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Prime Times Weekly feature of the Mail Tribune , Medford, Oregon Active in mind, body and BELIEF Photo by Jim Craven Don Wells, 83, has kept active all his life -- whether riding a bicycle, writing books or fighting for peace. His fitness regimen often includes a three-day-a-week, 25-mile Hyatt-Howard Prairie Lake bicycle loop and regular upper-body workout with weights. Although he enjoys the beauty of the mountains, he considers himself a person of action rather than a mystic. Rogue Valley man keeps himself fit to work for peace By JOHN DARLING Don Wells looks maybe 68, has a ready mind, a spring in his step and a T-shirt that says, "Maximal Fitness." Three times a week, he bikes the 25-mile Hyatt-Howard Prairie loop or takes on the steep bike trails up Tolman Creek. In winter, he puts the same sort of energy into cross-country skiing, entering the Diamond Lake 10-kilometer race and consistently placing in his age group. What's his age group? The 80- to 84-year-olds. Wells is 83. He also has a plastic knee and is recovered from nephritis, a serious kidney disease. "I like the stress. I'm a firm believer that if you don't do your cardiovascular workout, you'll end up in the rocking chair quick." Wells' mind operates just like his body. A philosophy professor and ardent pacifist all his life, the Minnesota-born Wells was a conscientious objector in World War II, long before most people heard of the term, and has published six books on the ethics of war. "The brain is a muscle and if you don't exercise it, it'll age just like a body that's not being used," said Wells, who continues to write articles for scholarly journals and speak at conferences that question war. Wells' pacifist views grew in the 1930s from long-established roots of Methodism, socialism and farm-labor politics found in Minnesota, he said. "I believed in the inherent worth and dignity of human beings more than in any one nation. We need to treat all people with justice and compassion, then it would be impossible -- indefensible -- to wage war justly." Wells applied for conscientious objector status and, though he had no training in the field, was assigned to be a therapist in a mental hospital for veterans. Wells had been a Methodist minister and in 1943 tried to enter the Army as a chaplain, he said. "Some committee -- I don't know who -- summoned me to Washington and showed me an inch-thick dossier about myself. They asked if I'd said and done all these things. I said yes. They said they'd let me in the Army if I signed a statement recanting everything. "I said, `You guys must be crazy. If I'm as subversive as you say, I'd sign it just to get in!"' Despite his overt radicalism in a pre-radical era, Wells managed an impressive string of teaching positions: Oregon State University, Washington State University, University of Illinois and University of Hawaii, where he taught for 22 years before retiring to Medford's Rogue Valley Manor in 1992. At the height of Eugene McCarthy's blacklisting, Wells organized WSU teach-ins and gave speeches against the Korean War. "It was a very exciting time. We had support from leftist students and some faculty. It was hard to get faculty to stick their necks out, but we got them talking about the history leading up to Korea." The Washington state version of the communist-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee wanted to investigate, but WSU president Wilson Compton wouldn't let them on campus, Wells said. At OSU in 1946, students asked Wells to debate the dean of students and the local American Legion commander on then-universal military training. "We wiped them out. They weren't prepared. The students were cheering and stamping their feet. Next day, the president called me in and said we do not embarrass the American Legion." When OSU fired two professors who worked on the presidential campaign of socialist Henry Wallace, Wells, also a Wallace volunteer, said he "quit before they could fire me." Wells wrote "God, Man and the Thinker" (Random House, 1962), a philosophy textbook. At the height of the Vietnam War in 1968, he wrote "The War Myth," a popular book on the psychological, political and economic myths used to necessitate war, he said. Other books followed on war crimes and the laws of war, then a work on the laws of land warfare and an "Encyclopedia of War and Ethics." Wells is now writing a 35-page booklet on the International Criminal Court, a body authorized by the United Nations in 1998 to allow trials of individual war crimes. He has served on the Board of Peace House, Ashland, and teaches "War and Morality" at Southern Oregon Learning in Retirement (SOLIR) at Southern Oregon University. He will be a main speaker at Vietnam Sunday here April 30. Wells and his wife, June, 84, celebrate their 60th anniversary this September. Meanwhile, the battle against aging continues. Wells rises daily at 6 a.m., walks 2 miles and does an upper body weight workout before breakfast. Then he takes to his 21-speed Trek bike. "I love the ambience of the air and the sights up above the noise, fumes and traffic of town. It's very emancipating. I'm not a mystic, though. I'm not much for sitting around meditating. I'm an activist." Prime Times Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA