New Hope Journal
Personal Essays and Public Opinions since 1979
_____________________________________________
by Larry L. Dill
There is little doubt in my mind that by 1968 I felt like a lost soul. Bob Dylan had compared what I believe was the same feeling to being a “rolling stone --with no direction home.” “Free Spirit” was what I called it-- a Thoreauvian marching to a different drummer--but a drummer on a distant island where the sound of the drum was hardly audible, the fires that lit the way barely visible and the seas between, dark and menacing. I think Joan Didion would have agreed that “lost soul” was the best description of how we felt when we got up in the morning. I had no fear of going to Vietnam. That was not the issue. On the contrary, I can remember thinking at the time that it would have been the easy way out. It was that way I’m sure for a lot of men, not only in the Vietnam War but for time immemorial. It’s hard to explain. In part, I guess, a great residue of patriotism still permeated my “good boy” self image not to mention just a sort of innate desire to be where the action was. On the other hand by 1968 I had already begun to think of myself as a hippie with a new set of values and a new list of moral and social obligations. I had smoked some pot, my hair was reaching shoulder length. I was in the “movement”, attending meetings of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), organizing and marching regularly in anti-war and civil rights demonstrations. I was a draft counselor, in fact a trainer of draft counselors. I even had the perfect hippie day job as a traveling lab technician for the Texas Highway Department. I kept my own hours, recorded my own time sheets, and signed off on my own reports. None of my supervisors ever actually knew where I was or what I was doing at any given hour of any given day. As long as the reports were filled out right and filed on time I could get paid for sitting on the banks of the Colorado river reading and writing poetry all day which is in fact what I frequently did. Looking back at the poetry I was writing in those days I can see that I was living in a dreamy confusion. Strangely, during that period I was haunted by the poem Dover Beach, by Mathew Arnold. It haunts me still.
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Arnold’s poem, published in 1867 (though written perhaps 15 years earlier on his honeymoon) contained all the elements of my own newly found, newly recognized melancholy: the retreat of faith, the dreamlike sadness of beauty and art, the stupidity of war and the fleeting hope that love can somehow make up for it all.
I had read all sorts of books in college, from Plato and Aristotle to Thoreau and Hemingway. Thoreau had taught me about simplicity and non-violent political action. Hemingway had taught me about being in the moment. For Hemingway the moment could be anything—love, war, a raging bull, a charging elephant. Thoreau, like his protégés, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, had spent time behind bars for his beliefs in social justice (only one night for Thoreau to be exact. Gandhi and King had it a lot rougher). A burning 60’s legend (which likely never happened but which lives on to this day) has it that Ralph Waldo Emerson (Thoreau’s mentor…or was it the other way around?) paid Thoreau a visit in jail and asked “What are you doing in here?” And Thoreau shot back, “What are you doing out there?” I admired the courage and certitude of both men, the anarchist Thoreau, the warrior Hemingway. But what was I to do here and now in Austin, Texas in 1968 and in the misty future that lay beyond my understanding and imagination? I had no idea. I was a prisoner of fate. Precisely what Thoreau had warned in “Civil Disobedience” was the worst kind of prison to be in. In other words, my sense of patriotism, the one I had learned from my parents and teachers, the one that Hemingway’s fictional heroes lived out, was being turned upside down by the ideas of Thoreau, Gandhi and Martin Luther King who were suggesting by their reasoning, conviction and actions that heroism could take many forms. Sometimes the hero is the one who refuses to fight. Sometimes speaking truth to power can have more force than a thousand guns. Thoreau had created in his essay, “Civil Disobedience,” the most systematic justification for pacifism since the teachings of Jesus Christ. Gandhi’s life and death had been a masterful performance of Thoreau’s ideas. Martin Luther King had picked up the mantle and was marching to his own drummer down an increasingly dangerous path. On the banks of the Colorado river looking back across the broken dreams of my youth that spring, I wrote a fateful, uncharacteristically mystical, poem about my loss of religious faith and spiritual direction. It looks to me now like the dramatization of a desperate prayer and its own internal psychic resolution:
A preacher
In a time when
TV
Telephones
A mouthwash
For the soul
Wanted stones
A window here and there
To be a place
But never noticed that
A place no longer
Wants to push its head
Among the daisy sounding
Words of
Politicians who campaign
To worship God.
“No need,” he said,
“To worry. God will make a
Video Replay and you’ll see
Why still these stones,
This window here, can help us
Ease our minds
When gasoline kings
Make slaves of service station men.”
