Seventy-six-year-old protester can't be silent about peace

For more than two years - no matter the weather - septuagenarian Joan H. Nicholson has maintained a solitary vigil along a busy stretch of Route 1 in Chester County.

About 26,000 cars a day pass her outside the Old Kennett Meetinghouse. Hardly any of those motorists know the name of this lifelong Quaker, but they know from the signs she wields her unmistakable purpose:

"Support the troops, end the war" and "U.S. out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Nicholson, 76 and healthy save for a touch of arthritis, generally takes her post from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. and 5 to 6:30 p.m., give or take a few minutes. Shaded by a floppy hat and a canopy of oaks, she said in an interview that she sometimes stays a bit longer "if there are a lot of cars."

"I just want to remind people that there's a bloody war and invasion going on," Nicholson said. "I just feel we can't be silent. You never know when something is going to move things forward."

Every now and then, she might take a few days off - never to vacation from promoting peace but to immerse herself more fully.

On those occasions, she may hop a bus to Washington, the scene of many of her more active protests. She has tangled often with authorities there, and she's been arrested seven times for such infractions as interrupting a House Armed Services Committee meeting or trying to deliver a letter to President Obama. Her lifetime arrest tally is more than 25, she said.

Nicholson doesn't remember when her advocacy started, but she can't recall a time without it. She grew up in the suburbs, the youngest of three children, and never followed their example of marriage and children.

"I really never thought about it," she said, adding that she realizes her single status gave her more freedom to pursue her causes.

She credits her parents with giving her "unconditional love" and showing her the value of volunteerism. They also gave her some financial security, she said, enabling her to move periodically to parts of the country where she felt she could make a difference.

A graduate of the Westtown School and Earlham College, a Quaker college in Indiana where she majored in history, Nicholson taught in Philadelphia's Get Set program, a pre-Head Start initiative, and was a substitute teacher in Camden in the 1960s.

Her first arrest occurred April 6, 1968 - two days after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - at the recommissioning of the battleship New Jersey in Philadelphia. She and others planted "a peace tree" and urged that the ship be used as a floating hospital during the Vietnam War.

In the last 40 years, her beliefs on issues ranging from protesting the Haiti refugee policy in 1992 to seeking the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in 2007 have led to shackles and more jail time, mainly in Washington, she said.

She crossed paths with King (she taught vacation Bible school at his Baptist church in Atlanta one summer in the early '60s); former New York Mayor Ed Koch; Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to serve in Congress; and Daniel Berrigan, a Catholic priest whose antiwar activities included breaking into a nuclear-missile facility operated by General Electric in King of Prussia.

More recently, Nicholson has attended antiwar events with Cindy Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq and attracted international attention in August 2005 for her extended antiwar protest at a makeshift camp outside Bush's Texas ranch.

Along the highway, where Nicholson often sings her favorite peace songs to pass the time, she said most people have been supportive, sometimes even stopping to chat. An exception occurred a year ago, she said, when a man pulled off the road and called her a traitor.

"My mother wouldn't like what I would do to you," Nicholson said he had told her.

She said she had tried to explain that she supported the troops but not the war. He didn't listen, promising that "if that sign's there tomorrow, I'm going to take it."

Nicholson recounted the incident to some residents at the nearby Kendal retirement complex, she said. The next day, two joined her for protection. She never saw the man again.

She's attracted other backers, including a Swarthmore College administrator and a Chadds Ford teen who created a Facebook page in her honor.

Chris Densmore, curator of the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore, only recently learned Nicholson's name. But before that, he said, he always waved when he drove by.

He finds it highly symbolic, he said, that Nicholson's sentry occurs on hallowed ground, an area where the first shots in the Battle of Brandywine were fired and that became what he calls "a hotbed of reform" for decades. The meetinghouse is celebrating its 300th anniversary this year.

The Chadds Forder, Sienna McGinnis, was 13 in March 2009 when she and her mother came up with the idea for the Facebook page, titled "Support the lady at Kendal."

McGinnis, who will enter ninth grade at Unionville High School this fall, said that as she and her family had traveled to and from Patton Middle School, they had seen Nicholson undeterred by snowstorms and downpours.

As McGinnis put it: "I liked the way she just stood up for her beliefs."