Grace Anderson Kimm, advocate for peace and justice, died peacefully at home in Potomac, Md. on March 15, 2023. She was 91.
Grace Anderson was born in Brooklyn, NY on Sept. 18, 1931 to Josephine Kinsella and Frudolph Anderson. She was one of seven siblings, with just the youngest, Audrey Mondello, now surviving.
Grace married Peter Kimm in 1954 after he returned from serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, 1951-1953. They met only a short time before Pete went into the Army, despite growing up in the same Catholic parish in Brooklyn. They experienced “instant chemistry,” they both recounted at their 60th wedding anniversary. Peter and Grace settled in their native Brooklyn where their first two children, Mary and Peter Jr. were born. Peter Sr. began study at The Cooper Union in New York City at night while working construction during the day, receiving his Bachelor of Civil Engineering degree in 1958.
Grace and Peter Kimm in January 1954
In 1961, in response to President John F. Kennedy’s call to “ask what you can do for your country,” Peter and Grace, along with Peter’s brother Victor Kimm and his wife Pat, launched their families on an odyssey of public service — first with a Peace Corps-type organization to Paterson, NJ and Seton Hall University, and then to Cuernavaca, Mexico where they learned Spanish. They engaged with Ivan Illich, Margaret Mead, Philip and Daniel Berrigan, and others, with a volunteer organization in US and Mexico.
They moved to the Washington, D.C. area, where Pete first worked for the American Institute for Free Labor Development, AIFLD, 1963-65, and joined USAID in 1966.
Grace was a lifelong activist for racial justice and for peace.
She and Pete attended the 1963 March on Washington, in the company of the Berrigan brothers, and heard Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech.
Grace was an activist for peace and for nuclear disarmament. She opposed the Vietnam War, participating in antiwar protests, taking along her children.
She drove (with Mary and Christopher, then a baby) to Canada with other members of Women’s Strike for Peace to meet with women from North Vietnam.
She was employed on Capitol Hill first by Women’s Strike for Peace, and later for many years, for the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, better known as SANE, the largest peace group in the United States. (SANE is now Peace Action.) A few of the issues she was passionate about included opposing the MX Missile, the B1 bomber, and deployment of intermediate range nuclear weapons in Europe, all of which threatened to destabilize the U.S.-Soviet dynamic and risk nuclear war.
In 1968, After Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Grace volunteered to support the Poor People's Campaign, thousands of poor men and women who arrived in Washington D.C. to protest for economic justice. Hundreds stayed overnight in Potomac at the Sisters of Mercy (now the Bolger Center) where volunteers including Peter and Grace supported the marchers with meals and more.
“On Mother’s Day, 12 May 1968, thousands of women, led by Coretta Scott King, formed the first wave of demonstrators. Resurrection City, a temporary settlement of tents and shacks, was built on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Braving rain, mud, and summer heat, protesters stayed for over a month. Demonstrators made daily pilgrimages to various federal agencies to protest and demand economic justice.” (Source: kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/poor-peoples-campaign)
Grace was an activist without boundaries, and she was not afraid of conflict. If she observed something that was not right, she would immediately say something and do something. This also applied to family and friends, who never had to guess what her opinion was, and often did have to explain their own actions or lack thereof.
But Grace brought that same ferocious activism in love and support of family and friends. She had many lifelong friends.
Grace and Pete hosted countless dinner parties that brought diverse and global groups together in Potomac, sometimes combining tennis, volleyball or cycling with global relations, international development, civil rights and disarmament advocacy, with Grace serving as hostess-in-chief.
Grace and Peter made their home in Potomac a place for family, for children and grandchildren and more recently, great-grandchildren. Almost every member of the close family lives nearby, and gathers for holiday and birthday meals and celebrations multiple times throughout the year. Every grandchild knew they had a special place and refuge with Grandma.
Grace cared for grandsons Brian and Jeffrey Kimm when their mother, Virginia Fowler, wife of Peter Kimm Jr., Grace and Peter’s son, returned to work. When Peter Jr. was killed in a car crash in 1995, both Grandma (Grace) and Papa (Peter Sr.) increased their involvement. The family lives next door.
As an example of fearless support, one evening Ginny called to say she heard someone trying to break into her house. Grace, still in her nightgown, armed herself with a hammer and headed next door to the rescue. She did not use her weapon on the culprit, a raccoon.
In the last decade before Peter Kimm Sr.’s death at 89 in 2019, Peter and Grace were joined at the hip, more likely to be doing the New York Times crossword together than engaged in higher volume discussions that happened previously. Grace was a fierce advocate for him in health care. During Pete’s hospitalization for nearly a month in early 2019, Grace, then 87, stayed with him every minute, sleeping in a recliner in his hospital room and eating hospital meals there as well. His doctors said they had never seen anything like it.
Grace read both the New York Times and the Washington Post in print every day until shortly before her death.
She was an avid gardener, and right now, this last part of March, 2023, her work in that Potomac garden continues to shine, with tens of thousands of blooming daffodils, hellebores and more. Multiple cherry trees bloom in succession, followed by redbuds and dogwoods. Towering oaks, tulip trees, hickory and more support a rich environment.
Grace Kimm is survived by her son Christopher Kimm (Emily) of Reston; daughter Mary Kimm (Ken Moore) of Potomac; her sister, Audrey Mondello of New York; daughter-in-law Virginia Fowler (Matt Egger) of Potomac; 10 grandchildren: Colin Dixon (Anna) of Cabin John, Md.; Emma Dixon of Potomac; Brian Kimm (Veronica) of Rockville, Md.; Jeffrey Kimm of New York, NY; Matthew Kimm of Los Angeles, Calif.; Elizabeth Egger of Potomac; Eliot and Eve Kimm of Reston, Va.; Jahna Kimm Knight (John Scherer) of Woodbridge, Va.; Jasmine Kimm Knight of Hackensack, NJ; three great-grandchildren: Declan and Ada Dixon of Cabin John and Chloe Kimm of Manteo, NC.