When Brad Emmons met Jane Kilbride in the early 2000s, he was in his early 20s and she was in her early 60s. They were in a van headed from Huntsville to Washington, D.C., to protest the Iraq War buildup. Brad and some other young people in the van started calling Jane their “peace grandma.” “She ate that up,” he says. “She loved it.”

In the family that emerged from the grassroots North Alabama Peace Movement, Jane was their peace grandma, and they were her peace kids. After the trip to the capital, they started meeting on Fridays at Old Town Coffee in Huntsville, a place that attracted “misfits and hippies,” he says. Misfits and hippies were among Jane’s people.