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John
Wallach
By
Michael Wallach
11 July 2002
Dear Seeds family,
As many of you may now know, yesterday at 3pm, my father,
John Wallach, died. He was the Founder and President of
Seeds of Peace. Most of you knew him personally.
I am slightly overwhelmed right now, but I hope I can
convey to you how deeply he loved each one of you, and
how passionately he believed in you. Each of you knows
him from camp in your own way, and in the way that we
shared him -- as the inspirational leader, the man who
insisted you work harder, reach out more, and believe
more deeply in yourself and in your friends. He felt this
with his whole being. He had no regrets after spending
time with you, after speaking to you, after building this
program. He knew that you were his dreams come true.
My father was not always a peace activist. He was the
son of Holocaust survivors, who had escaped from Europe
only by the smallest margin of luck. He used to share
the story of my grandparents escape with me, always ending
it with the phrase "its amazing that we're alive!"
If you think deeply, you will recognize his voice in that
sentence for yourself.
My father used to tell me that when he was little, he
would lay awake in bed, sneaking the radio under the covers.
Late at night, listening to jazz, he would wonder how
amazing it was that he was here. He would think to himself
about all the people in the world who had died, about
all the adults who had been killed before having children,
about all the children who had never grown up to be parents.
He told me many times, how he wondered what he done to
deserve his chance on this earth.
He didn't want to be a journalist at first. He wanted
to be an actor. He gave everything he had to performing
the role of King Lear, one of Shakespeare's most famous
plays. A big New York City director named Elia Kazan watched
him, stopped everyone, and said "that man is going
to be a great actor someday." Six months later, he
was kicked out of drama school. They said "his head
was too much in control of his heart."
Perhaps that's why he approached his life with so much
heart. He had a radio show where he pretended to be on
an airplane with the people he interviewed, and made the
airplane noises himself. He had an antique store in Washington,
and sold antiques to a young woman lawyer named Madeleine
Albright. Not long after, he became a reporter, and his
first big story almost got him fired. He had heard that
the American President, Lyndon Johnson had considered
stopping the Vietnam War, but had decided against it.
John wrote a front page story. Johnson, the President,
was so upset at the bad press that he asked the head of
the newspaper to fire him. "Get rid of that whippersnapper"
said Johnson. I don't think it was the first mischevious
pro-peace thing my dad did, and it certainly wasn't the
last.
Later in his life, more presidents, and the CIA wished
he had been fired. In the 1980's he broke a newspaper
story in America about how the U.S. government had illegally
shipped weapons to the Contras in Nicaragua, and how the
CIA had secretly mined the Nicaraguan harbors. It was
called the Iran-Contra scandal, and he won the highest
award you could win for journalism, called the Overseas
Press Club award.
In 1985, my father began working for peace in a different
way, starting a dialogue program between U.S. and Soviet
Diplomats, and an exchange between American and Soviet
artists. It was called the Chataqua Conference, and thousands
of Soviet citizens came to a small town in New York to
meet Americans for the first time. Together, they listened
to bluegrass music and talked about the future, and shook
hands for the first time. Soon after, my father started
a newspaper called "WE," which was the first
paper published in both the Soviet Union and the United
States. To raise publicity for the paper, he brought American
Jazz singers to Moscow. People were so excited that they
filled the thousand seat auditorium night after night.
I remember them singing -- I was fourteen as I stood in
the back of the theater. They clapped in unison in Moscow,
very communist, but by the end of each show, their hearts
had been so touched by the message, and their excitement
so built up by the music that they stood on the seats
of their chairs cheering, screaming and demanding more.
Seeing that was the first time I ever cried out of happiness.
Of course, the newspaper was such a radical step forward
that the KGB began to grow worried, and soon the Soviet
editions ended because "Russia had run out of paper."
In 1993, as the Soviet Union had began to change, he was
invited to Moscow by Mikhael Gorbachev and given its highest
award, the Soviet Medal of Freedom. As Gorbachav got off
the stage, my dad pulled him aside and opened up his coat.
Inside were five baseballs! Yes, he had hidden five baseballs
in his pockets. Strangely, he asked Gorbachev to sign
them. I sat in the back of the room watching. "What
are you doing, I asked?" I was incredibly embarrassed
for me and my father. "Oh, I have this friend in
Washington," he said "and he loves baseballs,
and I owe him a favor because he gave me money to help
start a new project I have..."
