Local couple leading peace billboard campaign

By LOIS PEARLMAN, ARGUS-COURIER STAFF

A Petaluma couple, Linda and Richard Speel, are the Bay Area coordinators for an organization that is erecting peace billboards around the country.

Featuring an American flag, a peace dove and the slogan 'Peace is Patriotic,' the 5-foot by 11-foot billboards have appeared in such cities as San Francisco, Berkeley, Tucson, Reno, Denver and Cleveland. 
 

'It will give people who are into peace some support,' said Linda Speel. 'We just got an e-mail from someone who saw one in Denver.'

The billboard effort is being organized by Peace Roots Alliance, a group that formed after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to promote peaceful solutions to world problems. The group is made up of former and current residents of The Farm, a Tennessee commune founded in 1971.

Linda Speel said the loosely knit network of friends has remained in contact over the years. After Sept. 11, one of the members whose daughter survived the attack on the World Trade Center decided to form the new peace organization.

Its first project was quilts made by American school children and sent to children in the Middle East. So far quilts have been delivered to children in Afghanistan, Iraq and Bethlehem in Israel.

'Making quilts gives us a chance to talk with children about what does peace mean,' Linda Speel said.

Linda Speel works as a nurse for special education students at Terra Linda High School in Marin County. Her husband Richard is an administrator at COTS in Petaluma.

Each billboard is funded locally, and the Speels say they would like to gather funds to place one in Sonoma County.