Northfield woman spurs day of national concern about guns, youth (1996)

By Norman Draper
Star Tribune Staff Writer

It stands to reason that the state that gave us Sober Cab for the holiday drinkers, the Great American Smokeout to spur efforts to stop smoking and TV Busters to wean us from our video habits would get around to guns in schools.

It's a Minnesotan -- Mary Lewis Grow, a 55-year-old Northfield opponent of gun violence -- who will be among those sharing the podium with US Senator bill Bradley, D-N.J., today in Newark, N.J., to announce the designation of a day of national concern about guns and youth. The October observance will feature a pledge for secondary-school students that commits them never to use guns or take them to school, and to influence their friends not to use guns. *

Grow, who has worked on ways to fight gun violence since the late 1980s, said she tossed the idea around a couple of years ago with Judy Farmer, a Minneapolis school board member, and Betty Jo Webb, the school district's director of family and community services.

"We thought that while there is a national focus on the issue of gun violence, it would be wonderful if kids could be connected by some sort of contract or pledge, like Students Against Drunk Driving," who pledge not to drink and drive, Grow said.

She was one of the organizers two years ago of a silent march in Washington, D.C. to protest gun violence. It also featured 38,000 pairs of shoes, arranged in march formation near the Capitol, to symbolize the people killed by guns each year in the United States.

The idea of the pledge and observance concentrating on kids percolated and, through the efforts of Grow and others, gradually made its way to councils and organizations around the nation.

But, Grow noted, a big national plug was needed to get it off the ground. That came when she was prowling the U.S. Senate offices, trying to drum up support. She flagged down Bradley in the hall; he responded enthusiastically.

Last month, with the bipartisan backing of Bradley and 83 other U.S. Senators -- including Minnesota's Paul Wellstone and Rod Grams, Massachusetts' Ted Kennedy, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond and North Carolina's Jesse Helms -- a resolution was approved to designate October 10 as the Day of National Concern About Young People and Gun Violence.

Grow said she hopes that publicity and the pledges will serve as the catalyst for nationwide discussions about gun violence. She said she wants to see activities not just in urban schools, where guns are a more visible problem, but in suburban and rural districts as well.

"I've always felt there is a lot of power in simultaneity," Grow said. "People get in a sense of strength from the idea that they're one of many doing the same thing at the same time."