New Hope Journal
Personal Essays and Public Opinions since 1979
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by Larry L. Dill
If I had been a lost soul in January of 1968, I was a lost dog by June. Through the spring of that year I had witnessed one of the most dramatic periods in American history and personally drifted through a sea of radically new ideas, ambiguous ambitions, and heart wrenching emotions. I had defiantly quit graduate school to become a poet and in so doing had lost my college deferment and had been reclassified 1-A (most likely to be drafted) by my local draft board in San Antonio. I had become an accomplished draft counselor for the American Friends Service Committee (as my meager contribution to the anti-war effort) and in so doing had learned of all the legal options at my disposal for avoiding the draft. I had chosen to pursue conscientious objector status because I thought it offered the strongest combination of philosophical, moral and political responses to the growing public aversion to the War in Vietnam. In the probing self-examination involved in a claim of conscientious objection I had had to engage in often heated discussions, debates and correspondence with family members, lifelong friends and mentors (some of whom never spoke to me again). I had been knocked off my feet by the assassination of Martin Luther King, jr., and I had been forced somehow, subconsciously or otherwise to reevaluate my recently abandoned dream of becoming a Methodist minister. Even as I was being denied a deferment as a conscientious objector by a vindictive and contemptuous draft board, my approved admission into the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary was insuring me (and my draft board must have known this as well) that I would receive a deferment as a ministerial student. In fact my appearance before my local draft board on May 15, 1968 was for all practical purposes a mere theatrical exercise in which I was granted the rare privilege of preaching to my judges and my judges enjoyed the freedom to belittle my beliefs and question my personal sincerity.
Integrated personal/historical timeline continued…1968
(References include Brown University’s Scholarly Technology Group, Mother Jones Magazine, vietnamwar.com and ABC News)
January, 1968—Dr Benjamin Spock (the “baby doctor” upon whom many blamed the permissiveness of the 60’s) and the Reverend William Sloan Coffin (the Chaplain of Yale University) are indicted for urging war resisters to evade the draft. John Kerry (a graduate of Yale University, age 25) has for several months been serving as an Ensign (the equivalent of a Second Lieutenant) aboard the guided-missile frigate USS Gridley in the Pacific. Kerry will soon volunteer for Vietnam combat duty and command a swift boat in the Mekong Delta.
February, 1968—Larry L. Dill (a graduate of the University of Texas, age 23) becomes a trained draft counselor for the American Friends Service Committee, and initiates proceedings to obtain a draft deferment for himself as a conscientious objector. The Eddie Adams Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of a Vietnamese General summarily executing a Viet Cong prisoner by shooting him in the head at point blank range is circulated in the American press. George W. Bush (a senior at Yale University, age 21) scores in the 25th percentile in the pilot aptitude portion of the US Air Force Officer Qualifications test.
March, 1968—Senator Robert Kennedy, running on an anti-war platform laid out by Eugene McCarthy, enters the Presidential primary race against the incumbent Lyndon Johnson. U.S. soldiers under the direction of Lt. William Calley (it is learned almost a year later) slaughter over 300 unarmed civilian men, women and children in the Vietnamese village of My Lai. President Johnson shocks the world by announcing that he will not run for re-election, temporarily halts U.S. bombing raids and lays the groundwork for the Paris Peace Talks between the U.S. and North Vietnam. The war will continue to rage for 5 more years. Bill Clinton, a student at Georgetown University and an understudy of William Fulbright, the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, writes a paper on the constitutional illegality of the draft.
April, 1968—Martin Luther King is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots ensue in many major American cities. Larry L. Dill applies for admission to the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and appears in person before San Antonio Selective Service Board Number 7 to appeal his denial of Conscientious Objector Status. The Board stands behind its denial. But he is accepted into the Seminary and subsequently receives a deferment from military service as a student of religious ministry. Columbia University in New York City is shut down by 20,000 students protesting the war.
May, 1968—George W. Bush, through the intercession of Texas House Speaker, the wunderkind, Ben Barnes, is accepted into the Texas Air National Guard. His 25th percentile grade on the Air Force pilot aptitude test is somehow enough to get him into flight school. Anti-war activists in France spawn a General Strike involving nine million workers who push the French nation to the verge of civil war. In Prague, Czechoslovakia, students and workers mount the greatest threat to Soviet hegemony since the Russian revolution.
June, 1968—Robert Kennedy having just won the California primary is assassinated in Los Angeles. Shortly after his 24th birthday, Larry L. Dill, leaves his wife of 4 years (for no apparent reason to either of them) and moves into a room at the YMCA where his draft counseling office is located (across the street from the University of Texas). In 3 weeks he will enter the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary where he will study New Testament Greek and criminal sociology.
Appendix to Chapter Two: Bill Clinton's Draft Letter
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