As the plans geared up for last Saturday's rally and parade in downtown Raleigh in support of American military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan (and everywhere, for that matter), Cy King was preparing the contrarian view. Oh, not contrary to supporting the troops. Not at all. But he didn't like the idea of a display of firepower when he thought it more important to focus instead on those who had been wounded in the war, or the families of those who were killed. So he and some other "peaceniks," as he calls himself and his allies, went downtown and handed out their statement of mourning.

Lots of people didn't like it. "The crowd was rather hostile," King said. "We were trying to explain our presence there, and people didn't want to hear it." But King kept up what he thought was the good fight, the right fight. (And he has noticed, at his regular peace vigils downtown, that there is far more support for anti-war activists when it comes to Iraq than in the days when the demonstrations were about Vietnam.)

Cy King's activism when it comes to the peace movement drives those who don't agree to distraction for different reasons. Some are just plain angry at him and have an honest disagreement. Others are driven up the wall when they get a load of his credentials -- a World War II Infantry veteran who served in the infamous Battle of the Bulge.

But make no mistake. He has never been ashamed of being a peacenik or a liberal and is proud of the fact that his parents taught him to be so.

"I've been lucky," King, who is 85 and a Raleigh native, said. "My parents were liberal on almost everything, and in those days liberalism was defined by your position on racial justice. My folks were right on that issue and on most others. My father came out of a Quaker background, and my mother was a Presbyterian, but my father couldn't get the Quaker out of him." King's wife, Carolyn, whom he met at a YMCA conference center, has joined him on all of his activist endeavors all through the years. They have been married for 60 of those years.

King is well-known in the Raleigh area, having served until retirement with the library at N.C. State University. (He previously worked for the NCSU bookstore.) And he has long been active with the Community United Church of Christ, many members of which have joined him in his civil rights and anti-war efforts.

"When it was downtown, the church would bring prominent speakers in," King said. "All of those events were integrated. We had Eleanor Roosevelt, Hubert Humphrey and, in 1958, Martin Luther King Jr. He wasn't a national figure then."

Cy King and other activists would in those days prepare for demonstrations by gathering first at Shaw University. "We'd get together there in an upstairs meeting room," he said, "and you'd sing and work your courage up and then go march down Fayetteville Street, two by two. I've never been assaulted physically or anything, verbally maybe, but the police did a good job of protecting us."

Even those who disagree with King, or at least with his penchant for protest, respect his convictions.

Thad Woodard is president and chief executive of the N.C. Bankers Association, which was the main sponsor of the "support our troops" event last weekend. King wrote him a letter explaining his objections about the parade, saying in part, "Perhaps a parade with some of the thousands who have lost limbs and minds, riding on floats or in wheelchairs, would be a more appropriate and realistic way of recognizing our brave young men and women."

Says Woodard, "I know him as a very patriotic person, a person who loves his country. I know that he is at 85 at the point of positive obsession of helping his fellow man, whether it be his advocacy of fair housing or helping people in need, whatever their need might be. I know that he cares deeply about whatever cause he embraces. He has embraced a role of advocacy against this war, and he has done it as he does everything else, in a positive and gentlemanly way."

King notes that most of the people with whom he stands shoulder-to-shoulder in vigils or at other protests are of his generation or close to it. He worries about that a little. "During the Vietnam era," he said, "we had a lot of college students with us. I wonder sometimes whatever happened to all those people. We are an aging group."

In some ways, perhaps. But Cy King's passion for peace and justice remains as fresh as it was on the first day, of the first march, in the first cause. People like him give a community conscience, and ask the questions of power that must be asked in a country that values its freedom -- as he does.