Interview with Rosemary Lynch, June 8, 2004

Nevada Test Site Oral History Project University of Nevada, Las Vegas Interview with Rosemary Lynch June 8, 2004 Las Vegas, Nevada Interview Conducted By Suzanne Becker © 2007 by UNLV Libraries Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews conducted by an interviewer/ researcher with an interviewee/ narrator who possesses firsthand knowledge of historically significant events. The goal is to create an archive which adds relevant material to the existing historical record. Oral history recordings and transcripts are primary source material and do not represent the final, verified, or complete narrative of the events under discussion. Rather, oral history is a spoken remembrance or dialogue, reflecting the interviewee’s memories, points of view and personal opinions about events in response to the interviewer’s specific questions. Oral history interviews document each interviewee’s personal engagement with the history in question. They are unique records, reflecting the particular meaning the interviewee draws from her/ his individual life experience. Produced by: The Nevada Test Site Oral History Project Departments of History and Sociology University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154- 5020 Director and Editor Mary Palevsky Principal Investigators Robert Futrell, Dept. of Sociology Andrew Kirk, Dept. of History The material in the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project archive is based upon work supported by the U. S. Dept. of Energy under award number DEFG52- 03NV99203 and the U. S. Dept. of Education under award number P116Z040093. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these recordings and transcripts are those of project participants— oral history interviewees and/ or oral history interviewers— and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U. S. Department of Energy or the U. S. Department of Education. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Rosemary Lynch June 8, 2004 Conducted by Suzanne Becker Table of Contents Introduction: birth and childhood, Phoenix, AZ ( 1917) 1 Joins Franciscan Order of nuns ( 1934), receives master’s degree in education ( Loyola University), works as teacher, gains worldwide perspective on U. S. through travels as part of central administration of Franciscan sisters ( beginning 1960), “ anti- American period” 2 Work with Louis Vitale and Franciscan Center, Las Vegas, NV 4 Learns about neutron bomb work at NTS ( 1977), first visit to NTS, formation of local peace group Sagebrush Alliance, work with western Cactus Alliance 6 Formation of Nevadans Opposed to MX ( NO MX) 8 First Lenten Desert Experience ( LDE) at the NTS ( 1982) 9 History of St. Francis of Assisi ( born 1182) and relationship to antiwar activism 10 Relationship with NTS manager General Mahlon Gates during first LDE ( 1982) 12 NTS protesters: arrests and trials, organization of other protest groups ( Nuclear Freeze), relationship with Shoshone, interaction with law enforcement 14 Work with Downwinders, formation of NTS Workers Radiation Victims Association 19 Baneberry ( 1970) and results of above- ground testing fallout and contamination 20 Thoughts on the desert as a place of temptation and spiritual testing, and the tragedies connected with weapons testing and war in the Middle East 22 Ongoing work at the NTS and the continuing need to resist 25 History of Atomlopers ( Quaker protest) at the NTS ( beginning 1957) 27 Formation of Pace e Bene ( ca. 1988) 28 Develops and writes Decalogue for the Spirituality of Nonviolence 32 Recounts joining the Franciscan Order, becoming a teacher, travels 36 Reflections on love of and grief for America, and admiration for American peace movement 38 Conclusion: changes in the peace movement at the NTS: lack of activism, lack of focus, and NTS moving into a new phase 39 UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 1 Interview with Rosemary Lynch June 8, 2004 in Las Vegas, NV Conducted by Suzanne Becker [ 00: 00: 00] Begin Track 2, Disk 1. Suzanne Becker: So I guess if we could just begin with your background, your family background, where your family’s from, where you grew up, that sort of thing. Rosemary Lynch: Well, I was born in Phoenix, Arizona when Phoenix was just a small town, actually in 1917. So there wasn’t much of Phoenix at that time except a little kind of oasis like small city in the middle of the desert. And of course at that time the Arizona desert was so beautiful, so unspoiled, the air so clean, so lovely. And I have to say we loved our state, we loved our city so much. And I had the privilege of exploring so many things, the beautiful desert. Like I say, the city itself was very small. And you could go to the mountains. It was easy to go around the desert, and we found all kinds of interesting things, pottery shards and Apache tears. I learned how to recognize all kinds of stones and relics. And some of the things that we brought home, my mother was wise enough to keep them, and later a curator from the Smithsonian university visited our home, and my mother gave him the whole collection, artifacts that we had picked up and found, just strewn around. We never destroyed anything to take it, but you just saw a jaw bone with a perfect set of teeth lying under the piece of cactus, you picked it up and brought it home and showed it to my mother. And also at