St. Louis

Park service protests pink Gateway Arch plan

The National Park Service is upset over a plan to illuminate the Gateway Arch in pink on Monday in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Spokesman Dave Barna said Wednesday the Park Service was not opposed to the cause, but rather the precedent it set for possible future uses of the 630-foot-tall arch, which the agency is charged with maintaining.

“If you allow a certain type of event with one organization, you open it up to everyone else,” he said. “You have to assume there’ll be some individual who’ll want to do this in some protest manner.

“We consider these monuments sacred sites. The color or the style or the function was all the result of those architects and design. They’re pieces of art, and we don’t want to see changes, even temporarily.”

Philadelphia

Peace advocate, 89, begins jail sentence

Bundled in two sweaters and a jacket against the biting wind as she sat in her wheelchair, 89-year-old Quaker antiwar advocate Lillian Willoughby went to jail.

“I never dreamed I’d get this kind of send-off,” Willoughby, of Deptford, said Wednesday in front of the U.S. courthouse in downtown Philadelphia surrounded by about 50 banner-holding members of the Brandywine Peace Community.

The gathering was both a peace vigil and show of support for Willoughby and five other demonstrators as they reported to the Federal Detention Center to begin seven-day sentences for blocking the courthouse entrance March 20, 2003, the day after the Iraq war began. The alternative was paying a $25 fine.

“It will be worth it if it gets the message out and people start working for peace,” Willoughby said.