Freethinker of the Year

1987 - Phyllis Grams

Retired schoolteacher, daughter of a former member of Congress and lifelong resident Phyllis Grams objected to the presence of a Ten Commandments monument on public property in Cameron Park, La Crosse, Wisconsin. She contacted Freedom From Religion Foundation president Anne Gaylor, who filed a high-profile lawsuit in federal court in September 1985, with Phyllis as principal plaintiff. When Phyllis began receiving crank calls, the elderly but feisty litigant was not the least intimidated, recounting how, after receiving one death threat, she responded, "Well, tell me more."

The Foundation offered into evidence the religious/commercial purposes behind the campaign by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, which had donated the La Crosse monument, to erect bible edicts in public buildings and parks nationwide. In the 1950s, Judge E.J. Ruegemer had launched the Eagles' project in conjunction with director Cecil B. DeMille's release of his movie "The Ten Commandments." After the 1986 trial, the case was dismissed on a technicality, not on the merits. In a moral victory, the La Crosse daily newspaper, which had actively editorialized against the complaint, changed its mind at the time of the federal trial and agreed that the monument should be moved to private property. The Freedom From Religion Foundation's annual college essay competition has been named in honor of the late Phyllis Grams, a longtime member of the Foundation.

"I remember one reporter quoting the La Crosse attorney as saying it was a trivial thing anyway, and I told them that was almost heresy, to intimate that any violation of the First Amendment was trivial."

1987 - Stephen VanZandt

Stephen VanZandt, a Foundation member, was principal plaintiff, joined by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, in a 1986 federal lawsuit challenging the placement of a chapel in the state capitol in Springfield, Illinois. TV evangelist Marion (Pat) Robertson exhorted legislators to establish the chapel during a prayer breakfast in Springfield in 1985. The Illinois House passed enabling legislation in a resolution filled with religious references, referring to a place "where its members may seek God, the comfort of His presence, the light of His guidance, and the strength of His love..."

In December 1986, U.S. District Court Judge Marvin E. Aspen of the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, ruled in favor of VanZandt and the Foundation, stating that the allocation of space for the chapel had violated at least the first two prongs of the three-pronged Lemon test. Wrote Aspen: "The wisdom of the First Amendment is that it mandates that the state protect all religious practice but at the same time requires that it not support any individual faith or religion collectively." After Steve was recognized by the Foundation for his First Amendment victory, a three-judge federal panel of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago unexpectedly reversed the lower court ruling on Jan. 29, 1988, declaring that the prayer room had a "secular purpose"!

"We've got the Constitution on our side. Even though we are outnumbered, numbers don't mean anything when it comes to interpreting the Constitution."