that time the Indian women— Apache, Papago, Pima women— would come into the town, little small city, and on the sidewalk in front of the one or two department stores we had, they would lay out their rug and put out their beautiful pottery and baskets and everything and sell them, and so inexpensively. So I grew up surrounded by these beautiful UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 2 things. Our wastebaskets were beautiful Apache baskets, and on the table you had a lovely Hopi pot or something. Everybody had these things. And lovely Navajo rugs. Things that people only dream about having today. So I consider that I was really privileged. At that time I didn’t understand it, I was so small, but growing up I grew to understand really the value of the collection that my mother had made as a young woman and the appreciation that she had, she passed on to us. So I loved the desert. So I had a very nice opportunity to grow up that way. I also had the opportunity to study, and later I became a school teacher. I entered the Franciscan order and became a Franciscan sister. What age did you do that? Nineteen thirty- four. And I had the opportunity to study and I earned a master’s degree at Loyola University in Los Angeles, Playa del Rey, which at that time also was a small university. It was a wonderful place to study. And I taught school for many years. I taught in the elementary school and later I taught in high school. Where did you teach? I taught in the Los Angeles area, Conady High School. I taught up in Havre, Montana near the Canadian border. That was also a wonderful place to be, and there I saw all these marvelous weather phenomena that I had never seen before, the aurora borealis and other, lovely things that I saw. It was extremely cold; it was right up on the Canadian border. But I appreciated my time. I loved it. I have to say that any place I was, I learned to appreciate what was there and to enjoy it and profit from it. In 1960 I went to an international meeting of my community, because I’m a Franciscan sister, in Rome, and at that time I was elected to the central administration of the Franciscan UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 3 sisters. And as a member of this five- person team, part of my work was to visit the various [ 00: 05: 00] countries where our Franciscan sisters were working. So those travels took me to many states in this country; also to Indonesia, to several of the Indonesian islands— Java, Bali, Sumatra, those interesting, beautiful places. Also to Mexico; I was in several states in Mexico. And to Africa; I was in two or three countries in Africa where the sisters were living and working. And so I had an opportunity for kind of a world- wide perspective. And I have to say that all this changed me so much. You know, I grew up, I was a typical product of the U. S. culture after World War II, that we were the greatest and practically the only place where God let the sun shine. And it was only when I went to Europe that I began to really, I will say, learn, and I made many discoveries and one of the discoveries I made was that not everybody in the world looked upon my country the way I did. I went to some of the United Nations- sponsored events with an agricultural organization that has its center in Rome and I learned that we were looked upon as an oppressor nation, that we were not this great home of the free and the brave such as I had always imagined, that the big American fruit companies were exploiting banana workers in Guatemala, and the big mining companies stealing original materials from other countries and so on. So I went through kind of what I later referred to as my anti- American period because I was so disappointed to learn these things about my country. At the same time I was learning so much in these various international organs. I had already grown up kind of learning Spanish because of the situation of southern Arizona at that time, had a large Mexican population. I went to school with Mexican kids, and I later studied the Spanish language even to the point where I could teach it. And so I easily learned Italian, and I UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 4 realized that the best thing I could do would be learn some other languages, so I also learned French, Dutch, and German in addition to Italian. And those things have helped me enormously. Are you still fluent? Yes, I can still— I’ve given lectures in practically all those languages. I love language. It’s the key to understanding the other person and their culture and so on. And I still have contacts in many of those countries. So, like I say, I went through this period where I was so disillusioned by the conduct of American business and what I saw as oppression of people in other countries, which is very real oppression, economic oppression, that when I came back to this country I decided I wanted to work somewhere where I could put this background of knowledge and experience to good use. And at that time I came with Klaryta [ Sr. Klaryta Antoszewska], who was invited here also to come to this country. She is a professional philologist; she knows many languages, including the Slavic languages, Russian and Polish, and various interesting things. So between us we can have contact with a lot of people. The world. Yes, kind of. I never learned an Asian language, which I consider a hole in my