The day after I wrote the poem, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated by a white supremacist in Memphis, Tennessee where he had gone to march in support of striking sanitation workers; and like the ebb and flow of the Sea of Faith in Arnold’s poem, the long withdrawing roar of my own disquiet came flowing back to me like the waves of the ocean and I interpreted the “video replay” of my own poem as a premonition of King’s death, a replay of Gandhi’s martyrdom and Christ’s crucifixion. Even though, as I think about it now, I had been psychologically “set up” to write the poem by King’s own rhetorical premonition of his death in his second most famous speech “I’ve been to the mountain top” that I had seen on TV the night before he died (the night I wrote the poem), I was unable to sustain any other interpretation than that I had been sent a message from God (the God I had pretty much stopped believing in, the one with the long white beard sitting on a throne) that the Christian ministry to which I had been called when I was 16 years old was still my calling and still my mission. And I had best get back to the task at hand. I don’t mean to say that I believed that God had taken Martin Luther King’s life just to get me back into the church. No, it was that I had been given a vision of the meaning of King’s death for me personally, even before it happened. That would have been God’s clever way of getting my attention. That was the way I explained it to my wife, Melba, who was…well…supportive…though I think, secretly, a little skeptical. And that was the way I explained it to the registrar at the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary where almost immediately I applied for admission. The Presbyterian Seminary was just a block north of the University of Texas, where I had earned my BA degree and lost my religion a couple of years earlier and where after a year of teaching in San Antonio had returned to graduate school only to drop out four months later for a general loss of faith in formal education itself, following my general loss of faith in religion. Are you following all these lapses and relapses of faith?
Complicated as the story may seem to be, it was really a lot more convoluted than I have so far outlined. In the winter before King’s death, in my capacity as graduate school drop-out, dope smoking hippie Texas Highway Department poet, anti-war protestor and draft counselor for the American Friends Service Committee, I had discovered something called “Conscientious Objection.” Well, hello! It seemed that there was actually in existence in this land of the free and home of the brave, a legitimate, legal, historical way in which a man opposed to war could actually register his opposition, be certified, and walk away from war and military service with his honor unquestioned, his body in tact, and his head held high. It was a description that I thought fit me like a glove. It was a piece of cake.
“Oh Wrong!, Mr. Holier than Thou, Eagle Scout, Most Outstanding Student, breath!” as Johnny Carson might have put it if he’d been there. The decision about how holy I was, how opposed to war I was, what my ulterior motives might be, how honest and trustworthy I was when it came to things relating to patriotism and military service, in short the overall assessment of my character as a man, and whether or not I could be considered a legitimate, legal and historical conscientious objector was actually going to be decided by guess who? My local draft board! An unbiased cross section of the community’s most rabid militarists and anti-communist demagogues. It is not surprising that, as is frequently the case in the loss of memory after a life altering trauma, the only recollection I have of my attempts to obtain conscientious objector status with my local draft board are found in the personal documents and official records I have preserved from that experience. My original formal application for conscientious objector status is dated March 5, 1968. That is the date on the application they sent me (the facsimile can be viewed at the very bottom of this page). The application was to be returned by March 15 (also indicated on the facsimile). Since it was dated March 5, I could not have received it until at least a day or two later, provided that they actually mailed it to me right a way (and why would I believe that) I only had about a week to reply. Evidently I did reply in time to receive a formal hearing. But the requested letters of recommendation I was to supply trickled in very slowly and I have no record of which letters I was able to supply before the board made its decision. What follows is a record of correspondence I had with potential references and their responses and my final account of my draft board appearance written as a recollection by me shortly after the board appearance, 36 years ago. First a recreation of the Form 150 application:
Instructions for filing Selective Service System Special Form For Conscientious Objector
A registrant who claims to be a conscientious objector shall offer information in substantiation of his claim on this special form, which when filed shall become a part of his Classification Questionnaire. The items in Series II through V in this form are intended to obtain evidence of the genuineness of the claim made in Series I, and the answers given by the registrant shall be for the information of only the officials duly authorized under the regulations to examine them.
In the case of any registrant who claims to be a conscientious objector, the local board shall proceed in the prescribed manner to determine his proper classification. The procedure for appeal from a decision of the local board on a claim of conscientious objection is provided for in the Selective Service Regulations.
