The Lifelong Influence of My Years of Working With the American Friends Service Committee
It was December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor Day, the day that the U.S. entered World War II. I, then Lucretia Wood, was a senior at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The stark announcement that day strengthened my conviction that war is NOT the answer. I knew then for certain that I must endeavor to live my life in a peaceful manner, must do what I could to be of service to others, must help in whatever ways I could to bring our country and the world nearer to living by peaceful means.
I was born and raised in a Quaker family with Quaker roots through both of my parents that dated back to the early days of Quakerism in England, families who emigrated to this country in the late 1600s, settling in southeastern Pennsylvania. My parents had both been raised in farming families, my father, Galen Wood, in southern Lancaster County, PA, and my mother, Verna Way, in Centre County, PA. Both parents, after graduation from college, left their family farms. My mother was a teacher; my father worked as a chemist, in timber preservation. The depression that started in 1929 was hard on our immediate family, but not nearly so hard as for many other families. We four siblings were nurtured from early childhood on to live in peaceful ways, to follow the Quaker peace testimony, the one on social justice, as well as the other Quaker testimonies. There was a strong emphasis on getting a good education in our family and in the schools we attended, which for the most part were Quaker schools. Getting a good education was vital preparation for living worthy lives. Born shortly after the end of World War I, I learned early on that war caused great suffering. President Woodrow Wilson’s assertion that the First World War was “the war to end all wars” had its influence on me at an early age. So too did the depression. Early on I learned that the depression had hit other families far more severely than ours, causing great suffering. How could I, when I grew up, live my life in a way that would help alleviate some of the widespread sufferings that existed?
After graduating from college in 1942, feeling a strong need to add to the family’s income, I sought a job using business skills learned in college, in St. Louis, to which city my parents had moved from Media, PA the year before. Our country was once again deeply involved in another war, World War II, during the four years I worked in St. Louis. The end of the war in the Pacific came when our country used the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki, with horrendous consequences. How could our country do anything so horrendous?
It was during those four years that two staff members from the American Friends Service Committee came periodically to visit St. Louis Friends and the wider community. They told us about the work of the AFSC, of the Committee’s need for young volunteers to serve abroad in reconstruction work once the war was over, of the need for contributions to make possible this work. I listened carefully to what they had to say, and finally, in the spring of 1946, I knew the time had come for me to see if there was a place for me to work with the AFSC. Thus it was that in June 1946, using my college training in accounting and business subjects, I joined the staff of the AFSC headquarters in Philadelphia, working in the Finance Department.
In the spring of 1948, an opportunity came to take part in a six-month work camp being sponsored by the newly-formed KVT, the Finnish work camp organization that was an outgrowth of the work camps sponsored by the AFSC in Finland and elsewhere right after the end of the war. Six of us from the States had signed up to go to the work camp. However, before we sailed to Europe, AFSC asked if, instead of the work camp job, I would be willing to work in the AFSC headquarters in Helsinki, where leader Lorraine Cleveland was just winding up her two-year assignment and the new leaders, George and Florence Selleck, could not take the assignment until the fall. Thus, instead of working full-time in a work camp during my six months in Finland, I was fully involved in working with our very able Finnish staff members in the AFSC Helsinki headquarters for all of the work in Finland. During those months, I was able to visit and work briefly in the various work camps, in particular escorting AFSC fundraiser Leta Cromwell to various work camps in mid-Finland and Finnish Lapland, through which experience she gained new materials for her fund-raising efforts among elite women’s groups in New York City.