education, but I never had the opportunity to do so. I did visit Indonesia and I learned enough Indonesian when I was there to deal with the people, but after I came back to this country I never had any further contact with that language, so I can’t really claim it. If I’m in an extreme situation, I can help myself a little bit. So Louis Vitale invited us both to work with him here. It was in the early days of what they just called the Franciscan Center. It was a group of Franciscans that were kind of getting UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 5 together, got a little piece of property over on the Westside, which was a very contained black ghetto at the time, and still is to some extent. Here? Yes, in Las Vegas. And Klaryta and I got an apartment in the public housing apartment, which [ 00: 10: 00] was later condemned by HUD [ U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] as one of the ten worst in the whole United States. That was another big chapter in my education. We were the last white residents, which didn’t make any difference to me because we had many wonderful neighbors. But that opened my eyes again to the tragedy of the extremes to which poverty can drive people, and we saw every form of tragedy, of child abuse. These things happen also in the best of suburbs, we know that, but we were very close to it, living there. And so that went for fifteen years. Later the whole apartment complex was condemned by HUD because of asbestos danger, but so far we both have survived. So we moved out. And actually we moved out about three days before the Rodney King riots. And that was very interesting because our black neighbors came to us, one of them especially. We didn’t realize that anything was brewing and he said, You know I have a gun and I’ll always protect you. We said, Why would you want to have to protect us? He said, I might have to. Well, that gave us a clue. We said, We don’t ever want you to shoot anybody on our behalf or anything. Well, he says, It’s going to be dangerous. So we moved away. And sure enough, in our apartment complex they burned down four buildings and had a lot of big problems. So had we been the only white residents there, and thanks to this kind neighbor who warned us, we got out. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 6 So those things kind of contributed to the building of our social conscience, I will say. And one of the first things I learned when I got here was that we were sitting on the rim of the Nevada Test Site. Now I had never heard about this place, and I guarantee you that at that time 99.5 percent of people in the country had never heard of it either. Because the policy was if you want to do something that you don’t want anybody else to know about, locate it far out there in that desert and don’t talk about it. And so that’s kind of what happened. Can I just ask you roughly what time frame this was? Yes. This was in 1977. And as the summer went on, Jimmy Carter was arguing in Congress to get the funds for the neutron bomb. And we kind of learned that this was the bomb that would kill people but leave buildings standing, and we thought that was just awful. So that’s how we started really going out to the Nevada Test Site because we, through a leak, through some friends, we discovered that not only had this bomb been developed, it had already actually been exploded out at the Nevada Test Site. So we went into action, and on Hiroshima day that year, that was my first visit out. To the test site? Out to the test site. And we went out early, early in the morning, just a little handful of us, and at that time you could go right up to the gate. There was no fences, no barbed wire, nothing, right where the workers went in. And we held like a little prayer hour. We went out early, early, before the sun came up, because I don’t know how they’re doing it now, but at that time most of the workers were taken out at a very early hour. And in that period, as I later learned, there were something like eleven thousand people that were employed either directly at the site or in support offices around the city, whatever. There was a lot going on. Do you remember who all went out with you? You said it was a fairly small group? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 7 Several of them have passed away. There were a couple of liberal Protestant ministers, all of whom have left town and are gone away. I was just curious. Let’s see, I’m trying to remember. Klaryta was there; the two of us went. Most of them have either moved away or passed. It was just such a small group and that’s so long ago. [ 00: 15: 00] And I saw the sun come up. It was so beautifully illuminating the desert, and it broke my heart to think of what I had learned was happening back there. So it was as though I got another calling in my life, and I thought, whatever I’m going to do for a while is going to be concerned with this place. And I didn’t exactly know how. So a little group of us got together, and it was around that time that these various alliances were springing up around the country: the Clamshell Alliance back in New England and different groups, environmental groups of one kind or another. Alliances in—? For environmental groups or, you know, social groups of some kind. But not directly involved with the test site? Just different groups. No, no, all over the country, for whatever their project was. So we decided to call ourselves the Sagebrush Alliance. And that’s not to be confused with the later group that came up about real estate. But this was a peace group, just a tiny group together. OK. Here, locally? Locally. And then we became part of a little coalition of groups that were around New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, a few from California. We called ourselves the Cactus Alliance because they were all groups that were struggling against some nuclear tomfoolery in their own localities. So for a while we had this, oh, kind of western group. