Sally Lilienthal

Sally Lilienthal
Born	1919
Died	October 24, 2006

Sally Lilienthal (1919 - 2006) was an American civil rights activist and artist who founded the Ploughshares Fund in 1981 during the Cold War in the belief that the threat of nuclear war overshadowed everything else.^[1] Ploughshares Fund continues to provide grants to individuals and organizations advocating against nuclear weapons. She served as an active president of the organization until her death at age 87. Earlier in life, Lilienthal also served as vice-chairwoman of Amnesty International in 1977, the year the organization won the Nobel Peace Prize, and served on the board of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for most of the 1970s.

Early life

Born Sally Ann Lowengart (1919) to Jewish parents^[2] in Portland, Oregon, Sally Lilienthal moved to San Francisco with her family at age twelve. She was enrolled at Katherine Delmar Burke School in San Francisco as a child, but, in one of her favorite anecdotes, was expelled for passing a note with an obscenity in class.

She later attended Sarah Lawrence College, graduating in 1940 with a major in writing. By the time of her return to San Francisco, she had developed firm political beliefs and had become a fervent, lifelong idealist.

Later Life and Work

In 1945, she married Navy Lt. Arthur (Tom) Cohen, Jr. She began sculpting in the 1950s, attending the California School of Fine Arts. Ms. Lilienthal remained an active sculptor until 1971 and both exhibited and sold her work. Ms. Lilienthal was appointed to the San Francisco Arts Commission in the early 1960s. She later served on the board of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and co-founded the museum's Rental Gallery in 1978.^[3]

Cohen died in 1955, and her marriage to George Hellyer ended in divorce in 1963. Ms. Lilienthal married Philip Lilienthal, associate director of the University of California Press, in 1970.^[3]

The Lilienthals founded the Northern California Committee of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1970. In 1971, Ms. Lilienthal and Ginetta Sagan founded Amnesty International's Western Region. Ms. Lilienthal later served as the national vice chairwoman of Amnesty International the year the organization won the Nobel Peace Prize. Ms. Lilienthal founded the Ploughshares Fund in 1981 and served as its president until her death. She died on October 24, 2006 at the age of 87.^[4]

Lilienthal was survived by her children, Laurie Cohen, Liza Pike and Thomas Cohen of Mill Valley; Matthew Royce of San Francisco; and Steven Cohen of Berkeley. She was also survived by her stepdaughters Sukey Lilienthal of Oakland and Andrea Lilienthal of New York; and 11 grandchildren. Philip Lilienthal died of cancer in 1984.

Ploughshares Fund

Sally Lilienthal founded the Ploughshares Fund in her San Francisco living room in 1981 to advocate against nuclear weapons. She told an interviewer in 1996, "I thought that if a lot of people felt the same way I did but didn't know what to do about it, we might get together and search for new ways to get rid of the nuclear weapons that were threatening us all." Lilienthal had a vision of a future where weapons no longer threaten families and the world, and where relations between nations are driven by respect for international law and cooperation rather than by fear of annihilation.^[3]

Though the organization "started with nothing. I mean really nothing," she told the Washington Post, "in the first year, we were able to give away about $100,000 to individuals and small organizations to study the problems of nuclear weaponry and to get ordinary citizens informed about the issues and the danger." Under her guidance, Ploughshares was an early funder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997. Ploughshares also funded scientists from the Natural Resources Defense Council to go to Moscow for what resulted in a breakthrough agreement allowing the installation of seismic monitoring equipment, proving that a nuclear testing ban could be verified. A grant to Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Theodore Postol allowed him to finish a technical paper exposing the Pentagon's exaggerated claims of the effectiveness of Patriot missiles during the Persian Gulf War.^[1]

"The possibility of a nuclear war was the very worst problem in the world," Ms. Lilienthal told the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview on the occasion of the Ploughshares Fund's 15th anniversary. Lilienthal envisioned the Ploughshares Fund as a way to get money quickly to people with pracitical ideas for stopping the buildup of nuclear weapons. Ploughshares Fund was structured to respond and adapt to emerging threats to global security.

In an interview with the Washington Post upon her death, George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace commented, "Sally was an absolutely vital figure in supporting researchers, policy activists and scientists in the U.S. and overseas who were trying to change government policies while [governments] were inflating the powers of nuclear weapons." Perkovich continued, "The thing about Sally that was so great is she went out and hustled and raised that money, then gave it away, which is heroic. . . . Sally had a lot of guts and wasn't afraid of anything."

Ploughshares Fund's founding board chairman Lewis Butler, a close friend of Ms. Lilienthal told the San Francisco Chronicle, "The fact is that she's always twice as hard-working as anyone else. And that inspires people. They see what she has done with her time and her life and her money and are inspired to give and work and then do more."

Ms. Lilienthal worked actively as Ploughshares Fund’s president until her death on October 24, 2006, at the age of 87.

References

External links

• An article about her on the New York Times
• Sally Lilienthal, 87; Created Peace Fund A Washington Post article