1 10 250 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/82556bbbd890c3c603b844028ec4f2a9.jpg 93af7916dce5f371dfc797319c2de378 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/40934a5aa8eb22b2325a2e239500c366.mp3 9b5058a329afb40588d6b154cc8e6749 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2003-07-11 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Paul Hendrickson Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Paul Hendrickson is an author, journalist, and educator. He is a senior lecturer in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a former member of the writing staff at the Washington Post. Hendrickson is the author of two books, The Living and The Dead and Sons of Mississippi. Hendrickson attended St. Louis University for his Bachelor's degree in English, and Pennsylvania State University for his Master's degree in English.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:7051,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:1},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Paul Hendrickson is an author, journalist, and educator. He is a senior lecturer in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a former member of the writing staff at the <em>Washington Post</em>. Hendrickson is the author of two books, <em>The Living and The Dead</em> and <em>Sons of Mississippi</em>. Hendrickson attended St. Louis University for his Bachelor's degree in English, and Pennsylvania State University for his Master's degree in English.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/wav Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 80:31 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Assassination of John F. Kennedy; Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; Activism; Post-war affluence; Collier and Horowitz; Anti-war Movement; Richard Nixon Resignation; Scott Fitzgerald; Vietnam Memorial; Robert McNamara; Jane Fonda; Civil Right; U.S Presidents; Hanoi Jane.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:7059,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:3381606},&quot;7&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Assassination of John F. Kennedy; Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; Activism; Post-war affluence; Collier and Horowitz; Anti-war Movement; Richard Nixon Resignation; Scott Fitzgerald; Vietnam Memorial; Robert McNamara; Jane Fonda; Civil Right; U.S Presidents; Hanoi Jane.</span> Subject LCSH College teachers; English teachers; Authors; Journalists; Hendrickson, Paul, 1944--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Paul Hendrickson Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 11 July 2003 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:04): All right. When you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, what is the first things that comes to your mind when you think of that period? PH (00:00:15): I guess I am speaking personally. Chaos, in terms of you almost woke up and did not know what the headline was going to be that day. I should back up and say that my own coming to awareness and consciousness in the world coincides with the (19)60s, which is why all my book projects, or so many of them, seem to be centered in the (19)60s. I was really an altar boy growing up in the (19)50s in a sheltered, Catholic, provincial, Midwestern town outside of Chicago and then I went to religious life, to the seminary, for seven years. In some ways, my awareness was stunted, not my intellectual growth, because the seminary was rigorous, but my awareness of the greater world outside me was stunted, so that when I came out of the seminary smack in the middle of the 1960s, literally July, 1965, I felt as if I were swimming straight out from shore. And it was overwhelming to learn about girls, to finish college, because I had done at least half of university in the seminary, and to connect with what was going on in the world around me. Kennedy, our great "Catholic" president, had been killed and that made a profound impact in the seminary, but we were still behind those seminary walls. That was (19)63. When I came out of religious life in 1965, so much in that short period of time had happened and I was trying to catch up with it. I mean, cities were starting to burn, Watts in Los Angeles. Vietnam was, not that I knew it, in the summer of (19)65, but America had taken over the war. It was now the Americanized war. All those years later, I would write a book about it. My opening word to you was chaos and that, even, is a personal statement of how I felt because interiorly, I had no grounding. It felt like I was on a sandbar or on a merry-go-round, trying to catch up. I was 21 years old. I had never been on a date and the world seemed to be swirling and I seemed to be swirling inside. SM (00:03:17): The boomer generation is characterized as a group of people that were born between 1946 and 1964. Now in recent years, there has been a lot of critique of this generation by news broadcasters or columnists or whatever. The basic criticism is the fact that they look at this generation of boomers as the reason why we have a lot of problems in this country, in issues like the drugs, issues dealing with sex, maybe even the increase in the divorce rate. All kinds of problems in our society meant there has been a lot of criticism of the boomers. Could you comment on whether that criticism is fair or unjust? PH (00:04:05): It is such a broad question that it seems to me there is truth in it and there is stereotype in it. There is myth in it that is unjust. I guess I am certainly part of that generation, even though I am just a little ahead of it. I was born in (19)44, so I am two years ahead of what might be technically or formally defined as the boomer generation and my own life, because of what I was just saying in the previous remarks, was more esoteric and eccentric than the classic boomer growing up, but of course, I am formed by that period of time. I am formed by the (19)50s and I am marked by the (19)60s. Is it fair? Yes. And is it unfair? Yes. It is fair in the sense that this generation had so much indulged upon it, extra expendable income by post-war affluence, a pampered quality, which has its flaws and sins and excesses in terms of the trouble, then, that people get into with their sense of affluence, with their sense of indulgence, and with their sense of, in a way, overeducated, not needing to be as accountable, both financially accountable and morally accountable, as the previous generation, as their parents and certainly going back to the depression of the 1930s, where no one had any money and people instantly had to start working and were grateful for any kind of employment. This boomer generation, the word itself, boomer, implies a lot about indulgence and laziness, maybe, and entertainment values. It is unfair in the sense that out of the boomer generation have come such already successful people, hardworking people, people that you talked about in your remarks before we even turned on the tape recorder, who have changed this country for the better. You have mentioned Tom Hayden. Okay, there is one. SM (00:06:54): When you look at the boomer generation when you were young, leaving the seminary, could you comment on the thoughts that you had on the generation when you were young in comparison to your thoughts today? PH (00:07:09): Just say that again. I am a little confused with what you want. SM (00:07:14): Your thoughts on the boomer generation, your generation, when you came out of the seminary, when you were in your early twenties, what were your thoughts about the young people that you were seeing in America of that period? Has that changed over time and have you thought about it and evolved in your thinking about this generation, and then where do you stand today on them? PH (00:07:35): Well, I will get in trouble here for what I am going to say. I am a teacher of writing at Penn, non-fiction writing, advanced non-fiction writing. These kids are the best and the brightest who get into these writing seminars. I am very, very proud of them because of how talented they are and how hard they work. I get the top of the pyramid, the creme de la creme, but what I am getting at here, Steve, is that I see all around me, when I said I am going to get in trouble, at the University of Pennsylvania, an elitism, an entitlement. When we were talking about the boomer generation being spoiled and too much income, the word that might come is entitlement. I feel that this generation of kids, and I am not talking about the ones I teach, because that is a very selective thing for them to get in. They are the committed, hardworking ones. I have to interview them before I allow them in. The run-of-the-mill, which is very, very high caliber of intellectual quality at Penn, those kids are entitled. They are too affluent for their own good. They are too smug for their own good. I feel that this generation has out-boomered the generation that I saw. You asked me what I thought of the world and young people my age when I came out of the seminary in (19)65. I still had blinkers on. I was still trying to learn. I went to a fairly conservative Jesuit university in the Midwest to finish up my education, St. Louis University, and the kids there were certainly boomers, but not in the real pejorative way that we think of it. I mean, just this term that we have been throwing around, boomer, strikes me as a pejorative idea. Do not you agree? SM (00:09:55): Mm-hmm. PH (00:09:57): And I think the rap is undeserved in some ways and in other ways, no. What you often find about me is that I am in the middle on everything. I, in many, ways see the grays of life. It is sixes and sevens with me. I am certainly not wanting to deny that the boomer generation caused a lot of problems. Do you know these two authors, Collier and Horowitz- SM (00:10:39): Yes. PH (00:10:39): ...who were radicals and then one of them, at least, Horowitz more than Collier, went totally over to the other side? SM (00:10:47): He has been on our campus. PH (00:10:48): Yeah. SM (00:10:49): He wrote Radical Son. PH (00:10:51): Yeah, you should interview him. SM (00:10:53): Well, we- PH (00:10:54): He is a difficult guy. SM (00:10:55): Yeah. We have had him twice on our campus. When you describe, can you break down the qualities that you most admire in the boomers and then the qualities you least admire in them? PH (00:11:09): Well, most admire are, this is almost flying in the face of some of what we were just talking. Most admire that they were idealistic. They want to change the world. They could not stand Vietnam. They could not stand the fact that African Americans were unjustly treated, so they were doing things, this is this element of the boomer generation, that was highly conscious and conscientious. I admire that tremendously. They wanted to change the world for the better. The things I do not admire are the ones who were listening too much to the Beach Boys and hanging out. SM (00:12:01): When you look at the anti-war movement, the anti-war movement is looked upon by most as college students, graduate students and undergraduate students who were very important in the ending of the Vietnam War. Your thoughts on how impactful these students were in ending this war? PH (00:12:25): I mean, we look back now and we see the excesses of the anti-war movement. A lot of the kids who were out there protesting, there were elements of peer responsibility, too much drugs, too much free love. All right, all right, all right, I agree to that, but I believe that, you said impact. It was tremendously impactful. That war would not have come to a conclusion. America would not have withdrawn its support if it were not for the boomer generation out there pushing and pushing and pushing and led by older generations, just as we mentioned Dan Berrigan before, Robert Lowell, the poet, Norman Mailer. All of the anti-war sentiment that grew has its roots in this same generation that is accused of so many sins. Yeah, they did tremendous things wrong and there were tremendous excesses, but the good of it, the power of it is far outweighed by history, it seems to me, which conservative Americans would want to write off and say, "Oh, it was irresponsible kids, stoned, who did not want to go to work and just wanted to protest something." Not true. SM (00:13:59): How do you respond to the critics who say that because of these college students who protested against the war or the Berrigans or the [inaudible] and so forth, they prolonged the war? PH (00:14:13): In what way? How could they have prolonged the war? SM (00:14:15): This is an attitude that comes from the Vietnamese and from the North Vietnamese, as some of the recent literature has stated that we knew when we saw this happening that we were going to eventually win, and so thus they can actually say that because of that, there are more names on the wall because they were not going to give up, period. PH (00:14:34): And it made the North Vietnamese, it gave them fodder for their cause. It made them hold together, but look how torn with dissension America is. If we just hang on, we will prevail. These people, these radical kids are on our side. Yeah, there is some truth to that and the grays are everywhere. There would be some truth to that, but far more, it seems to me, is the fact that all of that protest got the attention of the country because the lies that were being told within the government. I mean, I know what I am talking about. When I came out of the seminary in 1965, I knew nothing. It was so many years later when I was a reporter for the Washington Post and started looking at this and thinking about it and interviewing Robert McNamara, the architect of the policy, and when I started doing that, I knew nothing about the systematic and systemic lies that had been told. Those kids out there protesting, they did not have those documents, but they knew in their gut that it was a dishonest war and an immoral war, and God bless them. I, in my own way, only three years out of the seminary, joined the anti-war movement because I was at Penn State as a graduate student and I was passing out leaflets for Eugene McCarthy. I got with the program. SM (00:16:17): He was my first interview couple years back. He is not doing too well right now because he has got real bad back, but he is still hanging in there. When you look at the issues of the (19)60s, it is just a vibrant era, when you think of all the movements that came together. There was the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, the women's movement evolved. I remember even the Native American movement, the Chicano movement, the gay and lesbian group. Is there one reason why this was all happening at this time? Can we look at the civil rights movement and say this gave the impetus for other movements? This was the example that allowed other groups to say, "We can do it. We can make a change in this world" PH (00:17:06): Maybe that is one theory, the bounce off theory, the synergistic theory. Synergism is all these forces colliding and coming off and positively reacting off one another. The Chicano movement synergistically gets its power from the civil rights movement, which synergistically, the civil rights movement gets its power from Vietnam protest or vice versa. Yeah, that seems to me as good a theory as any. I like that, Steve. You should talk to Sheldon Hackney, professor at Penn, who has written a book. SM (00:17:43): I have got it. Great book. PH (00:17:44): And he teaches in a course on the (19)60s and he is teaching a course this fall, or maybe it is a preceptorial, called The End of the (19)60s. You said, "Why did all these things come together?" I do not know the answer other than... All I can say is that I was in the middle of this thing and it was swirling around me, just like it was for you. That is why all of the writing power that I feel, so much of it is rooted there in the (19)60s. I am still trying to get to the bottom of the mystery. What were the (19)60... Every great once in a while, these periods of time come along that are just so powerful, cataclysmic. If you believe in the pendulum swing of history, you go the (19)30s to the (19)60s to the (19)90s. F. Scott Fitzgerald said that it takes about 30 years for a generation to occur. The cataclysms of the 1930s, when did the 1930s began? They began on Black Monday, 1929, when the stock market fell. And when did the 1930s end? I think they ended on December 7th, 1941, when Pearl Harbor, because history does not go in these neat 10-year cycles, so let us say the (19)30s began the day the stock market crashed and ended the day that we declared war on Japan. The pendulum swing generation ... When did the 1960s begin? For me, the 1960s began on November 22nd, 1963, when Kennedy gets killed. And when did the (19)60s end? Tricky question, they ended on August 9th, 1974, when Richard Nixon resigned. The (19)60s really, the (19)60s are not New Year's Day 1960 to New Year's day 1969, no, November 22nd, 1963 to August 9th, 1974, when Nixon resigned. Now swing the pendulum again. When did the, quote, when did the (19)90s begin? I mean, we are going on the paradigm of Scott Fitzgerald's 30-year swing. If there is supposed to be a revisiting, the (19)60s are [inaudible] generous, so we will never have a decade like that, I do not think, again. Maybe, who knows, but what happened in the (19)60s cannot compare, in my mind, to the (19)30s. The (19)60s is like a boa constrictor having swallowed a warthog. It just bumps up so large. When did the (19)90s begin, "the (19)90s?" If we are talking (19)30s, (19)60s, (19)90s, this is a trick question that I use on my documentary students. When did the (19)90s begin, Steve? SM (00:20:52): I would think it would begin when Ronald Reagan became president. PH (00:20:55): Wrong. No, we are talking about upheaval, cataclysm. We have got the paradigm of the (19)30s. We have got the (19)60s. When did the (19)90s begin? This is a trick question. This is a trick question that is absolutely compelling if you stop and think about it. SM (00:21:13): It was not when Bill Clinton came in. PH (00:21:14): No, it is not cataclysmic enough. SM (00:21:16): Okay, yeah. PH (00:21:18): Now remember, history does not go in the- SM (00:21:20): Oh, you are talking about 9/11. PH (00:21:21): The (19)90s began on September 11th, 2001. SM (00:21:27): Okay. PH (00:21:28): That is when the (19)90s began. (19)30s, (19)60s, (19)90s. SM (00:21:31): You are right. PH (00:21:33): The world has been different since September 11th, 2001. SM (00:21:36): Oh, definitely. PH (00:21:37): That is the pendulum swing of history. SM (00:21:39): Right. Good analogy. Very good. When you think of the boomer generation, the Vietnam Memorial was open in 1982. The goal of the Vietnam Memorial was to heal within the veterans and with the families of the veterans itself, but also hopefully to heal the nation. It was meant to be a non-political entity. Could you talk about your thoughts on the impact that the Vietnam Memorial has had on healing, not only within the veterans and the family of veterans, but within the nation as a whole? And I preface this question with, what effect does this have on those individuals who are involved in the anti-war movement or as some people say, may have guilt feelings for not serving? PH (00:22:34): I love the Vietnam Memorial. I have been there many-many-many times. I have been there at all times of the day, in the middle of the night, in the early morning, on weekends, on national holidays. I have experienced it in a wide spectrum and variety of occasions and emotions and anything I can say about it is positive and powerful. I have never been to the Vietnam Memorial when I do not see some expression of powerful emotions, some display of something beautiful, somebody breaking down, crying as they are tracing a name on the wall, motorcycle veterans who are terribly overweight with long hair who are holding onto each other for dear life, and that is their humanity, not their physical appearance. It is their humanity of suddenly being called back to the fact of where they were when somebody died, some comrade died, whom they knew. I always wanted to go down there with Robert McNamara. I always wanted to see Robert McNamara there. He said to me in his office when I interviewed him, "Yes, I have been there." I am not even sure he has. If he has, maybe he has been there with a hat over his head and dark glasses in the middle of the night. I do not know. He said he was there. I hope so. I hear your question and about those who guilt and who did not serve and that, but I can only think of it as a positive healing slash of granite coming out of the earth. James Webb, who was the (19)60s figure who was Secretary of the Navy and was a decorated winner, I think he even won the Congressional Medal of Honor, certainly won a lot. No, I think he won bronze stars and things. He was a marine combat veteran and has written novels and he hated the Vietnam Memorial's design when it came out. He was leading the protest about this. They did not accept us when we came back and now they were trying to build a monument that is ugly and is a slash of marble coming out of the ground. That was wrongheaded. I mean, I forgive him tremendously. He could not see the power, the perfect power of that monument. Its form follows function. You walk into that monument. As you go down the descending steps, the wall gets higher and those names get higher and the power and the profundity of 58,000 dead grows on you that way. I am in awe of this monument. I am of the belief that it has brought great healing to the country, not enough. SM (00:26:06): You brought up McNamara again. I am going to go on a limb here and have your comments on McNamara because when I have been to the wall and the veterans that I have known in the Westchester area and in Philadelphia, there are three names that they seem to, I use the word hate. Robert McNamara is one. Jane Fonda is the most, and for some reason, Bill Clinton. Now, I would just like your thoughts again on these three names and why these three names seem to bring such ire to them, Vietnam veterans, and they will never heal from their thoughts from them. PH (00:26:50): Yeah. They bump up large. It is symbolism. McNamara seems so sure. To our generation, you say that name, it is like a knife point, McNamara. It is a knife point of remembering of consciousness. It has to do with his look, that swept back hair, those steel rim glasses that were both scary and I mean, daunting and awesome at the same time. Gee, there must be tremendous intellect there. And the body was so rigid and tight. His body seemed to fit in an envelope. It was all about lies, as it was later revealed, and then he fell. He felt so large because he quit believing that the war could be won and yet, he kept trying to pretend, so there was this mask. When all this later began to be exposed, I mean, he just became such a figure of enmity and among the veterans I know, he will never be forgiven. I have always wondered why he did not get murdered. I mean, people tried. Why did not he get murdered? There is just such hatred out there, such incredible hatred, and he is still an arrogant man. He is an old, old, old man, but he is still arrogant. The story of McNamara is that he falls and then he comes back into his arrogance. He comes back into his pridefulness. The stone monument of his pridefulness is a line that I used in the book, and that is very hard to forgive. It says in the Bible, "Pride goeth before destruction," and that is the McNamara story. Hubris, McNamara symbolically came to stand for such hubris of that administration, far more than Lyndon Johnson, who was devious and power diseased, but McNamara came to stand for this incredible hubris. People who put their lives on the line over there can never forget that and can never forget the feeling of how they were betrayed, and that goes for Jane Fonda, of whom I know of so much less about. Hanoi Jane can never be forgiven. SM (00:29:32): Hold that thought. I am going to put [inaudible] Okay. PH (00:29:45): Hanoi Jane cannot be forgiven because it just seemed that people were dying and she, in her arrogance and her smugness in her ignorance, went to North Vietnam and was spitting on the valor and spitting on the struggle, the blood of these GIs. Clinton is a much more complicated case. It has to do with his lying and his hypocrisy and boomer, who seems to have gotten away with a lot of things, who avoided because... Boomers get the rap, and not undeservedly, for being able to have stiff armed service in Vietnam, where the ordinary guy coming out of Westchester, Pennsylvania on his high school education or his modest community college education, does not have the leverage, the political sophistication, financial leverage to avoid service, skillfully avoid service because of his upper middle class economic sophistication and abilities to hide behind certain deferments. That is what Clinton seems to stand for. Hanoi Jane seems to stand for her traitor, her traitorousness. Clinton seems to stand for his manipulations of the system and McNamara seems to stand for hubris, for pride. SM (00:31:47): What is interesting about Clinton is the person who wrote the letter so that he could go to Oxford was Senator William Fulbright, who ended up going as head of the Senate for Relations Committee, who supported the war in the beginning, but then criticized it and wrote The Arrogance of Power. The irony that the man who became one of the most disliked individuals during the Johnson presidency ended up being the man that helped Clinton. There is a little bit of irony there. PH (00:32:16): There is a little bit of irony there. Fulbright did not know much about Bill Clinton, just wrote him a letter, wrote a letter on his behalf. Fulbright was a great man. He had the power. He had the moral capital to change when he saw that it was corrupt. We called Fulbright as an old man in a K street law firm, long retired from government. I am interviewing him for the McNamara book and I said, "Sir." I mean, he was a hero of mine. And he was old by then, and he basically did not have a job. He was just in a law firm as a emeritus associate guy. And I said, "Sir, I was so naive when I started this McNamara project. I did not understand how these..." He said, "Do not feel bad. I was naive, too. I was a US senator." SM (00:33:04): Yeah. He wrote a really good book, The Price of Empire, and I guess he co-wrote it with Mr. Tillman or something like that, and we ended up taking students from Westchester University down to meet him as our first Leadership on the Road program. Gaylord Nelson helped us secure it right during the Gulf War in (19)91, and it was a tremendous meeting. He had had a stroke, but he was back fully strong. And he walked into the room and he had that gut and the suspenders were up and everything and his sport coat. And he said, "Why do you want to listen to an old man?" I will never forget that, but at that point forward, he challenged our students and you knew right away how powerful he was. We had a student government president at the time who was so gung hoed for the war and of course, he was against the war, so it was a great learning experience for our students to give him the pro viewpoint. When you look at the lasting legacy of the boomer generation... You are a writer and some of the best World War II books are coming out now, almost 50 years afterwards. When the best books are written on the (19)60s and the (19)70s and the boomer generation, what do you think the lasting legacy is going to be of the boomers via the greater period of time to really reflect and understand the history of this period? PH (00:34:28): That they sought to make a change and it was a human enterprise. Any institution that they became part of, like the SDS, is flawed and full of excesses because it is run by human beings, but they were idealistic and felt that the world, there was corruption and that they were being lied to and they tried to do something about it. That, to me, has to be saluted and remembered. When we wash off or want to write off the (19)60s crowd as dope smoking, long-haired, irresponsible, that is inexact and inaccurate. The greater part of it is that they were large elements were trying to make a difference. SM (00:35:30): How do you even deal with the subtleness that some people use, maybe not to go as far as attacking the extreme elements of the (19)60s, but stating that this particular generation of 70 million people, only probably 15 percent were truly involved in any form of activism, whether it be in the civil rights, anti-war, environmental, whatever the cause, and they used that as an excuse to show that they are not really, the numbers were not really there? It was just a small number in a big generation. PH (00:36:05): I do not know. What do you think about that? SM (00:36:10): Well, my thoughts on that is that I disagree with them. I disagree because when you take 15 percent of 70 million people, that is still a lot of people. PH (00:36:18): That is a lot of people. That is what I was going to say. SM (00:36:20): And