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Reno
Gazette-Journal
May 20, 1996
Children
rally for peace in downtown Reno park
by
Mike Sion
 Dancing
for peace
Jessica Drossulis (right), 8, of Nevada Ballet Arts
performs with the rest of her group at Sunday's Festival
of Peace in downtown Reno's Wingfield Park. Jessica
was among the local schoolchildren performing for the
several hundred people who turned out for the five-hour
event organizied by the Center for Holocaust, Genocide
& Peace Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno.
In rainbow gymnast's garb, Misty Copeland, 9, twirled
a long ribbon and danced to Bette Midler's "From
A Distance" before a big hand-drawn peace sign
on stage at Wingfield Park.
Afterward,
the third-grader at Lemmon Valley Elementary said she
had a message for the less peaceful pupils at her school:
"Stop fighting because it would make it a better
place."
Local
schoolchildren turned the downtown park into a ray of
hope for a more civilized world Sunday, performing poems
and dances, skits and songs during what was dubbed the
Festival for Peace.
Several
hundred people filtered through the riverside park for
the five-hour event organized by the Center for Holocaust,
Genocide & Peace Studies at the U niversity
of Nevada, Reno. Center director Viktoria Hertling
called the festival the "icing on the cake"
for a program that involved more than 300 students in
kindergarten through 12th grade during the past three
months.
Students
composed posters and poems, many on display at the a
park. One, by Zack Paaley and Repan Smith of Mount Rose
Elementary School, showed the earth surrounded by seven
planets and a sunglassed sun, the heavenly bodies saying:
"Can't they all just get along!?!"
"We
wanted to plant the seeds of peace consciousness into
the hearts of the kids of the community," Hertling
said.
Sparks
Middle School teacher , Donna Pienkowski taught festival
goers how to fold Japanese origami cranes. She has been
reading her students the story of Sadako, a Japanese
girl who died of leukemia 10 years after an atom bomb
was dropped on her native Hiroshima in 1945.
Sadako
had been trying to fold 1,000 paper cranes because legend
said the symbols of peace could cure her. She died after
making 664, but her story spread around the world, making
the cranes a symbol of peace. Sparks Middle School students
now are trying to fold 1,000 cranes to string together
and hang at their school.
Brandon
Meredith, 8, folded cranes in the park Sunday. The Brown
Elementary student, who practices the nonviolent martial
art of aikido, offered a solution for adults who threaten
world peace: "Massage."
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