Louisville, Times
Louisville, Colorado
Wednesday, May 14, 1997

Crossing the nation
Activist's coast-to-coast walk passes through Louisville

By GREG AVERY

After walking toward it for more than an hour, Rudy Stolfer was unphased by the hill ahead on South Boulder Road.

Pulling all his essential belongings behind him in a coffin-shaped cart, he sized up the hill from its eastern foot just west of Via Appia.

"I saw alot of these in Virginia, so they don't bother me," he said jokingly. "Behind this, though, I noticed a couple big bumps with snow on top of them. Those might just slow me down."

Only somebody who has walked more than half the country could see the Rocky Mountains as mere bumps in the road. Stolfer doesn't seem to dwell on obstacles anyway--he's in the midst of a one-man, coast-to-coast mission for peace and social justice.

Stolfer ambled through Louisville and Lafayette along South Boulder Road on Monday, pulling a cart on which rested a cardboard coffin with "War Victims" scrawled in large letters on its side. By walking across the country, he hopes to raise awareness for the effort of the Washington D.C.-based Proposition One Committee, which seeks to get the world's powers to eliminate nuclear weapons.

He started walking with four others in Washington D.C. on Dec. 3, heading south and west. Three of his partners "decided warmer climes, hot showers and their beds would be better" and dropped out, he said. His remaining partner was hit by a car near Selma, Ala., suffering two broken legs.

After getting a new cart built to replace the one destroyed in the accident, Stolfer set out alone March 11 From Birmingham, Ala., and has covered an average of 20 miles a day, he said. He is working on his fourth pair of shoes since the trip's beginning.

Tanned and toned from about 2,000 miles walking (he has accepted few rides), Stolfer's personal mission is more generally centered on promoting nonviolence, environmental consciousness and activism through voting, letter writing and protests.

His protest of social injustice is most noticeable in the upside down American flag he flies from his cart. The upside-down flag is a recognized symbol of distress and, to Stolfer it's a symbol of a society in distress.

The victims of war his coffin symbolizes, he says, are those who suffer at the hands of warfare, racism, class conflict and failed social supports. Chief among his causes is environmental issues related to nuclear and chemical weapons.

He blames "misdirected priorities," greed, large-scale apathy for these problems, and a shrinking amount of freedoms enjoyed in this country. He points to the ongoing Oklahoma City bombing trial as a symptom of the country's problems.

"Isn't it time we said 'Whoah,'?" he asked. "If we don't change our ways soon, we're gone. We are phasing ourselves out."

"It's time we took our country back, but we've got to do it non-violently. Without that touch of non-violence, it'll show we haven't learned anything."

Generosity plenty on the road

One thing Stolfer says he has learned a lot about is the generosity of the nation.

Walking across the states, he has been put up in hotel rooms by church groups, allowed to spend the night on a sheriff's couch, given countless meals and had his cart re-welded by an art group in Amarillo. Locally, Lafayette's Cycletherpy donated some spare inner tubes to his cause.

After spending time with friends in Boulder, he plans to cut northwest and make it to the Pacific Coast in Washington by July. From there he plans to head south through California.

Prior to this trip, Stolfer, an ex-Marine who was stationed stateside during the Vietnam War, was a GreenPeace activist in the mid-West.