clara gouan, a housewife in her words, a mother of two young daughters, decided she had had enough of bending her life around tobacco smoke. her youngest daughter had a tobacco allergy that kept the family from enjoying one of the central pleasures of middle class family life, going out to dinner. so gowan and some girlfriends made a pact of sorts, their first political action. they would remove ashtrays in their homes, ashtrays that neither they nor their husbands used but were there as a room fixture for the convenience of guests, that this small gesture required pre-meditation and the kind of confidence that can only be shored up by a group of the like minded suggests a degree of anxiety that gowan faced when she wanted a smoking free space. she started group against smoke and pollution, or gasp, from this action. using $50 of her, quote, grocery money, she produced a first batch of buttons that would become a standard symbol in the nonsmokers' rights movement. she also published a news letter called the ventilator which got off the ground thanks to the prince georges county tuberc