That new project was Seeds of Peace. In the middle of
a cocktail party, he had chimed his glass, stopped the
chatter, and publicly asked the Israeli, Egyptian and
Palestinian ambassadors if they would send him twenty
kids each to meet the other side. My father had written
three books about the Middle East and he knew that to
get some real progress he was going to have to put people
on the spot. Embarrassed in front of the crowd, and trusting
my father (who, after all, had won all these presitigous
awards), they one by one said yes. He didn't want them
to even consider taking it back, so he wrote a story in
the newspapers about it the next day.
Not long after, he met Bobbie Gottschalk, and then Tim
Wilson. That first year, they put together camp with forty
five kids. That September the kids were on the White House
Lawn. Yitzhak Rabin said "witnessing these young
people standing here together gives me hope that one day
we will have peace." As Rabin and Arafat walked by,
my dad, in his usual way, jumped out and stuffed the Seeds
of Peace T-Shirts in their hands. Before they knew it,
Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton were standing
together holding Seeds of Peace T-Shirts, poster boys
for peace. Bill Clinton grew to know Seeds of Peace and
my father very closely, presenting him with a peace award
in 2001.
But in 1994, my dad had to make a decision -- he couldn't
continue his career as a journalist AND run Seeds of Peace.
It was one or the other. He had been a journalist for
twenty six years. It was all he knew. It gave him a good
salary, with benefits for when he got old. He was a member
of the White House press team - the top of his profession.
His articles were printed around the country. Important
people like Henry Kissinger and Vice President Bush spoke
to him about their opinions. Seeds of Peace was a summer
camp with fifty kids. But it had heart. It promised something
that nothing else in the world could -- a chance to end
killing, to end generations of sadness, to give people
hope. He chose Seeds of Peace.
For the past ten years he has worked night and day to
make Seeds of Peace a reality. He called hundreds of his
friends, asking if they could help in any way. Some people
donated sports items, some people donated paintings, some
people donated some time to live in their homes - so my
dad crated auctions for people to buy the gifts and give
the money to Seeds of Peace. Slowly, he built up enough
money to run the program every year. Every June and July
we would have camp. Every September, John would go back
to his friends and ask for something more. Slowly, his
friends began to rally around his effort, and Seeds of
Peace grew to be more and more secure. The auctions grew
to get bigger and bigger. Musicians began to donate their
time, and soon we had concerts and shows to support Seeds
of Peace. For the last three years, Seeds of Peace has
sold out Carnegie Hall -- a two thousand seat auditorium
-- in what is probably the biggest American pro-peace
rally each year.
And Seeds of Peace, of course, has grown and grown. With
each one of you coming to camp and meeting kids from the
other side for yourself, another spirit entered the dream,
another heart joined this incredible family. Who could
say now that my father wasn't following his heart? Every
summer, hundreds of young Seeds stood in Maine, side by
side in T-shirts and green shirts, singing the same songs,
playing the same games, trying, for the first times in
their lives, to discuss the conflict with people from
the other side. How did it feel? You tell me. For my father,
it was the most exciting moments of his life. He had seen
the violence up close while he was a journalist. I remember
meeting one of his friends who had had his arm blown off
in a letter bomb. And I remember getting a video tape
from the FBI about how to open the mail in case someone
wanted to attack us. But now, thanks to your courage as
well as his, my father was looking out at Israelis and
Arabs standing next to each other, playing ping pong,
swimming in the lake. When he said "look around,
think how lucky we are to be here" he really meant
it. Now, think how much those days mean. Take some time
to think about how lucky WE were to be there, with him,
thanks to him -- thanks to his belief that we have to
live with heart and with courage. We simply aren't awake
if we don't.
As my dad got older, he grew to understand this idea
more and more deeply. He repeated his idea to make one
friend a thousand times, because he knew that if you opened
your heart to someone, then you would see life in a whole
new way. You would cherish your friend, you would cherish
the grass, you would cherish the lake, the songs -- even
the food. Most of all, you would cherish the short time
that you had with the people around you, whether at camp,
or at home, or anywhere you were in the world.
My dad's friend Bernie, who was a reporter with him told
me today that all the other reporters (including Bernie)
were always a little bit jealous of John. No matter where
they went in the world, John always knew more people the
minute they got off the plane. Dad knew everyone, and
he wanted to be friends with everyone. I even remember
learning chess, when I was very little, from a Russian
spy that my dad used to have over to the house for dinner.
