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This essay started out as a longer comment about the Peace Pole at the State Fair, but now I think that's too confining a place to put it.

I think my first introduction the idea of a Peace Pole came when my younger daughter found it suggested as a project in her Girl Scout handbook in 1993 or 1994 and became interested in pursuing it. She proposed that our church install and dedicate one. I came to learn that members of the social ministry committee had been considering this for some time (a few years, perhaps) but had never carried it fully through. This inquiry pushed them to complete the action, and my daughter selected the 4 languages that are on Grace Lutheran's Peace Pole

She chose Japanese (because Japan is where the Peace Pole concept originated); English, Vietnamese and Spanish -- because these were the three languages respectively most-spoken at home by residents of Wake County, according to 1990 federal census survey. (In the 2000 census, Spanish speakers had grown to outnumber all other foreign languages here, but that's a topic for some other occasion.)

During the process I learned that the Fairgrounds in Raleigh already had a Peace Pole, in the Village of Yesteryear section. It was not the same pole as in my 2006 photograph. Their earlier one was a traditional wooden post that they did not maintain properly.

In 2004 or 2005 we [Lutheran Peace Fellowship members] noticed the peace pole was no longer standing in front of the church on the fairgrounds. We first suspected that fairgrounds caretakers removed it for some reason of malice. So in early summer of 2005 I went to the site on a weekday and discovered the pole simply lying on the ground under the church, in an unwalled crawl space.

Donating a new pole to replace it became part of the Peace Booth Committee's meeting agendas that year, thanks to Leo Klohr's involvement in both organizations. I think we were told the fairgrounds groundskeeping staff had removed the old pole because of its state of disrepair. When they learned of our organizations' interest in replacing the pole, they offered to build and install a metal replica of it. Someone thought adding planter-holders would make it still more attractive and useful. (I don't think I have ever seen planters hung on this pole, but they are happy that someone could do so.) That is the Peace Pole at the fairgrounds today.

Peace poles in public places in Raleigh today that I know of:

• Village of Yesteryear at the State Fairgrounds
• Grace Lutheran Church
• Holy Trinity Lutheran Church
• Community United Church of Christ
• The Methodist Building