Failure by the registrant to file this special form on or before the date indicated above may be regarded as a waiver by the registrant of his claim as a conscientious objector; Provided, that the local board in its discretion, and for good cause shown by the registrant, may grant a reasonable extension of time for filing this special form.
Series I.—Claim for Exemption
Instructions.—The registrant must sign his name to either statement A or statement B in this series but not to both of them. The registrant should strike out the statement in this series which he does not sign.
(A) I am, by reason of my religious training and belief, conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form. I, therefore, claim exemption from combatant training and service in the Armed Forces.
_____________________________
(Signature of registrant)
(B) I am, by reason of my religious training and belief, conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form and I am further conscientiously opposed to participation in noncombatant training and service in the Armed Forces. I, therefore, claim exemption from both combatant and noncombatant training and service in the Armed Forces.
____Larry L. Dill________________
(Signature of registrant)
(note: As can be seen in the facsimile, I signed statement (B) which meant that I was claiming total exemption from any kind of military service including noncombatant training such as cook or medic. The explanation of the consequences of choosing (B) over (A) appeared as follows on the face of the form itself.)
Under the provisions of section 6 (j) of the Universal Military Training and Service Act, as amended, any person who claims exemption from combatant training and service in the Armed Forces of the United States because he is, by reason of religious training and belief, conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form and such claim is sustained by the local board, shall, if he is inducted into the Armed Forces, be assigned to noncombatant service as defined by the President, or shall, if found to be conscientiously opposed to participation in such noncombatant service, in lieu of induction, be ordered by his local board, subject to regulations prescribed by the President, to perform, for a period of twenty-four consecutive months such civilian work contributing to the maintenance of the national health, safety, or interest as the local board deems appropriate, and any such person who fails or neglects to obey such order of the local board shall be subject to imprisonment for not more than five years or a fine of not more than $10,000, or to both such fine and imprisonment.
Series II.--Religious Training and Belief
Instructions.—Every item in this series must be completed. If more space is needed use extra sheets of paper.
(My answers to Series II questions follow below. But first these comments: It occurs to me now, 36 years later, that the provisions of section 6 (j) of the Universal Military Training and Service Act, as outlined above were in direct violation of the first amendment to the US Constitution which states in part “that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof…”. I say this because it seems clear to me that I was denied conscientious objector status in part because I was not a member of a traditionally and historically pacifist religious organization like the Quakers or the Seventh Day Adventists which in their creeds specifically prohibit participation in combat. I had been raised a Methodist (see the official Methodist position on conscientious objection in the letter below that was written as a letter of reference by my former pastor, Alberto Merubia. It states that though Conscientious Objection to military service was not a church mandate for its members, the Methodist church supported, and understood the Christian rationale of, those members of its organization who chose that course). Ironically, of course, all Judeo-Christian religions adhere to the 7th Commandment given to Moses by God, recorded in the King James Version of the Protestant Bible as Exodus 20:13, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” This would arguably make all believers in Catholic, Jewish and Protestant religions subject to a mandate not to participate in war, which by its very definition, necessarily involves the breaking of the 7th commandment. Big time.
To make matters even more complicated I had in fact been making plans as far back as the 10th grade in High School to become a Methodist minister, but only a year or so before this CO application was filed I had decided not to become a minister and had in fact left the Methodist Church and was attending the Unitarian Church which welcomes secular ethicists as well as those who believe in a conventional Supreme Being. Moreover, one of my moral mentors, Martin Luther King, jr. who was not only the nations leading civil rights leader, but had lately become, himself, an anti-war activist, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, between the time I had filed my application for CO status and the time I appeared before my local board. King’s death had a profound effect on me, and caused me to rethink my having left the ministry and the church. My intellectual transformation from traditional Christian to secular ethicist was an ongoing work in progress and was compounded by my military obligations rather than the other way around.
As to whether or not a local draft board (or the President and the Congress of the United States in its instructions to that board) had the right under the first amendment to determine whether my objection to war was based on a belief in a supreme being, the stated precepts of a particular religious organization or just a universal ethic, had been examined by the U.S. Supreme Court just three years before my draft board appearance. According to Jethro Lieberman in The Evolving Constitution (1992), for over a century Congress had been saying of Conscientious Objection,
That the qualifying “belief” must relate to a “Supreme Being” who imposes higher duties than those laid down in a code of law, and that it could not be a belief that springs from philosophical views or “a merely personal moral code.” [But] in a 1965 case involving among others, the folk singer Pete Seeger, The Court avoided the difficulty that this language might discriminate against certain religions by construing the law to mean any belief “that is sincere and meaningful [and that] occupies a place in the life of its possessor parallel to that filled by the orthodox belief in God of one who clearly qualifies for the exemption.”
