government that feel the need to ruin democracy wherever it rears its head. It’s not the kind of democracy that works to facilitate US corporations and investments. Look at a million examples to see how Vietnam wasn’t an aberration at all. It was just US foreign policy playing out in a way that was particularly costly to American lives of my generation. But it’s not really much different than the US invading the Dominican Republic, overthrowing the government in Guatemala or Ecuador or sending troops to Granada. It’s the same. Nothing much has really changed. There’s been an international peace movement forever and there’s been a Utah peace movement for along time, and there still is, which I think is great.

[tape interrupted]

BP: Laury Hammel left Salt Lake in 1971 for Boston and he’s lived there every since. His parents still live in Salt Lake. His mom’s been active in the Democratic Party and still is. Her name is Ruby Hammel. Laury has been gone from Utah for at least 35 years.

KF: How long is he staying here?

BP: He’s here for a conference.

KF: Is it an English conference?

BP: No, he’s here for a thing called the Social Venture Network. He’s involved in socially responsible business. He’s part owner of a group of tennis clubs and exercise clubs in

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Boston. He is involved with socially responsible businesses and ballet and the local first movement. They have an annual conference here called Social Venture Network. He’s involved with that as one of the speakers at the conference. He is staying at the Westward Look Hotel. It’s a hotel up in the foothills. You should give him a call. He’d be happy to talk to you. It’s the Westward Look resort. He’s an interesting guy because he was a student body officer at the University of Utah. He played on the tennis team and was also involved in SDS. That’s an interesting combination.

KF: How about Rosalie Sorrels.

BP: Rosalie Sorrels is a pretty well known folk singer. She lives in Idaho. She has recorded 25 albums.

KF: I have got Bruce Philips interviewed already.

BP: He’s a good guy. He knows a lot.

KF: I’d like to take you back. The Vietnam War ended about 1975. What was next for you as far as peace movement?

BP: I was trying to remember that. There was kind of a break there where there wasn’t much going on. The MX missile was coming along in there somewhere. Between 1975 and 1985 there was the MX missile and the waste dump. That was an interesting one because it involved environmental people as well as some people that had been more involved with the peace related stuff. Do you know about that?

KF: I’ve never heard of the Canyonlands.

BP: Basically in yet another really stupid idea, not quite as stupid as the planned dump that is going on now in Tooele, on the Goshute Reservation, there was a really stupid plan to put a really large scale nuclear waste dump in Davis and Lavender Canyon. If you’ve ever gone to Canyonlands and gone to Squaw Flat campground in the Needles District, there is one road that goes into this campground, then it dead ends. These two really pretty canyons. Canyonlands is here like this. Colorado River is over here. These two canyons are just barely outside Canyonlands. They’re literally not in the national park, but they :45 right up the national park. The plan was to put a gigantic nuclear waste dump in one or both of those canyons and bring nuclear waste in from all over the country and have a great big high security, 24/7 lighted fenced off area. It was just about as stupid as anything you can think of. Not only is nuclear power a stupid, ridiculous idea and nuclear waste is a huge long term, health, safety and environmental problem, but putting a gigantic waste dump right adjacent to Canyonlands National Park was just about as stupid as you could get. There were quite a few people that were involved in fighting the Canyonlands Nuclear Waste dump both in Moab and in Salt Lake. Some in Provo too.

KF: Were you a lawyer by then?

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BP: Partly. I was in law school in 1974-77. I’m a little hazy on some of the years when the nuke dump fight was on. I’m a little bit vague. Basically as the Vietnam War was ending a bunch of the people including me that were peace people also got involved in the environmental movement. So as the war ended and the national anti-war cause went down the environmental issues came up. There were demonstrations against pollution from Kennecott Copper here in Salt Lake and the nuclear waste dump was the most ridiculous. When I was in law school there were also plans to put a gigantic coal burning power plant on the border of Capitol Reef National park, which was another really stupid idea. It was almost like, “Let’s find some really pretty places and see if we can totally wreck them.” The nuclear waste dump was pretty out there in terms of a pretty dump idea. Happily that got defeated. Then the power plant which was the Kaiparowits Power Plant was defeated. I remember working against that when I was in law school. Then the MX missile stuff came along in the late seventies also. How those things sequenced I’m a little bit hazy. On the Canyonlands nuclear waste dump and the MX Missile and some other environmental issues.

