Fred Galluccio: Board of Directors
Since I was 5 years old I have been a person of faith. This has for the most part been a wonderful experience, but it has definitely had its challenges, and dark nights. Along the way I noticed that there was pollution. Living in the San Fernando Valley (Los Angeles, California) smog was my focus. I could not help but notice it with my burning eyes in the city and looking down from the mountains that I hiked in my back yard. It was probably a combination of many things that led me to a group in downtown Los Angeles trying to take political action to clean up the air.I graduated high school in 1970. I went to Loyola University at Los Angeles, my first “Catholic school.” (It has since been renamed Loyola-Marymount University.) While there I started a group called ECO Action, and ran the weeklong Earth Day celebration for several years. I learned a lot from speakers and interactions. I went to a few peace marches, but my main focus was ecology (which to me encompassed everything). I eventually attended medical school at University of California at Irvine/CCM. I did not do much with political action (except some fund raisers; and a research project on costs of medical care for the poor vs. the rich) until I was a resident at Santa Rosa. This was considered the premier residency in the United States. There were some pretty amazing people in the program. This is where I met my first spiritual director. She was an Ursulan nun at the time, and was very involved in the peace movement. Not infrequently, she would get arrested (sometimes with her 80-year-old mother), and then write about her experiences, which she shared with me. She introduced me to the Catholic Worker movement, among other things. During my internship year a woman physician from Australia came to my residency to speak to us on the topic of “Medicine and Nuclear Weapons.” Her name was Dr. Helen Caldicott. Well, she lit a match that got me going. This sort of pollution was too much for me. I did some lecturing in the community, went to meetings, became involved with the local Catholic Worker, prepared with a faith based affinity group eventually called “Arms For Embracing.” I was prepared to be arrested if I needed to. At my first major action at Livermore National Laboratory (where much of the US nuclear arsenal has been designed) I asked for permission from my residency to be off. I was asked if I would not get arrested because it would place too much burden on my fellow residents. This is where I think I began my long career as a “non-arrested” virgin.After my residency I worked in Sierra Leone for awhile, returned to work at my residency part-time as a member of the faculty, and then was recruited to be on faculty at UCI. I went to the Soviet Union with Los Angeles Physicians for Social Responsibility twice, where I lectured on Nuclear Winter (and some other topics) there and in other parts of Europe. I was also one of the people who went to China and Japan for the same purpose the year when PSR (as part of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) won the Nobel Peace Prize. I joined Orange County Physicians for Social Responsibility, eventually becoming its president and then a member of the governing board. I established and taught a course in the School of Medicine called “Medicine and Nuclear Weapons.” I also became more involved with my local Catholic Church. I tried to evangelize the heavily military-industrial complex employed people in the community (Huntington Beach) with the wonderful letters on peace that the US bishops had written. I started the Peace and Social Justice Ministry at our parish of 14,000 people. This became an evangelization for me as well as I became more and more involved in the community and in liturgy. Coincident with my coming to UCI in 1983 I met Anne Bucher (now Symens-Bucher) at a young adult retreat. She introduced me to the nuclear test site near Las Vegas. I have spent many days, weekends, and some weeks there since then. I met my wife Monika at the Nevada Test Site in 1992. She is a theologian and political/social scientist who taught high school and co-founded and ran the Peace Office in Salzburg, Austria. (I later discovered after we were married that she was somewhat famous for her actions and as a media personality.) Monika had taken part in a European Peace march across the US on the 500th year anniversary of Columbus coming to our continent, seeking to bring peace instead of violence. She decided to visit the test site for the Hiroshima/Nagasaki memorial. We decided to journey together, and now have two wonderful children Christina and Sophia. We continue to struggle with balance…children, career, action, etc. I/we are trying to find where and how to take action in the world in a faith-based nonviolent manner. I was pleasantly surprised and honored to be asked to become a member of Pace E Bene’s board of directors, and now I am finding my way in that capacity. I really like the community, action, and creativity of Pace e Bene. The concept to me is one of yeast or a seed – or the water that this world so needs. Fred Galluccio can be reached at: paxfred@earthlink.net
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