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 8 And then I would say another big thing that happened was that the MX missile came under discussion, and it seemed to be destined for Nevada. And the route of the MX missile was to come from wherever it was coming from, down through Utah and into Nevada, and they were going to build this huge rail system around in Nevada, in our state. So a little group of us got together. We were already, like I say, semi- organized, going out there. And we had a coalition of really unlikely groups: the Sierra Club, the Off- Road Motorcycle Riders, and the Audubon Society, all of us big political groups, the Franciscan Center. We got together and called ourselves Nevadans Opposed to MX. And we abbreviated that, the “ N” and the “ O” to say NO MX. So for a while that was our big focus, and that’s when we started getting better acquainted with groups again in other states that were also fighting this whole thing. And this was still late 1970s, early 1980s? Yes, around in those years. And that’s when I became acquainted with another person who was very significant in the whole struggle against military incursion all over the West, was Doctor Edwin B. Firmage. He was a Mormon and persuaded the Mormon Church to also become active in that in Utah. And I met him actually in New Mexico, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Now he’s a big professor, head of the law school at the University of Utah. And he was invited to give the main address at an event at which I was invited also to give a keynote address. And in fact I gave the opening address. At which event? And that was in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And so we met at that conference and after that, that helped us join forces with a lot of folks in Utah, to oppose [ the] MX missile and to engage in other peace activities over the years, so that’s been a very nice connection. [ pause] UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 9 Then in 1982, what we call the Franciscan family around the world— you know I’m a [ 00: 20: 00] Franciscan sister— our patron is Saint Francis of Assisi, the saint of peace. He was born in the year 1182, so the year 1982 was going to be a big anniversary, big centennial of his birth. So together with some other Franciscan groups in California and here, we decided that the best way we could celebrate Saint Francis as a saint of peace was not to have a big celebration, but that we would go out into the desert and we would spend the whole of the season of Lent out in the desert, and we would invite people from all over to try and come and join us to do that. Anybody who loved Saint Francis and who honored Saint Francis. And at that time there was a young man named Michael Affleck who had just finished at the Franciscan School of Theology in Berkeley, and he was very interested in it. Maybe you’ve heard his name. Yes, I— boy, I just drew a blank on the name, but Ken Butigan— Ken might’ve mentioned him. Yes, wrote a book, Pilgrimage Through— Through the Burning Desert. [ Through a Burning World] Yes, and he’s— He’s mentioned in there. He’s mentioned throughout the book, as are you. So the Franciscans got Michael to come here from Berkeley, and he and I worked together. We traveled all up and down the California coast together and talked to groups all over the state of Nevada, California, and all around to interest them in coming to the desert in 1982 during the whole of Lent. We were going to have during this Lenten season; we were going to hold a vigil out there in front of the test site. UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 10 And so I have to say that was a fantastic time, even though it was a difficult time. We started the day every morning early, early in front of the federal building. We had vigils and we went out— or first— no, we first started out in the desert, then we’d come home and we’d have vigil in front of the federal building. We were making flyers and got a lot of good information about the test site. But we went out every day during the whole of the Lenten season. And during that time, another interesting thing happened. To prepare ourselves kind of spiritually for that, we did go over the life of Saint Francis and the teachings of Jesus on nonviolence and so on. Even though everything we’ve done has always been very ecumenical, believers or nonbelievers or whatever, but it has had a spiritual motivation. And I have to say here as a comment, that I have learned that any groups that came without some kind of a spiritual component never lasted. It was just too much for them. “ Too much,” how? They got discouraged. Their candidate didn’t win. They didn’t stop nuclear testing. The military budget kept growing. They gave up. We never gave up, to this day, because we have that spiritual