John Townsend Looney
1916-2005
Ohio’s “Johnny Appleseed for Peace & Nonviolence”
John Looney, 88, died Tuesday, May 17, 2005. His life
may be best summarized by the motto, “to see what love can do.”
John was a tireless, committed, and joyful educator, advocate and organizer
for peace, nonviolence and justice who was also a dedicated husband,
loving father and devoted friend. He and his work with the American
Friends Service Committee (AFSC) was known and respected across Ohio
and the nation. To him, love toward others was not sentimental or naïve,
but the most moral, ethical and practical means toward personal fulfillment
and fundamental social change. One of his common retorts was “what
good
is faith if not put into practice.”
In the early ‘60’s, his love of people
found social justice outlets in scheduling and hosting
AFSC speakers and peace caravans around Ohio, working on fair housing,
church integration, racial justice training and full funding for public
education in Wadsworth, and with Adele joining the Summit County Coalition
for Peace. Stirred by son Mark’s antiwar efforts and attendance
at a massive demonstration against the Vietnam War, John sold his business
and began working full-time for AFSC out of his home in 1970. In 1973,
John started an AFSC office in Akron as part of Humanity House, an incubator
for start-up and local community groups, including the National Organization
for Women, NAACP, battered women’s shelter and others. He also
helped found the Akron Friends Meeting.
For 16 years, John directed the Northeast Ohio AFSC.
Projects and campaigns that he helped start and /or carry out included:
stopping the B-1 bomber; ending the Vietnam war; beginning the Ohio
Peace & Justice Calendar; organizing a radio program called Plug-In
carried by several Akron radio stations; organizing four joint Guns
or Butter conferences in Akron, Cleveland, and Youngstown; and ending
the nuclear arms race. He was President of the Ohio Nuclear Weapons
Freeze Campaign and served on the National Board. In this capacity,
he traveled the state (often at record speed with his car filled with
boxes of information and 3 by 5 note cards to gather names of new recruits)
organizing more than 50 peace groups in all parts of the state, including
rural Ohio. Some called him a modern-day Johnny Appleseed for peace
and nonviolence.
Maybe
his most lasting and prophetic social action was developing a curriculum
called Alternatives to Violence (ATV), a course on nonviolent conflict
resolution from the personal to international levels that blended his
learning and experiences in nonviolent conflict resolution with his
knowledge of writing legal case studies and personal business acumen.
The theoretical, historical, practical and hands-on course and accompanying
book and workbook were held and distributed in schools, churches, and
community settings in Ohio, across the US, and in more than a dozen
countries. The course was first sponsored by AFSC and later upon his
“retirement” from AFSC under a new organization that he
helped form, Peace GROWS (GrassRoots Outreach Works). In the current
period of war, retribution, and cyclical violence, ATV remains both
prophetic and timely.
Akron's Beacon Journal Article - May 20, 2005 - "Rest
In Peace John Looney" by Marilyn Miller
Cleveland Plain Dealer Article - May 22, 2005 - "John
T. Looney, left business to concentrate on peace work" by Richard
M. Peery
Read a poem/song about John by Tom DeFrange - "Big
John"