Though I was certainly a fan of Pete Seeger’s music, I cannot remember whether or not I was aware in 1968 when I was writing out my responses to the CO application, that the Supreme Court had in effect already negated the idea that I could be denied CO status as a secular ethicist. Ample letters of reference attesting to my sincerity, were filed with my application and will be included here. But my responses to the questions about my beliefs, seem to me now to have been a muddled mix of rational ethical beliefs and vague attempts to redefine the idea of a “Supreme Being” as… well… “rational ethical beliefs.” Precisely what the Supreme Court had given me permission to do in the Seeger Case. I have a sense though that I did not know about the ruling and had stumbled awkwardly to the same conclusions as the Supreme Court on my own. If I had sought the help of an attorney when I went before my local draft board, or even if I had appealed my case when the local board denied me CO status, I might have been able to cite the Seeger case (maybe even play it out on a banjo) and walk away with my CO status and a two year commitment to do community service work at, say, the Austin State Hospital (for the mentally ill). Instead, as you will see as the story unfolds, my journey would follow a path that lead me in and out of a conservative Presbyterian Seminary in Austin, a sojourn in New York City and one in Ft Lauderdale, Florida, back to Texas, on to Arizona, and to an obscure military base in South Korea where I somehow managed to stand “Catch-22” on its head and finally transform my failed attempts to associate the supreme being with the idea of love and non-violence into the Army’s idea of compassion as mental illness. But I’m getting ahead of myself Here follows the questions and answers in Series I of my application for exemption from military service on the grounds of conscientious objection.)
1. Do you believe in a supreme Being? _x__Yes ___No
2. Describe the nature of your belief which is the basis of your claim made in series I above and state whether or not your belief in a Supreme Being involves duties which to you are superior to those arising from any human relation.
I believe that God is love. That means that I am called upon from the very depths of my soul to treat all men as I would like to be treated. I believe in the infinite value of my own life and I want to grow and create and participate in the life of the universe. My God is love; and in order for my life to have meaning and value I must attach the same value to every human life that I do to my own.
War is incompatible with love. The definition of love which reflects the kind of God I believe in is one which necessarily forbids war. War is destructive…the definition of war is destruction. The fact of war is that one man is asked by his political leader to kill another man. My conscience demands that I obey the dictates of my soul.
My soul is my life. My soul makes me a part of the universe. I am alive and I a brother to every man. While I am living I must love life and give life and praise life and preserve life… but never take life. I believe that life is more valuable than death. Life is holy. No man has the right to destroy what is holy. Peace will come on earth when every man respects the life of every other man as he respects his own.
3. Explain how, when, and from whom or from what source you received the training and acquired the belief which is the basis of your claim made in Series I above.
I was raised a Christian and member of the Methodist Church. The Bible is the basis for all of my childhood religious training. Early in my life I realized that the God of love was to be the center of my life and that Jesus was to be my example. As I became a man I became more and more convinced o f my conviction. Many of my ideas about how to conduct myself in the world have changed but my basic belief has not. Many great men have enforced by basic belief…Rousseau, Thoreau, Socrates and Martin Luther are four of the men whose lives or writings have had particular influence in my life. But basically my belief comes from listening to the voice within my own soul.
4. Give the name and present address of the individual upon whom you rely most for religious guidance.
None.
5. Under what circumstances, if any, do you believe in the use of force?
I believe in the use of force when it is intended to preserve life. War is not intended to preserve life. It is often intended by both sides to preserve the liberty which each side wants at the cost of innocent lives. But I would not kill a man in order to gain some kind of liberty. Human life is more valuable than political freedom. I would use force where ever necessary to preserve human life.
6. Describe the actions and behavior in your life which in your opinion most conspicuously demonstrate the consistency and depth of your religious convictions.
I believe that deciding whether or not to participate in war is by far the greatest test of my religious conviction I have ever had to face. My decision, which will cause tremendous embarrassment for my family and will separate me in many ways from long time friends, has not been an easy one. My belief has always been clear to me. My faith, that is, the exercise of my belief has at times been weak. But I have found that my life has no real meaning unless I am willing to do what I believe is right.
Series III and IV involve an accounting of personal educational and organizational affiliations and is being skipped over here because the information recorded in these sections has either already been revealed elsewhere in this essay or has no bearing on the story.
