John Fisher-Smith, father, grandfather, husband, architect, builder, peace activist, farmer, author, artist, mentor, and friend, died peacefully at age ninety-eight on August 8, 2024.
Born on July 3, 1926, he spent his childhood in Halifax, England, raised to be a gentleman.
As a teenager, he moved to the US, first to Pennsylvania, where he worked on the family farm. He was drafted on his eighteenth birthday in July of 1944. He served in the US army, including a thirteen-month tour in Japan in 1945, as part of the army of occupation. In 2019 he returned to Hiroshima with the Peace Choir. After his tour of duty, he completed his studies in architecture at U.C. Berkeley.
He raised his three sons with their mother in the California Bay Area while working as an architect for a prestigious firm in San Francisco.
Some years later, after his wife’s death, he lived with his beloved Dot in a tipi in a spiritual community in Northern California. They became husband and wife in 1975.
When they came to the Rogue Valley, they joined other dedicated peace activists opposing nuclear weapons and the American war in Vietnam.
Dot and John participated in the “peace blockade” against Trident nuclear submarines in the Hood Canal Washington in 1982, by joining others in rowboats as well as the Rainbow Warrior to create a blockade and thus risk six months in jail.
John gave many presentations for Beyond War. Both he and Dot participated in the birthing of Peace House in 1981, as well as the successful campaign to make Ashland a nuclear free zone established by a vote of the citizens, the first in the US., in 1984.
John is remembered by the many friends and neighbors he helped, by those who heard him read his stories on JPR; by men in the Boys to Men community; by Zen practitioners who meditated together in the yurt up the hill on Sunday mornings; by the many couples Dot and John counseled and married, by John’s sister two years his junior, by his three sons and his daughter by marriage, and by multiple grandchildren.
Provided by Selene Aitken, former co-director and director of Peace House, 1987-1992.