Widow of Norman Morrison to Speak at The College of Wooster on Aug. 29

Wooster graduate immolated himself at the Pentagon in 1965 to protest the Vietnam War

WOOSTER, Ohio - Anne Morrison Welsh, author of Held in the Light: Norman Morrison's Sacrifice for Peace and His Family's Journey of Healing, will share her once-private thoughts about her late husband's very public self-immolation to protest the Vietnam War in 1965 Aug 28-29, at The College of Wooster. She will deliver a short reading and sign copies of her book in a free public event on Friday, Aug. 28, at 2 p.m. in Andrews Library (1140 Beall Ave.). She will also address members of the Worthy Questions mentoring group in a closed session on Saturday, Aug. 29.

Morrison, a 1956 College of Wooster graduate and a devout Quaker, drove from his home in Baltimore to Washington, D.C., where he doused himself with kerosene and lit himself on fire just outside of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's window at the Pentagon. His was one of several self-immolations that took place in the mid-sixties, including that of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, who burned himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon - an act that was captured by photographer Malcolm Browne. Morrison's choice to self-immolate was particularly symbolic in that it followed President Johnson's controversial decision to authorize the use of napalm, a burning gel that sticks to the skin and melts the flesh, in Vietnam.

In 1999, more than 30 years after Morrison's death, Welsh visited Vietnam with her two surviving daughters (a son had died of cancer at the age of 16). The three met with Vietnamese officials and citizens who shared the extraordinary impact of Morrison's act. A street was named for Morrison and a postage stamp was created in his honor. That cathartic experience inspired Welsh to write Fire of the Heart: Norman Morrison's Legacy in Viet Nam and at Home, a pamphlet published by Quaker-affiliated Pendle Hill Publications in 2005. Three years later, with the help of author Joyce Hollyday, that pamphlet became the foundation for a more detailed memoir describing the unresolved anger and sorrow felt by both the family and the nation. In the book, Welsh describes her husband's fateful act as a "desperate effort to bring an end to a war he abhorred. She also relates an intensely personal "spiritual journey of forgiveness, acceptance and recovery from life's wounds."

Morrison's self-sacrifice did not bring an end to the war that would drag on for eight more years, but it did have a profound impact, particularly on McNamara, who referred to it in Errol Morris's 2004 Oscar-winning documentary Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. McNamara, who died in July at the age of 93, somberly summarized his emotions by saying, "How much evil must we do in order to do good? It's a very, very difficult position for sensitive human beings to be in. Morrison was one of those. I think I was."