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Envision a World without Nuclear Weapons

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Wayne Snyder –Thank you for your service

June 4, 2019 By Bob Kinsey

Memorial Celebration of Wayne Snyder’s 98 Year Life
[ 1920 -2019 ]
3:00-5:00 Sat. June 8
Service and Reception
First Universalist Church of Denver
4101 E. Hampden (@Colorado Blvd NE corner) 80222

The Colorado Coalition mourns the passing of Wayne Snyder, who served as treasurer for years following the passing of his wife, Judy, who was the WILPF representative on our board for nearly three decades. We celebrate his life of service.

Jan Ross – Eulogy for Wayne E. Snyder my dad 6/5/19

Wayne E. Snyder was a great father, grandfather, husband, friend and mentor – the loyal head of our family. A man with sparkly blue eyes and the sharpest of minds to the end.

He was a generous soul who gave his all to our family & friends near and far – and this would be his greatest gift to us.

Dad grew into these roles  – and became more gentle and patient in his retirement years.  Especially in my mother’s last 5 years with COPD when he became the caregiver.

The arc of his life spanned almost 100 years – so is not easy to summarize.
But I will try because like him, I got the “Snyder gene” as a “loud talker”
As my husband always says,

“The Snyders elevate conversation to a competitive sport!

What made my dad so endearing is WHAT he had to say:

About sports – especially the Broncos & Rockies, politics, world history AND travelling:

Born in 1920 in Harrisburg, PA – dad grew up in a town so small, it shared a high school with the neighboring town

– his father was the Principal of his grade school – and made VERY sure he excelled in school.

– his mother was a career homemaker (whose hottest spice was paprika)

With 3 degrees: he first graduated from Gettysburg College in 1941.

World War II found him serving in Germany and England.

He returned to the states & got his BSFS at Georgetown University in 1947 with the G.I. Bill. Joined the Foreign Service and went to Africa – Mozambique and Swaziland –

where he learned to love spicy food, local shrimp and travelling! It was all so exotic to me. In fact, I have great memories of bringing his python snakeskin to show-in-tell in kindergarten!

Eventually he returned to the states and began his 2nd career. FINALLY in 1958, he met my mother in New York City and at the ripe age of 39 they married within the year.

Then twin baby girls arrived in 1961 – Judy and I quickly crowded their tiny NY apartment and we moved to New Jersey. Dad commuted and got his MBA at NYU during some long, late nights.

Fast forward to 1972 when dad’s job at Johns-Manville relocated the whole company to Denver – and Dad decided to show us The West.

Our first summer we drove to the Grand Canyon and California … on the way –

he strapped a big burlap safari water bag on the front of our NEW red Dodge Station Wagon to cross the Mojave Desert – in case we ran out of water or the car broke down.

Later trips got easier – to Yellowstone, the Tetons, Ghost Ranch, Chaco Canyon & more

Dad learned to embraced mom’s social activism, attended marches and watched us grow up.

Then in 1982 he retired “EARLY” and my parents started travelling abroad – mostly with Elder Hostel on educational style trips to Egypt, Greece, France …

And even The Hague for the World Peace Conference on mom’s 79th birthday.

When mom passed away 14 years ago he began his last chapter – learning to live alone, entertaining his grandchildren and our extended family, volunteering for the Colorado Coalition and making new friends –

So many of you here today, and at Harvard Square and finally at Sunrise Senior Living.

This is when he rose to the role of a great old man – sharp witted and a generous soul to the end. A great light and inspiration to us all… who will continue to shine brightly in our lives.

.

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Disarmament Quotes

Over the past 15 years, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.

Mikhail Gorbachev, January 31, 2007

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see... 

Mahatma Gandhi from The Essential Gandhi, Louis Fisher, ed.

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death. 

Albert Einstein, January 22, 1947

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not. 

Robert McNamara Former U.S. Secretary of Defense

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlister Kings Bay Protestor 2019

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee Butler Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1995

There are still thousands of warheads loaded on operational systems and standing on high states of alert on virtually hair-trigger posture. And you have to ask yourself: Why is that? Who is the enemy? What is the threat? 

U.S. General Lee Butler Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command in 1991-92

Viewing Trinity Test July 16,1945: "Now we are all Sons of Bitches"

Kenneth Bainbridge Deputy Director

[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

5-Star Admiral William D. Leahy Chief of Staff to President's Roosevelt and Truman, leader of Combined US-UK Chiefs of Staff during WWII

It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth. 

Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986

Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival. 

Former President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight Eisenhower US President 1953-1961

We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal ... 

George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, January 4, 2007

We seek the elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. 

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford "The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

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