From Finland, I went to England for a term at Woodbrooke, the Quaker adult-education college near Birmingham. I then took another assignment with the AFSC in Germany, where I headed up the finance work, in the AFSC Central Office for Germany, in Darmstadt, and stayed nearly two years. That was the time when Lou Schneider (and Frances and their children, Mr. Lou, Bobby, and Susan – the latter born in Darmstadt! – were also there. Also, Barbara Graves, Trudel Fuchs, Liselotte Feigel, Earl Fowler, and others. I returned to the States in the fall of 1950, took a short leave to visit family in St. Louis, met my future husband, Bill Evans M.D., then worked three more years in Philadelphia as assistant director on the International Centers Desk (section), working with Allen White. My last AFSC assignment was in the summer of 1953 when I took a summer’s leave from my job on the International Centers Desk and became the girls’ counselor at an AFSC work camp for high school young people in Cherokee, North Carolina. This assignment offered the opportunity to visit more easily with Bill Evans, who had moved in April 1951 from Philadelphia to Crossville, Tennessee to practice medicine in that rural and in many ways needy community, and led to our marriage in October 1953 and the end of my seven years of working with the AFSC.
Bill Evans and I lived approximately forty years in rural Cumberland County, Tennessee. Those were busy years for Bill serving as a physician through a non-profit clinic group. Together we welcomed and raised our four wonderful children. They, today and together with their spouses are living their own lives in worthy ways, serving others in need, and nurturing and educating their own growing children - our eight grandchildren! – in preparation for living worthy lives of their own. During those many years living in Tennessee, there were opportunities for volunteer work for me. Our family was active in the West Knoxville Friends Meeting, 70 miles distant. We helped start the Southern Appalachian Association of Friends, SAAF, which in 1970 became the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting and Association, SAYMA. Later came the beginning of the Crossville Friends Meeting. Those rewarding years included keeping in touch with the AFSC and with the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the FCNL, in particular, as well as other peace-oriented organizations. The years brought opportunities to our family to take part in peace vigils and Friends conferences, at which times we heard reports of ongoing work of the AFSC, as well as the FCNL.
In 1991 Bill and I moved northward, back to Pennsylvania, to the newly opened Foxdale Village, a Quaker Continuing Care Retirement Community, located in State College, PA. Since Bill’s retirement from practicing medicine about 1985, we two have been spending long summers in Maine. No matter where we are, concern continues for us both to do what we can to help build a more peaceful world. These days we support peace vigils in spirit, if not often in person! We write and phone our national leaders on issues of concern, trying to turn the hearts and minds of the leaders in a different direction, away from warring. Both of us are deeply thankful to the American Friends Service Committee, and to the closely linked Friends Committee on National Legislation, for providing continuing opportunities to help build a more peaceful world. The AFSC’s monthly electronic newsletters, Toward Peace and Justice, and other materials, as well as the FCNL’s monthly newsletters and the many weekly Action Alerts, are constant sources of helpful information for action. Always, there are ongoing opportunities to make contributions to these two organizations, in particular, and many others, working for peace and justice.
Bill Evans passed away, at age 92, on December 29, 2008. His spirit lives on in my life and that of our children, their spouses, and the eight grandchildren. At age 101½, I continue to be as active as I can be in peace efforts, especially in letter-writing and phoning through the FCNL. Our children and spouses, and the grandchildren, as well, lead very active lives, - ones filled with worthy concerns, as well as advanced studies, each to his own interest and ability. Following her father, Jonathan W. Evans, who was an FCNL intern after graduation from college, granddaughter Hannah Graf Evans worked with the FCNL for a three-year term. Her siblings, Rachel Graf Evans and Jeremy Graf Evans have attended the Spring Lobbying weekends for young people, where they are trained in lobbying and actively DO some lobbying. Concerned young people are the hope of the future.
Hope springs eternal in the human heart. War is simply never the answer. May national and international leaders one day soon do more to support changes that will eventually bring to an end the current devastating warring in the world AND come to rely on peaceful ways of resolving conflicts, wherever they may be, - in our country, in the Middle East, and beyond, around the world. This was my husband’s ongoing hope throughout his life, AND mine as well, dating back to my youth and continuing on in my senior years. And so I end these rambling comments by saying that Bill and I have ever been grateful for the many opportunities, over many years, that challenged us to do what we could to help bring our beautiful world nearer to the ways of peace.
*A shorter version of this article was first submitted in AFSC’s 90th anniversary and resubmitted with updates on May 15th, 2016, for AFSC’s 100th anniversary
Interested in learning more about Lucretia’s story? Listen to our special bonus podcast episode below!