Barbara Leonard Reynolds (born Barbara Dorrit Leonard; Milwaukee, Wisconsin, June 12, 1915 – February 11, 1990), was an American author who became a Quaker, peace activist and educator.
In 1951, Reynolds moved with her husband to Hiroshima where he conducted a three-year study on the effects of radiation on children who had survived the first atomic bomb. She and her family then became peace activists, sailing around the world to protest nuclear weapons. In the early 1960s, she traveled around the world with atomic bomb survivors to show world leaders, first-hand, the horrors of nuclear warfare. In 1965, she established the World Friendship Center in Hiroshima, Japan in order to introduce international visitor to atomic bombing sufferers (hibakusha) so that they could fully convey their experience of nuclear war to the global community. In 1975, Reynolds established the Peace Resource Center at Wilmington College to spread awareness of the nuclear threat and the experiences of hibakusha to the American public.
After this, she continued her peace and anti-nuclear activism, and after 1978, in California, she helped to resettle Cambodians fleeing Pol Pot, among other humanitarian pursuits.
Early life She was born Barbara Dorrit Leonard in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the only child of Dr. Sterling Andrus Leonard,1888-1931; Ph.D. Philosophy, Columbia, 1928, taught English at the University of Michigan for 12 years a Professor of English and Education at the University of Wisconsin and prolific author of books on English composition and literature (1888-1931) English Composition as a Social Problem, (editor, 1917); Poems of the War and of the Peace, (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1921); Essential Principles of Teaching Reading and Literature (1922); The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays, (Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1921); Leonard and Cox?, General Language (Rand McNally & Co. 1925); Leonard and Cox, An Answer Book for General Language (New York: Rand McNally and Company, 1926); The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage, 1700-1800, (Madison, 1929); Leonard and McFadden, Juniors Own Composition Book (New York: Rand McNally & Co., 1928); Theisen and Leonard, Real Life Stories, 4 volumes (Real Life Stories: Real Adventures; Real Life Stories: Heroic Deeds; Real Life Stories and Literary Selections; Real Life Stories: Open Spaces, Macmillan Company, 1930-35); Leonard and Moffett, Junior Literature (3 volumes, The Macmillan Company, 1930); What Irritates Linguists, (1930); Current English Usage, The Inland Press, 1932 and Minnetta Florence Sammis,The Home Educator. Editor, Minnetta Sammis Leonard; associate editor, Patty Smith Hill. (The Foundation library) © 29Sep23, A760377. R81873, 9Aug51, Field Enterprises, inc. (PWH); Best Toys for Children and Their Selection, self-published, 1925<Jessica Reynolds. "Date with Terror," Teen, January 15, 1967.Barbara's beloved Uncle John H. Sammis, 1846-1919, who wrote the well-known hymn "Trust and Obey," died on her fourth birthday. an educator who evaluated the safety of new toys for children. Barbara's paternal grandmother, Eva Leonard, was a syndicated daily columnist in over 200 newspapers during World War II and later wrote advice to the lovelorn under the name Elizabeth Thompson.Jessica Reynolds Shaver. "Joyful memories of a gentle, creative feminist," (Long Beach, CA) Press-Telegram, July 27, 1989.
Barbara was fifteen years old — and one month from graduating from high school — when her father, 43, a popular English teacher at the University of Wisconsin, drowned in Lake Mendota. A colleague from Cambridge University, Dr. I. A. Richards, 38, had come to Madison to meet Dr. Leonard and learn more of Leonard's original perspectives on English usage.From Grant Application for David Beard. Proposed paper: I. A. Richards: The Meaning of the New Rhetoric David Beard, Assistant Professor Department of Writing Studies, College of Liberal Arts, UM-Duluth: Chapter Two: American Influence on Richards and the New Rhetoric: A second chapter explores an influence on Richards that is ignored by other scholars: his relationship with American composition scholar Sterling Leonard. Most research effaces the impact of Americans on Richards’ work, focusing instead on the influence of British figures (Leavis, Empson, Eliot, Ogden, and Lewis). Americans are understood as having been influenced by Richards. In fact, Richards read Leonard’s monograph on usage in 18th century rhetorics shortly before delivering his lectures on The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Uncovering Leonard’s influence is an important first step in exploring the impact of American thinkers on the central figure of the New Rhetoric. This chapter was drafted in Summer 2007 under a McKnight summer research fellowship, will be presented at the November 2007 National Communication Association, and is presently being revised as an article for submission to the composition journal Rhetoric Review. davidbeard.v2efoliomn.mnscu.edu/Uploads/F2008gia_application.pdf Dr. Richards had spoken at the University of Wisconsin the night before and the two were spending the afternoon canoeing together. The canoe capsized and after two hours in the cold water, Leonard lost his grip on the canoe and sank. Dr. Richards was later rescued exhausted and in shock. Dr. Leonard's death was the top story in both The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin"Prof. S.A. Leonard is Drowned: Companion is Saved as Canoe Tips on Mendota," May 16, 1931. and the Chicago Daily Tribune."Boat Upsets; Educator Dies," May 16, 1931. The failure of lifeguards on shore to see the overturned canoe and save the two professors became a local scandal, resulting in an investigation. Dr. Leonard's body was never recovered.
