'Grandmothers for Peace' Founder Dies
ANTI-WAR
Barbara Wiedner, the Sacramento grandmother who abandoned her domestic sphere
to campaign worldwide as founder of Grandmothers for Peace International, died
late Sunday after a three-month struggle with pancreatic cancer. She was 72.
"She was an activist who was not afraid to take the risks to uphold the things
she believed in," said former Sacramento Mayor Anne Rudin, a friend and
colleague in peace activities.
Mrs. Wiedner was certainly not afraid of getting arrested, and often was,
particularly when demonstrating against nuclear weapons.
"I don't know how many times she was arrested," said her husband, Bill Wiedner,
of Elk Grove.
He related this story: When their son John was in high school, he was once
asked why he was not signed up to bring his mother to the annual mother-son
dance. "She's going to be in jail," the boy responded.
Mrs. Wiedner told her grandchildren she was doing it so they could grow up in a
better world, though at first they were too young to understand.
"I remember it being pretty odd that my grandmother got arrested," said Laurie
Baser of El Dorado Hills. "It hit us when the holidays came around, and it was,
'Oh, Grandma's getting arrested again.' "
Eventually they came to understand and appreciate her activities. "She wasn't
just ours," Baser said. "She sort of belonged to everybody."
Inadvertently, Baser helped launch her grandmother's new identity.
As an 11-year-old in 1982, she painted a protest sign for her grandmother to
hold at one of her first actions -- a protest against nuclear weapons held at
the former Mather Air Force Base.
The sign read, "Grandmother for Peace." Reactions to the sign led Mrs. Wiedner
to found Grandmothers for Peace International that year.
The group now has nine formal chapters around the country, and many more
informal ones.
Bishop Francis Quinn, the former leader of the Sacramento Diocese now living in
Arizona, recalled Mrs. Wiedner as a "sort of gentle activist."
"We marched together, calling for nuclear disarmament," Quinn said. "She was
always so loving and approachable in her ways. I certainly admired her."
As its leader, Mrs. Wiedner traveled the world, meeting leaders such as Yasser
Arafat and Mikhail Gorbachev, who once chided her for leaving out grandfathers.
She also visited with the humble. "She baked bread with Bedouin women in the
desert," said her sister, Jan Provost, head of the Grandmothers chapter in
Wisconsin.
And, no matter what the country, it seemed she never met a protest she didn't
like.
"It used to be she couldn't find her way to Raley's," her husband said, "and
all of a sudden she informs me she's going to go to Moscow during the Cold War
to influence that government."
In all, she went on 22 foreign trips, he said.
One was to Hiroshima, with Rudin.
"When Barbara came, I knew of her past history of engaging in protests," Rudin
said. "I pleaded with her not to get herself arrested when we were in
Hiroshima."
She didn't get in trouble, but she couldn't pass up a demonstration when she
saw one from the group's bus.
"She'd say, 'I'll see you back at the hotel,' " Rudin recalled. "She would be
off."
It wasn't just the adventure that engaged her, however. It was a true feeling
for the issue.
When the group arrived at the city's monument to those who died as a result of
America's dropping an atomic weapon there on Aug. 6, 1945, she was stunned.
"She just broke into tears," Rudin said. "It was such a moving symbol of
everything she stood for."
Mrs. Wiedner was the eldest of three children. She was born Dec. 16, 1928, and
raised in a Roman Catholic family in Superior, Wis.
"She was always extremely intelligent and just a wonderful sister," Provost
said.
She came to California in the 1950s and married Bill Wiedner in 1967, already
having had nine children (seven of whom survive) from a previous marriage.
"I wanted nothing more in life than to be a wife, homemaker and mother," Mrs.
Wiedner told The Bee in 1989. "I always saw myself as a grandmother in a
rocking chair with a cookie jar nearby for the grandkids."
The nuclear weapons at Mather changed that.
"(It) made me realize that if things did not change, my precious grandchildren
could be part of the last generation on Earth," she said in an interview in
September, shortly after she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.
"The doctors said six to eight months. She only had 3 ½ months," said Lorraine
Krofchok, a friend and designated successor to lead the Grandmothers. "We were
all cheated."
In addition to her husband, she is survived by three sons, Daniel and Kevin
Corcoran and John Wiedner; five daughters, Kathleen O'Donovan, Mary Jo
Corcoran, Colleen Balarsky, Patricia Estlander and Margaret Tilghman; her
sister, Jan Provost; 17 grandchildren; and one great-grandson.
Her brother, John White, died in September, less than a week after visiting her
following her diagnosis.
Bishop Quinn will preside at the funeral Mass at 11 a.m. Friday at St. Francis
Church.
Contributions in Barbara Wiedner's honor may be made to Grandmothers for Peace
International, or its Dorothy Vandercook Memorial Peace Scholarship fund, 9444
Medstead Way, Elk Grove 95758.
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