THE GREENWOOD
Commonwealth
Greenwood, Miss.
Tuesday, March 25, 1997
Page 1
By WILLIAM F. WEST
Staff Writer
The graveled highway shoulders have become Rudy Stolfer's platform these days.
The Pennsylvania man is walking across America, towing a makeshift coffin, in a what he calls a statement for world peace.
He stepped through Carrolton and Greenwood Monday, heading for the West Coast by summer.
"The bottom line is I think it is about time we all start getting along," the bearded Stolfer said while walking along U.S. 82 west of Carrollton.
Spouting a philosophy straight from the '60s, Stolfer will talk to anyone who stops about "puppet politicians," the evils of big business and the wrong-headedness of the war on drugs.
He said he is heading to Washington state and hopes to be at a gathering of like-minded members of the Rainbow Family by the Fourth of July.
"I pretty much feel that by coming out here, I am going to get to talk to folks, the common folks that have been out here like I was, working, Slaving away and getting short changed," he said.
Stolfer is from Washington, Pa., and he grew up in a family of teachers. He said his college career was checkered and he was a Marine in the late 1960s. After a number of false starts, and a few jobs, he found the Rainbow Family. That, he said, led him to the first of his "peace walks," participating in one from New York City to Washington, D.C.
Stolfer said he is protesting the federal government's involvement in the drug war. "Basically, the drug war has been going on for about 25-30 years and it has done nothing to stop the flow of traffic. A whole branch of our citizenry is being treated as criminals when essentially it is a medical problem," he said.
Peace walk gets message out
On Dec. 3, he and four others left on another walk with a mock casket. It's labeled with the words "war victims" in reference to those caught up in the drug war.
He's the only walker left.
He said Mississippian's and Southerners have treated him wonderfully. "The reputation that the South has for that good old Southern hospitality has been cemented in my mind set, because we bumped into nothing the entire walk but hospitality. And the rumors that are spread about the Southern constabulary being all nasty and everything has been disproved in our book," he said.
He said people have come out from their homes, wished him well and have even given him money. At one point, he pampered himself a bit and spent the night at a motel. But, when he's walking where the next city or town is a long distance, he might stop and sleep in an adjacent woods.
"I never know how far I am going to make it. People stop by and talk, and I don't feel like I am cutting them short." "When you get out here and you are by yourself, and you don't have anybody to talk to and somebody pulls you over, you tend to chew their ear off," he said.
And he may have the chance to keep talking. He says if there's no world peace by the Fourth of July, he'll take off hiking again.
With all those miles behind him--and ahead of him--he may need new shoes.