As global war loomed, the McLaughlins of Bloomington preached peace

They were an unlikely pair of pioneering Minnesota peace activists — seeking alternatives to war and preaching world government starting way back in 1946.

Ronald McLaughlin was a Northwest Airlines pilot who had served as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. His wife, Clare, gave up a promising career as an opera singer to care for her ill father.

Working side by side out of their quirky, self-built home in Bloomington, the McLaughlins organized meetings to discuss solutions to global conflicts, passed out flyers from their booth at the State Fair and delivered speeches at churches and schools.

And in 1946, they organized the local chapter for Americans United for World Government, advocating for a stronger United Nations to mediate tensions and prevent war. That group merged with others to become the United World Federalists in 1947 — which continues today as Citizens for Global Solutions.

When President John Kennedy in 1961 announced his “intention to challenge the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to a peace race,” the McLaughlins collected 60,000 signatures on a petition under a heading directed at JFK: “We Join You in the Peace Race.” With help from Sen. Hubert Humphrey, a longtime friend, they delivered stacks of petitions to the White House on Sept. 11, 1962. Kennedy’s national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, promised their work would be helpful to the president.

“If we just started a candle burning, it may help,” Clare, then 55, told reporters at the White House. She said they hoped all those “citizens’ signatures might strengthen” Kennedy’s hand.

The Cuban Missile Crisis a month later derailed much of the couple’s momentum. But in October 1963, Kennedy signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, barring the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. And the McLaughlins remained active in the peace movement until their deaths six months apart in 1990.

“They were definitely ahead of their times and now, sadly, they’re mostly forgotten,” said their son, Kent McLaughlin, 69, from his home in Spokane, Wash.

Shouts of “Communists!” would routinely interrupt his parents’ speeches, Kent said. “But my mom had the ability to take on the hecklers and, by the end of the night, they’d be signing World Federalist petitions,” he said.

The son of Christian missionaries from Iowa, Ronald McLaughlin was born in Japan in 1908 and met Clare Glover in Chicago after attending Northwestern University. They wed in 1936 and moved to Minnesota when a pilot job opened at Northwest.

During World War II they were stationed in Newfoundland, where he trained pilots and she often contacted the next of kin when pilots were killed in combat. “They’d seen enough carnage and thought there had to be a better way,” their son said.

Clare later brushed off the notion that an ex-military airman and a formally trained singer made odd peaceniks.

“We don’t think any groups are more members of the world community than artists and airline pilots,” she told White House reporters in 1962.

Outlasting hesitant bankers, who wanted them to build a cozy colonial instead, the McLaughlins provided much of their own labor building their Bloomington dream house at 9400 Cedar Av., overlooking the Minnesota River. They’d throw winter pool parties — no doubt talking about peace issues — after doing their daily “calisthenics from a swing over the water,” which was surrounded by blooming flowers, according to a 1948 story in the Minneapolis Tribune.

Ronald would often point to their first-floor swimming pool, which some considered folly, when people insisted that world government was impractical. “If you really want to get something,” he said, “you can do it.”

The couple raised two children and six massive Great Pyrenees dogs in the house, including 150-pound Elan that liked to eat a couple pounds of horse meat daily.

Kent said the house was torn down in 1970 because of structural flaws. Many of his parents’ ideals have been similarly razed, he said.

“They’d be mortified and horrified that we have not learned from the atrocities of war,” he said.

The McLaughlins moved to Seattle in 1964 after 18 years in Minnesota because Ronald wanted to fly Asian routes for Northwest. But their Minnesota days are important to remember, says Jim Nelson, 80, who lives in Minneapolis and met the McLaughlins in the late ‘60s.

“I was so impressed with the sincerity of their mission that I joined the group and I’m still a member more than 50 years later,” said Nelson, a board member and former president of the Minnesota chapter of Citizens for Global Solutions (https://www.globalsolutionsmn.org/).

Nelson, who helped care for a brother physically and psychologically damaged by his service in Vietnam, has collected more than 300 documents about the McLaughlins and the early Minnesota peace movement and donated them to the Minnesota Historical Society.

“Their clear thinking and sincerity about finding alternatives to war is more relevant than ever today,” Nelson said. “And their work still gives me hope.”

Curt Brown’s tales about Minnesota’s history appear every other Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at mnhistory@startribune.com. His latest book looks at 1918 Minnesota, when flu, war and fires converged: strib.mn/MN1918.