WERRA PEACE SIGN CONTINUES TO SHINE
Now mounted outside Factory Pipe warehouse
“We were looking to do something as a family; it was at a time when my teenage children were in the stage of not talking much with their parents and we wanted to do some kind of family project together,” says Dr. Robert Werra.
He and his wife, Marlene, moved to Lookout Drive beyond Mill Street, some 300 feet up from the valley floor, in 1972—a perfect location for a sign that could be seen from town.
Looking across the valley from their house to the east, someone had put up a star, an additional incentive for them to move forward with their idea.
A couple of years later, in 1974, they talked to their children about undertaking a family project and asked what kind of sign they would like to put up for Christmas.
“They wanted a peace symbol and although we were older and thought that was more of a hippy thing, we went along with it. After all, it does represent peace and we were looking forward to creating a happier relationship with them.”
He and his wife put the sign together taping Christmas tree lights to flexible PVC pipe and one Saturday morning when it was completed and ready to be installed on the roof, their kids, conveniently, had other obligations.
“It ended up that mom and dad spent the day crawling around the
roof, stretching the sign out and tying it up. We got done at about 5 p.m., just about the time they returned home.”
Every year thereafter, the Werras got on their roof in December and put the peace sign on their house; that old hippy symbol became a landmark, one that brought a sense of peace and hope to the community during the darkest time of the year.
“It’s the true presentation of what Christmas is about from 2000 years ago—peace on earth,” he says.
Dr. Werra likes to tell the story about one of his patients who he got to talking to about why he moved to Ukiah. The patient said he was driving through Ukiah on the freeway at night around Christmas time and looked up and saw the peace sign.
He pulled off the freeway, stopped the car, got out, looked up and said to himself that a place like this is where he wanted to live; and he moved here.
Over the years, the trees have grown too tall limiting the peace sign’s visibility and about five years ago, the Werras stopped putting it up.
About three years ago, Ross Liberty, who moved to Ukiah in 1974, and graduated from Ukiah High in 1975, noticed its absence and talked to the Werras about continuing the tradition.
“I was well out of high school before I started noticing that sign; it’s become important to our community, a part of it, a fixture and I wanted to preserve it,” he says.
Werra pulled out the rolled-up coil of plastic and Christmas lights from under his house and Liberty and his crew drove up there and mounted the sign on the Werras’ roof.
At the end of the holiday season that year, Liberty took what was left of the 45-year- old structure and brought it to his warehouse knowing that he and his crew could refashion the creation with the intention of putting it up on Amanda Reiman’s house, just up the hill from the Werras, where the visibility from town was still good.
“Liberty wants to pass on the tradition and put the sign up for all of us in Ukiah to remember what Christmas is really about,” says Werra.
“It’s a cultural thing for the community to see the peace sign on the hill,” says Liberty.
Proving too difficult to put on Reiman’s house and with her agreement, they assembled it on their shop floor, shrank it down a bit to a 15-foot diameter and put it on an exterior shop wall facing the freeway.
“It’s hanging on my building but just like when it was on the Werras’ house, that’s not what it’s about. It’s more than that; it’s about the notion of peace and it’s community owned.”
Special thanks to UDJ Deputy Editor Jody Martinez for uncovering Macleod Pappidas’ photos from December, 2007.