In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

99 chapter 4 “A Team of Paulings”1 I feel such a responsibility for the women with whom I have talked everywhere. I do really believe that women could play a great role if only they would step forward with courage. —AHP to Annalee [Stewart?], November 1, 1960.2 The Paulings don’t stand in each other’s shadow; they walk in each other’s light. —Mary Clarke, November 12, 1960.3 Linus’s night on the cliff at Salmon Cove proved a stutter but not an interruption of the Paulings’ accelerating peace work from the late 1950s into the early 1960s. Typically, Ava Helen did not pause, at least in writing, over her scare that night and Linus’s post-traumatic reactions. By early 1960 she had plunged into her service as a board member of the United States section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Within WILPF, she had a new cause: the promotion of an international congress of women for peace. Linda Richards, a student of nuclear politics, has posited that there is a style of activism that might be characterized as “swirling” or circulating: one individual flowing through a number of different networks and organizations, planting seeds of ideas, making connections, circling back to remind people of their promises and possibilities.4 This is the kind of activist Ava Helen became. Though her name appeared on the masthead of her organizations for limited periods of time, and is not frequently found in the national and international archives of these groups, her correspondence attests to her wide-ranging contacts, her polite yet direct approach to getting Ava Helen Pauling 100 things done, and her persistence. In addition, the blunt and sometimes impatient Ava Helen rears her mischievous head. Ava Helen’s service in WILPF and her breathtaking international travel schedule, as she talked with and befriended women around the world, fertilized the feminist thought in her approach to activism. More and more she was called on to be the voice of women acting for peace. Claire Walsh at the United States WILPF headquarters in Philadelphia asked Ava Helen after her appointment to the national board if she would be available to give talks to small groups of WILPF members. “I should be very happy to speak … if you think that I have something of interest to say to them. I suppose that you are suggesting that I tell about such matters as our visit to Dr. Schweitzer and other things of interest which I may have observed on our many travels.” She had already given speeches on Russia, particularly conditions for women and children, on conservation, and on the international WILPF meeting in Stockholm.5 She was mobbed after her speeches, and her skills grew. “I don’t know why you should fret over a speech; you couldn’t make a bad one, not with that delivery power you sway,” a friend assured her.6 In March 1961, inviting her and Linus to speak to the recently organized Canadian branch of the Voice of Women (VOW), Jan Symons wrote to Ava Helen that, according to the VOW members, she was “becoming as much of a celebrity as your husband.”7 When the Paulings traveled together, now most of the time, there was little hiatus from demands on their time and energies. “I only regret that we are such dreadful guests,” she wrote one hostess on returning from New York in late 1960. “The telephone rings every two minutes and I am sure that our hostesses are always glad to see us leave.”8 The Paulings welcomed the new student movement of the 1960s, and student activists began inviting both Linus and Ava Helen to their events. In May 1960 the Paulings joined the San Francisco Peace March. On June 18, 1960, Linus was served a subpoena to appear before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, chaired by the Democratic Senator from Connecticut, Thomas Dodd. Taking a leaf from Harry Truman’s manual on out-Communist-hunting the Republicans, Dodd had become the leader of anti-Soviet Democrats. Eviscerating the anti-bomb movement became his urgent goal. Somewhat ungrammatically he reflected for the press, “[S]ome of the propaganda activities against nuclear testing is Communistinspired or directed.”9 The subpoena was slipped into Pauling’s hands at the end of a Washington, D.C., WILPF meeting at which he had given one of his usual anti-bomb speeches. From the Willard Hotel the Paulings called...

Share