Series V.—REFERENCES
INSTRUCTIONS—This series must be completed. If more space is needed use extra sheets of paper.
Give here the names and other information indicated concerning persons who could supply information as to the sincerity of your professed conviction against participation in war.
Melba Richardson Dill, 709 West Lynn, Austin, Texas, wife.
Hough-Lewis Dunn, 34 Gottinger, Untere Karspule 12, West Germany, PHD student and friend.
Rev. Jack C. Bush, 207 Salisbury, San Antonio, Texas, Methodist Minister, former pastor.
Rev. William DeWolf, 826 Serenade, San Antonio, Texas, Unitarian Minister, former pastor.
Rev. Albert Merubia, 2103 Parker Lane, Austin, Texas, Methodist Minister, former pastor.
Mrs. Geraldine Mullins, 430 Cherry Ridge, San Antonio, School Counselor, former teacher and friend.
David C. Hamrick, 5722 Manor Rd, Austin, Texas, Caseworker, Austin State Hospital, friend and former college roommate.
Raymond C. Stuehm, 354 E. Hutchins Place, San Antonio, Texas, former Scoutmaster.
E.F. Duderstadt, Box 196, Ingram, Texas, Camp Ranger, former supervisor and friend.
Ernest G. Boardman, jr, 3818 Ridgelea, Austin, Texas, attorney and friend.
Eddie Richard Disney, 9122 Yett, San Antonio, Texas, police officer, high school friend.
Harley L. Lowe, 414 Shropshire, San Antonio, Texas, Scout Executive, former supervisor.
Ronald C. Coburn, 1606 A Brackenridge Apts, Austin, Texas, ROTC student, friend.
CharlesReese, 915 Wheatland Road, Apt 206, Dallas, Texas, IBM executive, college friend.
The Reference letters, refusals, and other correspondence relating to Larry L. Dill’s application for Conscientious Objector Status.
A total of eleven letters are included in this section. Four are letters of character reference, one from my college friend Lew Dunn (my personal favorite) and three from former pastors, Methodists Jack Bush and Alberto Merubia and a Unitarian, William DeWolfe. The letter from the Bolivian expatriate Alberto Merubia (who had recruited me into the ministry when I was still in high school) includes the revealing documentation that though not a part of the Methodist Creed, Conscientious Objection, was…well… sort of something that Jesus himself might have chosen to do.
One of the oddest things to happen to me in this saga was the exchange of letters I had with E.F. Duderstadt, my Camp Director for several summers at Indian Creek Scout Camp near Kerrville, Texas. “Duder”, as we all called him, had been a kind of John Muir father figure for me, teaching me every thing I knew about nature, including how to skin rattlesnakes, befriend skunks and use a cedar branch to make camp coffee. I was devastated when Duder refused on principle to write a letter of recommendation for me but surprised and awed when his oldest son, a chaplain at the Methodist Hospital in San Antonio (whom I’d never met) came rushing into the rescue.
Following these letters is a series of correspondence between myself and a college friend, Charlie Reese. Charlie, a hardcore conservative Baptist, was himself under the gun to be drafted and the correspondence reveals, as clearly as any thing I’ve ever read, the climate of the times.
Reference letters from Rev. Jack C. Bush, Rev. William A. DeWolfe and Rev. Albert Merubia.
Lew Dunn’s reference letter
Larry L. Dill’s letter to E.F. Duderstadt requesting reference letter, E.F.Duderstadt’s negative response; a postitive response letter written to Larry L. Dill surreptitiously by E.F. Duderstadt’s son, Rev. Jerome Duderstadt and Larry L. Dill’s reply
Correspondence between Larry L. Dill and Charles Reese
Letter from Jack C. Bush
March 15, 1968
Texas Local Board No.7
Selective Service System
655 South Main Avenue
San Antonio, Texas 78201
RE: Dill, Larry Lynn 41 7 44 405
Dear Sirs:
Mr. Larry Lynn Dill, 709 West Lynn, Austin Texas 78743, is a person of my acquaintance. From the period of June 1964 through May 1966, I was the pastor of his Church, the Cokesbury Methodist Church of San Antonio, Texas. I came to know him quite well during those two years. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Rexford Dill of San Antonio, I likewise know. Larry Dill’s wife is also my acquaintance. I feel that I know and understand these people well, and am convinced that Mr. Larry Dill is a trustworthy, thoroughly sincere and honest person of highest ethical and moral quality.
