Rose Marie Lewis

Rose Marie Lewis was born on January 17, 1934 on a homestead near Ontario, Oregon.  As a girl, she spent time there and in Coos Bay, Oregon, a coastal logging town with a population of Native Americans. Many of Rose’s lifelong habits-- thrift; industry; neighborliness; self-sufficiency—emerged directly out of her experience of small-town, pioneer living. Rose attended the University of California at Berkeley, where she met and was deeply influenced by the mystic theologian Howard Thurman. Thurman had traveled to India and met with Gandhi in 1938 (Gandhi famously remarked, at the end of their meeting, “Maybe it is through the Negro that nonviolence will come to America”); he was also a seminal influence on the young Martin Luther King, Jr. Thurman resigned his teaching post in Boston to found an interracial, interdenominational church, the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, in San Francisco. Rose upheld this vision of racial cooperation and harmony her whole life.

In 1966 Rose married Dick Lewis. Raised in Los Angeles, Dick was from an old Quaker family that settled in Pennsylvania in William Penn’s time; he had a degree in forestry, and was studying (with Chalmers Johnson) for a PhD in Far Eastern studies, focusing on Japan. Dick and Rose began a life of service together. They became the directors of AFSC’s East Asia work camp program in Japan, Korea, and Okinawa. Rose had already traveled in traveled in Europe, hitchhiking and visiting different communities. “I was always looking for Shangri-La,” she used to say, “The place where people had it all figured out.” Rose and Dick settled in the Salem area around 1980, buying a small farm near Brooks, where they set out to practice Permaculture. In 1982, during the US- supported genocide of native communities in Guatemala, Rose and Dick went to Guatemala and adopted two orphan girls, Ana and Marta. “That was when I really started to learn about racism,” Rose said, “from my daughters.” After the girls were grown, Rose and Dick worked in China for two years, teaching school. They also made extended trips through Africa and South America, visiting a peace community in Colombia; serving as delegates at an international reconciliation conference in Rwanda; renewing friendships, and making new ones.

Rose was very active in the Salem community. In 1982 she asked the Quaker meeting to sponsor a peace vigil, which continues today, 37 years later. She founded Salem Speaks Up! In 1992 – an annual event on December 10th, Human Rights Day, at which community members are invited to speak publicly about issues of discrimination they have experienced or witnessed in the past year. She and Dick started a local branch of the Alternatives to Violence project, leading nonviolence workshops in the prisons and in the community. She also started a Quaker worship group in Oregon State Penitentiary. She co-founded Salem-Keizer Coalition for Equality, a group that advocates for Latino youth. Rose was on the Peace Plaza board and the Peace Lecture committee; she was active with the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, the Friends’ Committee on National Legislation, and the American Friends’ Service Committee. She served on the national board of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and she helped create and sustain the once-a-month “4th Sunday at 4:00” potluck programs of the Salem FOR.

When an AME Zion church in Salem was burned down, Rose was there, with other local citizens, to ensure that the church had a place to meet during the years it took to find the funds for a new building.  Rose was indefatigable in her advocacy work, particularly in the areas of Racism, Women’s rights, and Peace. She invited people to her home, acted as a mentor, and kept in contact with people nationally and internationally who were working on social justice issues. She was a devoted mother, a thoughtful neighbor, a committed citizen. Rose hosted annual potlucks and holiday parties in her home; children and adults remember Rose’s punch, her Easter bunny cake, and Christmas sing-alongs with Dick at the piano. She was fearless, kind, and persistent. For 30 years, she edited the East-West Journal; she wrote a 150-page manuscript of a biography of Floyd Schmoe, an American Quaker who started a project in Japan after World War II called ‘Houses for Hiroshima’. She also shared her humor and love of fun, writing and performing songs with the ‘Awesome Aunties.’

Rose Lewis spent her life trying to make sure that all of us have a place at the table. We will miss her.