faith and that gave us some strength. So looking at the life of Saint Francis we said, well, he was such a saint of peace, and he lived at a very disrupted period in world history. When Francis was only five years old, the city of Jerusalem fell to the Saladin, who was the king of the Moslems and so on, and this was the period of the great crusades in medieval history, and all Europe was shocked that the holy places were now in the hands of the “ infidels.” But that’s how it was. And so then the crusades came along, just a big epoch in European history, and at first Saint Francis wanted to be a crusader. I don’t want to tell you the whole story here, but he decided then, he had already started to follow the gospel of Jesus more closely, and through many episodes in his life he decided that he would UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 11 not go to fight; he would go to visit the sultan who was the head of everything. And he actually did. And the story of his encounter with the sultan, first of all he [ 00: 25: 00] took a brother with him. I always say I’ve always wondered if this poor guy was a volunteer or he got drafted. I don’t know. But anyway, they went together through the Moslem camp, they crossed over at Damieta in Egypt, they got roughed up on the way, and they actually succeeded in getting to this elegant tent of the sultan, a great sultan, Malik el Kamil. And the story is that he stayed with the sultan for a week, and the sultan became so impressed with his brotherly attitude and goodness— and this is historical fact, the trip of Saint Francis and the encounter with the sultan— that the legend says that when Francis left the sultan, the sultan first of all tried to weigh him down with all kinds of gifts, which is the beautiful Arab custom, and he didn’t take anything except he accepted a little horn that was made of an animal horn because, he said, Three times a day, the Moslems use this horn to call their groups to pray, and they do that, you know, six o’clock in the morning, midday, and six o’clock in the evening. So that was a beautiful gift for him, and he accepted that. And these things are fact, but the legend says that when he left, that the sultan wept and said, Woe is me if the knights of the West come armed only with love like this brother. If they come with their weapons, we can defeat them, but we cannot defeat this love. And so that has always been such a lesson to me in my life: that we cannot defeat evil with more evil or power with more power, and we’re learning that bitterness again. And so it has stayed with me so much, that people don’t need bombs; they need bread, they need food, they need medicine, they need care, they need help. And so that has been the philosophy that you’ve taken out to—? That’s been our philosophy— Particularly to the work at the test site? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 12 Exactly. And so in the view of that, the group asked me if I would try to make an appointment to visit the head of the test site. The test site is run by civilians but they were all— I don’t know how it is right now, but they were all ex- military, being ex- generals and ex- admirals, but they had returned to civilian life. So the manager at that time was General Mahlon Gates. And so the group asked if I would go to visit him in the same spirit that Saint Francis went to visit the sultan. They said he’s like our sultan. So I did call up and I managed to get an interview. I called and I tried to explain who I was and how I wanted to see General Gates. And were they receptive? Well, they said I could have five minutes. I kept insisting I really had to see him about something important. I was met by two guys with guns at the gate, the door, in this federal building and escorted to his office. And was this up at the test site or was this—? No, this was in town. They had moved away from that office where they were at that time. And at the beginning he was a little bit nervous, but he was a very good man. And instead of five minutes, my interview with him was over an hour. He told me many things about his life, and I told him how I happened to come to this position and my Franciscan philosophy and everything, and I told him we were going to carry the cross out to the test site and that we were going to plant the cross out there and I hoped that it wouldn’t be desecrated or taken away, and he said, I guarantee you, I will order that no one touch the cross. And he did. And so the cross was out there for a long time. Wow. How long? Oh, a few years, and then I don’t know what happened to it. But he ordered that that cross be left there. And also he wrote a letter to all the employees— and at that time, like I say, there were a UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 13 lot— telling them that there was going to be this group out there, that we were good people, they were not in any way to hassle us, they were to show us respect. He put the Porto- Potties out there [ 00: 30: 00] for us, which was a big gift, and he put fresh water out there every day for us. So you see how good he was? And I always appreciated that, and in fact he invited Michael Affleck and me and we went on a VIP tour of the test site. We were taken with representatives from all the higher offices and everything. And what did you think of the test site, and did you learn anything? Oh sure, we learned. I