you are dealing with a lot of different causes. PH (00:36:23): And that 15 percent made enough noise that they were tremendously heard. SM (00:36:27): Oh, yes. PH (00:36:34): You can light a match. You can light a match in a dark room and see that light. SM (00:36:43): This issue that is really important, I sense it today, and I do not know if you sense it amongst your students, but it really concerns me. It is this lack of trust that we seem to have in our leaders. I have been in college education for 25 years. I saw it in the (19)80s with students. I see it in the (19)90s. I see it today. A lack of trust in leaders, whether they be political leaders, corporate leaders, even ministers. No matter where a person is, that there has got to be something wrong with that person. They cannot be trusted. I am wondering if the effect that Lyndon Johnson had and Richard Nixon and I even had someone tell me in the interview process that the lack of trust began with Eisenhower. Eisenhower? Yeah, because of the U-2 incident. He lied to the American public. It was right on television. He knew he was lying. If you really want to go back, you can talk to Eisenhower, and then you can even go back to FDR if you want to for some things. PH (00:37:47): Yeah, for Pearl Harbor. SM (00:37:47): Yeah, for Pearl Harbor and then Truman had opportunities with... The question I am really asking is the issue of trust. PH (00:37:58): Trust in our trust in government, trust in our leaders, gosh, it is a huge problem that concerns me, too, that automatically there is a tendency to distrust. Does that come out of the (19)60s? Does that come out of Vietnam? Oh, well, you are just pointing that it goes back further, but it seems like it was so pronounced during the (19)60s, and that is a fearful thing. If we think that everybody who comes forward to try to run for office or to lead us should be distrusted, I mean, I do not know how we correct that. SM (00:38:41): You see that when you think of the periods that I am just describing, that the (19)60s was the period where this trust and lack thereof really evolved and developed. The question I am really trying to get at now is what had the boomers done with respect to their children in terms of passing on the qualities that they possessed in activism into the next generation? Have you seen that the children of the boomers are like them or not like them? PH (00:39:11): My wife says that when you are raising children, we have two boys, the notion of be careful not what you say to your children as much as what you show them by your actions, what you do, because that is what they are watching. That is what they are picking up. I do not think that answers your question, but I mean, this thing you are getting at about how do we restore some basic positive, I do not know the answer to that. It is very worrisome. SM (00:40:04): I am wondering whether boomers have actually sat down with their kids or their grandkids now and talk to them about the (19)60s and the (19)70s and what it meant to them, so that in their lives they can believe they are empowered as well to be change agents for the betterment of society. A question that has arisen through this process of these interviews is, what have the boomers done with their kids and why, in the generation that followed the boomers, they do not vote. And if you talk to them, "My vote does not count." [inaudible] PH (00:40:39): They stress their officials. They do not think it is going to do any good. And as I said, they are over-boomered. They have out-boomered the boomers, so maybe the boomers are negligent and culpable here for not giving enough of their time to sitting down with their kids and telling them. And why would that happen? I do not know. It is interesting that my own kids know about the (19)60s without... My 15-year-old, 5, 6, 7 years ago, he knew all about the (19)60s. Where did he learn it? If I said to him, "John, what are the (19)60s about?" He would go, "Hey, man, peace." Where did you get that, from television? I do not know, but the true values of the (19)60s, does he know about those? Maybe not enough. The true values of the (19)60s that I would think of is all these things we have been talking about, protesting. SM (00:41:41): Well, working with students as I do day in and day out, one thing that I have seen, at least the last 16 years at Westchester, is the fact that there is two ways that they look at the (19)60s. There is either, "I wish I lived in that period so that my life could be as exciting as," because there were causes and issues, and number two, "I am sick of hearing it. I am sick of hearing about nostalgia. You are trying to relive your past. Come on, we are in the future now. I am tired of hearing about it." And of course, these are all responses before 9/11, because we had a lot of the interviews that I have had are before 9/11 and the causes and now there seems to be, this is a major cataclysmic event in student lives. PH (00:42:23): What are you going to do with this? Put a book together about what the (19)60s stands for? SM (00:42:27): Yeah. It is based on these questions. It is oral histories and some taken people who were leaders at that particular time. That is why we got McGovern. We got some of the older leaders, so people that were in positions upon responsible at that particular time, certainly a lot of vets and civil rights people and then boomers, people in the anti-war movement and people in the intellectual community. It is a combination of different points of view. I am in the process now of trying to get more women, because I am finding, it is interesting, that when you look at the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement, men were in the major roles. Men mostly served, even though the nurses did serve in Vietnam. And I am working with Diane Carlson Evans now to try to make sure that I get a lot of women to be interviewed in the next several months. It is a composite, lots of views, because it is like any oral history interview. It is taking a person's feelings, people reading these oral histories of different individuals from different perspectives, and trying to get a grasp of some of the questions that I have been asking and- PH (00:43:34): Tucker. SM (00:43:34): ...trying to understand the period a little better. PH (00:43:38): Listen. There is a book that is somewhere around this house, but you probably know about it. It is a similar tack of what you are doing, except it was done a long, long time ago, 20, 25 years ago, right as the (19)60s were finishing up. It is called From Camelot to Kent State. SM (00:43:56): Oh, I have got that book. PH (00:43:57): And Craig McNamara, McNamara's son, is one of the interviews in the book. SM (00:44:02): Oh, wow. PH (00:44:05): And he is a great guy. He is McNamara's own son. He is proof that Robert McNamara has a heart because Craig McNamara, people who want to write off McNamara think he is the tin man searching for a heart. No-no. McNamara is much more complicated. McNamara is the fact that he betrayed his own predilections and his own desire. He grew up on the cusp of the country in the (19)30s at Berkeley, where there was all this intellectual ferment. He was idealistic. McNamara sold out. He sold out, first of all, in cars, but then he came to Washington, where the line really had to begin. The McNamara story is far more tragic than some soulless money idiot. People who think that that is what he is about or a soulless numbers cruncher, they do not get McNamara. They are all wrong. Craig, his son, is a walnut farmer in Winters, California, is a truly good human being. And when I say he is proof that McNamara has a heart, Craig McNamara, the son, the only son, could not have gotten his goodness from his mother alone. His mother alone, McNamara's wife, was a tremendous person, but Craig could not have, he had to get it equal parts or not maybe equal, but he had to get parts from his father and parts from his mother. I do not want to get off on that, but he is one of the interviews in that book and you should dust that book off and look at it again because I think some of what you are trying to do is, although that is mostly... That book, I think, is mostly interviews with just the boomers, just the protestors. SM (00:45:40): Yeah. Well, I have got a lot of older people and a lot of Vietnam vets. PH (00:45:43): You have got the range. SM (00:45:44): Got a long way to go. I think I am going to get David Eisenhower and I am hoping I can get Julie. David will interview, but Julie probably will not. And I want... PH (00:45:55): She is so protective, is not- SM (00:45:56): Yeah. David came to our campus and she has written me some letters a couple years back, and so I think she trusts me, but I got to get through David again to try to get to Julie. PH (00:46:08): He is much loved at Penn. SM (00:46:09): Is he? David? PH (00:46:10): He is in the Annenberg School of Communication and teaches courses on the presidency. SM (00:46:17): He is a great guy. PH (00:46:18): Well, the students love him. SM (00:46:22): I just admire the man. He came to our campus about eight years ago and that is been eight years now, but I had some correspondence with his wife, trying to get her to come, and that is before her dad died, and so she was really concentrating on her dad at that time. We have one final question then I am going to go into some individual personalities here, and you can comment on perceptions of these individuals. I have been talking a lot about the anti-war movement, but I want to get back to civil rights. I had an interview with John Lewis, a very good one, for about an hour. It was took three and a half hours to get the hour because he was a busy man, but we talked a little bit about the civil rights movement that he was involved in and the (19)60s as a whole. I would like your thoughts on the civil rights movement period from the (19)60s and a sense that this person, this person, Steve [inaudible] feels, that somewhat, the civil rights history and the civil rights movement is not, well, am I saying being forgotten? I do not see the sense of the leaders that we saw in the past to keep this issue alive. We have the issue of affirmative action, which has just become before the Supreme Court, but how important is civil rights today? PH (00:47:38): Well, you analyzed it very well, it seems to me. Vietnam superseded everything. Civil rights started. We talked about that synergy. Civil rights actually started before Vietnam because the Vietnam protest did not really take off until the spring of 1965, as America was taking over the war, and civil rights protest and civil rights movement was in deep, full swing before that, before 1965. Civil rights precedes Vietnam, but then Vietnam supersedes everything about the (19)60s. And your point is extremely well taken, that those leaders, just like John Lewis, who was willing to go down and get his head beaten in, in such charismatic power, dignity, quiet power, but for every John Lewis, you could name so many others, known and celebrated and not so celebrated. James Foreman of SNCC and so many, where are those people today, because the civil rights movement seems to have atrophied. That is my comment. I am just looking at my time. Let us get on with these other- SM (00:48:58): I would just like some comments or just your perceptions of the following individuals that are personalities from the (19)60s and early (19)70s. Tom Hayden. PH (00:49:07): Some of these I do not have as an informed feeling about as I would like to, so if I do not have it, I am just going to say that. Certainly, my knowledge is sketchy, like anyone else's. It has its holes and its gaps. Tom Hayden is a committed guy who did tremendous work and I think there is a line of integrity all the way through where he is now and where he was back then. SM (00:49:39): Lyndon Johnson. PH (00:49:42): A man who is so complicated. Robert Caro's biographies are powerful and good. Sometimes they miss the juice of Johnson, which seems to be this whole kaleidoscopic notion of Johnson was everything. There was a compassionate side of Johnson that was so truly invested in the civil rights movement. That has to be admired. He was a liar, a cheat. He was power diseased. He just bumps up so large. I am endlessly fascinated by Lyndon Johnson, fascinated, much more so than by McNamara. SM (00:50:24): Hubert Humphrey. PH (00:50:28): Tremendous man, tremendous man of conscience, of idealism, who again, held that line all the way through. Got politically neutered by Lyndon Johnson and lost his way, but that cannot undo the grocer's son from Minneapolis, who rose from mayor and whatever else he did, idealistically to really want to help downtrodden people, great admiration. SM (00:50:57): John Kennedy. PH (00:51:03): Not nearly as fascinating or as complicated as his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson. John Kennedy, a hugely bright man with a native intellectual ability, but spoiled, lazy, brave in the sense of what he endured with his physical problems and his heroism in World War II, but narcissistic, selfish, spoiled as a rich kid, and yet came out of that to be a leader. What Kennedy has about him in memory and history, it was style. It was this panache, it was this class, it was this finesse, it was this charism. All of those things are true and surface and thin, as opposed, in my mind, to this immense complication of someone like Lyndon Johnson. SM (00:52:26): Robert Kennedy. PH (00:52:30): Oh, tough, shrewd, hard, politically astute. That word ruthless, which was attached to him, was not undeserved, but who also had tremendous conscience and he changed after his brother died. The last five years of Robert Kennedy's life are something to behold. They are powerful and emotional and committed and I think that death sincered him, that he began to see the world in a powerfully different way. The last five years of his life are beautiful and to be admired. SM (00:53:17): Eugene McCarthy. PH (00:53:19): A guy who certainly had ambition, who had intellectual pride, who had ego, but who also was brave enough to stand up, to challenge his own party and was a committed guy. I feel that the problem with Eugene McCarthy is that he has never quite broken a sweat. He has always been a little bit on the fringe of not wanting to get in there, roll up his sleeves, and fight all the way, and part of that might be his intellectual [inaudible]. SM (00:53:58): Martin Luther King Jr, and if you could comment on his stand against Vietnam War. PH (00:54:03): I thought it was brave that the guy who was so leading the civil rights movement felt that if he were going to practice the integrity of what he believed, that he had to expand all his thinking toward all the injustices of Vietnam, which certainly were unjust to African Americans, but just unjust in a political worldview. And Martin Luther King is a great man and a great leader who had large, private, personal demons and flaws. He was one of God's sinful creatures, just like we all are, but none of those flaws and personal failings can override the great, great life. SM (00:54:56): Malcolm X. PH (00:54:58): Do not know enough about him. Would like to know more. What I do know is that he had a kind, it seems to me, an intellectual core of belief. That vision is something prominent and powerful to be paid attention to. I do not know. I would be interested in knowing about his anger and his hate. I have feelings that there was too much anger there. SM (00:55:35): The Black Power advocates, the Bobby Seales, the Huey Newtons, the Eldridge Cleavers, Kathleen Cleaver. PH (00:55:40): I met some of them and I interviewed some of them. I interviewed Bobby Seale years later when he was hawking barbecue sauce, which he still is. SM (00:55:48): Yeah, that is right. Yes. He was at Temple, or he was. PH (00:55:51): Yeah. Again, those guys were brave. They were angry as hell and they were brave and were all the things we talked about earlier, their excesses. They screwed up, but you have to look at the whole life and they helped change the status quo. A lot of them were scary dudes. Maybe they had a right to be scary dudes. SM (00:56:28): Any thoughts on the fact that they had certainly put a lot of pressure on Dr. King and Bayard Rustin and James Farmer and Roy Wilkins, that their time had passed? PH (00:56:38): Yeah. You have heard the thing that radicals can get along much better with conservatives rather than liberals. Radicals cannot stand liberals because liberals talk the talk. They talk the talk, but- SM (00:56:53): They do not walk the walk. PH (00:56:54): They do not walk the walk and the radical wants it right now, right fucking now, and do not give me the talk the talk. If you want to fight with me, put a conservative in here because I know where that guy stands and I will be able to duke it out with him, but the liberal is mouthing all of these nice pieties. The hell with those nice pieties. I think that is the problem with the Stokely Carmichaels and the Dr. Kings. SM (00:57:24): How about the Abbie Hoffmans and Jerry Rubins, the Yippies, so to speak, of that era? PH (00:57:29): They were crazy and narcissistic and selfish and weird, but the other part of it is that there was something genuine and real in them that they were not out just to make a buck. SM (00:57:47): Richard Nixon. PH (00:57:53): I guess he was very, very unbalanced and he did some good things, but was so burdened by his... He was so brought down by his neuroses and his pathologies that I see him not as a tragic figure. That word is too thrown around. McNamara is a tragic figure, basically because he betrayed his own ideals. In the Shakespeare construct, you have to have a great single tragic flaw. McNamara's single tragic flaw is this pridefulness, his hubris. Nixon is more a victim of his own pathologies, and in that sense, he is not a tragic character. You do not agree? SM (00:58:54): No, I do agree. I do agree. I do agree. Spiro Agnew. PH (00:58:58): Ted Agnew, a mean man, a mean, vindictive guy who probably did some good things. SM (00:59:12): Here we go. PH (00:59:21): He probably did some good things as the governor of Maryland, but overall is a shit. He is like Frank Sinatra. They were friends for a while. Frank Sinatra is this eternal mystery, it seems to me, of great art and shit life, the things that Sinatra did. Now, Agnew does not have any great art. Agnew is just a shit. Nixon is brought down by his pathologies and you can almost feel sorry for Richard Nixon. You cannot feel sorry for Agnew. You cannot feel sorry for Sinatra. I mean, we are mixing art and politics here. You can be uplifted every day of your life by listening to Sinatra's music. I listen to it around here all the time. Every day of your life, you can be uplifted by Sinatra's music, at what the human voice is capable of, and every day of your life, you can be brought to the floor by the awful things Sinatra did, which have come out. SM (01:00:31): In the women's movement, the Gloria Steinem and the Betty Friedan, your thoughts on their importance. PH (01:00:38): They are tremendously important. Friedan is a more powerful figure, more important figure than Steinem. Steinem took her abilities and her intelligence and went with it as far as she could go, and that was a lot and that was far, but Friedan is much more of a Moses. I wish I had a female image. Friedan is much more of a pioneer and has much more intellectual firepower. SM (01:01:17): Daniel Ellsberg. PH (01:01:21): A screwed up, really good man of conscience, who did things for ego and ambition and notoriety as well as conscience and realizing, "This thing stinks and I have to be the one to bring it forward," but a guy who also had tremendous personal problems and was undone by a lot of those personal problems. I met him. I have talked to him. I have met him. I know him. SM (01:01:54): Dr. Benjamin Spock. PH (01:01:55): Do not know enough about him other than what you know. SM (01:02:01): Muhammad Ali. PH (01:02:04): I have been around him. Ali is so curious to me. A guy who has a gift that you would think is based in intellect, but it is not because I do not think he... I am not talking about whether he is an educated man or he is not an, not an educated man. I am talking about his intellect. You would think that a man of such rapier-like wit, is so fast on his feet in the ring and in life, would be high intellectual power. I do not think he was. I think he was not particularly a smart man, but he has some kind of gift, some kind of instinct. Maybe it is a kind of animal instinct for protecting himself and giving lightning jabs, and he was very brave, too, and I believe that what he did in embracing Islam was based on conscience. SM (01:03:20): I can remember that when he was dethroned and he could not fight after staying on the Vietnam War, he came to Columbus, Ohio. I was working at Ohio University then and he went to the Ohio Theater downtown, gave a speech. They pay him $3,500, and he came on stage with $3,500 in cash and gave it back to the group that brought him in and said, "Use this to help the homeless or the poor." That is the kind of man he was, because he was a millionaire from his boxing. PH (01:03:52): Yeah, I love it. SM (01:03:53): But that was tremendous of what he had to say. PH (01:03:55): I love it. I love that story. SM (01:03:57): Noam Chomsky. PH (01:03:59): Do not know enough about him other than certainly a guy who has done all of the things we have talked about from the intellectual standpoint. SM (01:04:09): George McGovern. PH (01:04:12): A great guy, a great sense of humor, a guy who kept his feet on the ground in political Washington. Of course, ambition wanted to be president. He basically railroaded and sold out on his running partner, Tom Eagleton, when it was discovered that Eagleton had mental problems. He did not support him in backing like he should have, because we were all scared. You have to put that in context. The country was scared about mental problems. McGovern falls there, but McGovern is a World War II hero. McGovern is a man of conscience all through the Senate years. McGovern has a wonderful Midwestern, he is from Dakota, as you know, he has a wonderful stability. His feet are on the ground. He is not going to be swamped by these eggheads. So many of the people who came to Washington to work in the Kennedy administration got their heads turned by the glamor of Camelot. That, again, is that style, as opposed to substance. McGovern is a man of substance. SM (01:05:19): Timothy Leary. PH (01:05:21): I do not know enough about him other than he seems, in some ways, a creation of the media. SM (01:05:30): Ralph Nader. PH (01:05:32): A flawed, good man who was tremendously motivated to help change these things that are wrong in industry, but a guy who was so aesthetic that he was difficult to know. His personality is prickly and there was a hardiness there. He has been held back by his lack of people skills. You see, you get back to Lyndon Johnson. The juice of Lyndon Johnson is this immense people skill. He knows everything. He has a PhD in people. McNamara has an eighth-grade education in people. SM (01:06:26): George Wallace. PH (01:06:34): A demagogue, a fiery little guy who did some decent things for Black people early on, but was killed by his ambitions, and that he was a nasty guy, finally. SM (01:06:49): John Lennon, the Beatles, and John Lennon in particular. PH (01:06:59): Lennon is a great songwriter. I guess he is an immortal songwriter. He is the most talented of the four. His talent far out shines Paul McCartney's. He is an intellectual all the way. I guess I have pretty strong good thoughts about him, but in a funny, queer way, I have to tell you, I do not like the guy. SM (01:07:32): Just the music of the (19)60s, the Jimi Hendrix, the Janis Joplins, that whole era, The Rolling Stones. PH (01:07:40): I went back and tried to- SM (01:07:43): The impact the music of this period had on the generation. PH (01:07:46): Yeah, Vietnam was our first rock and roll war, as has been pointed out. You cannot think about the (19)60s without listening to the stoned, Benzedrine quality of that music. And Janis Joplin's cry and Jimi Hendricks's wail with that guitar are just so emblematic of the (19)60s. I mean, Joplin I have written about. I went back and tried to understand the legend of Joplin. I did this with the Washington Post about four or five years ago. She was so hurt, tormented by her own self-worth, and somehow or other... She dropped out of the University of Texas as a freshman. She did a couple semesters at Texas and the fraternity boards at UT Austin voted her the ugliest man on campus, ugliest pig man on campus. That was just one of her insults. SM (01:08:59): You think of the Phil Ochs and Joan Baezes and the Arlo Guthries. You remember those musicians coming to our campus and the impact that they had, just of the words, the music. There is so many people like that of that period. PH (01:09:14): Phil Ochs hanged himself. I love Arlo Guthrie. SM (01:09:17): I am going to close with just a couple terms here of the period. When you think of SDS, what do you think of? PH (01:09:23): I think of obviously the scary, radical edge of protest of the (19)60s. Not the edgiest and the scariest, but a group that was out there toward the fringe. SM (01:09:46): Counterculture. PH (01:09:51): Counterculture is a beloved word for me. I think everybody should have an element of counterculture in them. The streets that we live on here is too culture. I hope to hope be the counterculture of Colfax Road. SM (01:10:07): The Pentagon Papers. PH (01:10:10): Everybody knows what they are. The Pentagon Papers are one of the great treasure documents of the (19)60s, (19)70s, SM (01:10:19): Okay. Chicago Eight. PH (01:10:27): The Chicago Eight, Bobby Seale was one of them. You say Chicago Eight and you think of a courtroom and Judge Julius Hoffman and people being restrained in their seats as Bobby Seale was. That trial was unfair and it caused such commotion because they thought that those eight who were on trial were murderers and rapists. Well, they were not that at all. It was unfair. SM (01:11:03): Watergate. PH (01:11:06): Watergate. I interviewed a man who had been imprisoned in China all during Watergate and came out in the late (19)70s and he had been in a hole in China and he heard the word Watergate. He said, "What is it? Is it something to do with the dam? Is it something to do with water?" Watergate. You say Watergate and I can only see the buildings themselves along the Potomac, where we lived in Washington for 30 years. SM (01:11:38): Hippies and Yippies. PH (01:11:44): I like hippies better than Yippies. The instant connotations for me are yippies have too much money. SM (01:11:59): And how about the communes? PH (01:12:06): There were something that I always secretly wanted to try because I wanted to run around naked. SM (01:12:17): I am going to close out with a few personalities linked directly to Vietnam. William Westmoreland and Creighton Abrams, both of them. PH (01:12:25): Yeah. Okay. William Westmoreland, whom I knew a little, I mean, I have interviewed. Not a terribly bright man. A soldier, a strong soldier, but a guy who should not have been in charge of that war at such a critical time. He was not smart enough. Abrams was a bulldog of a warrior. SM (01:12:54): And Maxwell Taylor would be the other one. PH (01:12:56): Yeah, he was the soldier scholar and he was beloved by the Kennedys precisely for that reason because he could bring history and intellectual thought to it. I think he was a pretty good guy. I really do. I mean, he, of course, was caught up in the lies and the political. People like David Halberstam hate Maxwell Taylor. I do not really understand that. SM (01:13:17): General Cao Ky and President Thieu. PH (01:13:24): Cao Ky is a cowboy. He is all about his style of his dress and his daring exploits in the air and he is a little Hollywood guy who wants to be on the cover of People Magazine. General Thieu, he is more interesting and a person of more integrity in some ways for me. SM (01:13:49): Kent State. PH (01:13:52): You can only picture a slope of hill and a people on the ground and a girl reacting in horror, bent down over a body. Whoever heard of Kent State, Ohio the day before that happened? SM (01:14:13): Moratorium. PH (01:14:14): I was there in October of 1970 or was it (19)69? The moratorium is, the moratorium is- SM (01:14:30): I think it is (19)69. PH (01:14:30): Is October (19)69. I was there. Masses of people. SM (01:14:38): Gerald Ford. PH (01:14:42): A good guy. Lyndon Johnson's great comment, "The trouble with Gerry Ford is that he played too much football at Michigan without a helmet." Gerry Ford was a guy who used all of his abilities to their max, but did not have huge abilities as a thinker, but who was skillfully pretty good in the House of Representatives, pretty good as a Congressman. I am being too flip. Good for the years that he was president. We needed somebody. We needed a Midwesterner to help us be okay after Nixon. SM (01:15:27): April 30th, 1970 and April 30th, 1975, April 30th, 1970, being the Cambodia invasion, which eventually led to Kent State on May 4th, and April 30th, (19)75 when the helicopter [inaudible] PH (01:15:42): The people trying to climb the ladders into this helicopter. SM (01:15:44): Yes. Get your thought on those two. PH (01:15:46): Well, I can picture the second one much better. The Cambodian invasion? No, and it leads to Kent State, but the April 29th, which is my birthday, and April 30th of (19)75, those helicopters lifting off from the Embassy roof, it is all about our failure there and human desperation and us leaving this country behind and we are trying to claim victory, but we know we have lost. I mean, it is a terrible moment. SM (01:16:21): The Berrigan brothers, Philip and Daniel. PH (01:16:25): Great men and we talked about them and models of conscience and heart, and both artists in their own right, Dan more than Phillip. SM (01:16:39): And Ramsey Clark. PH (01:16:43): There should be a thousand Ramsey Clarks in Washington DC and there are not many. SM (01:16:50): And of the books that have been written on the (19)60s or the books that were written during the (19)60s, what would be the books that you think are the most influential and important? PH (01:17:03): I cannot do it, Steve, because I would leave out the ones that I think of. Michael Harris's Dispatches is one of the great books in the (19)60s. I will have to email you. SM (01:17:16): How about The Making of a Counter Culture with Theodore Roszak and the Greeting of America? PH (01:17:20): Yeah. SM (01:17:21): Those are very important books. Final question, and that is, it is on the boomers themselves again. Are boomers in middle age or approaching old age now? Are they doing what they did when they were young or have they given in. Like a lot of people said during the (19)60s and early (19)70s, "When you guys get older, you are going to change." Remember that, no one over 30 that Jerry Rubin did? PH (01:17:50): Yeah. SM (01:17:51): Are the boomers still idealistic or have they just gone into the society and raising families? PH (01:17:59): It is so hard. Yeah. It is so hard to maintain who you are and your ideals. SM (01:18:04): That is all right. Idealism continued. PH (01:18:06): It is so hard to maintain it. I guess I will answer it personally. I have said that on my best days as a writer, I am doing something priestly with a small p. I went into seminary and religious life out of some misformed, misguided ideas, but still idealistic. And the goal was to try to make the world better and to help people. On my best days as a writer, I am doing that. And the continuum, I feel, continues with the spectrum, with the teaching I do at Penn, on my best days as a teacher of non-fiction. I am teaching these kids to be better human beings and I am maintaining that idealism. SM (01:18:53): And finally- PH (01:18:54): You said finally a minute ago. SM (01:18:56): Well, this is it. Is there a question that I did not ask? PH (01:18:57): No. SM (01:18:57): You bastard. