Kathy Boylan
Biography
Kathy Boylan is a longtime peace activist with Jonah House in Baltimore and a member of the Atlantic Life Community. She was one of five members of the Gods of Metal Plowshares affinity group that disarmed a B-52 bomber at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on May 17, 1998. She was held at the Kent County Detention Center in Chestertown, Maryland during the federal proceedings.
On May 17, 1998, five Plowshares activists — Sister Ardeth Platte OP, Sister Carol Gilbert OP, Kathy Boylan, Father Frank Cordaro, and Father Larry Morlan — entered the Andrews Air Force Base flightline in Maryland and disarmed a B-52 bomber with hammers and blood. The action took the name Gods of Metal Plowshares.
The Winter 1998–99 Nukewatch Pathfinder names Kathy Shields Boylan, Carol Gilbert, Ardeth Platte, Frank Cordaro and Larry Morlan as the Gods of Metal Plowshares participants who hammered and poured blood on a B-52 at an Air Force weapons display in May 1998. Their Maryland trial began September 22. The report explicitly states that all five were convicted and jailed before sentencing. January 4 was the announced future sentencing date, and a possible year in prison was exposure rather than completed service. Source: https://www.laka.org/docu/magazines/nukewatch_pathfinder/1998-4-winter.pdf#page=5
Birth-year sources
- Gods of Metal Plowshares biographies, 1998 — identifies Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Kathy Shields Boylan as 54.
- TRT World, September 2024 — identifies Boylan as 81 while documenting her continuing anti-war activism. The two dated reports support 1943 as her birth year.
- Dorothy Day Catholic Worker biography — independently documents Boylan’s identity and Plowshares activism.
Omitted 1989 custody
Added September 4–5, 1989 overnight detention, separately from the March 6, 1990 sixty-day sentence. Later prison-entry and release dates remain unverified; unrelated 1998 and 2001 cases are preserved.
Source: Arthur J. Laffin's participant chronology.
Earlier Shoreham disposition without five additional days served
Original page 2 identifies Kathleen Boylan with Frederick Pickering, Norman Iehle and Barbara Stern among Shoreham defendants sentenced on October 2 after the late-September trials arising from September 1980 arrests. It explicitly says the four five-day defendants did not serve additional jail time because of prior-time credit and jail policies. The issue does not isolate Boylan’s individual admission, release or actual credited duration. Five days is therefore not entered as completed service or added to an existing unrelated case. The October disposition year is contextual, not separately printed in this item.
National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective newsletter No. 10, January 17, 1982, original pages 1–6.
The October1996 Witness individually identifies the WashingtonDC Catholic Worker participant as Kathy Shields Boylan. This bridges the existing Kathy Boylan/Kathleen Boylan profile, whose middle name Shields is already stored. Add only the explicit full published name variant; the July27 protest is not automatically an incarceration date.
