Booth, 94, lived life for peace

Don Booth, who died last Friday at age 94, stood for peace. He stood for social justice.

And he stood for years, too.

He stood in front of the State House, asking Concord to give peace a chance. He stood there when Iran took Americans hostage, when we went to war with Iraq and when we ate sandwiches downtown during the noontime lunch hour.

He stood there when it rained, when it snowed and when an oxygen tank helped him breathe. He stood there while we snickered at him, rolled our eyes because of him and barely noticed him.

The only time Booth sat, it seems, was when he needed a wheelchair the past year or two. Then he'd sit in front of the State House, same message, same signs, same man.

Disagree with Booth's politics, if you'd like, or call him weird, if you must, but never question the man's sincerity and passion for what he believed in.

His was a lifetime quest, never to be confused with a fad or passing fancy.

"He never let go of the belief that the world would come around and people would come around," noted Canterbury's Steve Booth, Don Booth's 59-year-old son.

"He was as enthusiastic about life and hope for the future and people's ability to learn from each other on the day he died as he was 50 years ago," said Brookfield's Donna San Antonio, who knew Booth for nearly half his life.

Booth was a hippie before the counterculture and a beatnik before the beat generation.

He was a complex thinker, writing two self-published books on solar building and founding a business dedicated to passive solar construction.

Yet Booth remained simple in many ways, a slender man remembered in recent years for his wispy white hair, his squeaky voice and his relentless pursuit of a concept that is easy to explain and, thus far, has been hard to reach.

Peace.

"He carried on in so many activities," said Bow's Mary Lee Sargent, a retired college teacher who stood with Booth at the State House many times over the past six years. "He was one of these deeply dedicated people that are seen as crazy by people who aren't like that. His life was peace and justice."

Booth filed for and earned conscientious objector status while Hitler rolled through Europe. In Booth's journal, written in 1940, before America's entry into World War II, he wrote: "But I think I'd rather not kill or be killed, and would rather direct my energies to constructive work rather than destructive. . . . I've seen too much of the present turning of energies both national and personal to killing and I don't think the waste is justified."

During the war he worked in Civilian Public Service camps, organized by church groups, digging water holes in Gorham, hauling wood in Oregon and building privies in Florida. Once, a driver in Florida picked him up hitchhiking, asked why he wasn't fighting the Nazis, then told him to get out of the car.

"He was part of a generation of pacifists, and those people during World War II were very unusual people," said Arnie Alpert, program coordinator for the state's American Friends Service Committee. "It was a small bunch of people who felt very strongly about their beliefs and were as passionate against Fascism as anyone who went to war."

Booth settled in Canterbury with his wife, Lois, an 88-year-old resident of Havenwood-Heritage Heights. They had six kids, all of whom got the peace bug early.

"His kids got arrested at Seabrook before he did," Alpert said.

One of the enduring images of Booth is a black-and-white snapshot from 1986 at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. It shows him locking his right hand onto his left wrist, his face expressionless, as the police haul him away, their hands hooked under his armpits.

Years before that, Booth went to Washington, D.C., to listen to Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream. He held sit-ins on waiting room couches in political offices and held signs outside post offices to protest the use of tax dollars for weapons.

He was arrested several times, but that hardly mattered. Not in the bigger picture.

Most locals, though, knew Booth as the old man who stood in front of the State House for years. Like the dome on top, Booth was there all the time. He didn't move, and he stood for something deeply meaningful.

"He was the one person who would go out in all kinds of weather, when there would be no one else there," said San Antonio, who runs Appalachian Mountain Teen Project, a youth development program. "So even when there were 200 people there, it was always Don who felt like the anchor of that experience for everyone."

Sargent is a Midwest pacifist. She moved here from Illinois after retiring in 2003, near the start of the Iraq war.

She soon noticed Booth doing his thing, holding signs, promoting peace. She saw him there every Wednesday at noon.

Then she saw him there every day. She joined him three times a week, happy to meet a new friend in a strange land.

"I was looking for my own people," Sargent said. "I walked up and said, 'May I join you?' He was just the warmest, most welcoming, sweetheart of a person. He embraced me, literally."

He went on retreats with the teens from San Antonio's program, talking, listening, hoping they'd have a peaceful future. He also donated land and helped build the solar passive structure that houses the Appalachian Project today.

"He was up on the roof shingling," San Antonio said. "Incredibly vibrant into his early 80s."

The oxygen tube was added five years ago, the wheelchair shortly after that.

But Booth kept coming. He'd get rides to the State House from Lois and Steve. He'd hold his sign, never in a threatening way, never intimidating, always respectful.

"I don't think that by standing there on the street for an hour that he thought people would change their attitude," Alpert said. "He just felt he was going to be out there and hold true to his beliefs. He hoped it would unleash something positive in the world."

And that, we know, is what Booth stood for.

(Ray Duckler can be reached at 369-3304 or rduckler@cmonitor.com [1].)

(A memorial service for Booth will held Feb. 5 at 11 a.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 274 Pleasant  Street in Concord. A gathering is planned after the service at the State House plaza, 107 North Main Street. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to NH Peace Action, 4 Park Street, 03301.)