By Val

John Stanford

Since I moved to San Antonio in 1993, I have seen John “Juancho” Stanford at nearly every meeting, march, trial or activity for peace and justice issues (and although I do not attend all of these, I know he did attend nearly all of them.) But after 9/11 I came to know him better. Along with other activists, we met at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center to brainstorm ways of responding to the 9/11 attacks and to call for a response to the attacks that emphasized international justice processes and other peaceful techniques. This was in the week following the attacks. We started a peace vigil outside the San Fernando Cathedral on Sept 24, two weeks after the attacks. (The weekly vigils were later moved to Thursdays, and after the streets around Main Plaza were closed, to the corner of S. Flores and Commerce.)

Many people came and went to the vigils, but John was the mainstay, out in all sorts of weather, and every week almost without fail—including on Thanksgiving and other holidays that happened to fall on vigil days. Because my work takes me away from San Antonio, I wasn’t nearly as faithful as he was. I’d estimate that our pictures were taken by hundreds of people (mostly tourists, I suppose—and perhaps police or other agents) and we received many “Honks for Peace”, more and more as time went by. John was often pleased by the response, and said we were getting more positive reactions each week. He was always full of news and comments about local and national peace and justice events, always had a smile for everyone, even hecklers, although he would, if given a chance, explain why peace is the only solution to violence.

I also remember his accounts of his work on the Martin Luther King Jr. March Commission. Not only did he always march but he worked hard with folks on the East side to have Dr. King’s legacy of nonviolence and opposition to war remembered in the events. On the year the Commission decided to invite the Air Force to flyover the event, he tried to influence it not to “honor” Dr. King in this way. While some members of the Commission agreed with him, he did not prevail. That was one of the years when we wore tee-shirts with a drawing of Dr. King standing in front of a photo of Gandhi, with the quote, “The choice today is not between violence and nonviolence, but between nonviolence and non-existence.”

I wrote this last year from Latin America (Barranquilla, Colombia) where I work with peacebuilding programs in four countries. He was a great model, active to the last, unflinching, and through it all gentle and kind. I’ll miss him a lot.