SUMMER REFLECTIONS ON PEACE THROUGH JUSTICE; FLINT TO IBIZA

In my formative years during undergraduate time at St. Louis University, I confronted the world as a young adult for the first time. The War in Vietnam affected me personally, in that I was required to register for the Draft. As a full time college student, I was deferred; that is I was not called to enlist while a student.  My childhood next door neighbor, Gary Miller, chose not to attend full time college; he was Drafted (or perhaps enlisted),  served in the War and earned a Purple Heart. My cousin Tommy married Barb upon graduation from John Carroll; he received one of the last 'marriage deferments.' I found out later in life that my friend Geoff Neithercut received a deferment to go to Seminary.

My father had served in the military during World War II as had my uncles, fathers of neighbors and friends. Growing up in the fifties meant movies about the War, T.V. Westerns, B.B. guns and  nuclear war shelters.  My grade school (St. Luke's ) had as its mascot , The Bombradiers. Our High School, St. Michael's was the Warriors. One rival school, St. Agnes was the Crusaders. We played "War" in the empty lot on Proctor Street , tossing dirtball  'grenades' at each other from forts behind construction debris.

We made plastic airplane models of fighter jets, and Migs, and Japaneses 'Zeros', and the destroyers and aircraft carriers made famous in the Pacific Battle of Midway.  Guys in my neighborhood spent hours 'making war' with little plastic replicas of fighting men. We'd make drawings of battles during grade school classes while the nuns droned on about saving babies from the Communists in China.

In 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated a couple of years after asking the Nation to ask what we could do for our county and founding a 'Peace Corps' after a speech at University of Michigan. Reportedly, he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of the War in Vietnam when he died, but his successor, Texan Lyndon Johnson escalated the War during  the mid to late '60's.

This is the milieu of War wherein I needed to determine my path in life when I set out in the Fall of 1966 for St. Louis University.  During this period, events playing out on national T.V. escalated my thinking about how I would(should) respond as a young man:

      -A civil rebellion in Detroit in 1967

      -A wider war in Southeast Asia

       -Major student unrest and demonstrations world wide highlighting colonialism, capitalism, and 

          the burgeoning  the Military Industrial Complex

         -Expansion of the American Civil Rights Movement

No matter how hard I tried to focus on my classes, or social life, or sports, or part time /summer work to help with tuition, I couldn't escape the reality that the forces of history would require that I  decide how and what to do in response to these events.

Over a period of time, I began to consider how my own somewhat rudimentary understanding of the gospels that I had learned at parochial school should guide my decision making and behavior.  In Philosophy, History, and Theology Classes, I searched for guidance.  I joined the Big Brothers and spent time with Inner City kids trying to expose them to better opportunities, thinking my involvement in good works might be an answer.  Late night dorm discussions didn't do much for me. Most guys I knew were busy with classes, or fraternities, or social stuff to bother  discussing the issues that were concerning me at the time.

Gradually, I found myself somewhat isolated in my thinking.  As to the War in Vietnam, I began to search out non-traditional resources to inform myself: Alternative Newspapers, the Quakers, the Mennonites, the emerging Student Peace Movement, The Catholic Worker.

In November of 1969, I drove all night from St. Louis  to the Anti-War March in Washington, D.C., slept on a church floor and walked by the White House carrying the name of a Veteran killed in Vietnam. On the Capitol Mall, the next day, I sang "Give Peace a Chance" as led by Peter, Paul , and Mary and Pete Seeger and other luminaries of the time.

I joined a March in the Spring of my Senior year from the Gateway Arch to the University in Midtown.  Along the way, I was hooted at and derided as a "commie pinko" by members of Richard Nixon's so-called  "Silent Majority" lining  Laclede Avenue.

By the Spring, as friends made application to graduate school, Medical or Law School, I was immersed in the Anti-War movement and preparing an application for Conscientious Objector status to the Draft Board in Flint. Bonhoeffer, Ghandi, King, Jesus, Thoreau--all their writings and beliefs influenced my application. 

I prepared for an interview which ultimately took place in August, 1970 at the Federal Building in Flint. The questions were tough since I was not a member of the traditional "Peace Churches"(Quakers, Mennonites, Amish). I had the support of a local Roman Catholic Priest who wrote a letter supporting my sincerity, while simultaneously attempting to dissuade me from being a C-O. (I later found out that Monsignor Earl V. Sheridan had previously served on the Flint Draft Board!)

After a few weeks,  I received a letter from the Draft Board advising me that I was classified 1-O, thus eligible to be drafted into alternative service.  It was not a unanimous vote of the Local Draft Board. This meant I was "in limbo' in that my Draft Lottery Number  had not yet been reached in 1970; I awaited being drafted(or not!)

Finishing my third summer selling books in late August, I decided to head overseas with two buddies to explore Europe.  We boarded Icelandic in NYC after painting my friend's parents' home in New Jersey and  arrived in Munich at the beginning of October  just in time for the famed "OKTOBERFEST " to be over.

We purchased a VW Wagon and began our journey around Western Europe starting with a visit to Dachau to see vestiges of the famous concentration camp used by the Nazis to exterminate Jews, Dissenters, Homosexuals, and assorted undesirables.  My recollection is that it was extremely difficult to get directions to this place of infamy. I learned that day at Dachau a lesson that has stayed with me my entire life: it's one thing to read about an historical event; it's quite another to see the place where something happened  and feel it.

Mike and Terry and I tooled around Western Europe for the next couple of months visiting cathedrals and castles, art museums and youth hostels and spending one night in the Cambridge England Police Station. 

Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the Louvre, Buckingham Palace, The Palace of Versailles and debates at the Hyde Park Corner enthralled our sensitivities. We drove north to Scandinavia;  The Danish Resistance Museum in Copenhagen chronicled the efforts of heroic common people in Denmark to stand up to Nazi Occupiers during World War II. I personally confronted the reality of evil in the world and reflected upon how I would have responded to such a challenge to the ideals of freedom, tolerance, and democratic values. 

We headed  south to Spain , visited the Prado in Madrid then the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. We took an overnight boat to the Island of Ibiza with a traveling carnival troupe. I slept on the beach alone one night and awakened to a dude in scuba gear emerging from the Mediterranean.  Blaine advised me that he'd been around the whole world and, "I don't know, I just don't know.