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Paul Hendrickson Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hendrickson, Paul, 1944- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource College teachers; English teachers; Authors; Journalists; Hendrickson, Paul, 1944--Interviews Description An account of the resource Paul Hendrickson is an author, journalist, and educator. He is a senior lecturer in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a former member of the writing staff at the Washington Post. Hendrickson is the author of two books, The Living and The Dead and Sons of Mississippi. Hendrickson attended St. Louis University for his Bachelor's degree in English, and ennsylvania State University for his Master's degree in English. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003-11-07 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.2a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.2b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-01 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 80:31 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/d54854200882301cc8f50655324b8c82.jpg 28b251168a69264da03d6a06378d0191 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/0edec070d060d883fec7d6245dfae393.mp3 095cb75bf43fc812ddabe63c2e59783a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2012-01-04 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Frank Schaeffer Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Frank Schaeffer is an author at the New York Times who wrote the book \&quot;Keeping Faith\&quot; with his son. The book speaks about their father and son relationship during his service in the U.S Marine Corps. He is now a film director in Hollywood and he still continues to write books about life in evangelical households.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14281427},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Frank Schaeffer is an author at the New York Times who wrote the book <em>Keeping Faith</em> with his son. The book speaks about their father and son relationship during his service in the U.S Marine Corps. He is now a film director in Hollywood and he still continues to write books about life in evangelical households.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Entrepreneurial; Spirituality; Baby boom generation; Westward Expansion; Teenagehood; Divorce; Beat Generation; John F. Kennedy; Pro-choice; Boomer slogans; Activism; Civil Rights Movement; Women's Rights Movement; Gay Rights; Beat Generation.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:5053,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;7&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;8&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;10&quot;:0,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Entrepreneurial; Spirituality; Baby boom generation; Westward Expansion; Teenagehood; Divorce; Beat Generation; John F. Kennedy; Pro-choice; Boomer slogans; Activism; Civil Rights Movement; Women's Rights Movement; Gay Rights; Beat Generation.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 105:24 Subject LCSH Authors; Motion picture producers and directors; Schaeffer, Frank--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Frank Schaeffer Language A language of the resource eng Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Schaeffer, Frank ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors; Motion picture producers and directors; Schaeffer, Frank--Interviews Description An account of the resource Frank Schaeffer is an author at the New York Times who wrote the book <em>Keeping Faith</em> with his son. The book speaks about their father and son relationship during his service in the U.S Marine Corps. He is now a film director in Hollywood and he still continues to write books about life in evangelical households. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-01-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.3a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.3b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-01 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 105:24 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/8b2b6ed5d15df9420466a28256f0c24e.jpg 461cb2952f6315f907e2496a62c76c18 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/7c8bdfcaa9275461d3eb904db42acf57.mp3 26e85e30cf298954bb4f2702635d2bcc Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Raul Torres Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Drug scene; Vietnam; Students; Pro-Education; Conscientious Objector; Vietnam Draft; Vietnam War; WWII; Social Conscientiousness; Drug abuse; Boomer Mentality; Korean War; War spending; Civil Rights Movement; Parents; Boomer's; Vietnam Veterans; Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Memorial; Generation Gap; The Establishment; Richard Nixon&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14281427}}">Drug scene; Vietnam; Students; Pro-Education; Conscientious Objector; Vietnam Draft; Vietnam War; WWII; Social Conscientiousness; Drug abuse; Boomer Mentality; Korean War; War spending; Civil Rights Movement; Parents; Boomer's; Vietnam Veterans; Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Memorial; Generation Gap; The Establishment; Richard Nixon</span> Biographical Text Raul Torres <span>is an educator and former principal of Thomas A. Edison High School in Northeast Philadelphia from 1985-1998. During the Vietnam War, Thomas A. Edison High School had the highest casualty rate of any high school in the United States, a fact confirmed by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (non-profit that built the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, The Wall, in Washington, DC.) and has been recognized by local, state and federal government officials. 64 Edison students died in the war and they are forever remembered as the "EDISON 64." Raul Torres' brother, Robert Torres-Army Sgt.. is one of the 64. Those who died and served were predominantly African-American and came from a tough neighborhood filled with gangs At the time of &nbsp;the Vietnam War, the high school was an all boys school.&nbsp; The original building is no more, but since those days, through today, the school has memorialized those students with a wall in the main lobby of the school that includes the listing of all 64 who paid the highest price with their lives.&nbsp; The first wall was built in the old school in the 1960's and continues today in a new school at another location.&nbsp; The school and Philadelphia is very proud of these former students who came from a very tough environment and chose service to their nation as stepping stone and or choice to change their lives for the better.&nbsp; The "EDISON 64" will forever hold a place of stature to those times in American known as the 1960's.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 112:22 Subject LCSH High school principals; Torres, Raul--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Date of Interview ND Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Raul Torres Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Torres, Raul ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource High school principals; Torres, Raul--Interviews Description An account of the resource Raul Torres is an educator. He is the former Principal at Edison High School in Philadelphia in the 1980s and 1990s. Raul Torres is an educator and former principal of Thomas A. Edison High School in Northeast Philadelphia from 1985-1998. During the Vietnam War, Thomas A. Edison High School had the highest casualty rate of any high school in the United States, a fact confirmed by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (non-profit that built the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, The Wall, in Washington, DC.) and has been recognized by local, state and federal government officials. 64 Edison students died in the war and they are forever remembered as "EDISON 64." Raul Torres' brother, Robert Torres-Army Sgt.. is one of the 64. Those who died and served were predominantly African-American and came from a tough neighborhood filled with gangs At the time of  the Vietnam War, the high school was an all boys school.  The original building is no more, but since those days, through today, the school has memorialized those students with a wall in the main lobby of the school that includes the listing of all 64 who paid the highest price with their lives.  The first wall was built in the old school in the 1960's and continues today in a new school at another location.  The school and Philadelphia is very proud of these former students who came from a very tough environment and chose service to their nation as stepping stone and or choice to change their lives for the better.  The "EDISON 64" will forever hold a place of stature to those times in American known as the 1960's. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource ND Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.4a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.4b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-01 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 112:22 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/51852f7856db4bdc6c834d347165bed6.jpg 3c74f4cd9a389dcc17dc01be8f7dd465 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/44ab1081e03e1b7dc68cd5d38b0c12ef.mp3 4a0c11bf70d47b3cd830d51069ef77a5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 1996-11-18 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Joseph Lee Galloway Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Joseph Lee Gallaway is a veteran war correspondent and an author. In his writing, Galloway covered conflicts all across the world, including the Vietnam War, the first Persian Gulf War, and the Iraq War. He is the co-author of the Vietnam War book We Were Soldiers Once... and Young, which was later adapted into a movie, We Were Soldiers.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:7043,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:1},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Joseph Lee Gallaway is a veteran war correspondent and author. In his writing, Galloway covered conflicts all across the world, including the Vietnam War, the first Persian Gulf War, and the Iraq War. He is the co-author of the Vietnam War book <em>We Were Soldiers Once... and Young</em>, which was later adapted into a movie, <em>We Were Soldiers</em>.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Vietnam Veterans; Free love; Campus Demonstration; Vietnam War; Non-political entity; Veteran Memorial; Baby boom generation; Army; This Noble Land: My Vision for America; James A. Michener; Soviet Empire; Lyndon B. Johnson; George McGovern; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Malcolm X.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14281427}}">Vietnam Veterans; Free love; Campus Demonstration; Vietnam War; Non-political entity; Veteran Memorial; Baby boom generation; Army; This Noble Land: My Vision for America; James A. Michener; Soviet Empire; Lyndon B. Johnson; George McGovern; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Malcolm X.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 107:13 Subject LCSH War correspondents; Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- Journalists; Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988 -- Journalists; Iraq War, 2003-2011 -- Journalists; Authors; Gallaway, Joseph Lee--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Joseph Lee Galloway Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Benjamin Mehdi So Date of interview: 18 November 1996 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 00:05 JG: There is home. But in this case, and maybe in every case, that was wrong, that it was not, Dan Garcia, who, whoever left home. He was at home with professionalism, he was at home with his courage. He was at home with those he served with. And maybe, just maybe it is we, who did not go, who did not serve, for whatever reason, who have been away from home all these years. And so, I say, not a welcome home to Dan, but a welcome to the rest of us. That is very powerful stuff. 00:44 SM: Wow. That is. 00:44 JG: And I have showed that to a number of Vietnam veterans, and every one of them just left with tears in their eyes, at how right he got it. And I am sure in my heart that-that-that Peter Goldmark was probably a campus protestor, march against the war. And I wrote him and told him, that I that I really would love to see him, expand on that those remarks and give them to a broader audience. Because where we are now is, is we need reconciliation, this country, the war, rip-rip, ripped the country apart. And either we find some way to forgive each other and forgive ourselves or the world just keep killing us like those old Cambodian mines keep children that were not even born when the war ended. 01:47 SM: See that is the premise of why I am trying to do this project. There were a couple of things that that prompted me to even try to do this. I have worked at universities now for over 18 years. But in the last five years, when we do programs both on and off campus, I have taken students to meet leaders and I got involved with Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Philadelphia. We did a program at my former school at Jefferson where Don Bailey, the former Auditor General, who was a Purple Heart recipient in the Vietnam War refused to sit down with the Vietnam veterans responsible for the wall in Philly. We did a program at my former school at Jefferson where Don Bailey, the former Auditor General, who was a Purple Heart recipient in the Vietnam War refused to sit down with the Vietnam veterans responsible for the wall in Philly. And they, you may remember, uh, many years back when they tried to put the wall together in Philadelphia, that, uh, some of the top Vietnam veterans went to Washington, took the names off the wall, and walked the entire distance back to Philadelphia, and then buried the names right at the, at the ceremony when they opened several years. And Bailey would not shake hands with those veterans. And I thought that kind of- That was my first inkling that despite all the fantastic things with the wall, the healing and so forth, that maybe there is still a lot of healing that has to be done, not only within the Vietnam veteran community, but within the nation as a whole. And then a couple other instances have led up to this desire to try to interview people for their perceptions on questions that I am asking everyone. And then of course, there is spontaneity going in different directions, because my basic purpose here is to- It is a very complex issue, the Vietnam War and the (19)60s and the early (19)70s and the Boomer generation, their impact on America. But I guess I am frustrated because I see tremendous attacks being leveled against the Boomers right now, which is my generation. And first question I wanted to ask you is, when you look at all the current criticisms of the Boomer generation, which is those people born between 1946 and (19)64, but mostly those Boomers who were in college or of college age during the Vietnam War. A lot of criticism's being leveled against them as to the breakdown of American society, the drug scene started then, the divorce rate is on the rise, being the free love and effects and all that other stuff happened at that time. No respect for authority, because on college campuses during the war, there was protests, and they did not respect administrators or anybody in position of authority. Of course, they were lied to by their government. But what are your thoughts on the criticisms today leveling against the entire Boomer generation and the decay of our society going right back to those times? 04:31 JG: Well, the first thing I have to say is that I am not a Boomer. I was born in (19)41, before the war started. I am a prewar model by three weeks. But what that means is that I did not, I did not meet my father until I was four years old, four and a half, when he came back from-from the army. I guess everybody's thoughts about the boomer generation are-are shaped, to a large extent by what you have read and what you have seen of the (19)60s and the (19)70s. My thing is that-that during the (19)60s and the (19)70s, I was out of this country. I went, I have essentially left this country in 1964, and did not come back until 1980. I was a war correspondent in Vietnam, I was a foreign correspondent. I served Tokyo, Vietnam, Tokyo, Indonesia, India, Singapore, and then finished up with three years as the bureau chief in Moscow for UPI. So, I cannot tell you that I ever saw campus demonstration in this country, or that I ever saw confrontations with the police, except as I read them, newspapers and in the magazines, and saw the stories on the wire. So, I guess my view is, is a little removed. And maybe a little less passionate as to what went on. The boomers, I think, had no patent on the changes that took place in this country. They were a catalyst. Sometimes for good sometimes for bad. I am not sure that you can saddle them with responsibility for everything. But they are responsible for enough to make it interesting. 06:59 SM: What were your thoughts? As a person who served in Vietnam, when maybe you were not here in America, but you were-were over there. And you heard about, you heard about the protests, things that were happening on the college campuses, probably, I would say started around (19)65 and until about 1972. What were your thoughts as a person who was over there serving, and then the thoughts of your contemporaries and how you may be changed over the years and your perceptions of- 07:32 JG: The thing is that I always looked as to motive. Personally, after the first six weeks that I was in Vietnam, I found myself rather opposed to this war. I thought it was being fought very stupidly. I thought that we had bitten off a rather larger chunk than this country would ever be able to chew. It did not take long. I mean, I arrived there, sort of all I knew about war was what I had learned in John Wayne movies, and I think on the third day in country, I found myself on a helicopter landing on a hill where a Vietnamese ranger battalion had been overrun and every man killed, and we were there to find and collect the body of the American advisors. And so, you know, I helped carry that man to that helicopter. And I thought to myself, right then and there, this is, this is not, this is not quite what I thought it was going to be. 08:47 SM: Then this is (19)64? 08:48 JG: This is 1965, March-March of (19)65. I landed there, right after the first battalion of US Marines came ashore at Da Nang. And this was immediately thereafter. And you know, and in the process of doing that story, I immediately ran into some IVS volunteers who worked that province. And I said, “I bet you are glad to see Americans here.” And the guy looked at me like I was crazy. He said, “No, this is complicating my life, no end and making it much more dangerous. Before I could drive the roads of this province, rather freely, taking care of people who were starving or needed medical help or whatever. And now I cannot because all Americans have become priority targets”. And so, you know, literally the first week I began finding out stuff that made me question whether this was-was a very wise course we had undertaken to walk. Now as for these people back here, who really, the demonstrations did not get started until late (19)65. I think it was, oh, the old beat poet. Ginsberg had a demonstration in San Francisco in November of 1965. And I think that was one of the very earliest ones. And I, when I was doing research on our book, I-I went back and looked at that, and I found Senator Everett Dirksen, denouncing these people, as communists and traders and suggesting that they all be shot. So, you know, it was a real startling sort of a development at that time. I cannot say that I knew at that time that it happened to me, but I do not think it crossed my, my radar scope. By the time there was a movement, and there was a major confrontation going on. I am afraid that although I oppose the war myself, I could find not a lot to say for these people who also opposed it because I questioned their motives. I thought it was, shall we say enlightened self-interest. It was a protest against the draft far more than it was against the war. And I thought it was very elitist. I thought, you know, I knew who was fighting alongside me in Vietnam, I knew very-very well, because in the first major battle of the war, in the Drang Valley, I met a kid from my high school class that I graduated with in Refugio, Texas. And that was a graduating class of (19)55 kids. And his name was Vincent Cantu. And in that valley, for a dozen more guys, Hispanics, all of them from South Texas, within 20, 30 miles of my hometown, so I knew who was fighting this war. And I knew who was not fighting this war. And so, I had some trouble with their motives. 12:32 SM: Let me check this to make- 12:37 JG: Something to drink? 12:37 SM: I am fine. I got my Coke here. I stopped at McDonald’s. Talking about the motives now kind of moving up to 1996 as opposed to 1965. The Vietnam memorial was built as a nonpolitical entity. I really admire Jan Scruggs, and all the people involved in that whole process making that happen. I know all about the obstacles that he faced with getting that particular part of a portion of land and so forth, but it is a nonpolitical entity. Yet, when I go to the wall, and I have tried to go the last four Memorial Days, I have been there the last form or days and this is my third veterans day in a row to try to get an ambience and a feel for what transpires there, I sense that there is, there definitely is a lot of healing. But I still get the sense that we have a long way to go. And when I say a long way to go, not only amongst the veterans, but the non-veterans, the people who come to that wall, yours truly the Steve McKiernan's, who was in college at that time did not serve. I was a severe asthmatic, and I got out of the service that way. But it was not I was getting out of the service. I just could not serve. I had a very severe asthma. But the division seemed to still be there. And the question I was trying to raise is-is how much healing has really taken place amongst the veteran’s number one? And will they ever forgive those who were on the other side? The those who oppose the war. And the second question is, do you think there is merit in trying to take the next step beyond the wall, which was to heal the Vietnam veterans to try to heal the generation, the whole generation which the divisions still seem to happen? I just liked your thoughts on both of those questions. 14:28 JG: Well, to start, to start at the top of the wall, and the end, the whole sort of homecoming exercise of the last 12 or 15 years has been for the veterans, a very positive, very healing experience. I-I find it very hard to explain to someone who does not carry the same baggage, exactly what it means. The best way, I guess is to tell you that I have never been so privileged and honored as, as this past Veteran’s Day. When I got to hold up, lift up a young boy, four and a half years old Thomas Alexander Rudell, so that for the first time, he could touch the name of his grandfather, my friend, Captain Tom Metzger, who was killed in action,14, November 1965. And over my shoulder, I can see Tom's daughter, I could see both pride and pain their eyes. And so, to me, this is, man this is this is more than any church I have ever been in. It has more power to it. It is without question, the most powerful and healing piece of art that I know of, on the face of this earth. And it is so for most of those who went to Vietnam, it was a place that that for us is- I have seen too much magic there either. There is no other word for it. If you go talk to the volunteers who work at that wall and ask them for their stories. They will tell someone come up and say, “I am looking for someone who knew my father.” And they will say, “Go stand at his panel, and just stay there a while, and something will happen.” And it always does. There is there is a potency to that experience. That is, it is almost overwhelming. But that is healing for those who were directly wounded. If you are going to look for healing for those who did not go for whatever reason, I am not sure that is not the place. They are not going to find healing there for themselves. I do not know what we do about them. What we do about-about reconciliation. This is something that has got to be worked on. And we need to work on it. 17:35 SM: That reconciliation. Talking about almost like Lewis [Burwell] Puller [Jr.] was talking about before he killed himself back in (19)94, when he reached out, when the invitation to Bill Clinton to come to the Vietnam Memorial that year. And then Lewis wanted to sit and right beside him as he was speaking, remember that? I watched it. And I got to know Lewis briefly before he killed himself because I took students to the wall, and he spent three hours with our students there. And then the following spring, killed himself. Our students were quite shocked. But it was, it is the business of healing. That wall is for Vietnam veterans to heal, and their families and those who served because that is what is for, it to pay tribute to them, the people who served this country and gave the ultimate price because they were not welcomed home. But the next step is I would like your commentary in terms of when the invitation was given by Jan, and Lewis was supportive of it, to bring Bill Clinton there. That is, that is to me is tremendous reconciliation, bringing the other side. And it is almost like, I know how veterans feel toward McNamara the most a lot of them hate him because of some of the things he did. But would not the ultimate reconciliation be having him at the wall? Or having your strongest opponents Tom Hayden at the wall? Or trying to say those were very difficult times. We need to heal as a nation and shake hands, forgive. And it is hard to forget sometimes some of the things that went on, especially Jane Fonda going to Hanoi. Now, that is hard to forgive, but- 19:24 JG: Well, I have a-a lot bigger problem forgiving McNamara. He is the guy who knew, and he lied. And he, he lost heart in the war very early on probably as a result of the battle that I fought in. The battle that I wrote about. I think by November 1965, he knew it was a lost cause. And he did not have the balls to stand up, say it. He did not have the balls to give the right advice to his boss, President Johnson. He just silenced himself. He walled off his arm on judgment and was a good soldier for too long, terrible more years. And he did not address any of that in his book that he wrote last year. That-that is a that is a quibbler’s book. It is a book that tries to point blame at everybody but himself. I got no forgiveness for a guy like that. He dies, he goes to hell, ninth level. And Lyndon Johnson is waiting for him. And Boy is he pissed- 20:35 SM: That is amazing he was- 20:40 JG: Clinton-Clinton is the national command authority. He is the chief executive; he is the Commander in Chief of the armed services. On that day that you talk about, when Clinton came to the wall, that morning at Arlington National Cemetery, I was the master of ceremonies at-at Memorial Day services, and I looked at this crowd, I had about 30 minutes with him before he got there. And I saw some who were thinking about making a noise. And I said, ‘Do not do it.” I said, “Whatever else you may think of him, you respect the office, but more important than that, you respect my friends and your friends who rest here”. And I talked about Tom Metzger whose grave is not far from the amphitheater. And I talked about his daughter. And I talked about some other people who are buried there that I said, “Do not you by your actions here today, do not you dare dishonor them.” And they were pretty good. They behaved themselves. And if they would not have, I would have kicked their butts. And I think they knew that too. But I the President of the United States is a different case. I think you have to suspend judgment because of the office, whether you like the guy who is in it or not. And I do not know what Bill Clinton did. I do not think anybody knows what Bill Clinton did except Bill Clinton. If you want to forgive, you ought to confess, I believe that is the way the Catholics deal with it. 22:35 SM: I think when he came there, I wrote an article for The Philadelphia Inquirer. They did not print it. But it was printed it on our campus. And it was basically saying that the wall was the was the step toward healing from the Vietnam War, but I felt I called the visit like the next step. There may have been a lot of veterans that were against him. But when he came to the Vietnam Memorial, I know they were expecting a lot of people to be protesting him. And but there were not that many really, when you look at the numbers that were there, according to- I was not there. That is my shirt come in the next year. Look to me, like there were very few. And there were placards up there. There were more than- 23:14 JG: I was sitting right down there in the VIP seats. 