BY ANN S. KIM | OTISFIELD News of John Wallach’s death from cancer hit the Seeds of Peace camp hard. But campers and staff members were soon talking about his vision for peace and saying prayers for him according to the various religious traditions represented at the lakeside camp.
Thursday morning, they did what the program’s founder would have wanted: They carried on with activities designed to promote peace between young people from warring lands.
So with the Seeds of Peace flag at half-staff Thursday, Pakistanis, Indians, Palestinians, Israelis and Afghans played soccer in pursuit of the coveted Color Games trophy.
For some teens, there was a renewed sense of mission, said Tamer Mahmoud, an Egyptian who was among the 46 boys who attended the camp’s first session in 1993.
“They’ve been here for two weeks, and they have seen what this man’s dream has done for them,” said Mahmoud, who is now a counselor and planned to serve as a pallbearer at Wallach’s funeral Friday.
The camp planned a memorial service to coincide with the funeral in Washington, Conn.
This is the first summer Wallach was not able to travel to Maine to visit with teen-agers. Just 2½ weeks ago, he said he was planning to visit the camp. He died at home in New York on Wednesday.
Bobbie Gottschalk, the organization’s executive vice president, said Wallach’s type of lung cancer is usually fatal within six months.
“He just decided he was going to beat the odds. He kept just saying, ‘Give me two more years,’ and he got two more years,” she said Thursday.
Those two years allowed him to make preparations so that the camp and his dream of peace would continue after his death, she said.
Wednesday night, Gottschalk and camp director Tim Wilson broke the news first to those closest to Wallach and then to other staff members. Then they told the returning campers who had met Wallach, and first-time campers.
It was the newest campers who provided inspiration to the others as they spontaneously gathered in a group embrace to speak of Wallach’s message and sing the Seeds of Peace camp song.
“They all talked about how important the dream was, how important it was to do the things John wanted, how some of them had just been going along and now saw the importance of why we have to live every moment at this place,” Wilson said.
Later, the entire camp joined in singing a favorite of Wallach’s, “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream,” by Ed McCurdy.
Wallach always ended the camp talent show with the song, which concludes with the lyrics, “I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war.”
Wallach, a former foreign correspondent, gave up journalism and started Seeds of Peace after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.
The Israeli and Egyptian governments and officials of the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed to send delegations to the first camp. Since then, the camp has steadily grown to encompass other regions of conflict.
Seeds of Peace is now in its 10th year and has 1,600 graduates from about 20 war-torn lands.