He had big thick hands which moved the pieces around.
Vladimir was his name, and he always told me, "you
can't just think about one part of the game, you have
to think about all the pieces, everywhere, all the time."
My dad told me, as he grew more reflective about his
life, that he had always felt like he had a ticking clock
inside him, that time was running out. He had felt that
way since he was a little boy. Perhaps thats why he fought
so hard to do so much. "Just give me two years,"
he kept saying, "just give me two years." He
died exactly two years from his diagnosis with cancer.
While the cancer grew in my dad, his sickness gave him
an ever deeper understanding of what it meant to act with
heart. He said he always cherished watching the coexistence
sessions, understanding that everyone needed to shout
and to yell and to cry and cry and cry. "Its a detox
program," he wrote, "to get rid of all the hatred
that we have built up inside." If only he could have
cried away his cancer.
Instead, that job lies with all of us. We are his life
continued, and more than that we are his dream. As I grew
closer to my dad before he died, I began to understand
that the greatest gift he had given me was the ability
to love. Slowly, effortlessly, he had taught me how to
love a thousand things -- how to love Shakespeare, how
to love his favorite poet, Robert Frost, how to love newspapers,
how to love acting, how to love the sky and the lake,
and the trees. He taught me how to love Israelis, and
Palestinians, and people from around the world. He taught
me how to love taxi drivers by talking to them like old
friends, he taught me how to love my mom, by seeing how
deeply and passionately she cared for him, he taught me
how to love Seeds of Peace, and he taught me how to love
each of you. I'm not kidding, I wasn't interested in Seeds
of Peace when it started, it was only through my dad that
I slowly came to understand what it meant to live a life
with heart. I have forgotten a thousand things, I am sure,
but the one thing I will never forget is John. He didn't
need to teach any of us how to love him. It came too naturally.
It is your job now to live with your heart. John can't
do anything for you but spur you on, the way he always
has, by repeating "go make one friend," or "breathe
deeply" or "aren't we lucky to be here, to be
alive" in your head. He can only urge you on saying
again and again to "cherish your time here!"
"You've only got three weeks!" How much he repeats
those sayings is up to each of you now. And how much you
live with your heart, taking chances with your heart,
being couragous with your heart, those are all up to you.
If you fail, and the KGB says to you "you have to
shut down," or the famous director tells you "you
were thinking too much," then all you have to do
is go back to your heart, or remember my dad, and think
about what he might tell you. He wants you to do that.
He wants to help. As he always did, he wants to be involved
with life, with the most exciting, couragous, heartfelt
thing he could think of.
When my dad fell very ill, we took him to the hospital.
He could barely speak, and began fighting and fighting.
Like each of you in coexistence, he didn't want to be
there, and he didn't want to think about what he was thinking
about. His body grew weaker and weaker, but still he fought
and fought. He tried to get out of the bed thirty or forty
times, but his body wouldn't let him. His body wouldn't
move. Yesterday afternoon, he fell into a deep sleep,
basically unconscious. My mother and my brother and my
dad's sister watched him in bed, fighting in his sleep,
dealing perhaps with all of the demons in the world, from
the demons that haunted his parents, to the things he
had seen happen in the Middle East, to the murder of his
personal friends Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin, to the
demons that decided to pluck him from the earth at only
fifty-nine and steal from us someone who loved with all
his heart, giving him cancer in his lungs even though
he never smoked. But after a night of fighting and fighting,
completely unwakeable and not answering to any shouts
we made, somewhere in there, he chose to fight a different
fight. He fought to say goodbye to all of us. This morning,
on Wednesday, he opened his eyes just a little bit. He
looked at my mom and me and his sister. His friends Bernie
Kalb and Aaron Miller sat by his side. They spoke to him
and he understood them. We asked if he was comfortable
and he nodded that he was. We sang the Seeds of Peace
song to him and reminded him of all of you. My mother,
his wife of twenty six years, held his hand and asked
him to blow everyone a kiss. Softly, but as best he could,
he blew four quiet kisses. I looked in his eye and saw
a tear forming. I could tell how badly he wanted to say
I love you, to everyone who had ever been a part of his
life.
Keep going everyone. John is with you.
With all of my love, and all of John's,
Yours,
Michael Wallach
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