23:17 SM: So, there were more than the 200 that they say there were? 23:21 JG: They had them walled off way up the hill. 23:23 SM: Okay. 23:24 JG: Behind the fence. And, and they were raising the hell. I do not know how many there were, but it sounded like a lot to me. Because I could not, even from that distance. You could hear them chanting, you could hear them screaming. You could hear them hollering. You could hear them taking on an unfamiliar role for them being a protestor. 23:48 SM: That again, goes back to the old business of having a hard time forgiving and forgetting. 23:55 JG: Yeah. 23:55 SM: And-and the wall is supposed to be a place of healing. Nonpolitical, yet there is a political statement being made right there. 24:03 JG: Yeah. Sorry. Life is like that. 24:10 SM: When you look at the Boomers and I got just some general questions, when you look at the Boomer generation, what do you see as their most positive qualities and their most negative qualities? Now you are, you are a couple of years before Jack Smith, I remember when I interviewed him. He is one year older than- But I have never put up a timeframe on Boomers. Because many of the leaders of the protest movement were older graduate students in their late 20s when college students were just coming there at 18, 19. But from your own personal perspective, when you look at the (19)60s and the (19)70s, and the attacks being made in America, what-what are the positive qualities of the young people of that era and one of the negative qualities in your eyes? 24:57 JG: Well, for whatever motive they question. If they ask hard questions, I respect that. They, earlier than most Americans got a quick feel that they were being lied to by their government, by their president. They knew how to raise hell to get attention to what it was-was their cause. All of these are positive things in my view, the government should be looked at with great suspicious of them as they were of Lyndon Johnson. So that is the positive. The negative. Well, I carried the questioning onto lengths and depths maybe they should not have crossed. Anything that opens the country to an epidemic of casual dope use casual sex, casual calls for overthrowing the system and revolution. I think those are all negatives. 26:55 SM: Of course, the overthrowing of- 26:57 JG: And my question would be where the fuck did their revolution go? When the draft ended, juice went out of the movement. And a revolution went down the whole. 27:17 SM: Well, the Boomers always used to- a lot them used to saying college campuses at that timeframe- Of course, I cannot always preface this on college campuses. Because over half of the young people in America, that era did not even go to college. So, we kind of tend to have a tendency at times to just concentrate on what was happening in the schools, and not really investigate what has happened to the other half of the Boomer generation that never attended college. But it is no question that the issues, the issues are what drew students to protest, and that the passion toward those issues, but when the war ended, the Boomers aged. Are they like any other generation? Because Boomers used to say that- 28:04 JG: Forever. 28:05 SM: “We are, we are the most unique generation in American history. Number one, we are going to change the world.” And thirdly, a slogan of that period was it was a very famous Peter Max poster, “You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful.” So, there was that mentality of doing their own thing and, and whatever cause it might be. And the goal would be, hopefully to work together on solving issues. But- 28:33 JG: I, you know, if I am going to fault them for something is that they tend not to clean up the books. You know, they leave a lot of accounts open, things that yesterday they were willing to die for, or at least be uncomfortable for. And when it is done, they do not balance the books. They do not stop and look and say, “Wow, you know, these agrarian reformers that we supported in Cambodia have turned out to be some of the greatest butchers in the history of the world.” Who is protesting? I heard a little bit out of Joan Baez, and that was it. And she was essentially walled off from her whole generation as a consequence. And I have had this argument with, with Boomers before I said, “Where the hell is Jane Fonda?” You have got 3 million dead people. You got bones piled to the ceiling in Cambodia. Where is Jane? Where is Tom? Where-where are the people who cared so much for life. Now, it is all happening in a vacuum because they do not care. They moved on to something else. 30:00 SM: I think Tom Hayden still living his life the way-. He is kind of- he has been in politics out of California. And he is kind of still working hard on the environment and still living as he always did. Although he is very Jane Fonda. What a combination. Has your opinion changed over the last 25 years? When you when you came back in 19? Well, when you were there in (19)65, and then of course, you were over in Europe as a reporter, have you changed your attitudes toward the Boomer generation over that 25-year period? Where have you been pretty consistent in your thoughts on them? 30:40 JG: Fairly consistent. I was a little surprised when they all turned up as lawyers and stockbrokers, driving Volvo's doing the consumer thing. But I guess that is normal. I guess that is a normal progression. But the question is-is that I have had I have had from very early on, and they are still not answered. So no, I have not I have not changed my opinion. 31:20 SM: And those questions are again. 31:26 JG: Where is your revolution? What have you done in this world? You are now turning 50? What have you what have- what is your impact beside the impending bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare? Where have you left your mark? How have you changed the world? Where- how have you done all those things that you have demonstrated for or demanded? Where is the, where is the beef? 32:02 SM: Would not you say to that, it might be kind of early to say where is the beef? Boomers are just turning 50. And, and this is the time now where they could be leaders the next 10-15 years. So, it is kind of difficult to evaluate them at this juncture. It is a little too early. Would not you say? You are- 32:21 JG: 50, you are getting near the end of the game. You better have a few scouts on your belt, or you are not much of a warrior. You know, this is what they say in the financial planning business. It is time to get serious. Boy, you are going to retire here before long. What have you done? What have you done? 32:52 SM: When you look at the, you know, because you cannot talk about 60 million people just like you cannot talk about all Vietnam veterans. But are there examples of Boomers that you know, who have lived a lifetime of commitment toward a variety of issues? And just as they were when they were 20. They are still doing it at 50. 33:13 JG: Yeah, I would say there are. They have to be out there. I have met some of them. I think like all of us, their-their perspectives have changed. Maybe their causes have changed some. 33:43 SM: I am going to ask a question about trust. When I had a conversation with Senator Muskie, about five years ago, when I took students to Washington, and during the conversation, we were talking about the (19)68 Convention. And at that juncture, I brought up a question about the lack of trust that young people at that time had in people like him, vice presidential running mate, United States senator, you name it. And I wanted him to respond to that. Because I think a lot of people in my generation still do not trust because of what the government did during the Vietnam War. Certainly, the Watergate, everybody knows about Watergate, but the lack of trust, and we see it even amongst the Boomers who do not even vote. Boomers do not vote, and their children do not vote. And a lack of trust and authority already because they were lied to in many respects during the Vietnam War and the-the enemies list that Nixon- all these things have added up and kind of left a psychological imprint into the minds of many of the Boomers not to trust or to ever trust. What is your commentary with respect to that issue of trust am I right on when I am talking about that, and the effect it has had on this generation? And is that, is that one of the lasting effects of those people born between (19)46 and (19)64? Because they went through these experiences they cannot trust and thus they carry that out of their kids, and they do not trust leaders as well. 35:17 JG: I would you know. The strange thing is-is that it is, it is those lower middle class, and lower-class kids who were drafted and shipped first to Vietnam to fight and die, who ought to have less trust in situation than almost anyone, and yet maybe they have more. They still send their children to the army. None of the others do. The army is as a volunteer force, even more isolated than it was as a draftee force by far. Recruitment is all from probably seven Southern states, 80-90 percent of it. 36:10 SM: Oh really? 36:11 JG: Sure. Who sends their kids to the army? There is an economic force and there is, to a lesser extent, sort of familial pressure, there is a 30 percent of them are black. So, there is an economic thing. And there is also the fact that, that, surprisingly, the army may have the most level playing field in American society. If you are a person of color, you go in and if you can meet the standards, you get promoted. So those people who probably have less reason than anybody else to trust- 36:56 SM: Trust more. 36:57 JG: Still trust their children, in the hands of the army in the hands of government, if you will, in the hands of Bill Clinton, who uses the army more readily than any president I have ever known. 37:12 SM: That is an interesting observation. Because- 37:16 JG: Wh-What has happened? The peaceniks are shipping armies. This guy moves, troops at the drop of a hat. It is almost like he does not know that a military course is the last card you play, not the first card. He also does not seem to understand when he was standing out in front of the embassy in London, demonstrating because we were trying to be the world's policeman, what the hell is he doing now? We have an army that is a 911 reaction force. You call we haul? You got someone starving in Rwanda, being killed in the millions by their own government? Hey, we will go fix it. You got a problem in Bosnia? We will send 20,000 American soldiers in there. That is because there is nobody on Capitol Hill. There is nobody in the upper half of your generation, who has a kid in that in that force. 38:35 SM: It is true. 38:36 JG: I do not even know someone who has a kid in that force. If-if war starts tomorrow, there are precisely two people in the US news and world report building who have ever heard a shot fired in anger, and I am half of that force. And the other is a guy who was out in LA who was a grunt. 39:06 SM: Oh, my goodness. How many people were in there? 39:08 JG: Well, there is 130 or 40, editorial side people. But hey, they come out of a different place. They come out of the elite. So, I, you know, basically, their right to be suspicious. Are they right to turn their back on democracy as a system? I doubt that. I would say they are very wrong on that. You know, you have a duty to vote. You have an obligation. It is the simple obligation of citizenship. You live and the freest country on the face of this earth. I think you also have an obligation to defend it, but we will leave that aside. You at least have a minimal obligation to care about who governs it. How it is governed and go down and vote. If you do not do that, you are not much of a citizen are you? 40:11 SM: You are not, definitely. I have seen that amongst college students today. Statistics show that only 18.5 percent of today's young people in entering classes over the last three years have any interest toward being involved in politics, but over 85 percent of them have been involved in some sort of volunteer activity. Now, I am asking myself, and I will ask you the same thing. Is this a sign that students do not feel empowered that their vote does not count that they cannot make a difference? number one, but they feel they can influence other people's lives with their volunteer activity. So, like, an interesting, they can help others. But they are really not feeling empowered to help themselves. 40:54 JG: I do not know the answer to that, I do not know what moves there- they, you know, we are talking, we are sitting here, you and I talking about the Boomers. And, and I can kind of get a fix on them. But I have not got a clue when it comes to the one below them, generation and generation X, whatever you want to call them, you know, these are, these are, this is, this is the generation that-that that is non literate, is the word I am reaching for. But that is not quite it. They are, you know, they do not read books. They are- their information is absorbed visually- 41:31 SM: Fast and sweet. 41:34 JG: Fast, quick. It is computers, it is TV, it is the sort of stuff, and they are not readers. And I do not understand anyone who is not a reader, because it is, it is the very basis of my life. I fell onto it at an early age and-and I have devoured books constantly since then, and it is amazing how far ahead of you they can stay the publishing industry. And now I write books. And I do not know who is going to read them in another 20 years. 42:12 SM: Well, I know that we have computer ages upon us, and in terms of preparing for the future, young people know that they got to be schooling computers, or they are not going to be able to have a decent job, a decent salary, raise a family, you name it. Two good books I would like to recommend for again, in the next question, have you had a chance to read Our War, which is David Harris new book. 42:33 JG: No. 42:34 SM: It is a very good book, for Steven Harris was a protester at Stanford, and went, went to jail for protesting against the war. He was sent to jail for refusing to serve, right. You read the draft; he refused any [crosstalk]. 42:50 JG: A guy that stood up, standup guy. I am not going to go do what I think is wrong. And I am willing to pay the price. I got all the respect in the world, like them as much as I do. 43:02 SM: He was in jail, two years, two plus years. I think. 43:06 JG: Good. That was where he should have been. That was where all the rest of them should have been too. 43:10 SM: Schlesinger has written a book called The Noble Land, which is a very good book, James Schlesinger. Oh, excuse me, James Michener. He has written a brand-new book, This Noble Land, and it is reflecting his 93 years on this earth and talking about the problems of American. It is a good book. 43:28 JG: I will give you a good one that that if you have not read, you should, and it is The Living and The Dead. Robert S. McNamara and Five Lives of Lost World. 43:39 SM: I saw him on footnotes. I have not read the book. Yes. 43:42 JG: Just a splendid book. It is a splendid book. 43:46 SM: There is a person who was touched by the war, who did not serve. 43:51 JG: Yeah. Well, he is a young guy. 43:53 SM: I think he is in his early 40s. I am going to mention a few names here of people that were well known to all boomers in America at the time in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. And I just like to have your comments on them as a person from your own perception and maybe their impact on history, if there is such a thing. I got about 20 different names here and we will be short and sweet. Your perceptions of people like Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda. 44:25 JG: You would start with the word the top, the top dogs there. Well, Miss Fonda is an accomplished actress. Mr. Hayden is a pretty good, far left politician in California on local issues. And I do not have a lot of respect for either one of them for the simple reason that they are prime among those who have not balanced the books. When she issued an apology to the “veterans” that was no apology. It was a politician's apology. If I have offended someone, I apologize only because I have offended them not because I did anything wrong. 45:17 SM: What year did you do that? 45:20 JG: Four or five years ago, five or six, the VFW was breathing down her neck and-and she issued a statement. That was ingenious, disingenuous. disingenuous all of those things and did not apologize to anybody. 45:41 SM: I tried to get an interview with her in Atlanta and she rejected an interview. 45:45 JG: I am sure she did. She has made known to be a housewife. 45:55 SM: Then second would be Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. 46:00 JG: Clown princess. The great court has to have some gestures and they were in. 46:12 SM: Dr. Benjamin Spock. 46:16 JG: Well, Spock raised them. He wrote the book. Ask him if he is happy. The way they turned out. How did his kids turn out? I do not know. 46:28 SM: He has written a brand-new book. He is not too happy with some of the boomers. He is reevaluating- 46:34 JG: Who is he blamed? Their mamas did not read his book, right? 46:42 SM: The Barragan brothers, the two Catholic priests who are. 46:47 JG: Very principled men. They never wavered in their convictions. They were willing, like Harris to go to jail. And did. All I ask is that you be a standup guy, that you make a decision based on your consideration of the evidence, the preponderance of the weight of evidence and stand up and say your peace. And if in the saying of it, you must violate a law then be willing to take the punishment for it. 47:29 SM: It is almost like the same thing that Dr. King was professing during the nonviolent protests. He could not understand why people would not be willing to go to jail for protesting he was, and others said “I do not want to go to jail.” But that is part of being a nonviolent protester. 47:42 JG: I spent three years covering the last days of the Soviet Empire. And it was evil. Reagan got one thing, right. It was an evil empire. I covered the trials of Anatoly Sharansky and Ginsberg and guys like this, and I saw them stand up in the face of certain destruction, and yet clinging to a principle stand there and defy the weight of the most awful dictatorship operating on the face of this earth. And they brought tears to my eyes with their statements. Sharansky’s statement, he was convicted in this kangaroo court, without evidence without anything, he was just convicted. And they asked him made a terrible mistake. They said, “Do you have anything to say?” And we were not allowed in. His brother was there, committing to memory, the words that Anatoly Sharansky was saying to these people, and he walked out and spilled it. And he was crying, and we were crying. And it was it was this is my definition of a standup guy. If more people had done that, the dictatorship would have fallen a lot sooner. 49:19 SM: It is almost like getting back to the Vietnam War in terms of the healing. If there is more of an accountability right now on the part of those who did not serve, where they would be up front of and it is not like Jane Fonda, but they were upfront as to watch. And at the same time, show praise for those who did there could be even a greater healing here in America. 49:39 JG: Sure, you know, I mean, most of the Vietnam vets push to it will tell you “You did not go, you did not want to go. I did not want to go either. If I have been smarter, maybe I would have my folks had a little more money and could have kept me in college.” A lot of what ifs but essentially, there was not a lot to be learned in Vietnam from having gone. The only thing really to be learned there was the nobility of the guy in the hole next to you. The best people I ever met in my life; I feel sorry for people who did not go. Reporters and photographers. Sure. If you are my age, and you were not there, I look at you. And I wonder why. Did you ask to go? Did you try? Did you want to go but you could not get your boss to send you? That is one thing. But you were afraid of your life. And so, you did not go to the biggest story in the last half of our century. You did not go? This is, this is the movie of our generation. And when it happened, where were you? You were out buying popcorn or taking a pee? Where were you? Well, what did I get by going? The only the best friends of mine. The most loyal people that I know, guys, that if I made one phone call, would have a phone tree working like this. And if I needed 200 people out on my farm, for whatever purpose, they would be there tomorrow afternoon. And there are not too many people in this country that can say that. 51:34 SM: Not in 1996. 51:37 JG: When my wife died in January, and I took her home to Texas to bury her. And I was crushed. And I was standing in the family home, and I looked out the window and there stood a dozen Hispanic veterans in Vietnam. They heard they turned up. They had stood beside me before and they were there to stand. 52:07 SM: They care. 52:08 JG: They care. You want to know one other thing? 52:12 SM: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. 52:12 JG: The United States Army, the 1st Cavalry Division and the 7th Cavalry Regiments and uniformed delegations to my wife's funeral. So, if you did not go, what you missed was that what you missed was the most important thing in life. And I am sorry, I can forgive you. But I cannot give you that. You got to earn that. Where were you standing? Who were you standing beside? If you are in the mood in the mob, can you make a call today and have 200 people turn up to help you? You would be lucky to get one. So that is how it is. 53:09 SM: The Lyndon Johnson. How about Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara together in there? 53:17 JG: No, let us take them separately. Lyndon Johnson, I mean, it is hard to talk about the man. It really is. There was so much right about him and so much wrong about him, all in the same skin. He was the biggest bundle of contradictions of anybody I have ever seen. He was a liar. He was the quintessence of a Texas dealmaker. He would sell his mama, if it got him what he wanted. He wanted a lot of very interesting things. He wanted an into segregation. He wanted a fair deal for poor Blacks or Hispanics. He wanted somehow to lift them up. But he did not understand the basics of it. He did not understand that you have got to give the guy the tools with which he can lift himself. If you are pulling him up, he does not learn anything, it does not. You know, the heart of this city in the heart of every city in America is a legacy. It is the legacy of Lyndon Baines Johnson and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Hey, Nixon did not do that Anacostia, go over and take a look better have some door gunners. 55:14 SM: With those bad sections of town. 55:16 JG: Yeah. How would they get there? How come they are still sitting there? Where are they going? They got there because of Lyndon Johnson. Then that is the good part about it. The bad part is Vietnam. Where he started a war on the installment plan. “We will put a dollar on the table now and a dollar on the table tomorrow and $2 later, and we are going to defraud the American public. We know how many men we are going to send. But we are not going to tell them because they would not like it. We know how many billions upon billions of dollars we are going to spend. But we cannot trust them with that information, because then they will not vote for my programs in Congress, the Great Society programs. So, I am going to flim-flam then.” And nobody a better flim-flam artist than Lyndon Baines Johnson from Johnson City, Texas. So, what does he do? He sends divisions off to war to under strength. He knew early as November of 1965, that he was sending 500 to 600,000 Americans to Vietnam. And yet he could sit there and in his State of the Union speech in January of 1966 said, “We have no plans to increase the force.” He lied, he lied, he lied, and you go to hell for lying the same as you do for cheating and stealing. Robert McNamara-McNamara goes to the same lower level of hell that Lyndon Johnson goes to, and his sin is not only mendacity his sin is arrogance. He lied, he cheated, and he was proud of himself. This guy brought generals to their knees, whipped on them so hard they cried, and he did not have a clue what was going on, or how to make it change. He was a bean counter and he counted beans good. 58:06 SM: Body count, body count. 58:09 JG: Body count, every pernicious influence that Vietnam had tracks right to his fingers you know, I can almost forgive Lyndon Johnson just because he was at least entertaining. McNamara was not even entertaining. He was just evil. 58:33 SM: Bottom line, would you consider him just a bottom-line person? 58:37 JG: Oh, worse because the biggest bottom line of all he got wrong. What do you do if you if the-the accounting-accounting firm that is doing the books of Ford Motor Company or General Motors comes in? Wrong? What-what we do to him nothing? We gave him a nice fat job at the World Bank for 10 years. The son of a bitch that tried to throw him over the rail of the ferry boat to Martha's Vineyard. They should have left him go, okay. All he needed was another 10 seconds and old McNamara had been floating down there. 59:18 SM: That was in Hendrickson’s book, I believe. 59:22 JG: Yeah-yeah. There is a baby boomer who acted on his information and impulse and opportunity and more power to him. 59:31 SM: Couple other people, George Wallace. 59:36 JG: Well, on Wallace, another Southern politician, always far more complex than they appear to be on the surface of it. Doing stuff to get elected when they do not believe in it. Wallace, you know, came on like the biggest seg this country ever saw. And he was not that. He has got a whole lot of black friends and people are forgiving him right and left. 1:00:08 SM: What about Eugene McCarthy? 