Esther Mohler Ho, 79, Hayward, Calif., believed so much in nonviolence and social justice that she sometimes found herself behind bars or facing guns.
Now there is one less peacemaker in the world. Ho died Aug. 20, 2010, in Hayward, surrounded by her immediate family.
She was born July 2, 1931, on a farm near McCune, the daughter of John and Lota Mohler. In a brief memoir published in “Love, Grandma,” published by Grandmothers Against the War, Ho wrote that her early lessons about living in peace and serving those in need came from the Sunday school classes and sermons at the local Church of the Brethren.
“My parents reinforced those ideas at home,” Ho wrote.
When Brethren Volunteer Service workers visited her congregation, she decided that she would some day join this organization. That dream came true two years after she graduated from McPherson College with a degree in English, and she was assigned to Kassel, Germany, as a representative for International Christian Youth Exchange.
When she returned to the United States, worked with the director of Peace Education and Action for the Church of the Brethren.
“There I learned that Christians are called not only to live peaceably in their families and communities, but also to try to influence the way their governments treat people,” Ho wrote.
She later obtained a master’s degree in speech and language pathology from Northwestern University in Illinois, and worked 20 years as a speech and language specialist.
Ho later joined the Ecumenical Peace Institute, based in Berkeley, Calif. She wrote that it was nearly five years before she could bring herself to risk being arrested. Her first experience with that came when her group occupied a house that was being sold by HUD. According to law, excess HUD properties should be given to the homeless or poor, but instead were being sold for profit.
She and other members of the group spent several hours in jail, but no action was taken against them in court.
Following that, Ho wrote, she found “many opportunities to put my body where my beliefs were.” She was also arrested during peaceful demonstrations at Livermore Nuclear Weapons Labs, the U.S. Navy ELF Facility in Wisconsin, Oakland and San Francisco Federal Buildings and the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga.
She felt that her most significant contribution to peace came as a member of Christian Peacemaking Teams.
Ho spent two summers in the West Bank city of Hebron, Israel, on violence reduction missions with local peacemakers, serving as a “human shield” to protect Palestinians, using her CPT training in nonviolent intervention, observation and documentation. She also spent three summers in Chiapas, Mexico, working as an observer in support of an endangered indigenous community.
