This is the Memory Palace. I'm Nate DeMayo.

By 1991, the editors of the Berlitz Guide for Tourists to Washington, D.C., were so certain that it would still be there,

that it was mentioned as a site one could see when visiting the city, just as one could visit the monuments to Washington or Lincoln or Jefferson,

or the Vietnam War, or the various museums of the

Smithsonian, the Capitol building. A traveler would find, next to the White House, by the wrought iron

fence that surrounds it, a camping tent. And within it, they'd probably find a guy named William

Thomas, as he had been nearly every day of the previous 10 years,

since he first launched his protest against the United States government, and what he saw

as its many hypocrisies and mendacity, and its continued possession of and reliance upon nuclear

weapons. Just a tent by the White House, a few slogans painted on plywood, some literature to hand out if

people wanted it. I can't tell you precisely how many days he missed in his peace vigil in that

tent during that decade, though I can put those days into a few different categories. There were

the times when he was in court or in jail. He

was arrested a lot, particularly early on on various charges. Then there were the few times

when, having gained attention for his protest, he was invited to travel to Africa or to Asia,

to understand the struggles of people there, the impoverished, the ill, those displaced or otherwise

emiserated by war. And then there were the days when he himself was ill or had some urgent

personal matter, at which times other people would maintain the vigil, two other people

primarily, one who had been there almost from the beginning and who would ultimately spend more time than anyone else in that tent.

Her name was Concepcion or Conchita or Connie Pichodo, an immigrant from Spain.

She had bumped into Thomas, his friends just called him Thomas, for the first time in 1979.

Bumped into him quite literally, it seems, on a bus.

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