1:00:15 JG: McCarthy, white guy, smart guy, literate guy you know. The trouble politics in this country is if you want to want win, you got to get down in the mud with the pigs. And Gene McCarthy would not do that. Never did it. Well, he is neither did Adlai Stevenson, these kinds of cerebral guys do not usually win elections. 1:00:45 SM: What about George McGovern? 1:00:49 JG: McGovern, to me is the definition of one too many damn lawyers. 1:00:57 SM: But he was not a lawyer, though. He was a- he had a PhD in history. 1:01:04 JG: McGovern? 1:01:04 SM: Yes. 1:01:06 JG: Becoming lawyers around this town. He has gotten a law degree from somewhere. 1:01:10 SM: He is at the Middle East Studies Institute right now. That is where he is. But he got his PhD in South Dakota. He was just on our campus this past week, he was talking about his daughter, Terry, who died of alcoholism. And he got his PhD in history from University of South Dakota. They are building a library in his name right now there. Then he went off to Congress as, after he got his PhD. ran for office, was a congressman. Then he went on to become a senator. And so, he has, he has a PhD in History. Actually, no one ever calls him Dr. McGovern, because he is a senator, but he was a doctorate. 1:01:44 JG: Damn, I thought he was a lawyer. Sure looks like one. 1:01:48 SM: He is a pretty nice guy. 1:01:49 JG: Well, I have to give him a pass on being a lawyer then. 1:01:55 SM: Some of the other people from that era, Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. 1:02:00 JG: Once again, you are putting two guys together that ought to be considered separately. But Martin Luther King, the greatest orator or this country ever had. Spoken beautifully, thought beautifully. I wonder, what do you would think of the situation today? I wonder what Dr. King would think of Mayor Marion Berry. I wonder what he would think of a generation of black politicians who are the most pernicious influence [audio cuts] 1:02:47 SM: Dr. King? 1:02:49 JG: I wondered what Dr. King would think of a generation of his disciples who are now Black political leaders in the cities of our country. People like Mayor Marion berry of Washington, DC. And when I say they are political leaders, I am on being very kind. People like Barry and the Blacks who administer this city, are more pernicious influence in the lives of the poor Black people of this city than anything else I can think of. How does this come to be? How do the sons of Martin Luther King wind up wheeling and dealing and selling their own people down the river? In this city, there are about 90,000 people on a waiting list for public housing. And the waiting list is years long. There are at any given moment 30 to 40,000, empty public housing units, that this administration cannot manage to quit stealing the money long enough to fix so that those units can be put back in service. They are either so corrupt or so inefficient, or both, that they cannot do a simple job like fixing apartments so that poor woman and all our kids has a place to live. Now who are they hurting? Who are they hurting the most? They do not hurt me. They do not hurt you. They are hurting that woman and her kids. I think Dr. King would condemn them all to a hell they richly deserved and in ringing tones. 1:04:54 SM: And these are boomer African American leaders that are around the city now. 1:04:57 SM: You got it. 1:05:00 JG: I do not know Marion Barry, but I am disappointed in him though. 1:05:03 JG: Well, you have got a situation where they have to declare, essentially declare the District of Columbia School System, bankrupt, where they take it over and put one of my best friends as the CEO, General Julius Becton, find soldier. So, nowhere near a boomer generation, the man is 70 years old, joined the army in 1945, was a company commander in Korea was a battalion commander in the 101st airborne in Vietnam, who was fixed stuff, all his life. He is a builder. And they got to reach out and pull this man out of a richly deserved retirement to take on what is arguably the worst job in America. 1:05:57 SM: This gets off my questions. I will get back to the names again, we will talk about Malcolm X. You said a builder, this man who is coming into the city as a builder. When you look at the boomers, now you are talking about some of the African American leaders here in this city? Are boomers’ builders? Are they the people that bring people together to unite for a cause for the betterment of society? That is very generalistic terms? But though, that was the mentality on the college campuses, and we are going to- 1:06:26 JG: That was what they set out to be, but they did not end up that. They set out with ringing calls for change and revolution. And they do not even make good caretakers. 1:06:43 SM: Look at the life of Malcolm X, what are your thoughts on him? 1:06:48 JG: I do not think much about Malcolm X. I do not know that he was much of a force for good for his people. If his legacy is-is the guy out in Chicago now. If that is his legacy, what is it worth? A man who divides conquered by division. 1:07:18 SM: At the end of his life, though, a lot of young people, they look at his life as a person who changed because everybody knows that Malcolm was at one time in jail. He was a pimp. Of course, he was a follower, and he was also actually white men are devils that type of mentality. But then the last part of his life he changed when he went to Mecca, so some people look at that life as a person who liked change and he saw the good in everyone as opposed to just-just in black people. 1:07:51 JG: What did it get him? 1:07:52 SM: Got him killed. That was what it got. So, well, a couple of other people here and I have got I have got so many on the list, but these are kind of people from the era. 1:08:03 JG: Keep rolling. 1:08:06 SM: Ralph Nader. These are all names the boomers talk, and this is part of their life. These people were part of their life. 1:08:15 JG: Nader is quixote, I guess, still tilting at windmills? He has been consistent. The Soviets always admired consistency. They said, you know, “We do not care what you are as long as you are consistently that. We have a hard time shifting our view you know, so if you are, you are a son of a bitch as long as you are consistently a son of a bitch we can, we can live with you. It is when you-you bounce from side-to-side.” Nader is consistent. I do not know what his ultimate [inaudible]. He balanced the books on him at the end of his life, what he will have achieved in the long run. 1:09:15 SM: What about the people that were the musicians of the era? Certainly, even in Vietnam and music was played over there. People that have the generation, the Bob Dylan the Jimmy Hendrix, The Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, you name it the list go on and on. What-what are your thoughts about those people who performed the music delivered the messages. I know Country Joe and the Fish, boy, is he unbelievable. You know, when he came to Vietnam memorial, a couple of years back and he performed at the top of the wall and you probably there that day and-and I want to interview him, I am going out to California in the summer. And I want to interview him out at Berkeley because I think he has got an awful lot to say. Have you got his Vietnam album too? 1:09:45 JG: no. 1:09:46 JG: Oh, it is beautiful. He actually wrote a whole album on Vietnam. He has beautiful music and I think he did in the last four years. It is all music for the last four years. What are your What are your thoughts on them? 1:10:11 JG: Well, that is the soundtrack of our generation. That was the music that we heard in Vietnam, it was the same music that was heard in the streets here. Music and Musicians are a powerful force. Almost, I should say, as powerful as poets. Not quite, but almost, you know, the older I get, when I want to find truth, I look in the volumes of poetry not in the volumes of history. So, the musicians, they are out there. When I look at them, it is with a certain amount of sadness. Because so many of them burned their lives out so quickly on drugs. Their messages were mixed. They took their own advice too often and-and it killed a lot of them. 1:11:09 SM: Phil Ochs killed himself. Yeah. So, upset. He is disappointed in life, and he just did himself in. 1:11:18 JG: And that should not be, you know, the bar, just the poet's the musicians, they should be our optimists. They should be giving us a message that allows us to go forward, carry on. If they cannot find in their own music, hope what is there- 1:11:51 SM: If you think about, I do not think there has really been anything written on the musicians in depth, individual books, but looking at the musicians and their impact that time. It is just a couple other ones and that is Daniel Ellsberg. 1:12:10 JG: Ellsberg certainly performed a great service by leaking the Pentagon papers, documentary evidence of the lies that had been told of the bankrupted policy of which he was one of the architects. So, his one great act, was an act of leakage. 1:12:40 SM: Of course, Richard Nixon. 1:12:43 JG: Ah now, Nixon is such a complex man. He is one that I have a hard time forgiving. At least as hard as time as I do McNamara. This is the man who came to office to end the war and yet another 20-25,000 men died while he played politics, he and Kissinger, they all end up in the same level of hell with McNamara and Johnson. They really do. Their whatever contributions they made are so outweighed by the evil that they did. 1:13:34 SM: Do you feel that strongly about Kissinger too? 1:13:37 JG: Yeah, oh, more so with Kissinger. Kissinger was so smart. And then, and yet he would sacrifice anything for his own ambition for His own glory. I think about I really, when I went to Indonesia, the ambassador there was a man named Marshall Green, who had been in the Foreign Service all his life. A very honorable, decent man. He started his career in in the Embassy in Tokyo before on the eve of World War II. And he was the assistant secretary for Far East affairs, the year that Nixon and Kissinger decided to begin the secret bombing campaign and in Cambodia and to do the invasion- 1:14:43 SM: That was 1970, yeah, April 30th. 1:14:46 JG: Yeah. And they ran it by him. Sort of pro forma, you know, and he argued with, he said, “No.” He said, “This is wrong. This will achieve no purpose, except to destroy the Cambodian people. It will not alter the end of the Vietnam War in any measurable fashion, not by one day, not by one body. And it will not make the difference between winning and losing. It will be gratuitous offense against a bunch of people who are kind of a sideshow, they are out of it. Do not do it.” And they said, “Fine, Mr. Secretary, your objections are noted, we are going ahead.” And he said, “Wait a minute, maybe I have not been eloquent enough.” And he argued with them. And they said, “Okay, you have had your say, shut up.” And he went back and argued again, at which point they fired him. They made him the ambassador to Australia and made and finished his career as the ambassador to the World Population Planning Council. They destroyed a man, they destroyed millions of men, by their acts. Where do you find forgiveness for this? Where do you find a little wiggle room for a man like Kissinger or Nixon? 1:16:39 SM: It is amazing through the actions of all these politicians. And the effect they had on the young people who were growing up at that time, not only veterans who fought in that war, and everybody who lived in saw the war was run was against the war. And, of course, the Civil Rights Movement was going on at that time, too, so cannot forget about that. But the lasting psychological impact of this has had on us as a nation as well as Senator Gaylord Nelson said, the body politic. And he said, I interviewed Gaylord Nelson, who was against the Vietnam War, one of the first senators and he said “He does not know anybody who walks around with lack of healing on their sleeve was a boomer about the Vietnam War. But he did say that that war destroyed the body politic. And it has never been the same sense. 1:17:35 JG: It has not, quite right. You know, if you have to go back in our history, the only other event as-as divisive and corrosive to the American way of governing and being governed the body politic, as the senator said, you go to the Civil War, and there is the same depth of division, anger and bitterness in Vietnam than there was in that. Excuse me. And I do not know, you still get in a pretty good fistfight down the south over the Civil War. And we are 120 years past it. So how long does Vietnam last? How long is it an influence in the life of this country? You know, it could be long past, our lifetimes, our lifespans, and probably will be. I participated in the making of a documentary film. We took a dozen Vietnam veterans back to Vietnam and walked our battlefield in the company. 1:19:01 SM: I saw that. 1:19:01 JG: The man who tried to kill us, but when they were doing in studio interviews, I met [inaudible] daughter was one of the people carrying [inaudible]. And she gave the story of her father and what his death in battle did to her life. And at some point, Forrest Sawyer said, “Well, the book has been written, it is this close the circle.” And she looked at him like he was crazy. She said, “The story is not over. It is not over as long as I draw breath. That war killed my father when I was 17 months old, and it will not be over for me during all my life, nor will it be over during the lives of my children. So how long do we reach out? How long does it go? 1:20:07 SM: Last name I have here is actually two of them. Your thoughts on Spiro Agnew and what he was doing back here as the vice president and Gerald Ford, the partner. 1:20:22 JG: Oh, Agnew. He was he was such an inconsequential person. You know, I do not even think about it. He just does not matter. He did not matter, then he does not matter now. He was not even a good puppet. Who else was it that you asked about? 1:20:53 SM: Gerald Ford. 1:20:54 JG: You asked Gerald Ford, Gerald Ford. You know? I thought Gerald Ford was good man. I thought he was probably the right guy to be the caretaker president after Nixon. I wish he had not given out any pardons. I think Nixon, Kissinger should have been in a cell right down the road from John Mitchell and the rest of those guys. But you know, there was a cartoon that somebody good drew the day that Ford left office. And it was maybe Herb Block, I do not know. But it was very interesting. What he did was he had Ford up a ladder cleaning the seal of the President of the United States wearing a painter's hat. And when he started this, he was encrusted with filth and grime and-and it had him finishing up it was, it was back in shape. It was looking pretty good. And I thought that was a pretty fair, pretty fair estimate. You know, you can just as you cannot say anything about Spiro Agnew, because he was inconsequential. You cannot really say much bad about Jerry Ford. He was decent. 1:22:41 SM: He was a bad golfer. 1:22:42 JG: He was a bad golfer, but a decent man, a decent human being. And have we had a Spiro Agnew as the successor to Nixon? I am not sure that we would be sitting in the United States of America, the place might have come a fight. 1:23:00 SM: It would have, they hated him on college campuses. With one quick question here today, two the interview, the Vietnam War ended. Why? 1:23:13 JG: Why did it end? 1:23:14 SM: Yeah, why did the Vietnam war end? 1:23:16 JG: Because the American people had had it right up to their epiglottis. They had it with the coffins coming home. They had had it with the lies of the politicians they had it with the body count. Hey, we won. Because we killed 10 of them for every American, they killed. It is not a bargain; the American people knew. They knew it was not a bargain. And-and they wanted, they wanted it stopped. Not for what the kids were doing in the streets but for what that war was doing to our country. It stopped because the American people stopped it. They did not want it anymore. 1:24:13 SM: There are two or two or three issues that define a generation. Boomers, I think historically will always be attached to the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, even though the Civil Rights Movement was really strong in the (19)50s and the early (19)60s. 1:24:29 JG: Yeah, exactly. I would say- 1:24:30 SM: And actually- 1:24:30 JG: They had less to do with the Civil Rights Movement. What that was, that was a- 1:24:37 SM: Is not it interesting though, that a lot of movements came about at the time of the Vietnam War, the Women's Movement came about at that time. Of course, the whole you know, what happened about the Vietnam Memorial now. We have got the nurses being recognized at the wall. There were so many, I mean, the Native American Movement, the Hispanic Movement, there were so many movements happening all at the same time. And they were all protesting against what was going on in America. But it is like- that protest mentality really came about because of the Vietnam War and a few of the things that were happening on college campus respect to administration and not being allowed to do political activities on campus. So, there were some things in school too. But what is the lasting legacy? What do you think the lasting legacy will be of the boomer generation who are now reaching 50? Do not forget, they are, they are 50 years old, or from 34 to 50 right now. 1:25:30 JG: Yeah, well, there is still time for him to get their shit together. There is still time for them to leave some kind of legacy dividends for the stockholders of the Volvo Motor Company you know, I read the financial papers and I see them talking about “Well, the Boomers did not, have not saved any money but that is okay. Because their mamas and daddies are dying now. And they are inheriting their money.” And thank God their mamas and daddies did save. Is thisthis what you are going to say at the end? Well, they-they inherited some money. So, they were able to live okay. Even though Social Security went down the tubes and so did Medicare. You know, they got to get their shit together and get to work and fulfill some of their promises. You want to you know, it. I am 55 now. And for the last five, six years, my thoughts have really turned to trying to leave a legacy of a little better world for my sons who are 16 and 18. I would really like them to inherit a kinder, gentler world. And I pray every day that they will never know war as I have known it. That they will never see a young man dying in their arms as I have and see the life flow out of him, and you are helpless to do anything. I do not want that for them. I do not want that for any son and any daughter in this country. So, you know, what I guess I am saying is that- very good friend of mine died about three years ago, a guy named B. T. Collins. He was a California politician. He had been Jerry Brown's Chief of Staff. He was Pete Wilson's great friend. Now if you can do those two things. He was also a double amputee, lost a leg and an arm in Vietnam with Special Forces. Had his 100 percent disability pension. He could have walked out of Valley Forge Hospital, a bitter-bitter man and never contributed anything. Instead, he went off to law school and spent what was left of his life really, working harder than any three men I knew toward healing the body politic. Toward helping the helpless toward making the system work. Now nothing wrong with that. Nothing to say that the boomers cannot do that. In fact, what I am saying is that they should, and they ought and if they want to leave a legacy somewhere beyond that is something more than the headlines, sex, drugs and rock and roll, then they got to bend down and do it. They picked up somewhere along the way a reputation for selfishness. And it started at the beginning. They were too good to go fight in this war. That was the work of poor people, the children of poor people and the disadvantaged. We have a president in the White House today said” I will not risk my viability as a politician in the future by going to Vietnam where I might get killed.” So, we have them, the worst of the yuppie movement. And it was pernicious and is. “He who dies with the most toys wins.” These are not legacies. These are things to overcome. And I do not mean get out there and hug trees. I mean, get out there and do something for people. 1:30:41 SM: Good point because we talked about the yuppies. They live in certain sections of cities, a lot of them are boomers. Yeah, one of the basic premises, if I remember correctly, and when I was in college, “Money does not matter.” I heard that over and over again, it is not about money. It is not about it yet. 1:31:01 JG: And there they are. 1:31:02 JG: Yeah, some of them are still “Money is not meant anything to me. I have stayed in higher education my whole life, because-because of what happened.” 1:31:08 JG: Good thing it does not mean anything to you. 1:31:10 SM: Yeah. 1:31:10 JG: Yeah. 1:31:11 SM: But I am guilty. We had Congressman Penny on our campus. And he said that “The boomers just do not save.” And he said, “You know, something, Steve?” He said that “ I have not saved either.” Remember, Congressman Penny, you left a couple of years ago, a Democrat from Minnesota. He, he is not poor by any means. But I am saying he is raising five kids. And he says, “I am just part of the legacy. I do not save either.” And so, there is some truth to that. Nope, they do not save. 1:31:35 JG: They do not save. 1:31:45 SM: As if there is no tomorrow. And I do not know if that says something about the boomers that “I am going to live for today. Because there is no tomorrow,” I do not know. So. 1:31:45 JG: Well, then you get to be over 50. You better rethink your position. 1:31:51 SM: The last question, I am going to ask then we will be finished here. I might go over into the next little section here in the tape, that is getting back to the wall. In 1982, I think it was (19)82 for the opening? Are you pleased with what the wall has done for America? Not the Vietnam veterans now what it has done for America as a whole? Because it is pretty well known fact that anybody who comes to that wall, whether they were in the war, family members of someone who served in that war, or someone who died in that war, or someone who remembers their college experience during that war, or if they were working in a factory during the war, and did not go to college, all those flashbacks of where I was, come back, and then then the little kids are right there. And they say to their dad or mom, “Dad, what did you do?” Kids will always ask those kinds of questions. And I am wondering that-that is what it means to me. I have to keep going back because when I was a college student, you know, I guess there might be some sort of guilt that I wish I had served, but I could not serve because I had a severe asthma. And, and it was 1970. And I was in the hospital during the Cambodia invasion. I was graduating in 1970 at State University in New York at Binghamton. And I broke my arm and it was a very serious arm break, and I almost had it amputated and I was in the operating room for five hours, about two weeks before graduation. And everybody in my whole family was in the hospital and the Cambodian invasion was happening, April 30. That was April 30, 1970. I was in the hospital for two straight weeks, two days before I went under graduation. It was a magic moment for me, because the doctor who came in and after he had operated and saved my arms. And he said, “I wish they would shoot all those damn kids; I wish they would kill them all.” And I said, “As a college senior, who saw the tremendous divisions in America, I want to do something in my own small way to bring people back together again. So, I get real emotional about the Vietnam War, even though I did not serve because I care about Vietnam veterans. I have been working with them in Philadelphia since 1983. So, when I worked with him on the wall in Philadelphia, and we help raise money, it is a long story. But I wanted to do something in my own small way. As I said this to Jan once too. And I really said it to Lewis, when we took our students to the wall, to try to do the next phase to assist the process that began at the wall. And that is to write some sort of a book about this very complex era, in this very complex time. Pick some of the best people in America and ask them the tough questions and just let them reveal so that we can kind of heal as a nation, even beyond the Vietnam veterans. And I actually have an ultimate goal beyond this. The ultimate goal is I have been thinking that I may even go to Oliver Stone because I know Robert Groden, who was a consultant with the movie JFK, to get financial backing to bring to the university campuses of America and maybe to the town halls of America in two years, symposiums over a nine-month period, one per period, bringing back those who were for and against the war, people who serve in the war, just to try to bring them together to try to understand. Almost like the Jimmy Carter concept when he does have the Carter Center to bring the sides back. Just do something to help and assist. And I always quote in my own small way. So, my final question is-is this such an effort worthy of the effort number one? And just your overall thoughts, again, the overall impact that the wall has had on America beyond the veterans, because I know what-what the effect is had on the veterans? 1:35:56 JG: Well, it reaches far beyond the veterans for the simple reason that that I saw someone did an estimate that there are 40 million Americans who have some personal connection to a name in the wall. They were a college classmate, or- 1:36:17 SM: Me, too. 1:36:17 JG: They were a high school classmate, or you know, an in law, a sibling, whatever. 40 million Americans care about at least one of those names on that wall. So, they care about all of them. And what has its impact. The other thing that is operating there, and operated, you know, when they were doing the welcome home parades for the Gulf veterans, and they went far overboard and out of proportion in doing this, and I, you know, a lot of my friends called up and said, “I think I am angry about this.” And I said, “Do not do that. Because what they are doing is they are overcompensating because they did nothing for you. So, this is as much for you as it is for them. And so, you go on down to the parade. And, and you watch because this is America saying 20 years too late. Welcome home all of you. Welcome Home Vietnam veterans too.” And that was the way it worked in the parades. The young troops would reach and pull the veterans off of the curbs and into the parade. So, my counsel was “Let go of the bitterness, it is misplaced. The American people know what they did not do. And they are ashamed of it”. And the thing is where we come to, is that here we have a country where only three million win. And today, I would bet you that out there in the land, there are 10 million wannabes who are pretending that they did go. 1:38:32 SM: Really? 1:38:32 JG: What does this say? 1:38:34 SM: There are those types of people that say they are a veteran. 1:38:37 JG: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Any number of them. We detect them all the time. And then- 1:38:45 SM: That is the worst. 1:38:46 JG: That is, in our view, imitation is not any sincere form of flattery, but-but here today in this country, there are a lot of people who pretend to be Vietnam veterans. Now, this is not a sea change of attitude. I do not know what is. 1:39:09 SM: I had never heard that before. 1:39:12 JG: Oh, there are guys who specialize in debunking these frauds. And they turn up in amazing places, not a federal judge, but a high-ranking judge in Chicago, was presenting himself as a Vietnam veteran and Medal of Honor recipient and got an AO. 1:39:33 SM: People do not speak- 1:39:38 JG: The publisher of The Arizona Republic, Dan Quayle’s family newspaper, presented himself as a Vietnam veteran fighter pilot. False, got caught, got fired. 1:39:54 SM: Put it on the resume and the whole- 1:39:56 JG: Yeah. 1:39:56 SM: Oh my goodness. 1:39:57 JG: Yeah, politicians do it all the time. But worse, yet you have the guys who put on the kameez and put on medals to which they are not entitled, and-and go around presenting themselves and their opinions as those of Vietnam veterans. But what a distance we have come. 1:40:16 SM: Gosh. Yeah. 1:40:20 JG: To put Vietnam veteran on your resume would have been a guarantee 20 years ago- 1:40:25 SM: No job. 1:40:26 JG: That you were not going to get that job. 1:40:27 SM: That is amazing. Yeah, I just go to the wall. I have gone now seven times. And I call Jan's office and I get the pass. I take students there now. I am probably going to take some students there on Memorial Day, this next year, because we graduate late, I took three to Veterans Day last year. And I took students to meet- 1:40:46 JG: You have got to watch them. They have got a lot of frauds down there. 1:40:49 SM: Oh, at the, at the ceremonies themselves? 