came out more horrified than I went in. But we went to parts of the test site that no one ever goes to, because they had like the governor, mayor, people like that, were on this bus. It was called the VIPs of Nevada. And Michael and I were picked up off our line as the bus was going into the test site, off of our protest line, or our vigil line. Can I ask what parts you got to go see? Well, they took us all over. We went into their main building where they have all the controls. We went out and we saw all those craters around, you know, where the test— we saw from afar one part which is closed off in perpetuity; it’s guarded in perpetuity, no human being can ever enter there because it’s so contaminated. We saw that from far away. So we had a really first- class tour, and in fact we went down first to the DOE on the first day and had a special lecture with films and everything, explaining the whole history of the development of all of it. And then the bus drove by and picked us up off the line and we went in with all these illustrious celebrities. But that was an experience. But other than that, I give you that example to show his courtesy and his friendship to do this. And later he and I were invited to be on a Channel 10 TV thing together, and that was kind of interesting because— UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 14 Gates and you. Yes. Because when they turned the cameras on, General Gates said, Well, Sister Rosemary and I know each other from the Nevada Desert Experience, and I thought, that’s so nice that he’s the one that says that. So we became friends that day and, it shows that we can’t ever hate anybody. Nothing is accomplished by that. Never. Right. Did he talk to you at all about how he felt about the test site and the work that he was doing? Yes, but also a very remarkable thing happened. During the six- and- a- half weeks that we were out there, not one bomb was exploded. And he put a moratorium on it for the time that we were out there. And that was in the period when they were exploding bombs maybe once every two weeks or so. But for that six- and- a- half weeks, nothing. So you see, many things are possible. And so, anyhow, we had thought of this Lenten Desert Experience in 1982 as a one- time thing. We never thought that it would continue. But people were so enthusiastic for it that after that, they started gathering every year for the Lenten Desert Experience, and it became known as LDE, LDE- 1, LDE- 2, and so on. And from the beginning, another nice thing was that it was ecumenical. The Episcopalians would have a service, the Presbyterians would have a service, we would have a service, and you know, there was always such a spirit of inclusion. And the arrests continued, and we went on trial. But I have to say, we never got those terrible sentences like some people did. What types of sentences were they? Three days, something like that, and sometimes they were suspended. You got community service or whatever. Right. Right. And you’ve been arrested? UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 15 Oh yes. And so gradually as the numbers grew, the number of arrests grew, and finally one time— and then other groups began organizing. The Nuclear Freeze group came up and they came out and so, they were out here for a while. They had some funds; we never had any money. We were just a little kind of small group going out there, spiritual group, praying and resisting and making signs and writing articles and letters to the news. There was a [ 00: 35: 00] lot of publicity. If you go back to the Review- Journal, to their archive, you can find quite a few things. And I remember the first time I saw somebody that I didn’t know that came out to vigil. Otherwise they were all people that I knew, that I had talked to or had had contact with. The first time I saw a couple of strangers come, I thought, boy, we’re making progress. So that’s kind of how things went on, and then like I say, other groups got interested, the Nuclear Freeze people came, but I did notice, really and truly, that any of them that didn’t come with some spiritual power or motivation— not obvious, not laying it on anybody, but in their hearts, the desire to make peace, the desire to— as the numbers grew, we always insisted that anybody that wanted to commit civil disobedience would go through our nonviolence training, and Louis and I did a lot of that nonviolence training. Do a lot of it locally for different groups? Yes, we did. Whoever came and said they wanted to be arrested, we would say, well, you have to go through this little afternoon training first. And we kept saying, they’re not our enemies; they’re our friends. And we had wonderful examples, too, of the cooperation and the friendship on the part of the authorities. At one time we had the people standing— and when you go into the test site there’s a kind of a curve in the road, and one of the authorities at the test site, they were called back to Washington and said, Well, you have to do something about these protesters, because they had put up a sign, “ Caution: Protesters on the road.” UNLV Nevada Test Site Oral History Project 16 So in other words— Yes, they didn’t want us to get hurt, and when this one authority from the test site was called back to Washington, D. C. he said, Well, we have to have the sign because there’s a curve in the road and some of them might get hu