Kay Camp Papers

"Katherine Lindsley Camp, a peace activist, died of complications from a stroke at the Quadrangle retirement community in Haverford on July 9, [2006] the day before her 88th birthday.

As a self-described "peace protagonist," Mrs. Camp devoted 50 years to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She investigated human-rights violations in Chile; toured villages in Vietnam; addressed the United Nations; and walked hundreds of miles in demonstrations. In 1980, she spent four days in jail for protesting the nuclear power plant at Limerick. From 1967 to 1971, she was president of the Women's International League's U.S. sector and was international president from 1974 to 1980. In the 1990s, she helped reorganize the league's Main Line chapter and led a chapter protest against nuclear weapons outside the Bryn Mawr post office in 1996, on the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. "We're pressing for the abolition of all nuclear weapons by 2000," she told a reporter at the time. Mrs. Camp grew up on a farm in Livingston, N.J. She earned a bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College, where she met her husband, William Perrine Camp. They married in 1941. During World War II, he served in the Army in Europe, while she worked as a cryptographer for the War Department in Washington. While raising their children in Havertown, she helped found a kindergarten in Havertown, and was a Cub Scout den mother and PTA president. In 1956, she and her husband, a physician, became Quakers and joined Norristown Friends Meeting. She was active with the American Friends Service Committee. In the 1960s, she was founder and president of the Greater Norristown Bi-Racial Study Group. Mrs. Camp ran for Congress in 1972 as a Democrat in the 13th Congressional District [of Pennsylvania]. She lost to the incumbent, Republican Lawrence Coughlin. In 1978, she was an adviser to the U.S delegation to the U.N. Special Session on Disarmament. She was editor of Listen to Women for a Change, an anthology of essays by 50 feminists. She loved gardening, cooking, sailing on Barnegat Bay, choral singing, and tennis, said her son David. In her 60s, she designed and helped build a log cabin in Maine for family vacations. Mrs. Camp's husband died in 1999. In addition to her son David, she is survived by two other sons, Nelson and Anthony; a brother; seven grandchildren; and one great-grandchild." [quoted from an article by Sally Downey, staff writer, Philadelphia Inquirer]