1:40:52 JG: Oh yeah, the wall. A couple of- three years ago, up turns a young lady, quite striking and attractive, who said that she was the daughter of Oliver Stone’s Sergeant Elias. And Sergeant Elias’s name is indeed on the wall. And she came to a meeting of the sons and daughters, the organization for children of men who were killed in Vietnam. Told her long and sad story and went down to the wall and full Apache regalia and did the burning of the feathers and all of this crap and-and I think she even made it onto the platform the year, the year after, and then shortly thereafter, it was discovered that the whole tale was just that, a tale. 1:41:52 SM: Oh my God. 1:41:54 JG: So, this is one more strange story in a town full of them. 1:42:02 SM: My goodness. I see a lot of people there every year. It is packed every year. I see the people talking, "Where did you serve," and everything. And they ask me. And everybody asks every time I sit there, except when I was with the students, they knew I brought students. And I said, "I did not serve." But I know back in 1983, when I first came to Philadelphia from California because I worked out there at another university, that I got to know the Vietnam veterans. Because we were going to do a program on the posttraumatic stress disorder with Dr. Harry Schwartz, who was at Jefferson Medical School. And I got to know Harry Gaffney and Dan Fraley, and Dennis Best, some of the Vietnam veterans are well known in Philadelphia who did the markings. And Harry said, "Steve, I am going to tell you right now, you are not one of us." But you have to gain the trust of the Vietnam Veterans. So, all the people that I invited, I met with 20 of the top Vietnam veterans, Wally Nunn, CEO in Philadelphia who was close to, I forget who it is, Mayor Rendell, whatever. But I had to be very open and at the outset, that I did not serve, and I told them why. And they said that was very important, first, to be honest, and open, and upfront about it. And then, the second thing is to try to put this program together and to show you care. And so, what we did, we did that program. And I got it on tape, too. It was a very good program. But it got to be so darn political, because Don Bailey would not shake the hands of the Vietnam veterans that were there, who worked so hard on the Wall. And I could not believe that here is a guy, a Purple Heart winner, and Don Bailey was a Purple Heart winner, yet he refused to go up into the room with Harry and Dan. And I could not understand the bitterness there when all they cared about was creating that Wall in Philadelphia. And I do not know if you have been to the Wall in Philly, but it is a beautiful wall. They have had a lot of problems with graffiti. People try to destroy. There is a lot of roadblocks to getting that property as well. Of course, Edison High School has the most people who died in the Vietnam War. So, it is a- 1:44:03 JG: A good guy you may want to go to go look up. I am reading the story. Someone handed it to me at the wall. It is a Denver Post story about a Vietnam veteran. He was one of McNamara's Project, 100,000 guys. These are the people where they went out and they lowered the standards. So, they were taking people with an IQ of 60 and below and making drafting them and making them soldiers and sending to Vietnam where they died at a rate three times higher than the average draftee. This is by way of they said, "Bootstrapping. We are going to help these guys out of poverty and out of the inner city. So, we are going to send them to the army." Well, this guy out in Pueblo, Colorado is one of those guys. And he is 100 percent disabled, unable to work. Launched a personal campaign five years ago, basically around the malls and the grocery stores with a can collecting dimes, and quarters, and dollars to build a Memorial. 1:45:23 SM: In Denver? 1:45:23 JG: Stones in Pueblo. 1:45:25 SM: Oh Pueblo, okay. 1:45:26 JG: With the 680 names of the Coloradoans killed in Vietnam, and this guy is barely functional, but he managed to go around to companies and get them to agree to help. He got someone to agree to engrave the names, somebody else to donate the stone. He went to the city council and made a presentation and got them to cough up 15 grand and bang they dedicated it last two weeks ago. 1:45:55 SM: An article in the Denver Post? 1:46:00 JG: Yeah, and on the day, they dedicated the Veterans Administration cut his pension in half because if he could do such a project surely, he could do a job too. 1:46:12 SM: Is that where we are today? 1:46:13 JG: Is that where we are today? You bet your ass. 1:46:17 SM: Yeah, I have got to get a copy. Do you know who? Is it the Denver Post of- 1:46:20 JG: Denver Post- 1:46:22 JG: People probably know by calling to get the- 1:46:23 JG: Call him. They got it. 1:46:27 SM: Any other lasting words of advice? Any thoughts on the boomer generation? 1:46:32 JG: No. I will let what you have got stand. I probably said too much too bluntly. 1:46:38 SM: No-no, that is what I wanted. 1:46:38 JG: And all I do is say what is in my heart. 1:46:41 SM: When I met with Jack Smith, I asked him “Who should I interview?” And he-he just said one name, you. That is unbelievable. 1:46:51 JG: Jack is a wonderful man. I do not know how he retained his sanity going through what he went through. I went through some stuff but nothing like that stuff. 1:47:09 SM: Yeah, he is, he is unbelievable. (End of Interview) Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Description 2 Microcassettes Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Joseph Lee Gallaway Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Gallaway, Joseph Lee ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource War correspondents; Vietnam War, 1961-1975 -- Journalists; Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988 -- Journalists; Iraq War, 2003-2011 -- Journalists; Authors; Gallaway, Joseph Lee--Interviews Description An account of the resource Joseph Lee Gallaway is a veteran war correspondent and an author. In his writing, Galloway covered conflicts all across the world, including the Vietnam War, the first Persian Gulf War, and the Iraq War. He is the co-author of the Vietnam War book <em>We Were Soldiers Once... and Young</em>, which was later adapted into a movie, <em>We Were Soldiers</em>. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996-11-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.5a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.5b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-01 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 107:13 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/4c1d5cc5d92084df980803ebff652780.jpg 2021b16fb5f19d50a5652641d521ad7b https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/a89bfb76433dc4421cefb44fec636591.mp3 5dcc4d932bfa66d4feb66eed88f7479a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-10-07 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed David Hume Kennerly Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;David Hume Kennerly is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and photojournalist. His portfolio includes photographs taken of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971. Kennerly photographed every American president since Richard Nixon.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15105,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">David Hume Kennerly is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and photojournalist. His portfolio includes photographs taken of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971. Kennerly photographed every American president since Richard Nixon.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Photography; Vietnam War; War photography; Rolling Stones; Supremes; Miles Davis; Ollie F. Atkins; Time Magazine; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Vietnam Memorial; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; Joe Frazier; San Francisco State; Protest; Rock n' Roll; Healing.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14281427}}">Photography; Vietnam War; War photography; Rolling Stones; Supremes; Miles Davis; Ollie F. Atkins; Time Magazine; Dwight D. Eisenhower; Vietnam Memorial; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; Joe Frazier; San Francisco State; Protest; Rock n' Roll; Healing.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 237:33 Subject LCSH Photographers; Photojournalists; Kennerly, David Hume, 1947--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: David Hume Kennerly Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 7 October 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:04): Testing one, two. Step two. I know some people I have interviewed have been on the cell phone and then their cell phone starts to go and then they go on the landline. So anyway. DK (00:00:15): This works. I hear you fine. SM (00:00:19): Okay. First question I always ask and I really want to ask you is the beginning, how you really became a photographer as a young man or a young kid. Your early years, the influence of your parents and your teachers, your high school years, where your love for photography first began. DK (00:00:41): Well, I am a native of Roseburg, Oregon, which is a really small town. It was called the timber capital of the nation, right in the middle of the forest in Douglas County. And I grew up in a place that I really wanted to get out of. I do not know, I had that feeling from way back when, I do not know exactly when it started. But my dad was a traveling salesman and so I would go around with him every now and then, particularly up to Portland, nothing exotic. But I got to look at the big city after my little town of 10,000 people in the whole area or something like that, I realized that there was a big world out there. And I had taken an early interest in photography, and when I worked on the student newspaper called The Orange 'R, my first photo published was in 1963, and I think I was a sophomore in high school then. And that really made an impact on me, seeing the work I had done. It was not a very good picture, but as I recall, it was a baseball player coming across home place. And on the scale of good photos, it was about a one on a one-to-ten scale. But what it did was it really got me excited about photography, and I learned how to shoot and process. I learned with a Speed Graphic camera. Actually, it was probably a Crown Graphic 4x5, and you only had a holder, it was two frames. And so, I can see why the old-style photographers were so good at getting the moment because they had to get it, you could not just turn the motor drive on and take a lot of pictures. So I learned the business the old-fashioned way, which was one shot at a time and you better get it right. And I started getting better at it. Then we moved from Roseburg up to West Linn, which is a suburb of Portland, in midway my junior year. And a lot of people would have really been terrified, angry, resentful about having their parents uproot them at that point, but I was deliriously happy about leaving this little town. And I convinced the people who were running the newspaper at West Linn High School that I should be on the staff and all that. And I pretty well sold myself as a much better photographer than I was. SM (00:03:52): [Inaudible]. DK (00:03:54): But at that point, because I was close to Portland, I had a lot more access to bigger stories and things were happening. And to shorthand it all, my senior year in high school, I was working on two local newspapers, small papers, one on Lake Oswego and the other in Oregon City. And my big score was I had a picture of a fire in Lake Oswego that was on the front page of the Oregon Journal, which was the big afternoon paper in Portland, and that really did it. I was fiercely determined to become a professional photographer probably from the time I was a junior in high school. And certainly by the time I was a senior, I was actually getting paid to take pictures for a local paper. It was not much. And when I graduated, I had a full scholarship to Portland State College, now University, and it was a working scholarship to take pictures for the paper. And that did not last too long. I had my eyes set on right down the street, literally two blocks, on the Oregonian and Journal. After I graduated from high school, I worked in a flower mill to get enough money to buy good cameras, and that had two effects. One, to help me buy the cameras. And the second was I knew I was not cut out for common labor, so I have great respect for those who do it, but it was not for me. And that fall, I started college but I was already trying to get into the Oregon Journal. And so later that year I was, I would have to think about this precisely... I was hired by the journal. I was a part-timer when I was 18 years old and while I was still going to school. I left school. I went to school for about a half hour and if it was dog years, because I had got a staff job on the Oregon's Journal, which was a huge thing. And I think the youngest photographer was probably 50 years old. So I worked and at that point, my career took off. I mean, there was no question about it. And I took a leave in (19)67, to go six months in the active duty as a National Guard. So I went to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri for basic training, then Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis after that, and then came back. And when I returned, I got a job on the Oregonian, which remains to this day as a very good newspaper. And then I was offered a job by UPI to work in Los Angeles in November in (19)67. I remember this because I had pulled up stakes and moved down to LA for UPI. And at that point, I was 20 years old and was really, I think probably ahead of almost anybody else my age in terms of working in the newspaper business. But all this is leading up to why I went to Vietnam. I mean, I was in UPI through (19)68 in Los Angeles. I was at the Ambassador Hotel the night Robert Kennedy was shot. And then I was offered a chance to move back to New York early (19)69, and I covered the World Series with the Mets that year and a lot of local news. I mean, working in New York is just the best place on earth for a news photographer. It's just [inaudible] and it was very exciting to me. And plus, it is the big leagues of photography. You had all these local newspaper guys [inaudible]. And it was still getting toward the last of the good old days of photography, certainly being digital by a long shot. And I mean the big innovation of photography was really going from the 4x5 to the 45 millimeter. That was as important a revolution I think, as going from film to digital. I mean, the digital's probably had a much bigger impact overall. But when you think about it, that small little image, which was poo pooed by the old guys. But when you look back at the Erich Salomon's back into the (19)30s, was shooting with that and it gave them much more versatility and discretion in their photography. So, I had already migrated to 35 millimeter as a senior in high school. And so, I went to New York and then I was offered a position at UPI in Washington DC, which was really the prime bureau for the wire service because of the White House, [inaudible]. The center of the power of the Earth was really Washington DC, and it was a very big deal. And I just saw it the other day, a certificate. I had my first ride on Air Force One when I was 23 years old as a member of the White House travel pool. SM (00:10:42): David, I want you to stop right there because I am going to go into some questions on that period in a couple minutes, but I want to go back to a second question. You are a- DK (00:10:56): Let me back up just a touch too. SM (00:10:57): Uh-huh. DK (00:10:58): Part of my job at UPI, because it was 1967, (19)68, there were a lot of anti-war protests going on. And even earlier than that, up in Portland, I was covering that side of things. Not as much as I probably would have liked, just because State College particularly was a high college. That had a lot to do with the anti-war movement. And the student body was very divided in terms of conservative, liberal. But I was right, because it started from the middle of that, so I was seeing a lot of the big protests. And then particularly when I got to Washington DC and that is where you can ask me questions, but I moved there and early (19)70, I believe. That sounds about right, or maybe in late (19)69. It was probably late (19)69, I do not remember precisely. And obviously Richard Nixon had just become president and it was a whole new ball game from the LBJ time, and of course the anti-war protests were building and building. And that was the home front of connection to Vietnam, certainly at that point. SM (00:12:33): You are a frontline Boomer. And when I say that, you were born in (19)47, and the frontline Boomers are really those born between (19)46 and (19)56. Because the Boomer generation's defined as the- DK (00:12:45): It's even more. I would say (19)46 to early (19)50, even (19)51, (19)52, because we were the ones looking down the barrels of this Vietnam War. Having graduated (19)65, which is a key date, (19)64. So, the Clinton, Bush, Gore guys were all born in (19)46, and they all dodged the draft essentially. No, Al Gore did. Strike that comment. SM (00:13:20): Yeah, he went to Vietnam. DK (00:13:21): Bush went in the National Guard and was a pilot, Clinton dodged the draft, and Gore went over to Vietnam, even though just for not a long time, but I always respected him for doing it. His dad definitely could have gotten out of that. And he was not a fighter, but he was like, "So what?" He went over, and I do not think he was there very long. But that group, me and the two years afterwards, I mean the crucible was the ones that graduated (19)64, (19)65, (19)66, (19)67, pretty much those four. Maybe even (19)68, although it was starting to draw back a little bit. But it was a five-year sweet spot, for getting your ass at Vietnam as a soldier. And part of my rationale in going into the National Guard was, I have always had a difficulty with authority and people telling me what to do. And so, I think I got into the National Guard, I was not opposed to war or anything like that. I was not even afraid of going to Vietnam per se, I just did not want to go as an army guy. And as a result of my being in the newspaper business, I had met Tom McCall, who was the Governor of Oregon at the Lime. Very colorful, interesting character. And just as luck would have it, I was over at covering something that he was doing visiting the Portland National Guard headquarters. And I had known McCall just by, he was really friendly with the press. And so I asked him to introduce me to the general who's in charge. And then later I went back over to Steve and said, "I am really interested in going into the National Guard, could I get my name on the list?" And so I had no family input at all. I mean, I looked at the Dan Flails and the other people who manage some family connections they get... And also, I do not even think it was a big waiting list there. It probably could have just happened [inaudible]. But I did, in my own way, I probably pulled strings for myself. And so, I got into the National Guard, went off and did my thing for the six months and then post for two weeks [inaudible]. The bigger problem I had then was getting out of the Army in order to go to the war, and that happened when I was in Washington DC. Do you have some questions? I will tell you what my motivation was. Do you have another question? SM (00:16:32): Yeah. Did you identify yourself as a member of the Boomer generation, and do you like that term? DK (00:16:39): I do not really care about the term one way or the other. No, I do not think any of us did. It's funny, one of my late close friends was Jeff MacNelly, the Cartoonist. And when I did a book, well I have done a few, but one of them was called Photo Op. And Jeff did the introduction to the book, Photo Op and he called it The Adventures of Baby Boomer: a Self-Centered Generation Comes of Age and Usually has the Name for it. To answer your question, no, I never thought of it enough. What was important to me, there were two things that I obviously I knew, I was 1-A in the draft and then I went to school. I think I got a student permit, but I did not want to stay in school. So being 1-A, and then I could be drafted. But my sole focus really was to become a news photographer, and that is what I was doing. And so really getting drafted to me, would have had a serious impact on that and I would not have been guaranteed to get a, although I probably would have become very prominent outside of the Army or whatever. In one way or another, I would have ended up in Vietnam no doubt, which did not bother me. But there was no guarantee I would get what I wanted. And so that is why I went the route of getting in the National Guard. Now the National Guard, it is almost a certain, with all those units being called up though, there is no hedge against going off to several tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, whatever. But back then it was, if you got in the National Guard or the Reserves, the chances are you were not going to go to Vietnam. So I did that. I was always calculated. Everything I have done in my career has been really about the career. Obviously, I was not afraid to go to Vietnam. So when I moved to Washington, what was happening at that point, and I can even go back and give you a single image that changed my life. Well, there is one other thing that happened in (19)66 when I was on the Oregon Journal, Robert Kennedy came to town campaigning for the local Democratic Congressional candidate. In fact, I think Edith Green was a member of Congress then, and one of the few women that had been in Congress. And I met Bill Eppridge and Steve Shapiro, two really great photographers. Bill was a LIFE photographer. And I was subjected to one of the great politicians of all time was Robert Kennedy, and it had not been that long ago that his brother had been killed. I think was in Roseburg then, I must have been. But I so vividly recall that, and I had never seen John F. Kennedy. I never saw him. So there was Robert Kennedy, and I had a really good spot. [inaudible] the LIFE guy showed me where to go, and it was very nice. But it is an image I will never forget. But that whole entourage, all the people and the two photographers and some national guys were with him. And this little makeshift motorcade went out to the airport. And back in those days, just go out onto the ramp, onto the field. So Kennedy went on. But what really struck me was these two photographers got on the plane and the door closed, then the plane backs out. It was like the final scene in Casablanca, where I am standing alone and the plane goes off into the far. And I wanted to be on that plane. I had such a visceral reaction to that. And here I was, I have never really been a small-town guy mentally. I mean, I think I am in terms of how I look at things, but I always wanted a bigger picture. And I think because of that moment, it really then made me to follow the path of covering politics. Of course, politics, was very closely aligned with war because the people, politicians sitting in a room somewhere [inaudible]. That is just how it goes. And that is a fascinating thing to know and to see, and very few people have seen it. When was the decision made to go to war here or to end the war there. But then the year before that, and I am skipping around here but now I am just thinking about, there was a story, a photo essay by Larry Burrows at LIFE magazine, and it was called Yankee Papa 13. And it was the story of a young sergeant Marine. It was really a day in the life, following this guy around. And the first images of them were sitting on the helicopter with his machine gun, and he has a huge smile on his face and all that. And what happened during the course of that day was that they went into rescue another chopper that is been shot down, so one of the crew people was killed. And the cover picture was this guy, the sergeant who a dead Marine laying in the foreground. It is just a very dramatic photo. But the most compelling image from that whole photographs, that still remains one of the great photo essays of war, was a very happy sergeant at the beginning. The last frame in the story was him in a little warehouse or something, crying with his head down, and was just all alone. It was just one image, even more than the cover image, this is considered a great photograph by me and others, but I think the more poignant on it was the one that got me. And between Robert Kennedy and Larry Burrows pictures, those two roads intersected for me. SM (00:24:07): And you were labeled, and I think I read that people call you a political photographer too. And you are proud of that fact, are not you? DK (00:24:15): Well, I do not mind that. I mean, the one term I just do not like really is journalist because it feels like changing janitors to sanitation engineers. It is the same thing to me. I am a photographer, I am a wired guy essentially. I mean, it really means you are the utility outfielder. You can cover anything, anytime, anywhere, whatever. Does not make any difference. "This is a food picture? Okay, I can do that." SM (00:24:47): I interviewed another photographer, a video maker a couple days ago who said she considered her camera a weapon because the pictures taken are an eyewitness account of what really happened on a particular day at a particular time for history's sake. No government can hide the truth. And as she said, "Pictures verify the truth so that nobody can say it did not happen." Do you consider your camera a weapon? DK (00:25:19): No, I do not think so. I mean, there is a great documentary which you must see called An Unlikely Weapon. Which is about Eddie Adams, the guy who took the picture of the General Loan shooting a DC in the head. SM (00:25:42): Oh, yes. DK (00:25:44): That documentary is an essential viewing for you, and it's called An Unlikely Weapon. I mean, maybe Eddie would have agreed to that. I do not look at it that way. I am not an activist. She's more of an activist, obviously. I am old-fashioned news guy, brought up in the business to be an objective observer as much as that is possible by people who really believed in that stuff. Nowadays, the lines have been so horribly blurred by comments like that, this weapon thing. I mean, I get it. And I have always thought that the power of photography is shedding the light and the corners that you would not otherwise see, and I am all for it. I mean, that is what journalism is really, or it should be. But it's not an activist weapon for me. I have never been that, I do not know, [inaudible]. SM (00:26:47): Yeah. Well, this person was an activist too. DK (00:26:52): Right. And that is fine. Everybody does it for their own reason. I mean, Jim Nachtwey is an activist, but he is a great photographer and he would be the first to admit that his camera could influence social change. And there have been a lot of great photographers, and that was their mission. Eugene Richard. Unabashedly so, I am just not like that. That is all. I mean, I am criticized for being who I am because I do not take a more political view of things. But I had it drummed into me. In fact, when I am asked if I am a Democrat or Republican, I say I am a photographer. SM (00:27:34): Very good. I love that response. DK (00:27:39): But that is very fouled out. I mean, I am no different now than I was before. And I worked in a Republican administration, but I honestly, I would have that same relationship with a Democrat who became president. I would have worked for him. It did not matter. In fact, let us fast you forward. By the way, the President Ford one. I had been working for him for three or four months. We're alone in the Oval Office talking about how he had been a good Republican all of his career and all he wanted was to be Speaker of the House. And there he was in the Oval Office and he looked at me and said, "I have never asked you. Are you a Republican or a Democrat?" Then he said, "Do not answer that." He did not give a shit. But that was our relationship. It was a human relationship, not a political relationship. And I think one of the problems now is that everything is so political. And even if you declare anything. If you say, "I am for Jerry Brown," or, "Meg Whitman," just say here in California now, it's like, "How can you do that? You're such a dumb shit." Whatever point of view you had, it just would not make any difference. And so I do think pictures speak for themselves, and this idea of the camera as a weapon, I think is contradictory to be honest with you, from my point of view anyway. But that is someone else's point of view. That is what they said, that is fine. We all do our own thing and I am all for it. So back to my path to Vietnam because I can remember, and there's another movie analogy here which is equally old-fashioned. But because I was the Baby-Boomer generation without even thinking of it that way, all I knew was that kids that I had gone to high school with and graduated, now were going to