Joan O. King was remembered Saturday, March 13th, at the dedication of the Peace Pole planted in her honor at the Sautee Nacoochee Cultural Center. Joan was a writer, activist, and long-time White County resident who passed away in April 2020. She was eighty years old.
Honoring Joan O. King
At the ceremony, family and friends shared stories of Joan and talked about how she had impacted their lives. Her daughter, Ginny King, shared that Joan was one of the few people she had known who actually “made a difference in the world.” Ginny was given the honor of unveiling the peace pole during the ceremony.
Best friend Barbara Williams and her husband met Joan and her husband Lewis in Atlanta forty years ago. Later, they all moved to the Sautee area. Barbara described Joan as having “moral courage” and talked about the letters to the editors that Joan frequently sent to Gainesville and area newspapers. In a writers group in which both women participated, Joan consistently encouraged the other writers to share their opinions in letters to editors, explaining, “It doesn’t matter what your opinion is, but it needs to be shared.”
Joan exemplified that suggestion and was known for her letters to editors in which she was the voice of the minority opinion. As another friend shared, “Joan was the epitome of a Quaker activist at its best.” Throughout her lifetime, Joan also actively worked for nuclear disarmament through Nuclear Watch South, serving as a board member and an activist.
According to Patrick Brennan, the executive director of Sautee Nacoochee Cultural Center (SNCC), “Nuclear Watch South is a statewide, grassroots anti-nuclear group established in 1977 as GANE-Georgians Against Nuclear Energy. The mostly volunteer citizen’s group specializes in direct action ranging from organizing protests and testimony at public hearings to publishing educational materials and conducting legal interventions before state and federal agencies to public events such as the peace pole planting.”
The new peace pole
The new peace pole replaced the original one that had rotted. Joan was instrumental in the placing of the first peace pole in 2010. Brennan shared that the first peace pole was “in honor of peace and environmental activist Adele Kushner on the 65th annual observance of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.”
The placing of the new peace pole was inspired by the ratifying of the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in October 2020. The treaty is meant to be the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.
The new peace pole is inscribed with the words “May Peace Prevail on Earth” written in English, Cherokee, Japanese, French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and Sanskrit, and is sponsored by the Sautee Nacoochee Cultural Center and Nuclear Watch South. The peace pole honors both Joan and the Nuclear Ban Treaty. Glenn Carroll, the coordinator of Nuclear Watch South, was a part of the ceremony as well.
Symbolic icons for peace
According to Brennan, “Peace poles are internationally recognized monuments to the hopes and dreams for peace held by the global human family. Thousands of peace poles stand in every country of the world as silent icons for peace, reminding us to think, speak and act in the spirit of peace and harmony.”
Besides the peace pole, the Tree of Peace was planted on the SCNN grounds in 1988. Brennan shares that the tree was planted at a ceremony led by Mohawk Peace Chief Jake Swamp at the invitation of 5th grade students at White County Elementary School. Sadly, the tree died in 1991, and, at Chief Swamp’s suggestion, another tree was planted to symbolize “burying weapons and arbitrating conflicts, and living by the Great Law of Peace.”
