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• No smoking at home? Danville residents fear policy is first step toward 'Orwellian World' 

But McIntosh isn't waiting to write a novel to extol the virtues of a life full of liberty. She is doing that now as she leads essentially a one-woman campaign against what she feels is an infringement on the freedom of the residents of the Housing Authority of Danville.

The target of her campaign is a new no-smoking policy set to take effect June 1. Although the housing authority has 394 units with a total of some 700 residents living in them, the policy will affect only five units and the building in which they are located.

But McIntosh believes the policy is broad enough to give the housing authority officials license to impose it on all units and residents.

"I see this policy as the first step toward a total ban on smoking in housing authority apartments," said McIntosh, a retired school teacher - and a non-smoker for 35 years - who lives in a unit on Crescent Drive. "It may now apply only to a few units, but it has language in it that can cover an expansion of the policy." . . .

"And I'm old enough to remember Hitler, and I know Orwell's '1984' virtually by memory," said the avid reader and admitted "pack rat," to whom White gave a two-bedroom apartment so she would have enough room to store her hundreds of books.

"A home is a man's castle, and I don't think Big Brother should be allowed to take one foot inside of it just to put out a cigarette. In America, we are supposed to be the home of the free and the brave, and I think the residents here need to be brave enough to fight for their freedom."

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