Retired physics professor Sam Neff has long history of social activism

When Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historic "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Sam Neff had already seen a sneak preview.

On his first day as a physics professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1965, Neff was swept up in a protest involving civil rights leader Julian Bond.

It was the opening day of classes, but Morehouse students and faculty were encouraged to head to the state capitol building in support of Bond, who had been elected to the Georgia House of Representatives but was prevented from taking his seat by members who objected to his opposition to the Vietnam War.

King spoke on Bond's behalf at the state capitol, and it was then Neff first heard excerpts from the speech that would define King's legacy.

It was also one of the first moments in Neff's "extracurricular" life as a civil rights and peace advocate. During the next five years, Neff said "we were always marching for one thing or another."

Neff, 69, has long pursued activities that might be considered radical by some. But for the Whitefish man and his wife, Ruth, activities such as joining the demonstrations against the Iraq war in downtown Kalispell or heading up meetings to discuss the Patriot Act are second nature.

"It's just natural for us to get involved with that sort of thing," Neff said.

Neff's name may also be known locally for his letters to the editor on the subjects such as the Patriot Act and nuclear proliferation. In a January opinion-page piece, he wrote " Nuclear weapons only are weapons of terror, and kill indiscriminately. The threat of their use would make it appear that our way of defending democracy is by threat of monumental acts of terror."

During his 30-year tenure as a physics professor at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., Neff taught a course on the technology of nuclear arms during the mid-1980s.

"There was lots of debate and discussion going on," he said. "It was a lively course."

He worries that as the dialogue has faded, the lessons of the Cold War have been forgotten.

"We haven't disarmed. We haven't convinced other nations like India and Pakistan that they aren't going to do any good," Neff said. "There isn't any good way to use a nuclear bomb."

Though Neff said his parents weren't politically active when he was growing up, they were living examples of the ideals he would later embrace.

They were serving as Congregationalist missionaries in Guadalajara, Mexico, when Sam was born. The family moved to Claremont, Calif., where his father was a minister and his mother a teacher, when Sam was 2 years old.

He grew up in Claremont and finished his undergraduate studies at nearby Pomona College. He left there to earn his doctorate in physics at Harvard.

During graduate school, he met Ruth while folk dancing. She was working as a visiting nurse in a Harvard biology laboratory. They were married the next year.

After Neff earned his doctorate, the Neffs lived in New Zealand for five years where he taught and worked on upper atmosphere research. A short-term teaching job in Colombia followed.

Neff took his position at Morehouse, a predominantly African-American college, in 1965, and stayed for five years. During those contentious political times, the Neffs joined a number of civil rights and anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, but also found a way to make a long-lasting statement.

The Neffs had four children and adopted two more, but were having trouble locating a quality preschool that would suit all their children. They were the second white couple in Georgia ever given custody of a mixed-race child.

"Most of the preschools were either all black or all white," Ruth Neff said.

In 1966, the Neffs helped create the racially and economically integrated Atlanta Cooperative Preschool Center, and returned to Atlanta when the school celebrated its 25th anniversary.

During its first years, the center served the children of some of the city's most notable citizens, including Bond, currently the chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Howard Moore, lawyer for militant '60s activist Angela Davis, and Bernice Johnson Reagon, the founder of gospel group Sweet Honey in the Rock.

While they were in Atlanta, the Neffs also joined a Quaker, or Friends, church at the prompting of one of Sam's brothers.

"We just fit in real well there," Neff said. "They have a strong peace testimony and a strong belief in equality and the idea of God being in every man."

Earlham College, a Quaker institution, was able to lure Neff away from Morehouse in 1970. Neff said he was ready to go, in part because the environment on campus didn't feel as welcoming as it once had.

"In the late '60s, the black power movement began and I felt a little uncomfortable," he said. "Not threatened or anything. You just had the feeling that the black faculty and students needed to work on their own."

Though the Neffs' initial plan was for Sam to spend about 10 years at Earlham, he remained on the faculty until he retired in 2000 and took the title of emeritus professor. Though they have had a home in Whitefish since Sam retired, the Neffs still have their residence in Richmond and spend time there in the spring and summer.

One of the fundamental tenets of the Quaker faith is to live simply. Sam Neff said that position solidified for his family when he and Ruth led a rustic-living semester for Earlham in 1976. That fall and winter they took a group of 22 students to Vermont to live and study on the grounds of a place usually used as a summer camp.

The Neff family, with all six children at home, stayed in the camp's small infirmary building. They lived, if not rustically, at least primitively, doing things such as cutting wood as their source for heat and cooking.

"That really had an effect on our lives," Sam Neff said. "We got back to Richmond and really started concentrating on getting along with a lot less."

Neff still tries to ride his bike as often as possible, and says Whitefish is a "great little town for that."

With peace issues always on their minds, the Neffs made it a mission to bring together people whose governments are in conflict.

They felt strongly that Americans needed to come face to face with the citizens of Reagan's "Evil Empire," and ended up leading half a dozen educational tours of the Soviet Union. They encouraged people to study up on the language and culture before they traveled, and even to learn their dances.

"Our aim was to get people into the fabric of Russian society," Ruth said.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Neffs began offering learning tours of Cuba, and have taken three of those since moving to Montana. Under new restrictions of the Bush administration, their education licenses have been canceled, but the Neffs are encouraged that two of Montana's congressional delegation - Rep. Dennis Rehberg and Sen. Max Baucus - are pushing for more open relations with Cuba.

The Neffs started traveling to Montana to participate in winter sports nearly 10 years ago, and bought their current home when their daughter Kathryn opened her medical practice in Whitefish.

They still ski as often as possible, and Sam also keeps fit to compete in occasional triathlons.

The Neffs are fixtures on valley dance floors, seen just about any time ballroom, folk or contra dancing is offered.

Sam is also likely to be providing the dance tunes. On his accordion, he jams twice a month with the Northwest Montana Accordion Association and weekly groups in Columbia Falls and the Eagles in Kalispell.

He's not missing the academic life, even after 40 years of teaching physics. It was a subject that held his attention for decades, he said, because the math at which he excelled could be used to verify and develop physics theories.

"I loved it," he said. "But it was always the hardest thing I'd ever done."

Reporter Heidi Gaiser may be reached at 758-4431 or by e-mail at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com