UIC College of Nursing Vigil for Peace
and Witness Against War-December 10, 2004

Contact: Gerry Gorman, R.N. , Ph.D.
December 8, 2004
312-413-9013
Cell: 847-845-4597

Chicago-University of Illinois at Chicago nurses and health care professionals have invited Chicagoans to join them in a “Vigil for Peace, Witness Against War” in front of the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center at 820 South Damen Avenue from 4:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. on December 10, 2004. Their invitation states: “If you believe war is a public health emergency, that soldiers and veterans need our support and that peaceful protest is essential, please join the vigil.” Planners announced their intent to hold regular Friday evening vigils, holding candles and banners in front of medical centers, and to encourage health care professionals throughout the Chicagoland area to develop similar public action.

In an op-ed entitled “A nurse wonders: What if we united to oppose war?” published on Sunday, November 7, 2004, in the Chicago Tribune, UIC Nursing School professor Dr. Gerry Gorman pondered her own son’s future and imagined what would happen if all members of her highly trained profession pushed together for peace. After receiving numerous responses to the essay, she and several colleagues decided to welcome sympathizers to a peaceful protest against U.S. warmaking. “We are mandated to teach our students a primer on ‘bio-preparedness,’” Gorman wrote. “But, we shy away from the disastrous health consequences of depleted uranium and assault weapons…What if we said we will not practice our healing art so that our children can be bandaged and sent back to battle to be killed or to kill the children of other mothers on the other side of the world.”

For more information, call the contact numbers listed above.

A mother ponders her son’s future and imagines what would happen if all members of her highly trusted profession pushed together for peace

By Geraldine Gorman.
Geraldine Gorman is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health, Mental Health and Administrative Nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Linda’s eyes rouse me from my lethargy. On the early mornings when our swimming times intersect, their pale blue clarity accentuates my own confusion, rankles the remnants of my conscience.

Her locker is 2 feet from mine. We face each other, dry ourselves with white towels, and try to bridge the chasm the separates us. Her son is in Iraq; my son is a senior in high school, momentarily shielded from the mayhem that consumes her family’s life.

Two middle-aged mothers from Rogers Park, we swim our laps in the same university pool, know many of the same faculty members and neighborhood people, shop at the same stores, and share the same listservs and cultural reference points, with some variations.