Don't Jeopardize Your Future! (By Mentioning the War)

[I wrote this April 13, 2003, for an online forum in Muscatine where I live now. --Dan]


In Spring 1968, I was a senior at Mid-Prairie High School [Wellman, Iowa]. As part of a class project, we interviewed fellow graduating seniors for a several-week feature on a local radio station. Mainly we asked about future plans. Some said college; some said work; some said the service.

"The service" was the acceptable euphemism for the main option pumped at us by our guidance counselor.

"Not sure what you want to do? Why not enlist and see the world a bit, then let Uncle Sam pay for college once you've got a better idea? That's what I did." Thus counseled our jovial between-wars "veteran" who'd never seen much of anything himself and certainly never faced danger.

That was the acceptable official message of our school, day in and day out. Our small school had already lost one recent grad killed in Vietnam, so we were encouraged to support the troops and hate the godless communists.

It was the spring of the Tet offensive, and Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy were running against their party's war president, but it was not acceptable at MPHS to question the war. We studied long-ago wars but didn't get past WWII. One little section on "contemporary problems" for a few of us college-bound types taught how dangerous and mistaken communism was. Otherwise, the real war all around us was scarcely in the curriculum.

When a few of us got acquainted with some of the "protesters" at the nearby University of Iowa and then talked about it, our teachers and principal warned that none of that stuff would be tolerated at MPHS.

When Martin Luther King was murdered, some of us made a show of praising his life and mourning his death. A few fellow students (few but loud) made a show of calling us "nigger lovers" and went out of their way to "bump" us in the hallway--slam us into locker doors, that is. The adult response was boys will be boys--you should know better than to provoke these toughs anyway.

So, to the radio interviews. I was a "good" student and did my share or more of the project. Late in the project it was my turn to talk about my future. I said I planned to go to college and study art. I liked writing and politics, too. That's the part that aired.

I had also said I cared deeply about injustice in the world, and I was proud of my nation when we were leaders for justice and peace but ashamed when we supported dictators and used guns and bombs instead of sending food and constructive help to people in need. Something like that. And I said I didn't know if I would register for the draft, and I didn't want to hide out from the war under a student deferment. And if I did register, maybe I would seek recognition as a conscientious objector. And so I didn't know if I'd really graduate from college very soon.

The main part of the interview got cut without my knowledge, on orders of the speech teacher. When I heard the broadcast, I was angry and demanded to know why my bit came out so short and bland. The sympathetic student interviewer had drawn me out on my by-then vocal and visible protest and had seemed pleased with my answers.

The teacher explained kindly that she had saved me from myself. It was understandable, she said, that I might not have realized I would have upset the listeners who would have blamed the school for letting me believe such things and actually say them. She did me a special favor, she said, by excising the part about conscientious objection. That would have become part of my "record" and would follow and haunt me the rest of my life. What if I ever wanted to work for the government? What if I wanted a job or career at all? Maybe I thought artists could get away with expressing dissenting views, but she knew I wasn't really that sort. She said I was a bright student with so much potential; I would need a clean record so I could go as far as I should. She said I should thank her.

I don't remember her saying I was comforting the communists and prolonging the war, but she may have said that, too. Plenty did.

Heading toward our 35th anniversary this summer, I don't have near all the answers I'm looking for, but I've learned one thing for sure: "War is STILL not the answer."