QUIET END TO A LONG WALK FOR PEACE

They had walked for 260 days and more than 3,700 miles, and yesterday, their numbers having been swelled by like-minded Americans from all over the nation, they marched in an eerie silence toward the White House carrying their message of peace.

Members of the Great Peace March had trekked across the continent talking disarmament to anyone who would listen, but on the final day of their march they chose another way to make their point.

Setting off from Meridian Hill Park to the mournful music of a single bagpipe, more than 3,000 marchers made their way down 16th Street NW to Lafayette Park, across from the White House, without uttering a sound.

"Can words adequately express our concern about nuclear weapons, our hopes for our children, our country, our world?" organizers wrote on a tiny card passed out in Meridian Hill Park. "Hiroshima's dead, and the unborn future, watch us silently. We are walking for them . . . . We are speaking out, in silence."

Washington marked an end to the journey the marchers began March 1 in a Los Angeles parking lot, and many hoped it would mark the beginning of a grass-roots effort to end the arms race.

"The march had nothing to do with the ending," said psychiatrist Dick Edelman, one of a core group of about 700 who walked across the nation. "It had to do with raising the consciousness of millions of Americans, and we did that."

About 7,500 persons, according to police estimates, turned out for the full day of rallies that began at Meridian Hill Park, continued in Lafayette Park, and ended at the Lincoln Memorial.

As night fell, thousands of candles were lit from a lantern that had been itself lit from the Hiroshima Peace Park's eternal flame. The steps of the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool were outlined by the flickering lights, as prayers were offered and the group sang "Imagine," a John Lennon song that calls for world peace.

Many of those who came yesterday to walk the last few miles or to add their support had traveled from as far away as Las Vegas, Broomfield, Colo., and Kingston, R.I. "You have to come because it's right," said Bill Fazzio, 24, a senior at the University of Rhode Island. "It doesn't matter if it's going make any difference or not."

Some, like Mary Beth Byrne, came because the marchers had touched them on their travels. "We were part of the march as it came through Indiana," said Byrne, who had driven all night with a friend on the trip from Hammond, Ind. "We had them in our homes, and we've followed them ever since."

Actress Bonnie Franklin, star of the television series "One Day at a "I believe in what these people have done for the future. And it would be nice to think we have a future."

-- actress Bonnie Franklin Time," and her husband, Marvin Minoff, flew in from Los Angeles to march the last few steps for the same reason. "I believe in what these people have done for the future," said Franklin. "And it would be nice to think we have a future."

Some of the marchers reveled in the warm response they received and said that it boded well for the future of the peace movement. Others were not so optimistic.

David Sheehey, a 44-year-old cabinetmaker from Santa Barbara, held a flickering candle at the Lincoln Memorial and reflected on his just-completed trip across the country.

"I'm happy it's over, but I'm extremely disappointed with the turnout across the country and here today," said Sheehey. "I was hoping for a wave of people. I feel we were on a wake-up walk. We were trying to say, 'Wake up America. See what is happening in the arms race.' I really don't know if we accomplished anything."

Whatever else they accomplished, the marchers had walked through 15 states, supported by a caravan of buses and trucks and a budget that totaled less than $900,000 for the entire trip.

They endured parched days and bone-chilling nights in the Mojave Desert and marveled at the snow-clad splendor of Colorado's Loveland Pass -- obstacles the naysayers said they would never overcome. They trudged through hot, humid Nebraska cornfields and watched the changing autumn leaves in the small towns of Pennsylvania. They crossed the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan and walked the streets of Harlem.

If the land and the weather offered extremes, the emotional terrain was no less diverse.

They were touched in Girard, Ohio, where children waved from the school windows and all the town's church bells rang to welcome them. They were saddened in Nebraska when a small town shut down all its stores as they approached, and in McKeesport, Pa., where a man threatened to drive over the tents in their camp and teen-agers put cherry bombs in their portable bathrooms.

Sometimes they encountered warmth and hostility all at once. In Toledo, Ohio, 79-year-old marcher Franklin Folsom remembered, seven hostile picketers "marched along with us . . . but they disappeared when we got to the center of town and the mayor and half the City Council were there to greet us."

The lowest point for many came on a dirt road in the California desert, where the march nearly died from an overdose of elaborate plans and a lack of money. Hundreds of the original marchers pulled out, but a core group remained, scraped together funds and resurrected the march.

"I've never experienced more of the extremes in life," said Kristin Grace, a 22-year-old marcher from Cleveland. "It seemed more like nine years than nine months."

And what did they accomplish?

A great deal, according to speakers at the rallies. The Rev. Jesse Jackson likened their pilgrimage to that of Gandhi, saying, "You have won the hearts of our nation." Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) brought congratulations from 114 members of Congress.

And astronomer Carl Sagan told them, "Reason ultimately will prevail {to end the arms race} . The alternative is that no one will be left to do the reasoning or the emoting."

Not everyone agreed. A group called the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow was waiting on the sidewalk at the corner of 16th and I streets NW with signs that trumpeted the Reagan administration motto of "Peace Through Strength," and Craig Rucker of Alexandria, a member, said he believed that the marchers were "sincerely misled people."

Still, the marchers said they felt that they had made a difference.

"The march has given life to the peace movement," said Valerie Gaddis, 25, of Lincoln, Neb. "It is something tangible that people can latch on to."

"We got a lot of people talking in families and in schools," said Elizabeth Fairchild of Encinitas, Calif. "Our effect will be stronger a few years down the road . . . "

Tony Boff, 29, of Toledo was not one of the marchers, but he said the march had created "a lot of energy {in the peace movement} , a real revival. It seemed as if things had died and were over, but this is here, this is now and this is something vital." Staff writer Sue Anne Pressley contributed to this report.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.