I am convinced, through my association with him, that he is of utmost sincerity in his views about war and the military, and that he is honest in his evaluation of himself as being a conscientious objector.
Though I do not share his views particularly about the meaning of war, I do believe very strongly that he is being totally honest with his best conscience, and reliable with his persuasion to seek deferment on the basis of his personal beliefs.
I am sure that whatever disposition your Board makes of his case, that he will appreciate, as will I, your sincere and thorough consideration of every facet of his case.
Very truly yours,
Jack C. Bush, Sr.
Pastor, St. Mathews’s Methodist Church, San Antonio, Texas
Letter from William A. DeWolfe
March 19, 1968
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
I have known Larry L. Dill of 709 West Lynn in Austin, Texas since early in the fall of 1965. My contacts with him were of the nature of a minister/parishioner relationship, including his participation in an eight week course on Unitarianism, which I led.
In this time I have come to know him as a most sincere young man with a fine and probing mind. I have had no occasion in my several contacts with him to doubt either his sincerity or his veracity.
In observing his participation in the above mentioned course and in other group meetings up until his moving to Austin in the fall of 1967, I was impressed with the lack of hostility or even aggressiveness in Mr. Dill. When I knew that he strongly disagreed with the words of others, I was impressed with his ability to state his sincere convictions without hostility or offense. There is hardly an aggressive fiver in his body.
Although he did shift from attending the Methodist Church to attending a Unitarian Church, it did not represent a change in his basic convictions or beliefs. It represented a change in the mode of expressing these beliefs and their foundations.
Mr. Dill, to the best of my knowledge, is a most sincere person with a strong personal conscience and a devout dedication to the ways of peaceful living.
I would strongly urge the Draft Board to recognize his claim for classification as a Conscientious Objector to War.
Sincerely,
William A. DeWolfe
Minister, First Unitarian Church, San Antonio, Texas
Letter from Alberto Merubia
March 26, 1968
To whom it may concern:
As former pastor of Mr. Larry Dill, over a period of five years in San Antonio, I m happy to testify that his statements and position supporting his view as a conscientious objector are absolutely sincere. Although I personally do not agree with his position, I respect his sincerity and admire his courage in stating it.
The Methodist Church in its “Social Creed” (“Methodist Discipline”, “ The Christian and Military Service”) states:
“The Methodist Church, true to the principles of the New Testament, teaches respect for properly constituted civil authority. It encourages both love of country and love of all men. Believing that government rests upon the support of its conscientious citizens, it holds within its fellowship those who sincerely differ as to the Christian’s duty in regard to military service. We ask and claim exemption by legal processes from all forms of military preparation or service for all religious conscientious objectors, as for those of the historic peace churches. We recognize the right of the individual to answer the call of his government according to the dictates of his Christian conscience. We also recognize that non-violent resistance can be a valid form of Christian witness…..”
Quoting the above statement and reiterating Mr. Dill’s sincerity, I am,
Your’s truly,
Albert Merubia
Pastor, Ward Memorial Methodist Church, Austin, Texas
Letter from Lew Dunn
34 Gottingen
Untere Karspule 12
W. Germany
March 30, 1968
Local Draft Board
Selective Service System
San Antonio, Texas
Dear Sirs,
This letter testifies to the sincerity of Larry L. Dill in his application for conscientious objector status. I have been a friend of Larry Dill for almost six years. Many qualities of his character strike me, his politeness, his concern for other’s welfare, his desire for knowledge, his seriousness in discovering what reality (i.e., truth) is for himself as he sees himself in the world.
However, what strikes me most is the genuine tenacity of spirit with which he defends and asserts what he believes is true. For example, once when he was with a group of friends, I heard and saw him defend the character of another person (absent from the group) whom the others were trying to belittle; that is, Larry Dill thought nothing of speaking out for what he believed was true, even tough it was an unpopular stand to take. Many are the times when he and I would have a discussion about religion, politics or education when he would state his opinion with clarity and defend it against certain points I might raise against that opinion.
Therefore, it is Larry Dill’s steadfastness of conviction of which I stand convinced and which I submit as the prime reason for my belief in the sincerity of his effort to obtain a conscientious objector status.
Sincerely yours
Hough-Lewis Dunn
PhD candidate, Department of Germanic Languages, Universitity of Texas at Austin.
Go to Chapter 2B: A House Divided: The Duderstadt Letters
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