Vietnam and getting killed. And I also saw the photographs, and arching back to Larry Burrows, 1965 was early on in the war, but already these striking images are being made by great photographers. From Robert Capa, who was the first photographer killed in Vietnam 1954, released in that conflict, I guess where you would put a pin in that somehow. But I am seeing Eddie Adams' photographs of General Loan shooting the guy. I am seeing John Olson's pictures of the fighting [inaudible]. Catherine Leroy's photographs, and Sawada's picture of UPI, won a Pulitzer of the woman with her family coming across the river. And Toshio Sakai's picture won a Pulitzer for UPI. [inaudible 00:30:52] won the Pulitzer. Malcolm Browne for Burning Monk. And all these fabulous, probably a bad word, but these fantastic, yes, amazing photographs are being taken off to his war. And I am on the sidelines and the people fighting the war were my age. And basically, the photographers, I think for the most part were a little bit older. Although John Olson and I are the same age. He was with Stars and Stripes at the time. But all of a sudden, I started feeling like, and you will understand this analogy, although no one else does. I gave a lecture at USC the other day, they had no idea what I was talking about. But I was like, "I felt like Mr. Roberts on the supply ship watching the destroyers sail into battle." SM (00:31:48): I know that feeling. DK (00:31:49): "On the supply ship in the backwater and wanted, as a naval officer, to be on a destroyer, to be in the action, to be on the front line of what was happening." And so, I had this rather profound moment where I felt like I am going to miss the biggest story of my life and it is my generation's story. And if I do not go, I will never forgive myself. And I know that is how I felt about it. It was not to go out there for the glory of being a combat photographer. So, I started lobbying the guys in New York. And here I was, I already was doing a job that most people would go to a war in order to try to get something like this, to cover the White House, which I found boring. And it was also restricting [inaudible]. And I quite frankly hated it. And so, I just felt that I had to go to Vietnam, and so I convinced UPI to send me. And now this was late (19)70, and then I was going to be then going over early (19)71. And things were drawing down, the American involvement was being cut back, but there was still a lot of action. So they decided to send me over there. I was being such a pain in the ass about it that it was better for them to send me over than to listen to all my bullshit all the time. And so, the last assignment I had covered before I left for Vietnam was the Ali, Frazier fight at Madison Square Garden in March 8th, 1971. And what is ironic about that fight is that the next day was my birthday, March 9th, and I had the front page of New York... DK (00:34:03): I had the front page of New York Times, New York Daily News, practically every paper in the country. I was the only photographer that got the photo of Ali in mid-air, getting knocked down on the 15th round. SM (00:34:11): Wow. DK (00:34:12): What's funny is that picture is also part of my Pulitzer Prize portfolio, which was for photography. It was not just Vietnam, it was the whole year of 1971. It was coverage from that year. The centerpiece was Vietnam, but I also covered the India-Pakistan war, and I was in Cambodia. Then that fight too, which would be my outgoing thing. What happened before I got over there was that my photo hero, whom I had never met, along with Kent Potter of UPI, whom I was going to be replacing in Vietnam, and Henri Huet of AP and Japanese photographer, Shimamoto, I think his name was, of Newsweek, were on a helicopter that was shot down over Laos in the Lam Son 719 strike invasion, and were all killed. I got to be honest with you, that scared the shit out of me. SM (00:35:16): Yeah. DK (00:35:18): That all of a sudden, even though I did not know Burrows, I was going to replace Kent Potter, Larry Burrows was really my motivation or his photos were the foundation of my interest and respect for war photography. All of a sudden, all these guys are dead. Henri Huet was one of the great survivors, AP guy, French Vietnamese guy. All of a sudden, I did not have second thoughts, but it really scared me. I was like, wow. It increased my resolve to do it. It was not like I was not going to do it, but it really made it... It was not just a pedestrian thing at that point. It was really now a serious matter. Pedestrian is not the right word. It was something that I had not thought about that much. Yes, you can get killed. I knew that conceptually, but when I really saw it happen, then that was a different deal. I ended up in Vietnam and probably got there the end of March, 1971, stayed for a little over two years. SM (00:36:40): Yeah, you were right in the combat zone. I have seen your pictures. I have the book, I think it is Shooter. [inaudible]. DK (00:36:48): Shooter was the first one. Yeah, Shooter, and then there was a photo op for those cartoons of McNally are in there. SM (00:36:56): Right. You took some unbelievable shots. I am asking, do you remember the exact moment? You probably do. You took a lot of pictures, but the single soldier on the hill, which was an unbelievable shot. You took another shot of, it was kind of a jungle, and you could see through the jungle, the guy walking through there. DK (00:37:17): That was a different place. Actually, those pictures, they are a good combination because one of them just shows the lush area in which we were operating sometimes, or just a blown away hillside. The guy walking over the hillside was the photograph singled out from my portfolio, showing the loneliness, desolation of war. That was a good picture. I remember the day I shot it because it was so dangerous up there. That is the contradictory part of it, is you do not really see that many good combat action pictures because everybody's down. It is really aftermath or either the prequel or the sequel. It is never the main act usually. SM (00:38:18): You were right out there with them, and they accepted you. In that particular war, photographers could go right with the guys. I know Joe Galloway got on a helicopter for the Ia Drang valley when he was a reporter. You ate the same food, you had the same risks. Did you ever feel that you had, like Joe did, that you had to pick up a gun to save your life? Ever have that experience? DK (00:38:44): Yeah, I did. I did. It was really just ... As a kid in Oregon, I grew up shooting, hunting, everything from pheasants to quail, occasionally deer, which I never liked doing that much, but I was a good shot. In fact, I had an expert ... When I was in the army, I was an expert rifleman because I knew how to shoot. It was no big deal to me, just a different kind of a gun or weapon, I should say. Get your ass kicked the saying gun. Anyway, I have never been pacifist in that regard at all. I liked the hunt. I used to, I do not now. Nothing against it. One night I was at a place that was going to be overrun by a Vietcong attack, and somebody shoved a gun into my hand, and I was shooting back because it was nighttime. During the day, I would not have done it because I could have been taking pictures. But at night, if we were overrun, I was going to die. Self-preservation takes the priority over any other item really. SM (00:40:06): What were some of your other favorite shots in Vietnam? DK (00:40:10): That was unusual. Before, apparently, there were some photographers who would carry guns with them. I never did that. I thought that was a mistake. SM (00:40:19): Were there other favorite shots that you took in Vietnam that stick out? DK (00:40:24): Another one ... The only reason I know what photos are in the Pulitzer portfolios ... I was in Vietnam when they announced that award, and I had not even known I had been nominated for it. You can imagine the shock. There was definitely no anxiety because if I had not won, I never would have known I had been entered. They entered the editors at UPI, Larry DeSantis and Bob Schnitzlein were the two guys that did it. When I heard about it, then I was being asked all these questions about the pictures. I had no idea. I did not know. It was only about three years ago, I went up to Columbia where they had the Pulitzer archives and everything, and they had the box there with my entry in it. I went into the box, and I looked at it. Half the pictures. I did not even realize were in the portfolio. I mean you could just as easily say the photo of Ali won the Pulitzer prize, but the one they picked out, the picture of the guy going over the hillside was the one. That got published widely because of that. The citation said the pictures show the loneliness, the desperation of war. There were all these other pictures in there. One of them was a combat action picture of these two soldiers evacuating, carrying a wounded comrade off the battlefield. Another picture I always liked was near Khe Sanh, although Khe Sanh was [inaudible] as we knew it, but it was still a dicey area up there. The soldier bent over a machine gun with a cross dangling from his neck, and that was a good visual. It was symbolic too. The guy, the lone soldier, it was another lone soldier really. Much has been written about combat is 99 percent boredom and 1 percent sheer terror. That is not the quote, and that is it. You sit around, and you're anxious and tired and nervous about what might happen, and sometimes it does. To me, many times the anticipation of what might happen was worse than what really did. Not always, but sometimes. The cover picture of Shooter was during a very serious firefight and Dirck Halstead took that picture. He's another guy you should talk to by the way. SM (00:43:44): Yeah, I saw that. Do you think he would respond to talk to me? DK (00:43:47): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hehas been teaching down at UT. He would be a great guy for you to talk to because he was there when the Marines landed in [inaudible]. Eddie Adams was there too. So Dirck can give you ... He was there when the war ended. Perfect guy. He is very articulate about it too. A good storyteller and has a really interesting point of view about it. He is an old-fashioned photographer like me, former wire guy. He and I worked together at UPI. He is the godfather of my eldest son and really was my mentor. I will give you his contact info. I am sure he will be happy to talk to you. I would do it ... Dirck's probably 10 years older than me, but he has got a ... You have guy who was there when the Marines landed and was there when they lifted off from the embassy. SM (00:44:46): In 1975, yeah. DK (00:44:53): All that and everything in between. Dirck shot that picture of me, and that was one of those occasions where we almost did not get out there alive. Galloway, Joe's an old friend and his Ia Drang experiences, I cannot imagine anything more terrifying than that. Everybody had their own war. It is like if you talk to a hundred people, you get a hundred different stories and points of view. If you walked down the street in a village, and you took a right turn instead of a left turn, you went into a different story than if you had gone the other way. It is like everybody's story was personal. When people write about the big picture ... There are some writers who have done good works that were not there because they ... It is like being a political cartoonist. You do not have to be there to put it into perspective necessarily, but the people who were there, like Bernard Fall, still to this day, one of the best books on Vietnam, Hell is a Very Small Place, and guys like ... It goes on and on, Halverson and other people. SM (00:46:16): Neil Sheehan. DK (00:46:19): Sheehan is another former UPI guy. The book he wrote, A Bright Shining Lie, that is one of the good [inaudible]. SM (00:46:31): Stanley Karnow's Vietnam, too, was another great one. DK (00:46:34): What is that? SM (00:46:35): Stanley Karnow's Vietnam. DK (00:46:42): There are just tons of good ones. To me, the best ones are by the people who were there, of course because it is like being a good photographer somewhere, where you can translate what you see, and a good writer can do it with words. Rarely do the two come together. I see writing as ... It is so difficult, but I wrote Shooter. Everything I have ever done, I have written myself. It's the good news and the bad news probably. SM (00:47:16): What was- DK (00:47:18): Observations are really ... The marriage of those two is really great. Or you will take a good photo like Phillip Jones Griffith, who did Vietnam Inc I think it was, but writing ruined a really good bunch of pictures to me because it was so biased. It detracted from the photos. Sometimes you just should let the pictures tell the story and stand out of the way. SM (00:47:52): Good point. DK (00:47:52): By interjecting opinions, Philip, who was a really good photographer, did that. You should look at that book and see what I mean. SM (00:48:05): One question I have here is, and last one really on Vietnam, was what was Vietnam like when you were there? Did you see the divisions that were taking place in America between black and white, the issue of the drug culture, soldiers questioning their leaders and their strategy, believing that the war was a mistake while they were fighting it? What did you see and hear on the bases and in combat? Was what was happening in America happening there? Were the troops also aware of the student protests and even the Vietnam veterans against the war became a very big topic. DK (00:48:44): Yeah, but when you boiled it down, those kind of ... Number one, I got there ... This is kind of a funny story, but Eddie Adams, who was a prime competitor of mine because he was AP, I was UPI, before I left for Vietnam, he told me that I was too late, all the good pictures had been taken. One of my highest possessions is that after I won the Pulitzer Prize, that Eddie sent me a cable that said, "I guess I was wrong. Congratulations." SM (00:49:35): Well, that is an anecdote. DK (00:49:35): For him to do that was a very begrudging act too. I will say it. I did not see it so much. I was on fire base for now, but again, they were drawing down Americans there at that point. It was not the (19)69, (19)70, that was really (19)67, (19)68, (19)69, were probably the three biggest years, and then they started pulling them back in. The Americans were becoming more in an advisory role, not so much frontline combat, a little bit. I mainly covered the Vietnamese side, so I do not recall really ... You would see guys wearing peace symbols and all that to some degree. The black soldiers in my estimation got along fine with their white... SM (00:50:45): What is really amazing, you have this on your website, and it is the quote from James Earl Jones, and said that, "David Hume Kennerly is like Forrest Gump, except he was really there." You seem to be everywhere. You start out in those early years, taking pictures of musical entertainers like the Rolling Stones and The Supremes and Miles Davis, unbelievable stuff. Those are icons of the Boomer Generation. DK (00:51:20): I know, but you know what, I never ... this is kind of bizarre actually. I once had a ... By the way, I think James was just being funny. It was a funny quote that ... I appreciate it obviously, but I think I would be more of a [inaudible] thing surely. This little remote voice, the guy in the background, that it is always critical events that I have a camera with me. It could have gone a lot of different ways for me because I worked nights at the Oregon Journal. I guess if I were ... The Rolling Stones' first trip to America, The Supremes, they got all the big acts at the Portland Coliseum. Igor Stravinsky, Miles Davis. Some of the pictures I did in (19)66 were just these ... Not that they were the greatest shots, but they were good pictures, but nothing better. I could very well have taken that Rolling Stone magazine route, that if I really had an interest in rock and roll and music and that whole lifestyle and everything, I could have gone down a different road just like the left or the right in Vietnam. Just depends on the fate would have it. I was so concentrated on me, more important things, it was not sports photography. I was pretty good at that too. It was not rock and roll or certainly not entertainers or movie stars. Did not interest me. The conversations I had with politicians were always much more interesting than movie stars. When I look through my photos and my experiences with photographing like a film celebrity of some kind, or a Robert Kennedy or a Bill Clinton or whomever, that the best stories I have almost always had something to do with substantive matters, not with the illusory Ones.0 when I photographed celebrities, it turns out to be an empty box of memories usually, outside of a few good pictures of them, because I just do not recall anything that interesting about them. That is not to be critical, but itis why I never did the showbiz route or the rock and roll route. It would have been more fun than getting shot at in Vietnam or slogging through a rice paddy or being dehydrated in India-Pakistan war, almost getting killed. Anything. Would have been more fun than that, but that is what I wanted to do. SM (00:54:15): A couple things, you covered the POWs when the last POWs were coming home from the war. I think that was (19)73. You went to Hanoi I believe. DK (00:54:28): That right, and that was the last... SM (00:54:29): That is a major, major happening, and then that picture that you took in Cambodia, the little girl. We knew what was happening with the Khmer Rouge. I think it is really ... When you state underneath your picture you do not know if she even survived the onslaught of the Khmer Rouge. That is an unbelievable picture. DK (00:54:54): That one also won a World Press contest. That won portrait division of World Press in (19)76. It was taken in (19)75, right before Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, with the dog tag and all that. I have no idea what happened, but I will tell you that picture in the haunting image category, that probably ... I think about that picture probably more than anything else I have done. SM (00:55:29): It is her eyes. It is her face. DK (00:55:35): It is really about the wars. It is not about the soldiers, the politicians, but really when these things happen, it is the kids and the innocents who suffer the most and have no idea what's going on or why all this is happening. It really is a brutal existence. I think that is why that picture has some resonance. SM (00:56:02): Did you fly to Hanoi? How did you get the Hanoi to cover and take pictures of the POWs? DK (00:56:09): Well, they had let in actually ... That was two weeks after John McCain and that early group of POWs had been released. There was a prisoner of war facility called the Plantation. It was not the Hanoi Hilton, which had been downtown, an old French jail. That last group were some B-52 crew that had been shot down like six months earlier. They basically had been well treated compared to McCain and those other guys because the war was kind of grinding to a halt. They let a few select people in, and I flew in on a chartered Air WOW plane from Dien Bien into Hanoi. It was Walter Cronkite and his crew and a couple of other photographers, and they took us over and let us take pictures of these guys behind bars. Then they later bused them out to the military airport in Hanoi and released them. I got that, and yeah, it is a shocking situation to see these fellow Americans in their rice pajamas behind bars. I felt kind of self-conscious about taking pictures of them, but that was my job. SM (00:57:45): David, let me switch my tape here. I got to turn it over here. Hold on a second. Okay, let me see here. Hold on a second. All right. When I look at that quote from James Earl Jones, I kind of wrote down... Okay, I saw the movie Forrest Gump, and I saw Forest Gump in Vietnam and saw him with Richard Nixon, so I put down some of these, what I consider some of the major things that you did and the events you were at to take pictures. I know you have already talked about Bobby Kennedy, but the first one I wrote down here was when you took those pictures of Bobby at the Ambassador Hotel and all the atmosphere, the happiness. I saw it on TV. You were taking those pictures, but you did not go back into that area where he was shot, I guess, or did you? DK (00:58:47): Well, no. What happened was ... It is funny. It was sort of like the Ali-Frazier fight. The reason there are not any other pictures of him doing that V sign, he just raised his hand up and put it down. It was so fast, which I did not even realize until many years later when I saw the film. There was another photographer there from UPI, and we flipped a coin to see who would be up on the podium, and then follow him because he was going to another event. It was an overflow ballroom [inaudible] there. I lost the flip, so my friend Ron Bennett went back with him. That is normally how you cover stuff, somebody's on the riser, somebody's closer in, or I would have been back there with him, and I have no idea what would have happened if I would have gotten the pictures. I have no idea. The one thing I knew was I always had a flash. Again, going back to that be prepared news shooter thing. Anyway, he went back. Then when I heard what had happened, just all of a sudden everything changed, and someone said a shooting had happened and all the rumors. I went out in the back, and the ambulance was there, and I got a picture of Ethel in the back of the ambulance because the instinct is just go right toward the action, whatever it is. Try to get it. It really was a horrible night. It was actually someone that I had ... I had been upstairs with him. I have a picture of me and Bobby Kennedy that was taken less than an hour before he was shot. Upstairs, I was invited up because I knew Bill Etheridge was there. That goes back two years. He was there with him. They had that incredibly haunting photo they took in there of the ... That was a TV light and just that guy, the waiter bending over him. SM (01:01:04): Yes-yes. DK (01:01:07): I think it was so personal, really, that somebody I would met and talked to had now been shot. That was the [inaudible]. SM (01:01:15): Did you hear the bullets? DK (01:01:17): No. No. SM (01:01:18): Okay. DK (01:01:18): I did not. Big crowd there, a lot of people there. SM (01:01:24): Yeah. The second one that I brought up was, you mentioned it, was the coverage of the New York Mets and everybody, from last to first. Being an Atlanta Braves fan and them knocking off my Atlanta Braves in the, I think it was the best of five series at Shea Stadium. Covering that event, here it is in the 19(19)60s with all the problems, and here you have got this team who was atrocious, and then all of a sudden, the next year they become world champs. What a story. DK (01:01:59): The amazing Mets. SM (01:02:02): Did you get to know all the players? DK (01:02:04): I covered them all year. As part of a UPI photographer, sports was always one of the main things you had to shoot. Yeah, I had the first base dugout position during the World Series and- SM (01:02:19): Oh my gosh. DK (01:02:20): I was only 23 years old. I was sitting there next to Sports Illustrated guys. It was not like now, where you have 10 jillion photographers. Then it was like AP, UPI, New York Times, the Daily News, Sports Illustrated at that point. There were not that many. There Was third base dugout, first base dugout, these positions right next, so there were designated spots, but those were the best. You could not have a better place to see the ballgame, but all I am worried about is the pictures of it. To me, it's like, okay, it is the World Series. That ramps up the intensity of the moment, but I have always responded well to that. The pressure never got in the way of a good picture. SM (01:03:19): When I saw that you had taken pictures, I was just doing flashbacks of (19)69 because the Cubs were doing so well, and then they overtook the Cubs, and then they beat the Braves, and they beat the Orioles in the World, Series. When you have like Gil Hodges, and then you had Seaver, Koosman, Ryan, Mays, Charles, Kranepool, Jones, Agee, Swoboda, Weis, Grote, and JC Martin, Gentry. I will never forget Wayne Garrett. He was on the team, and he hit a home run off Pat Jarvis in the Braves Series. DK (01:03:53): I have a baseball signed by all those guys you just mentioned. SM (01:03:57): Wow. DK (01:03:58): At the time, including Gil Hodges and Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Yogi Berra was their coach. They had Donn Clendenon. SM (01:04:11): Oh, first base, yes. DK (01:04:15): Right. I had a lot of really good pictures, and one of the best was after the whole thing was over with. I have a picture of Tom Seaver, and I think it was Gary Gentry. They came out after everybody left, and the field had been torn up. There were just these pieces of sod everywhere. People were just crazy. He's still got his uniform on, his shirt out, and he's like standing on the pitcher's mound, looking down. I was the only person that was out there. That picture stands out in my mind, the aftermath of it all, in a real unusual situation, which has been emblematic of my kind of photography. I have always been attracted to sort of the Pulitzer thing, loneliness, desolation. My book, Photo du Jour, you see a lot of that in there, picture a day in the year 2000. That is all part of it. SM (01:05:20): Yeah. Then you covered the resignation of Spiro Agnew, and then of course, the selection of Gerald Ford to be the VP. Your experience of taking that picture with Time Magazine, and you began your close relationship with President Ford. Could you talk about covering Agnew's and then of course that whole period of Nixon leaving? DK (01:05:45): When I came back from Vietnam, Watergate was the big story. I came back in, not sure exactly when, but I think it was like June, July, somewhere. I made a detour. I left Vietnam, although I kept going back. I lived for a while in Hong Kong, a while in Bangkok and then Paris and then back to the States and really, right into the full-frontal hurricane that was Watergate. Agnew was part of that story, although he was not really related to Watergate per se, but it was all part of the trouble that was brewing. Time Magazine assigned me to go follow him around, which was not easy because he hated the press for one thing. Those nattering nabobs of negativism. SM (01:06:51): Yes. DK (01:06:51): You know who wrote that? SM (01:06:53): Pat Buchanan? DK (01:06:53): Yep. SM (01:06:54): Yeah, I figured. Yep. DK (01:06:57): Actually, Agnew, it was impressive he could even say that. That is not [inaudible]. Anyway, I cannot say it. Then he resigned, and my classic photo of him was really the day after he resigned, in the back of the limo. It was up in Maryland. It was actually a funeral, might have been for his mother or something. That picture ran in Time. I cannot remember how much after that, not too long after, Nixon designated Ford. As I recall, it was like a Friday afternoon. I went up to take his picture up at the House. He was minority leader of the House and very friendly. Let me come in, said you're wasting your time. I took this picture with window light. That night, Nixon announced him- And then that night Nixon announced Tim, and then my picture was the cover of the magazine, the new number two, at which point Time assigned me full-time to cover Ford, which really the glory days of magazine journalism because nowadays Time Magazine does not even cover overseas presidential trips. The budgeting has gotten so bad. There are a lot of pictures not being taken as we speak every minute, every hour, because of budgetary problems in the business. Newsweek is going under us. US News is really more about lists of big colleges or hospitals. Time still remains number one, but there's no way... And somebody commented on this recently, that looking back through all my photographs, everything from Vietnam to the Middle East to Jonestown to whatever it is, that there is no way that a publication would send people off to cover stories like that anymore. As an individual [inaudible], there is no way. They cannot afford it and they do not even think about it, and honestly, I think everybody is settling for a lot less now in terms of photographic quality. And it's being replaced by somebody with a flip camera or a camera phone, snap, and that is good enough. And that is really part of the deterioration of... It does not mean there are less good photographers out there, it is just they are not traveling into the center of big stories the way they used to. SM (01:09:56): You became so close to President Ford and his family because he picked you as his personal photographer. And I love the terms that you gave them before you took that position, is that he would report directly to him, which was I think very important in that relationship. When you look at the time that he