Biography
Paul Emerson Hood was a Quaker peace activist and co-founder of Ailanthus, a Boston-area Christian nonviolence community. After serving as a Marine in World War II, he devoted much of his later life to peace work. Ailanthus maintained weekly vigils at Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, where guidance systems for nuclear missiles were developed. Hood was arrested after an August 6, 1981 prayer protest in the laboratory courtyard, received a 30-day sentence, and was released September 25. He later co-founded the Vermont peace group Chrysalis and helped establish the Small Potatoes meal program in Burlington.
Separate 1981 actions and custody limits
The original October 30, 1981 Nuclear Resister, printed page 3, visually inspected, individually names Paul Hood, Jean Holladay and Grace Carson, gives the August 6 arrest and September 25 prison release, and reports thirty-day sentences. It does not give an actual admission date or certify thirty days actually served.
The complete original Commonwealth v. Hood, 389 Mass. 581, including its companion-case footnote, describes a different December 21, 1981 leafleting arrest involving Paul Hood, Suzanne Belote, Robert W. Hillegass and Jean Holladay. The opinion reports $50 fines suspended pending appeal and affirms the convictions July 5, 1983. Neither this decision date nor the later Quaker memorial biography's undated account supplies the missing August-case admission day. The memorial's broader recollections are not used to override the court's individual disposition. His existing identified portrait is retained.
His Quaker memorial describes a separate protest while he was living at Jonah House in Baltimore: he poured ashes on a cruise-missile model at the Pentagon and spent several months in jail. The account does not give the imprisonment dates or institution. It also says his spring 1977 Seabrook arrest did not result in jail time.
NEYM Permanent Board advance documents May11,2019, PDF page 80; NEYM Permanent Board advance documents May11,2019, PDF page 81.
