PEACE WALK------Rudy Stolfer, of Washington, Pa., passed through Winfield Saturday while heading east on a 6,000-mile walk around the United States to promote world peace. Stolfer had already walked 4.900 miles and expects to end the walk in Washington, D.C. on Labor Day weekend. (Judith Zaccaria Courier)

May 6, 1998

By .JUDITH ZACCARIA

If you were downtown around parade time Saturday you may have noticed a tall blond man wearing a hat with a cross and peace sign on it and pulling a coffin east on Ninth Avenue.

He wasn't part of the KANZA Days parade. His walk is considerably longer Rudy Stolfer is walking across America to promote worldwide peace and the end to all wars.

Stolfer 48 originally from Washington,Pa. had already walked about 4,000 miles of a 6,000 trip he said. The walk began in Washington, D.C.on Thanksgiving 1996. Stolfer and four others made their way from Washington to Oregon by July 1997.

On July 13 1997 Stolfer left Ochoco National Forest in Oregon . Made my way down the coast to L..A. and hung a left to Washington D.C. " traveling through Arizona, New Mexico , Texas and Oklahoma before getting into Kansas.Traveling at a pace of about three mph he expects to arrive in Washington, D.C. on Labor Day weekend in time for a peace demonstration , 10,000 Drums to be held in Lafayette Park across from the White House.

At various times during the trip Stolfer said. he has been accompanied by other people who walk with him a short way or many miles. He estimates about 75 people have walked about 1,000 miles of the trip with him. In Medford Okla. he visited one evening with a family whose children had invited a dozen of their friends to meet him. The next morning five kids wakened him in his motel room and asked him to walk to school with them.

The best part of the trip, he said ,is "You get to meet people you don't read about in the paper. There are so many genuinely good people out there."

Stolfer said the trip has strengthed his faith he carries a worn copy of the New Testament with him and quotes from it frequently. People qoute lines like "There shall he wars and the rumor of wars" to justify the continued existence of war, he said, but I respond with "They shall heat their swords into plowshares'" I think that is a good goal to work for. It will take a little stronger effort. The last war was fought and won for us 2,000 years ago when we were saved. But you still hear a lot of opposition to that premise. The premises we live under are so limiting. Once you realize the power of the Lord realize God has no limitations.

People continue to believe in the need for wars because of "poor programming" Stolfer said. Garbage in; garbage out. Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex and guess who's running things now. Every five minutes worldwide $8.5 million is spent on war while 150 children starve to death. It's a poor choice of priorities.."

The walk for peace came as a spontaneous idea out of Stolfer's contacts with Proposition One, the group that has been holding a continuous Peace Vigil in Lafayette Park since 1981.

He had worked for Green Peace for a couple of years before deciding to make the walk, had run his own business, making educational puzzles for children ,worked 16 years on the railroad and spent four years in the Marines. He'd also been a surrogate father to his former fiancee's son for eight years. "When you help raise a child," he said, "you get to thinking they should have something better."

Stolfer is in a line of peace walkers, he said, including Gandhi. Martin Luther King Jr, and the Peace Pilgrim, a woman who walked around the country for peace from 1953 to 1981. "The first peace pilgrim was Jesus," Stolfer said. "I feel this walk was inspired by God."

Stolfer said he does not ask for donations, but people have given him money, a meal, new pairs of sneakers, even sometimes a place to stay. He usually camps out in a tent and if he has no other means of getting food he's not above scrounging in trash bins

Police in most areas have been cooperative, he said, though the Oxford police warned him about walking on U.S. 160 because they'd had complaints. Where he was walking, he said, there were no shoulders so he had to walk in the road.

The coffin Stolfer is pulling reads "War Victims." Another sign reads 'Vote Walt Root." Walt Root is an acroynym for 'We Are Living The Results Of Our Thoughts" a line Stolfer read in a book. "If we think we deserve better," he said, "we'll get it."