Column: Long Island at the Peacemaker Award Gala

Last Friday, Peace Action New York, at its 60th year celebration, selected Hofstra students for the 2017 “Don Shaffer Peacemaker Award” in our state.
Many North Shore Long Island connections were noted as this recognition was presented at historic Riverside Church in New York City.
Chief among them was the sponsorship of student recognition by the Shaffer family, long-time residents of Great Neck. The late Don and Doris Shaffer were models of principled, sustained activism for decades.
They passed those torches of leadership and engagement to members of their talented family. On hand at Riverside to present the outstanding campus award to Hofstra was Robert Shaffer, Professor of History at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.
Seated at my table (among the 400 celebrants), Shirley Blanc Romaine told me that, in all her decades living in Great Neck, no student was the equal of Robert Shaffer as a creative activist leader.
Doris Shaffer was a professor at Nassau Community College and a leader of the teachers’ union. Don headed Long Island’s SANE chapter, helping its merger with Peace Action. After a successful business career and a life of activism, Don applied for admission to NYU Law School.
At age 60, Don submitted a support letter that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr wrote when they worked together during the 1960s. After graduating as the oldest person in his class (1991), Don applied his legal training – pro bono – on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Dr. King’s association with the Shaffers was also a connecting point for the Hofstra Peacemakers. Hannah, a first-term freshwoman from Tennessee at our table, said she was particularly inspired by Dr. King’s association with Hofstra as she joined the Peacemakers during her first month on campus.
Great Neck and Roslyn resident, the late Harry H. Wachtel, brought Dr. King to campus to deliver the graduation address in 1965. Hofstra’s Wachtel Archives are replete with documents and records of Dr. King’s associations with Long islanders and his close ties with the Wachtel family.
Emile Beck, president of the Hofstra Peace Action Matters group, accepted the award from Robert Shaffer (photo is attached). She expressed appreciation for the intergenerational associations of students, faculty and community (folks including Margaret and Martin Melkonian, Andrea Libresco of Mineola, Linda Longmire, and the late Greg Maney, among many others).
With Emilie, receiving a standing ovation from the throng of 400, were young, persistent peacemakers, Natasha Rappazzo, Adam Hockenberry, and Sarah Puckett. (Lola Solis, a junior, who wrote a “Report from the Conference to Ban Nuclear Weapons,” had to miss this gathering because of family commitments at her Texas home.)
Throughout the Gala evening, folks were mindful that Dr. King had given the most significant speech of his life at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967. On that date, precisely one year before he was assassinated in 1968, Dr. King spoke forcefully against the Vietnam War and called for peace initiatives.
On April 4, 1969, two years after King’s “Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence” speech at Riverside Church and one year after his assassination, Harry Wachtel returned to Riverside Church to speak about Dr. King’s journey for civil and human rights. That speech is in the Hofstra Wachtel Archives.
The Peace Action Lifetime Achievement Award at the Gala went to Harry Belafonte. Mr. Belafonte (now qualified for “The Elders” leadership group at age 90) helped Hofstra to establish “The Wachtel Distinguished Professorship for the Study of Nonviolent Social Change.”
Student peace activists at Hofstra are keenly aware that they have been bolstered by many Long Islanders who provide scaffolding for organization and activism: the late Betty and Frank Phillips, the Romaines, Zimmermans, Scheiners, Sparbers, Widoms, and many others who constitute a Long Island/North Shore Citizen Activist Hall of Fame. Not to mention the emcee for the evening, Media Benjamin, founder of Code Pink and fearless activist, whose roots in Freeport are a source of Long Island pride!
Because those young students are standing on the shoulders of giants, they have excellent prospects to fulfill Shaffer family ideals: Never stop thinking about tomorrow; work for Dr. King’s “beloved community” where nonviolence is not merely a protest strategy but a way of life.”