Connections: Hero Among Us
Let’s not blame the election but bad international news coverage for not knowing about the Peace Boat. You may not have heard about it, and I would not have if I had not been paying attention to what Judy Lerner, a part-time East Hampton resident and a nonagenarian, has been up to lately.
Peace Boat’s mission is to promote a nuclear-free world and the 17 “sustainable development goals” of the United Nations. It left Japan on Aug. 18, headed for 21 countries in 104 days. It docked at Pier 90 in Manhattan last month, with five atomic-bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki aboard, here to offer testimony at the U.N., and it sponsored a “Floating Festival for Sustainability” onboard on Oct. 20. Judy Lerner was there.
Ms. Lerner was honored with the William Sloane Coffin Jr. Peacemaker Award in early October by the Peace Action Fund of New York State. A longtime special-education teacher and former teachers union president who raised three children in Harrison, N.Y., and Greenwich, Conn., she has been a peace activist since at least 1971, when she was among the founders of Women Strike for Peace, which fought nuclear testing. She has been all over the world, fact-gathering and attending forums, including Cuba (when it was off-limits), Vietnam (with the antiwar movement ), Japan, China, Kenya, and Denmark.
Ms. Lerner was on the board of the Center for Constitutional Rights for 20 years. Now the director of the executive committee of the 1,000-member Non-Governmental Organization Department of Public Information, she spends three or four days a week at the U.N., where she works to engage others, particularly the young, in its activities.
Cora Weiss, a part-time East Hamptoner who was profiled in The Star in August, gave a few words of introduction to Ms. Lerner at the dinner at which the Peacemaker award was presented. Speaking of Mr. Coffin, she said he could gather people of different persuasions together. “And you,” Ms. Weiss said, referring to Ms. Lerner, “persuade people also: to campaign against nuclear weapons, to call for no more war, to work together with other peace groups, to learn about the United Nations, and to call for education for peace in our schools.”
Noting that she was almost 95 years old, Ms. Lerner also spoke. “I only hope that I reach 100 years and can look back at all of my work and struggle for a world without war. . . . Together we will not only ensure peace and equality, but we will do something else significant. We will disrupt aging!”
East Hampton is often thought of as a place where celebrities roam, and that is not incorrect. But among our celebrities are people who would never think of themselves in that way, but whose life work may help make this a better world.