Dear Friends,

Yesterday, I received the obituary of a Friend from Roanoke, Virginia. I didn't know Jeremy Mott, but today I noticed that I had corresponded with him on QuakerQuaker about the history of Friends in Ohio. I am sorry we have lost him.

Here is the obituary.

~Blessings, Paula

Jeremy Hardin Mott, a leader in the Vietnam-era draft resistance movement,

died September 2, 2012 at the Raleigh Court Rehabilitation Center in Roanoke,

VA. He was 66. His daughter, Mary Hannah Mott, confirmed his death.

Jeremy Mott was born December 3, 1945 in New York City and grew up in

Ridgewood, NJ and Rochester, NY. He was the eldest of four children. Mott

graduated from Sandy Spring Friends School (MD) and attended Harvard

University for two years. He took a break from Harvard to follow his life-long

love of railroads, working for a year for the Erie Railroad. When drafted, he

initially obtained conscientious objector status and worked as a hospital

volunteer for the Brethren Volunteer Service in Chicago. To make his protest

against the Vietnam War and the draft more meaningful and visible, he

resigned from alternative service and burned his draft card in Central Park

during the 1966 Mobilization Against the War. Together with others, he formed

the Chicago Area Draft Resisters, CADRE. He was one of the first in the

country to go to trial for resisting the draft and was given the maximum prison

sentence, five years (reduced on appeal to four).

Upon his release from prison in 1969, he worked for more than three years for

the Midwest Committee for Draft Counseling, the Chicago office of the Central

Committee for Conscientious Objectors. Mott wrote and published a

newsletter about draft law sent to 5,000 counselors nationwide who helped

draftees consider alternatives to military service.

He married Judith Franks in 1970, had a daughter in 1974, and obtained his BA

from the University of Illinois-Chicago in 1975. He and his family moved to NJ

in 1976, living in Hoboken, Ridgewood, and then Hackensack. He worked for

Amtrak, as a dispatcher, until his retirement.

Mott moved with his family to Roanoke in 2009. He faced serious health

challenges during his final years. Besides his wife Judith and daughter Mary,

he is survived by his mother, Kathryn Hardin Mott, three sisters, Margaret,

Jessica, and Bethany and their families, and Mary’s partner, Jacob Wise.