In 1935, Barbara married Earle L. Reynolds, and they had three children: Tim (1936), Ted (1938) and Jessica (1944). In 1951, Dr. Reynolds was sent by the Atomic Energy Commission to Hiroshima to conduct a three-year study on the effects of radiation on children who had survived the first atomic bomb (1951–54). Barbara and the family went with him. They lived in Nijimura, an Army occupation base nearby. During their three years there, he designed and built a yacht, Phoenix of Hiroshima.
Peace activism In 1954, Reynolds and her family sailed around the world in the , a yacht that Earle had designed. In 1958, the family (minus their eldest son Tim) and a crew member, Niichi (Nick) Mikami, arrived back in Honolulu. Across the dock was a yacht, the Golden Rule, in which four Quaker men had attempted to protest American nuclear testing in the Pacific. They were arrested under an injunction put into effect while they were at sea, forbidding American citizens to enter the area of the ocean where the weapons were being tested.Hardtack I series of 35 atmospheric tests near the Marshall Islands, 1958) On July 2, 1958, the Reynolds family and Nick sailed the Phoenix into the test zone and were stopped by the American Coast Guard ship Planetree. Dr. Reynolds, as captain, was put under arrest. He was ordered to sail the Phoenix to Kwajalein Atoll, from which he, Barbara and Jessica were flown back to Honolulu by Military Air Transport Service plane for Earle's trial. Unable to find a third man to help Ted and Nick, who had stayed with the Phoenix, Barbara flew back to Kwajalein and the three sailed the yacht back to Hawaii, a trip which took sixty days. After Reynolds' conviction and its reversal after a two-year appeal, the family completed their circumnavigation, which made Mikami the first Japanese yachtsman to sail around the world.
On arriving in Hiroshima to an enthusiastic welcome, the Reynolds family were surprised at the appreciation expressed by hibakusha (literally, explosion-affected people), the atomic bomb survivors, for their protest against nuclear weapons. Walking along a Hiroshima street one day, Barbara was stopped by a hesitant woman in full kimono. The woman pulled up her sleeve to show gnarled keloid scars typical of atomic bomb burns. With tears in her eyes she thanked Barbara for giving her a voice to share the cry of her heart, "No More Hiroshimas", with the world. Barbara often mentioned this in talks, saying, with tears in her own eyes, "it had never occurred to us to represent anyone but ourselves." Barbara committed herself to speaking out against nuclear weapons and for disarmament.
In 1961, to protest USSR nuclear testing, the family sailed to Nakhodka and were stopped within the limit claimed by the USSR by a Soviet Coast Guard boat. The captain and several other officers boarded the Phoenix. Although the Reynolds were able to have a two-hour discussion about peace with him, Captain Ivanov would not accept the hundreds of letters from Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, begging for peace. Upon their return to Hiroshima, Barbara decided to bring a survivor from Hiroshima to take the letters personally to show to government leaders around the world and to the United Nations. When asked why hibakusha, Barbara reportedly said, "Because they are the prophets of this present age."Harada, Tomin. Moments of Peace. A committee of Hiroshima leaders choose two survivors to represent the city, a 29-year-old woman, Miyoko Matsubara, a schoolgirl at the time of the bomb, and an 18-year-old student, Hiromasa (Hiro) Hanabusa, who had been orphaned by the bomb as a baby.
She organized the Peace Pilgrimage in 1962, accompanying the two hibakusha around the world as they shared their personal experiences of atomic war, appealing to world leaders to ban nuclear weapons. Over five months, the three Peace Pilgrims traveled through 13 countries, including the Soviet Union, appealing for nuclear disarmament and receiving a warm and open reception from public leaders, churches, schools and the media. During their six weeks in the United States, they spoke to 187 groups and met with many leaders in Washington D.C. and at the United Nations. In Geneva the three attended the 1962 Disarmament Conference.
Two years later Barbara organized the World Peace Study Mission, taking 25 survivors of both cities plus 15 interpreters to every nuclear nation, including the USSR. Teachers went to meet with teachers, doctors with doctors and at the UN they appealed to the U.S. government to return Hiroshima – A Documentary of Atomic Bombing, to the Japanese, who had made it. (It had been impounded and classified by the U.S. military forces soon after the occupation of Japan.) Dr. Tomin Harada, a physician who dedicated his life to the continuing medical needs of the hibakusha due to delayed radiation sickness, and who had named a species of rose he developed after Barbara, wrote in one of his two books about her, "Through Barbara's World Peace Study Mission the survivors of the atomic bomb were introduced to the world and the anti-nuclear movement gained strength."Harada, Tomin. Moments of Peace, p. 31.
Upon their return, Earle and Barbara divorced.Reynolds, Barbara, with Shaver, Jessica Reynolds. "A Little Toad Shall Lead Them?" Quaker Life, June 1991.
World Friendship Center and Hiroshima Nagasaki Memorial collection Barbara envisioned a place visiting foreigners could stay, where they could meet and hear the stories of survivors. Dedicated in 1965, the World Friendship Center has established lines of communication between hibakusha and the world through various peace efforts. Barbara was its first director, Dr. Harada the first chairman of a board of ten non-political persons and an international board of honorary sponsors. Dr. Albert Schweitzer, accepted a position as a sponsor in one of the last letters he wrote. Tens of thousands of people have stayed at WFC since its founding.