Cross-Country Trip Opened Teacher’s Eyes to Possibilities for Peace

Last summer Carol S. Braham took a bus ride across the United States with 170 other Americans and 220 Russians to promote peace.

Braham had unknowingly been building up to the 30-city peace trek through her various consciousness-raising activities in high school and college as well as with her church peace and justice group.

Although the American-Soviet Peace trip was considered a positive and major

step toward peace by those who participated, the 29-year-old school teacher feels her work toward world peace has just begun.

“The trip changed my life,” said Braham, who attended Anaheim’s Esperanza High School and Cal State Fullerton and lives with husband Robert Braham in Yorba Linda. “Now I want to keep involved and tell people that they can help make the world a better and safer place by getting involved too.”

She says she believes in the ripple effect. “If we can open just one door, open our minds or have any contact with anyone who is different, we can dispel the label of ‘enemy’ on them,” she said.

Braham is relating her bus ride experience by talking to church, community and school groups throughout the county. Or to anyone who will listen, such as her fifth-grade classes at St. Juliana Catholic School in Fullerton.

“It’s real important to start people thinking about peace at an early age,” she said.

Besides her penchant for helping bring peace to the world, Braham says she feels her path also is leading her to groups that help the homeless and those mired in poverty.

But her main role is the peace movement, which started with her involvement in a church peace and justice group during her high school days.

“I said to myself, ‘I can make a difference,’ ” she remembers. It was also a time, she said, “to ask myself what I could do to help somebody. It was also my awakening to do something for others,” she added, and she chose teaching to accomplish that.

“I thought I could serve people that way,” she said. “It was also the time to develop and challenge myself to be a better person.”

So last year when she saw an advertisement seeking participants for the peace ride, “I thought to myself, ‘that’s too crazy,’ ” but she wrote and was accepted.

“It felt right.”

The peace trip, she said, helped dispel a lot of the enemy image of the Russians.

“It helped us look at each other with open doors and minds to hopefully pave the way toward peace negotiations. We feel all of us are playing important individual roles.”

Shurla and John Turek of Anaheim had an unusual decision to make. They bought another house in Anaheim but wanted to keep half the house they’ve lived in since 1963.

The half they wanted was a two-story addition with a living room, two bedrooms and a massive master bath. So they cut it off the house they sold and moved it to the house they bought.

The house they bought was on another street, but actually was next to the house they sold and, because of the configuration of the two lots, the house they bought was almost next door.

Nevertheless, the Tureks had to get City Council permission to make the move and last week the neighborhood turned out to see half a house move.

“We are really attached to the addition,” said Shurla Turek.

Sterling Davis, 77, decided to retire, again. But this time as a crossing guard at the Portal and El Camino Real intersection in San Clemente, where he has seen virtually an entire generation of schoolchildren grow up.

He has worked the corner since 1975.

Davis, who first retired in 1975 as a research engineer, said he had fun working the intersection except for the two times he got glancing blows from passing cars.

He noted it was from a Cadillac being driven by the same woman both times.