Evelyn Murray

Evelyn Sheen Murray was a Portland Elementary School teacher and a peace activist who waged war against nerve gas. She was born June 21, 1911 and died April 13, 1996.

Evelyn was a vital member of The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) for three decades. She joined WILPF in 1967, feeling it was an organization that would help in her battle against nerve gas. She had attended a conference where Dr. Pfeiffers, a zoologist from Montana, newly returned from Vietnam, told of the horrible effects of Agent Orange and that the U.S. was producing nerve gas and germ weapons. This shocked and horrified her. She joined WILPF and sprang into action. From 1969 to 1970, as a member of People Against Nerve Gas (PANG), she was one of the plaintiffs in a class action suit against Defense Secretary Melvin Laird and the Army that blocked shipment from Okinawa to Oregon’s Umatilla Army Depot near Hermiston. The Army instead transported it to Johnston Island, south of Hawaii. In 1978 when the Army wanted to transfer leaking nerve gas from Denver to Utah, she was outraged—her grandchildren lived in Denver. She called nerve gas “a fickle weapon of highly dubious military value,” and with WILPF’s help, she founded the Nerve Gas Task Force. Evelyn was a dynamo as head of this organization for ten years.

She enlisted help from peace and church groups, the scientific community, and a vast network of friends. The Nerve Gas Task Force had a mailing list of over seven hundred supporters throughout the country. She sought for ratification of Geneva Protocol of 1925—which forbid the use of asphyxiating, poisonous, and other gases in warfare—and for a ban on further production of such weapons. The Geneva Protocol was ratified by the U.S. in 1975.

Evelyn developed educational brochures, posters, pens, and pencils, using her skills from years of elementary school teaching. She created a nerve gas exhibit that she displayed at countless conferences. She attended one working conference of experts in London, England. She was on the phone at all hours of the day and night with lawmakers around the country and scientists around the world. Wisely, Evelyn saw to it that her vast collection of materials and documents, some of them out-of-print, were placed in the Oregon Historical Society Library as a permanent resource. (WILPF member, Laureen Nussbaum, was a great help in this endeavor.)

In 1969 the U.S. banned and destroyed its biological weapons. In 1975, under Senator Fulbright’s leadership, the Senate finally ratified the Geneva Protocol. In 1985 Evelyn was responsible for passage in Salem, Oregon of Senate Joint Resolution 19, which memorialized Congress to end funding and production of chemical and biological weapons, and she made an effort to generate similar resolutions in other state legislatures.

The United States did finally stop production of chemical weapons in July of 1990, and Evelyn was invited by Senators Hatfield and Prior, Representatives Fascell and Porter, and the Council for a Livable World to come to Washington, D.C. for a celebration of the happy result of what they called “Ten Years of Struggle.” For Evelyn, it had been twenty-three years. She stayed home but sent messages to be used in toasts.

In 1993, the final wrinkles were ironed out of an international agreement halting the production, use, and stockpiling of chemical weapons. Billed as the most complex arms control pact ever negotiated, it commands wide international support and has been signed by 115 nations. It seeks not only to ban lethal chemicals but to control access to compounds used in the manufacture of agricultural pesticides and other industrial products, preventing their diversion to weapons-making.

Binary nerve gas stored at Umatilla, Oregon is finally now being destroyed. More than a decade after production stopped, struggles continue to meet a congressional deadline to destroy chemical weapons by 2017.

Evelyn received many honors, including the Citizens of Dedication Award from Church Women United and the Justice and Peace Award from the National Council of Churches. She was a peacemaker in her daily life and was also a canoeist, swimmer, and avid gardener. 

Words of the late Milton Lowenthal fit Evelyn’s life so well. They are called the Ten Steps for Peace: Have a dream, believe it’s possible, seek the truth, reject militarism, promote nonviolence, preserve the environment, prepare for peace, live peaceably, work together, spread the word, and never give up!

Written by Johnni Freeborn