Biography
Vern Rossman was an ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), born Feb. 3, 1927, raised in a minister's family in Oklahoma, educated at Phillips University and Yale Divinity School (ordained 1951). He served as a missionary to Japan from 1952 to 1963, where the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki shaped his lifelong commitment to peace and anti-nuclear work; he later worked for the Disciples' Division of Overseas Ministries in Indianapolis and as executive director of Intermedia in NYC under the World Council of Churches. At the time of Griffiss he was a 56-year-old father and grandfather living in Dorchester, MA. He died at his home in Columbia, Missouri in 2014.
Plowshares peace activist arrested in a disarmament action against nuclear weapons systems in the 1980s. Convicted of federal sabotage and depredation of government property. Documented in PFOC Breakthrough magazine.
