Biography
John George Lemnitzer was a Lutheran minister born November 21, 1943 in New York City. While serving Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Missoula, Montana, he joined the 1980 Easter peace action at Malmstrom Air Force Base. He served 90 days at the federal prison camp in Leavenworth and returned to Missoula by June 1981. Lemnitzer later served Lutheran congregations in Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, and Phoenix. He died on October 12, 2015.
Prison admission and release at year precision
The complete original March 1981 Nuclear Resister issue 4, page 1, says John Lemnitzer had just begun his 90-day Leavenworth sentence for the Easter 1980 Malmstrom action. Issue 6, June 1981, page 2, reports that he had been released and returned to Missoula after serving 90 days. These pages were fully rendered and visually checked. Release is established in 1981; exact admission and release days are not printed. Original March 1981 report; Original June 1981 release report.
The original VVAW interview with participant John McNamer identifies the Missoula Prince of Peace minister's Easter 1980 arrest and describes McNamer taking the incarcerated minister's place the following Easter. Together with the March start report and documented 90-day stay, this bounds the sentence admission to 1981; that admission year is an explicitly bounded inference, not an exact date. Admission and release are both stored at YEAR precision only. Identical January 1 placeholders do not mean same-day custody, and the independently documented 90 days actually served is retained instead of a placeholder-date calculation. Original participant interview.
An identified portrait is indexed with his original family obituary, but ordinary retrieval encountered a site challenge; it was not bypassed and no image is imported. General Lyman Lemnitzer's photographs are not photographs of this minister. Original named obituary portrait lead.
