Jerome Zawada
Biography
Father Jerome 'Jerry' Zawada OFM was a Franciscan friar of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Province (later the Sacred Heart Province) and a peace activist whose six decades of ministry included extensive work in the Philippines, in Nicaragua during the Contra war, and at U.S. military installations. He was arrested dozens of times across his life, primarily for SOA Watch line-crossings at Fort Benning, Georgia, and for protests at the Nevada Test Site, serving multiple short federal sentences. He died in 2017 at age 80.
Convicted in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia under 18 U.S.C. § 1382 (entering a military reservation) for participating in the School of the Americas Watch (SOA Watch) annual nonviolent civil-disobedience action at Fort Benning, Georgia on September 2002. The action targeted the U.S. Army Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) — formerly the School of the Americas — which had trained Latin American military officers later linked to assassinations, torture, and massacres including Romero, the four U.S. churchwomen, the Jesuits in El Salvador, El Mozote, and Plan Cóndor. Defendants typically received 3 to 6 months in federal custody plus a fine.
The July 2013 Ground Zero newsletter individually names Jerome Zawada among the fourteen people arrested on the federal side of Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor during the Pacific Life Community action on March 4, 2013. It also identifies this person among seven defendants arraigned June 5 on a trespass/re-entry charge under 18 U.S.C. 1382, pleading not guilty and awaiting an October 21 trial. The possibility of jail was prospective. The report does not establish a complete jail interval or an eventual prison sentence. Source: https://www.gzcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/July-13-newsletter-for-website.pdf#page=7
Sources
Separate 1988 pretrial detention and bond release
A November 9, 1988 letter signed by the Missouri Peace Planting participants, including Jerry, describes Zawada's October 4 reentry and bond forfeiture, with confinement through the November 2 trial conclusion. Its continuation says he was out on bond awaiting sentencing. A separate row records October 4 admission and November release at month precision only; November 2 is not promoted from trial conclusion to a discharge day. The automatic partial-date counter is not documented actual days. Original Post Amerikan, physical pages 13–14 / printed pages 12–13.
The old August 14 arrest date and blanket dismissal/cite-and-release statements are withdrawn. The letter documents trespass convictions, not universal dismissal. Other campaign custody and later sentence endpoints remain unknown, and are not joined into one continuous stay. Existing identified photograph retained; unrelated later cases unchanged.
Contemporary obituary and separate imprisonment episodes
The August 2017 Catholic Agitator obituary identifies Father Jerry Zawada as the Franciscan friar who died July 25 at age eighty, corroborating the existing death date without supplying a new birth date. It reports two years of late-1980s imprisonment for repeated Midwest missile-silo trespass, three six-month School of the Americas prison sentences associated with 2001, 2003 and 2005, and two months in 2007 following protest of torture training at Fort Huachuca. These are distinct campaigns and retrospective term summaries, not exact physical-admission or discharge dates. The caption names Zawada and Toni Flynn as having served six-month terms at the same time in Crisp County Jail for the 2001 Fort Benning line-crossing. This event-year label must not be substituted for an independently documented admission year. Existing case dates and counters remain unchanged; no sentence maximum is converted into exact actual days.
Catholic Agitator, August 2017, original PDF page 7 / printed page 7.
The contemporary report documents a separate custody episode: Two years probation; $5,000 fine or 500 community-service hours.
The Nuclear Resister155 reports that he was among seven people arrested at Creech Air Force Base on September28,2009, taken to Clark County Detention Center and held overnight. The report describes next-day processing but does not establish his actual release date; that field remains unknown. This is separate from the Fort Huachuca case.
