WITH TEARS, LAUGHTER, PEACE MARCHERS DISBAND

'IT'S LIKE BEING IN A WAR TOGETHER,' SAYS ONE

After a final round of bear hugs and tears, Mordecai Roth, a 66-year-old Los Angeles dentist, climbed into his van and headed toward California. Mel Baker, a radio reporter from Utah, caught a noon flight back to Salt Lake City. And Ethan Kaplan, joining his mother in their Honda Accord, set off for Westchester County, N.Y., where homework and rules awaited.

The Great Peace March was being dismantled yesterday, and the marchers, who had trekked across the continent together for 260 days, were setting off separately on their most difficult journey yet -- the trip back to their real lives.

"It's like being in a war together, that kind of closeness, that kind of camaraderie," marcher Morris Ridgeway said of their 3,700-mile walk for peace. "You shared the extremes of the weather, all the problems, all the sadness, all the happiness . . . . No one who hasn't been through it will ever feel what you feel."

Ridgeway's sentiments were echoed throughout the camp on a grassy field in Northeast Washington, where marchers packed their gear from the pastel tents and junker buses and trucks that had made up their mobile neighborhood since March 1. The ramshackle community even had a name -- Peace City -- and was loved by its inhabitants, the 700 who had made the entire trip and others who had joined them along the way.

But as the day ended, remnants of Peace City remained in Washington, where the marchers had come to plead for nuclear disarmament. One group of marchers planned a demonstration today at the U.S. Department of Energy to voice their opposition to continued nuclear testing, perhaps by getting arrested for civil disobedience.

Others set up a symbolic group of tents on the Ellipse. "Peace City Lives|" said a hastily lettered sign at the encampment, and Andy Hammerman explained that the peace march had not come this far simply to go away.

"The marchers wanted a presence at the White House, after . . . being denied an opportunity to confront Ronald Reagan and his policies," Hammerman said. The symbolic camp is to remain for a week.

Many marchers planned to keep Peace City alive in other ways, in part because they said they could not imagine going back to their old lives. Yesterday the camp overflowed with talk of peace buses, peace walks, peace academies and traveling peace theater.

Roth and Mim Broderick, a 68-year-old grandmother from Studio City, Calif., planned to open an office in Burbank and work as "full-time peace activists," said Roth. Dona Ridgeway, who made the journey with her husband Morris and their 3-year-old son, hoped to start a "peace academy" in Iowa, near the town where she grew up.

Morris Ridgeway, who said he had worked as a "jack-of-all-trades" back home in Santa Cruz, Calif., said he felt that "the ideal of getting ahead has lost a lot of its meaning."

"What's the use of getting ahead if there's going to be no world?" he asked. "When you see what can make things better for people, you realize that's what people should work at."

Some planned a peace walk through Florida, to begin Dec. 28, while others had an ambitious idea for a walk through the Soviet Union. A young man who calls himself "Non-Dairy John" said the march had "not accomplished its goal" and he and others would continue traveling the country, calling themselves "The Great Peace March Continues."

A nearby marcher joked, "Why don't you call it 'Brother of the Great Peace March,' or 'Wife of the Great Peace March,' or maybe 'Revenge of the Great Peace March.' "

And so it went, sometimes with tears, sometimes with laughter, as marchers dismantled Peace City's preschool, its library and its academy. Others prepared clippings for the archives and totted up the final cost, which organizers estimated at $900,000 for the nine-month trek.

Many said the greatest loss would be the "sense of community." Almost every marcher interviewed said the group was a family in which they felt free to open up and be themselves in a way that was frowned upon in society. "It will be hard to get up every morning and not hug everyone," said Ethan Kaplan. "There's so much love . . . . I'll miss that."

Tracy Bartlett, a counselor from Solona Beach, Calif., said some people were "feeling fear about trying to function in a world that doesn't share the values we have hammered in here . . . like working for the community and not your own paycheck."

Jeanine Brannigan, a student from Puget Sound University in Washington who plans to organize the Soviet Union walk, said she would miss "the chaos" that generated such "unexpected and beautiful" things. Among them was a 4 a.m. concert by rock star Jackson Browne, who suddenly appeared one night at the group's camp in Iowa. Or the vanilla ice cream that a donor delivered to a rest stop in the Mojave Desert.

Most of the marchers admitted that they longed for some things from their former lives. "Classical music," said Dona Ridgeway. "Beds, heat, strangely enough doing math and physics," said Kaplan. Brannigan and her friend Lenise Mahlke collapsed in squeals of laughter as they reminisced about what they missed.

"Lipstick . . . shaving my legs, putting on a dress," said Mahlke. "A haircut, shopping at someplace that isn't a Goodwill store," Brannigan said, as Mahlke broke in, "a bubble bath and a bottle of champagne."

When asked what he had missed, Mordecai Roth shot back, "Want a list? Privacy, chairs, showers . . . . "

Then his eyes grew somber. "But I wouldn't trade any of this," Roth said. "What I got here was so much richer."

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.