With Anniversary of 9/11 Approaching, Columnist Recalls DePauw Speech

September 3, 2002

September 3, 2002, Greencastle, Ind. - "Art Spiegelman was already wearing his peace button last Oct. 3 when he stepped onto the stage at DePauw University's Kresge Auditorium, lighted a cigarette and gazed at his audience," begins Ruth Holladay's column in today's Indianapolis Star."'I feel like I just escaped Beirut and I'm back in America,' observed the dark-haired Pulitzer Prize winner, who like the rest of us was in post-9/11 shock." Spiegelman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist best known for the covers he creates for the New Yorker magazine, witnessed the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (you can read a story on the DePauw speech, including video and audio clips, by (clicking here).

"So he'd flown out of an East Coast war zone into the tranquil heartland of Greencastle, in Putnam County, in western Indiana," Holladay continues. "And while his talk was hardly political -- he spoke about the history of comics -- his button spoke volumes: No war."

Later, the columnist writes, "Now, after almost a year of sober reflection, an emotional fog has lifted. We love our country, but Spiegelman was right. No war." But Holladay notes that America continues to debate whether or not the U.S. should do battle with Iraq.

You can read the complete column, entitled "There's nothing funny about Americans fighting for peace," at the Star's Web site by clicking here.

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