KF: Do you remember some of the leaders?

BP: The main leader on the MX thing, the one who was the most active and out front was a guy named Stan Holmes who was a high school teacher at Alta High. Stan was the MX information center. There was a bunch of other people. On all these things, all of them were group efforts. There were a lot of people that knew each other from some other thing in the past and people would come and go in Salt Lake. Stan Holmes was the best informed and was the most visible person on fighting the MX missile. Then there was Ed Firmage who reportedly got the Mormon Church to oppose the MX missile. He ran for congress. I’m not sure if he’s still teaching at the law school or if he’s retired. He ran for congress. He’s kind of a Mormon peace person who retained his Mormon Church relations to some extent. He was involved in getting the Mormon Church to oppose the MX missile. The Canyonlands nuclear waste dump, one of the people that was really active in that was woman named Terry Martin, who as far as I know is still married to Bill Lockhart. Bill Lockhart is an important player here too. He’s the guy that I mentioned who is the law professor at the University of Utah who made it possible for the peace demonstration to happen in Provo. He was about the first environmental lawyer, the grand daddy of environmental lawyers in Utah. Over the years he has represented a lot of different environmental groups for free. He taught environmental law at the University of Utah and I was a student of his. I worked with him in opposing the Kaparowits power plant. That was a project that I worked on in law school. I think that was about the time as the MX missile. It was in the late seventies.

KF: Once you got your law degree you worked for legal aid immediately?

BP: Yes, here I work for legal aid. In Utah there are two different sister organizations. There is the Salt Lake Legal Aid Society, who I never worked for. There is Utah Legal Services, who I did work for. Utah Legal Services is a statewide program. Salt Lake

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Legal Aid is a narrow ER program, just in Salt Lake. I never worked for legal aid, but I did work for Utah Legal Services. When I first became a lawyer I worked in Ogden for a year or two for Utah Legal Services.

KF: How did that promote peace and justice?

BP: My perspective is that lawyers can do several things. They can work for the bad guys. I’m not interested in being a prosecutor. I think that lawyers that work for big companies that are the primary culprits in destroying a lot of the environment, and some lawyers make it possible for them to do that without any kind of punishment and restraint. Then there are other ways you can use the law to help people and movements. I don’t think that legal aid or legal services work directly produces peace in the sense that it’s not specifically focused on peace related stuff. What it is focused on is trying to help poor people have an opportunity to get a fair shake in the legal system and have somebody assist them in standing up for their rights. In that sense it’s again if you want peace, work for justice perspective. It’s trying to make sure that everybody has an equal chance even though that’s really a joke, I don’t believe that. But trying to ensure that poor people have an opportunity for somebody to represent them in a variety of different legal contexts. Over the years I’ve represented and handled a wide variety of cases. It’s usually trying to help poor people get what they’re entitled to and not get pushed around unfairly by the government or by landlords or by car dealers or hyper active social workers or some other combination of forces. I wouldn’t say that legal aid and legal services work is directly focused on peace, because it’s not trying to pursue disarmament or anti-militarization or increased spending directly on war things, but I think indirectly it is helping people that would otherwise be pushed around and achieve justice in some opportunities for their lives to be free.

KF: I’m hoping that once you get the transcripts it would be so helpful for this project to sit down with you again. The stuff that you told the details about in the beginning is just wonderful details for us. I’d like to hear some more of the same stuff about this other things.

BP: There is a lot of good stuff and interesting people too. This is a fun project.

KF: It’s phenomenal. Thanks.

[end of interview; :56]

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