A Message from Thomas Lauderdale
Dear Friends,
During this tour I have been reading a most incredible book just published by Steve McQuiddy called Here on the Edge: How a Small Group of World War II Conscientious Objectors Took Art and Peace from the Margins to the Mainstream.
I grew up in Indiana, where my father Kerby Lauderdale was a Church of the Brethren minister. The first songs I ever played on the piano were hymns. The Church of the Brethren is one of three peace denominations — the Quakers and the Mennonites are the other two — and during World War II, those who refused to go to war were sent to Civilian Public Service camps all around the United States, building roads, planting trees, fighting forest fires. These camps were run by these three peace churches.