VANDALIA PAIR'S CRUSADE CONTINUING IN CYBERSPACE

Web Site Dedicated To Rainbow Farm Pushes For Legalization Of Marijuana

VANDALIA -- It all began back in the early '90s, when Grover "Tom" Crosslin
bought the 34-acre farm and an adjoining 20-acre woods.

Crosslin grew up in Elkhart.

When he got out of high school, he became a truck driver, got married in
his teens and divorced a couple of years later. He started a successful
business installing flagpoles and then began buying run- down properties in
Elkhart, fixing them up and selling or renting them. He did good work,
winning an award from Elkhart's Historical and Cultural Preservation
Commission in 1995.

Crosslin loved to smoke dope, his friends say, and when he got stoned, he'd
launch into loud libertarian rants about how the government had no right to
tell people what they can or can't smoke. He used to toke up with his
construction crews after work.

One of his workers was Rolland "Rollie" Rohm, a quiet, easygoing guy with
long blond hair and a big, happy laugh. Rohm had fathered a son at 15 and
was briefly married. Soon, Tom and Rollie became companions.

Crosslin bought Rainbow Farm Campground in Vandalia as a place where he and
Rohm could escape their urban life in Elkhart. They loved to pick
blueberries, fish in the pond and just stroll the hills with their dog.

In the mid-'90s, Crosslin bankrolled Rohm's legal battle to gain custody of
his son, Robert, who was then about 6 years old. When Rohm won that fight,
the two men began raising the boy in Vandalia.

On April 19, 1995 -- the day of the Oklahoma City bombing -- he was
arrested for assault in a local bar.

These days, Crosslin's supporters claim he was defending himself against
gay-bashers. But at the time, witnesses told police a different story:
Crosslin was ranting about the bombing when a woman told him to shut up.
Cursing, he shoved her and then hit her with the bartender's club before
the owner wrestled him to the floor.

He pleaded guilty to assault and served several months in the Cass County Jail.

When he got out, his anti-government views had hardened.

He channeled his anger into the movement to legalize marijuana. He turned
Rainbow Farm into a campground and began holding pro-pot festivals every
Labor Day and Memorial Day weekend.

"We consider this a war on us and we are fighting back," Crosslin once
wrote on the farm's Web site at rainbowfarmcampground com.

That war ended with Crosslin's death at the hands of an FBI sniper on Sept.
3, 2001, and with Rohm's death at the hands of a Michigan State Police
sharpshooter 12 hours later. Both were angry over the ongoing focus of Cass
County Prosecutor Scott Teter and Cass County authorities on their lives at
Rainbow Farm, with allegations of illegal drug use and distribution and the
loss of "their" son, Robert, because of it.

"In a way," says local attorney Dan French, "it's our own little Waco."

Rainbow Farm Campground's operation may be no more on Pemberton Road. And
the Rainbow Farm telephone hot line has been disconnected.

But a memorial Web site dedicated to the late Rainbow Farm Campground owner
and his companion continues in cyberspace at www.rainbowfarmcamp.com, the
successor to Rainbow Farm Campground's old Web site. Its message,
emblazoned with "In Memory of Rainbow Farm: Tom Crosslin and Rollie Rohm,"
remains as solid as if Crosslin and Rohm were pushing it themselves.

Those Rainbow Farm festivals over the years had a serious political purpose
-- proselytizing for Michigan lawyer Greg Schmid's Personal Responsibility
Amendment (PRA), designed to decriminalize marijuana. Schmid had set up
booths, where he gathered signatures on petitions to get the amendment on
the Michigan ballot.

"Rainbow Farm was the conduit for people interested in marijuana law
reform," Schmid says. "The best petitioners I met, I met through Rainbow Farm."

That petition continues on through Rainbow Farm, too.

The PRA Committee, based in Saginaw, Mich., is seeking to raise $45,000 to
begin a petition campaign to get the measure to decriminalize marijuana on
the state ballot in 2003.

"This one campaign has the potential to do more towards forwarding the
cause that Tom and Rollie died for than all other groups and efforts
combined," according to Rainbow Farm's Web site.

"Tom and Rollie were some of the very first promoters of the PRA back in
1998. They believed in it wholeheartedly."