< style="font-weight: bold;">Elmer with 7 others entered a General Electric (now: Lockheed Martin) nuclear weapons plant on September 9, 1980 and took simple hammers to Mark 12A warhead casings. The vision of the prophet Isaiah - of "beating swords into plowshares" - enacted, a commitment to making peace and doing disarmament begun.  "We are filled with hope..." concluded the statement of the Plowshares 8. Elmer would say on September 9, 1980 that it was "the happiest day
< style="font-weight: bold;">This past weekend Elmer passed into that cloud of witnesses that have paid the price of hope. Thank you, Elmer, we stood and resisted together at GE and other places where peace nor hope never enters. You entered such places and brought peace. See you at the next act of resistance at Lockheed Martin.









< style="font-weight: bold;">During the night of May 7-8, Elmer Maas, in the 70th year of his life, heard and answered this call after a life living and sharing the Word of nonviolent love. The civil rights marches of the 60's taught him the price that the powerless pay for freedom and justice.  He never turned back from that struggle which led him from the security of college teaching to part-time jobs and fulltime peace work. The short list of involvements included the Peoples' Voice Cafe in New York City, the War Resisters League, the Kairos and Atlantic Life Communities, and, at the heart of everything, the movement to realize Isaiah's command to beat swords into plowshares.

< style="font-weight: bold;">In 1980, with 7 others, Elmer enfleshed this command in the first Plowshares action and for 25 years either participated in or facilitated most of those that followed.  He understood that the threat and actual use of nuclear weapons represented the determination to use any degree of violence to obtain political and economic control < style="font-weight: bold;">of the earth's resources for the powerful.  He also understood nonviolent resistance as the grassroots community building and the simplicity of life at the roots of the Gospel message.
 
< style="font-weight: bold;">The "Little Professor" was a remarkable combination of humanist scholar and jailbird with the awesome ability to clarify the historical relationships of religion, philosophy, art, music, and, of course, PLOWSHARES. He could return from deadly court scenes to regale us with his musical compositions like "The Jailhouse Blues" or more classical offerings flowing from his mother's treasured piano.  The legacy Elmer wanted to leave all peacemakers was his "curriculum:" < style="font-weight: bold;">a project growing out of his integrated charts, supplemented by hundreds of books, files, tapes, videos overflowing an apartment also always open to visitors. < style="font-weight: bold;">He envisioned 7 years of seminars, and we worried about his health as he struggled to transform his charts into workable classes.

< style="font-weight: bold;">Elmer, your curriculum is yourself, your work completed, integrated on the mountain of vision. Your legacy is your great and loving and humble heart. You always worked behind the scenes, tireless even when exhausted, waiting outside a police precinct to be certain everyone was released. All of us will share memories. Mine range from a night struggle through polluted waters to a Trident submarine to the easy task of luring Elmer to the "Met" to relax and explain all the cultural connections of a renaisance painting. We will use your charts with gratitude, but most of all we will try to struggle up  the mountain of nonviolent love, "that God may teach us God's ways and that we may walk in God's paths," beat the swords of violence into plowshares and learn war no more.    

< style="font-weight: bold;">Elmer will be waked at the Ortiz Funeral Home 22 First Avenue (between Houston and First Streets) Friday, 13 May, from 2 - 5 PM and 7 - 9 PM and Saturday, 14 May, from 11 AM - 1 PM. < style="font-weight: bold;">At 1:30pm Saturday afternoon, we will gather at Ortiz Funeral Home, to begin a funeral procession to the Catholic Worker's Mary House, at 55 East 3rd St. < style="font-weight: bold;">Mass of Christian Burial will begin there at 2:30 pm, to be followed by reflections and stories.

If you have questions, please call 201-264-4424.