became president, the boomer generation, it is maybe the most historic time in their lives because of Watergate and the pressure that President Ford had to be under after Nixon left. And when you look at all of these things, not only the resignation, but then he pardoned him and he had to go before Congress. He separated the United States from Vietnam on April 30th of (19)75. And then of course he lost to Jimmy Carter, and then there was the whole Ford Carter debate. I remember living in San Francisco at the time when he had that blunder about Eastern Europe, and then a lot of people made fun of him because he golfed and he would hit a golf ball into the yard. There is a lot of things during that timeframe, but what was it like being every day around this president with these such historic events happening right around you? DK (01:11:16): Well, going back to my initial conversation, I lecture all the time about... My latest, one of the lectures I gave, I did it over at the Aspen Institute, and this year was the presidential [inaudible] from Lincolnville [inaudible]. But I was only the third civilian chief White House photographer, and the first was Yoichi Okamoto with Lyndon Johnson who had great access that was really the standard by all of us who followed him. Well, maybe not all, but most of us had looked to Ollie or rather Yoichi as the gold standard in presidential photography. He was the godfather of White House photography for me. And then he was followed by Ollie Atkins, who had frankly no access and a really difficult period. It was like, "Okay Ollie, that is enough. A couple pictures and then you are out." And I knew this because I covered the Nixon White House at 27 years old, and as someone who would just come back from Vietnam and [inaudible] there, et cetera, et cetera. The White House photographer job did not mean that much to me to get it, just to sit around and have somebody tell me when I can go in and out of the Oval Office. The night that Ford became president sitting over in his house with Alexandria, just the two of us after he had a few family friends come by and he had asked me, invited me over and asked me to stay after everybody left. And we had this conversation in his living room, and he said, "Well, you were going to be White House photographer. How do you see that job?" And knowing what frustrations Ollie had, I said very directly to him that I would do it on two conditions. And that one is that I worked directly for him, meaning not for the press secretary or the chief of staff, that I report directly to him, and that I have total access to everything going on, whether it's national security, any kind of... Anything. I said, otherwise I was not interested just because why would I want to do that? I love working for Time Magazine, traveling around the world and taking pictures of interesting things. But he was looking at me while I said that and puffing on his pipe, and he said, "You do not want Air Force One on the weekends?' So that was it and the deal was done, really. And that was the atmosphere in which I worked for two and a half years, and I had access to everything, whether it was top secret meetings about the Soviet Union or whatever, and including... Which was a full circle for me, was being in the room when he pulled the plug on American involvement in Vietnam. And that was in the Roosevelt Room under a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt. It's one of the most important things that I took there, and you can imagine how highly classified that was because of the security of getting out the people that wanted to get out. And it was a very decisive moment, and just having been over there, I was there only a month earlier. In March I went with General Fred Weyand, who was looking to see if there's any way they could stem the tide of the advancing North Vietnamese. And so, I had been in Cambodia and Vietnam on a presidential mission really, and that was a hard one. I had a lot of friends over there, and after the fact I sponsored more than 20 Vietnamese, getting them out of camps after they had escaped from Vietnam and all of that. So, I had always been emotionally attached to Vietnam, but having said that, I have not been... I do not think, anyway, living in the Vietnam past, and I know a lot of people who have. It was both soldiers certainly, and a lot of news people who were there, photographer who were there, and just cannot seem to shake it loose. I mean, I literally moved on. When I was out of Vietnam, that was that. Not that I did not think about it. I did think about it, but to this day, I do not look at it as the greatest story I ever covered. It was certainly one of the most important. But I have been very fortunate that I have not lived in the Vietnam past. I know a lot of people who still do, and I feel bad for them. SM (01:16:55): Yeah. You were there, again, those three things he took over at the time of the resignation, the pardon, having to go before Congress, his commentaries there, and of course the separation from Vietnam, those were all just major happenings. Do you think history has been fair to President Ford in terms of when they talk about the boomer presidents, we talk about Eisenhower in the (19)50s, and we talk about John Kennedy and then we talk about LBJ and Nixon? And then some people will say, well, then we had the lightweight Gerald Ford, then we go to Carter who was a disaster, and then we get to the powerful Ronald Reagan and then Bill Clinton in the 90s and George... So just your thoughts on whether history has treated him fairly? DK (01:17:45): I think so. I think it is treating him more fairly every day that goes by. And I think where the turnaround came was ironically with he had Kennedy giving him that profile [inaudible] for the pardoning of Richard Nixon, and Kennedy basically admitting that he was wrong in his criticism of Ford at the time, that it really did to help killed the nation, that it put Watergate behind us, but people were so mad that it cost Ford the election. I mean, he really was sacrificed on that altar of bad feelings against Nixon. And people's thought there was a deal or whatever. I mean, nobody... And everybody wanted to get rid of him, and what we ended up with was Jimmy Carter. And Carter almost lost. I mean, the more Carter was out there talking, the less people liked him, and if that election a week later, Ford probably would have beat him. And the Poland thing, you can look at anything that threw off that momentum, which Poland did. And if Ford has just said, "The spirit of the Polish people are not dominated by the Soviet Union," slam dunk, home run as opposed to "They're not dominated by the Soviet Union." That was a mistake and one that he begrudgingly admitted later, believe me. It was getting bloody, man. Most people were trying to get him to go out and clarify that. Trust me, I was one of them. But anyway- SM (01:19:31): You were also the person who took two historic pictures of five presidents at two different times. The first picture was Nixon, Carter, Bush, Reagan, and Ford, and the second was Bush one and two, Clinton, Obama and Carter. That is historic in my opinion. DK (01:19:48): No, actually that was the last one, which was early January of last year, (20)09. It was the fifth time that five presidents been together, but only the second time where they posed for a picture because the Reagan library was the first time, and then there was the Nixon funeral, and then there was the 9/11 memorial at the National Cathedral, and then there was Reagan's funeral. Might have been, actually... No, that is right. It would have been Reagan's funeral, and then president-elect Obama with the other four and that was that. It is kind of interesting there is only been two baby boomer presidents, Clinton and Bush, and now Obama is the first president of my lifetime that has been younger than me. SM (01:20:58): And actually, he is actually the last two years of what is defined as boomers, (19)46 to (19)60. Was not he born in (19)62? DK (01:21:07): I cannot remember. SM (01:21:08): So he was two years old. DK (01:21:11): Yeah, I definitely would not put him in that category, I suppose. SM (01:21:18): It must have been quite an honor for you to be picked as the photographer for these occasions. DK (01:21:24): Well, no, I was not picked. There were a lot of other photographers there. I just happened to get... By design, I got an angle where I took a chance at the Reagan library where I got off to the side and there was a little... I should admit to some premeditation there, because one of the Advanced people before called me up from Bush.... No, actually somebody doing the Reagan event and wanted me to come out, because I lived in LA here at that time, to give them some advice on what would be a good picture. And so, I had a hand in setting that up. And because I knew what they were going to do, either were going to walk out together and then stand in this one spot, and photographer were like locusts. They all gather around one place usually. And so I assumed that the head on pictures is what everybody's going to go for, but I knew the best shot would be off to the side, that Mount Rushmore type configuration. And it would not have been as good a picture if Reagan then looked over to where I was, and that is why that picture was so good. And if you see the other pictures from head on, they looked like cardboard cutouts. It's all flat lighting and I never would have taken that picture. And then the last time, because it was the Bush White House and I was not working for any news organization, but I had to get in there. So, I called Dick Cheney up, whom I am still on friendly terms with, and I told him that, I said, "Do you still have any influence over there at the White House? I got to get in and take that picture." I said, " The press office will not return my calls. I am getting no help from them." And about two minutes later, the press secretary called me up and said, "Oh yeah, sure, we would love to have you come in for that." SM (01:23:41): Wow. DK (01:23:43): But there were other photographers there, but it was not a big group, but there were others. They had like three waves of photographers. But I knew when I came in the door, that was the shot right then and there, bang-bang. It was very quick, but I had a good angle there. SM (01:23:59): You knew that... I think you had over 50 front covers on magazines, and 35 I think in that time period length of some of the (19)60s and (19)70s stuff. What are the front covers that stand out for you? What year and what was the picture? DK (01:24:19): Well, I think obviously the Ford cover was my first Time magazine cover. And then it was the... I am trying to think. Well, the other huge one was the December 4th (19)78 cover of Time Magazine, Jonestown. SM (01:24:47): Oh yes. DK (01:24:48): That was huge. And then there was Ansel Adams on the cover of Time, the only cover... September (19)79, Ansel was called the master eye, and it was him on the cover of Time. To this date, the only photographer that is ever been on the cover of Time. In October '86, Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik, and it was no deal, and we transmitted that picture on a Sunday night. Early technology victory over the opposition. And I nailed the picture of Reagan kind of looking disappointed and Gorbachev, and the headline was "No Deal". Those are four covers that have all been significant, and the President Ford cover was another portrait. And the President Ford cover and Jonestown are two of the biggest selling covers in Times history, I think to this day actually, and really important events. I mean, there have been others. I have had other covers, but... SM (01:26:06): What was the most important event that you covered? You said Vietnam was not the one. What was the most important event? DK (01:26:12): It is hard to say that really, I know I said it, but I would say Sadat going to Israel was right up there. Jonestown was right up there. Reagan Gorbachev Geneva Summit was right up there. In terms of events that have profoundly impacted the world, obviously Vietnam, Reagan, Gorbachev, Jonestown would not be in the major historical importance, but in terms of drama and horror, Jonestown... I mean Vietnam affected so many people, 50,000 plus Americans being killed there during the war, hard to overlook that one. And it scared a generation of people in one way or another, at least impacted them. And I missed out [inaudible]. SM (01:27:16): I lived in the Bay Area when Jonestown happened. DK (01:27:19): Oh yeah, well that was- SM (01:27:21): Because so much was happening at that time, not only Harvey Milk being murdered in Moscone, but Jonestown. So you flew there, took the... I have that magazine. You flew there and took all those pictures. So, when you first got to that site, it must have been... You had been to Vietnam and seen death. DK (01:27:46): Well, but we did not know, and that was not even the point really. I was doing another story. I was down... The story of Shooter is a good story. [inaudible] recollect because it happened so soon [inaudible]. I think it was one of the last stories, and that is a good story. That tells you what happened. But until when we first circled over Jonestown in that plane, we just heard rumors that, oh, there were a lot of kids there, that we thought maybe they were still holding out against the Guyanese army, and we just did not know. And when we circled over there in the plane, I saw those people. I thought, well, look at all these people down there. And so, they must, it is not as bad as we thought. And as we got closer, realized that all the people were dead. And that was shocking. I mean, I cannot even begin to tell you what that was like. That is probably the most difficult thing I have ever had to deal with psychologically is to see that. And I think that was... Because at least in a war, you got some sense of why people are doing it. And in this case, there was no reality spread there. There was nothing that a sane person could understand why that would have happened. And to this day, I am perplexed as anybody, why they did that? SM (01:29:29): And you were right down on the ground there eventually? DK (01:29:33): Yeah, then we got on the ground. I was one of those few people ever to be there, fortunately for everybody else who was not. SM (01:29:40): Did you have to wear masks? Because the stench must have been really intense. DK (01:29:43): It was bad. Yeah. It was like two, three days later. SM (01:29:46): Wow. DK (01:29:47): Not good. SM (01:29:49): Why did we lose the Vietnam War, in your opinion? DK (01:29:54): Well, I do not know. The historians are still fighting about that war. I think we, well ultimately, if you take it all the way back to Eisenhower era that we backed the wrong horse. I think that is what happened. I am really curious what would have happened if you looked at Ho Chi Minh as a nationalist and not a communist, if you looked at him in a different way, could there have been a decision that would have sided with Ho Chi Minh? I do not know. I mean, the resolve was there in the north, and in the south, there was so much corruption. I mean, you read all the stories. SM (01:30:48): Yes. DK (01:30:49): I am probably the last person you should ask that question of just because I have no idea. You look at the place today, it is still a communist country, but they are big time into capitalism. So, I am just wonder what was lost other than obviously all those lives. But if I were a family who lost somebody in Vietnam, I would be pretty pissed off, quite frankly. SM (01:31:21): Did you ever have a chance to talk to President Ford about his position on the Warren Commission? About the single bullet theory? And of course, he and all- DK (01:31:33): He was emphatic that he agreed with the rest of the commission, that there were no... That it was not a conspiracy. SM (01:31:39): When you saw the wall- DK (01:31:42): To this day, by the way, I have seen nothing that would prove differently. And I know it is one of ongoing fascinations that some people have, the obsession with that whole thing. It is almost like you can... It kind of goes to the category of the United States was a co-conspirator in the 9/11 Twin Towers attack. SM (01:32:17): Yeah, there is some that think that Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, they were all connected in some way, conspiracy. DK (01:32:29): It is just I cannot... It is so hard to... It is like Jones telling to me. I do not understand that kind of thinking. So, I do not know. SM (01:32:35): When you saw the wall, the Vietnam Memorial for the first time, what was your reaction and thinking in 1982 when all the veterans came back and since? You're the person who won the Pulitzer Prize for pictures on the war in Vietnam and experienced combat firsthand. And then of course, the decision that President Ford, to depart in 1975 after 58,290 died and 3 million Vietnamese died. What was your thought when you first saw that wall? DK (01:33:07): I cried. It was the single most powerful thing I have ever seen in my life as a monument. To see those names, many of whom I knew. They were guys I went to high school with were or had met. And I thought it was... I was overcome with emotional when I saw it. And I went down there on my own to see it. I did not know what to expect. And I know it was really criticized by a lot of veterans groups and people, but I think it's emerged as probably the single most powerful vision of what that war was, because it boils down to all those people were killed. And guess what? That does not even... The names of the people who were severely injured are not on there, so you could add another 100,000- SM (01:34:14): Oh yes. DK (01:34:15): ... Names, not to mention all of the Vietnamese. SM (01:34:20): Have you ever read Lewis Puller's book, Fortunate Son? DK (01:34:27): I have not. And I have got it. And I have got so much. I mean, read all the time. I read so much. That is one, believe it or not, that was on my list. That is a good one. SM (01:34:48): Well, I knew him. And that is another story. This is your interview, not mine. But I only knew him through making an effort to contact him. He was the inspiration to write my book. DK (01:34:59): Oh wow. SM (01:34:59): He supported me to do it when I talked to him before he killed himself. DK (01:35:03): But Galway knows him or knew him. SM (01:35:03): Oh yeah, and Joe's great. Of course, Joe's now in Texas, I think so. DK (01:35:10): Yeah. Yeah. I have not talked- SM (01:35:13): And when I interviewed him for my book was many years back. His wife had just passed away, and then he ended up marrying one of the daughters of guys who died at the [inaudible] Valley. So that is an unbelievable story. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end, and what do you think was the watershed moment? DK (01:35:35): That is a good question. They definitely ended in the (19)70s. And I would say they probably ended after... Definitely after Nixon resigned, because he represented the... I mean, he was elected in (19)68, took office in (19)69. The (19)60s as we remember them did not even really start till (19)65. SM (01:36:10): You are right. DK (01:36:11): And everybody talks about the [inaudible], because then all the images that you see flashed up are Rolling Stones, Beetles, hippies, et cetera. And I think you could safely say the (19)60s ended with the end fall of Saigon. That would be probably the most dramatic moment I could think of. SM (01:36:36): Is there a watershed moment? DK (01:36:44): That moment would be the fall Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. Yeah. I mean, I think that is the end of the (19)60s right there. SM (01:36:51): Where were you when John Kennedy died? Do you remember the exact moment when you heard? DK (01:36:55): Yeah, I was in social studies class in Roseburg High School, and when they came in to the class, I remember what was more interesting to me was what I found out many years later that there were people celebrating his death here in this country. That was shocking to me. SM (01:37:26): Oh, yes. DK (01:37:26): Unbelievable. Because all we can think about at the time, all the kids, they were all fine. And I mean, he was the president. He was like this character that because of modern communication, we would actually gotten to know this guy through TV. And he was a young person who... And my parents were Republican, but everybody was so upset. I mean, the part of Oregon I come from, it is a very conservative part of the state, and I remember in [inaudible] billboards, so that was... However, nobody was celebrating. We were all the kids. We were in shock. SM (01:38:18): When you were not San Francisco State, SI [inaudible], we back in the East saw that on tele... We knew what was going on there. And of course, a lot of the protests were in Berkeley. DK (01:38:31): But Berkeley I did not really do, but the SF State I did. I was actually based in Los Angeles. They flew me up there to cover that. SM (01:38:38): That was pretty intense. An, were not you threatened at that? Or were you beat up or? DK (01:38:43): Oh yeah, the cops hit me, the students threw rocks at me, and it was kind of an equal opportunity bashing. SM (01:38:52): Geez. What was your thought when all this was happening about higher ed, our young people, and America? DK (01:39:05): Nothing surprised me at that point. To me, it was a good story. It was dangerous though, but there were a lot of good pictures out of that. Hey, you know what? It's just what I have done. That is just another story along the way. And one of the things I was going to mention to you was I had gone to pitch a book of my photos to, I think it was Abraham, and all the editors could talk about was, did I have pictures of the social changes and fashion? And I said, no. They said, why? I said, "Guys, I do not give a flying fuck about any of that stuff. I do not care about [inaudible]. I do not care about fashion. I do not really care about sports that much in terms of photography. What I cared about is what you were looking at. These are my pictures, and I cannot go back into the vault and pull out a bunch of stuff that you think I should be doing as opposed to what I did." I was really offended by them, to be honest with you. SM (01:40:23): Well, you know what is interesting- DK (01:40:24): What do you see here? I said, "This is the story of one person's journey through the events of his generation". I said, "I cannot go back and do it over again. And if I did go back and do it over again, I do not think I would do it any differently." I mean, I would have taken some better pictures and not missed as many as I did, but the direction would have been the same. SM (01:40:50): The irony of your pictures of the Ali Frazier fight before you went off to Vietnam is interesting because, I am just reflecting, he was kicked out of boxing because of his stand on the Vietnam War and stripped of his title for a while. And then he came back and we all remember what he had said, that he's not going to go off and kill yellow boys when black boys in America are not being taken care of. DK (01:41:17): Yeah, that fight, I mean, that was one of the great fights of all time. SM (01:41:21): How important do you think- DK (01:41:25): [inaudible] Frazier, you will never, ever duplicate something like that. Well, the whole boxing industry is screwed anyway anymore. But those were, again, that was sort of representative of... That was still the (19)60s, even though it was 1971. That was an event with its roots going back into... See, basically, because we divide everything into... We like neat little items. 50th anniversary of this, 20th anniversary of that, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, the (19)80s. It does not mean jack shit. (19)60s, the (19)70s, the (19)80s, it does not mean jack shit. I mean, when I did my book, [inaudible] in 2000... Hang on, I was showing this to somebody the other day and I said something here, if I can find it. Hold on. Every month I wrote something about... Where is it? Well, I cannot find it. the end of the last day of 2000, I did a picture of... Actually, one of the pictures, you should get that book. I think you would find it pretty interesting, I was at the convention in Philadelphia, among other things. SM (01:43:03): The name of the book? DK (01:43:05): Photo du Jour. SM (01:43:07): Okay, I will find that. We have a really good bookstore. DK (01:43:16): Hold on a sec, I just want to see if I can find this one thing. Well, maybe I do not have it here. Dave Barry Howard Fryman wrote a piece. SM (01:43:35): You can email me. DK (01:43:39): The main thing right now, I guess, the point was that the last picture that I did, And this was a project I did with a Mamiya 7 camera, which is like a light on steroids. It is a medium format or a range finder camera. the last photo was of a volcano in Hawaii. Normally day-to-day, I did not even know where I would be one day to the next, but in this case, by that point, at the end of the year, the family and I were going to be in Hawaii on a vacation and the volcano was still active. That was the last day of December 31st, 2000, the last day of going into 2001. The symbolism of that volcano was, it did not make any difference that it was the last day of the year or the first day of the year, or the last day of the millennium. The fact of the matter, everything, it just goes over into the next day. It does not mean anything. It is like these are just all, they are days. They are false markers. I think that was point. SM (01:45:12): How important do you feel students were in ending the war through their protests? You saw it at San Francisco State, but they were all over the country, particularly between (19)67- DK (01:45:21): Hang on one second. Here is what I said. The first day of the new millennium was basically another day. The Earth continued to spin on its axis. There was no cataclysmic thunder clap wiping out our way of life as we knew it. That would wait until September 11th, 2001. That was the point. Oops. Can you hold on one second? SM (01:45:56): Yep. DK (01:45:57): Hold on. SM (01:45:58): Yep. DK (01:46:08): The point is, when you are talking, that was a good question. When did the (19)60s end? If you just sent out all of the, if you took all that stuff out, it really, it was a state of mind really more than anything. I think that is a really good question. I have talked to people about that. Well, what does it mean the (19)60s? It's almost like the (19)70s, somebody, they do not talk about the (19)70s per se. So much shit happened during the (19)70s. More than in the (19)60s almost. SM (01:46:40): What is interesting is a lot of people have said the (19)60s were from that (19)65 till about (19)73 because you cannot separate (19)71, (19)72, (19)73 and (19)70. You cannot. DK (01:46:52): Right. SM (01:46:52): A lot of people look at disco as a change when things start changing. DK (01:46:58): Yeah-yeah, yeah. SM (01:46:59): When you look at the generation that you grew up in, the boomer generation, this would be based, the generation 74 million total. What would be the people that you knew, can you give any strengths or weaknesses to this generation if you were to comment on them? DK (01:47:20): Ask me that one more time, I am sorry. SM (01:47:22): When you look at the boomer generation itself of 74 million, not all were activists and probably only about 10 percent were, and the rest were not. But when you look at this generation, which is all inclusive, it is male, female, black, brown, yellow, gay, straight, you name it. It is all of them. Were there any strengths or weaknesses that you could list? DK (01:47:54): Well, God, there is so many. In many ways, Clinton kind of epitomized all that. I mean, he was a person who, and in a way, this is not a fair thing to say, but because we all were brought up differently too, I mean, he had a hard way to go brought up. Here's the guy that overcame a background. I do not really like Clinton, by the way. I understand his strengths and his weaknesses. In many ways he represents many of the strengths and weaknesses of the generation. A lot of promiscuous people who were, if it feels good, do it. I understand that. I think those of us, products of the World War II generation or the greatest generation as to Tom Brokaw said, makes you feel a little bit strange. They went through all that. They collectively, and we were brought up in the (19)50s where prosperity was the cornerstone of the country and on the sacrifice of our parents. My parents and those people that age really have a different way of looking at stuff. Those who went through the depression. We do not know about any of that until now, but I do not think it's the same thing. It is for certain people, but not in this overshadowing way. I am rambling here because I do not have a good answer for you. It is everything from television, the advent of TV really accompanied the rise of the baby boomers. Jeff, it was very funny. In fact, you got to get the photo out if you do not have it. If you want to use Jeff's cartoons in it, I will give you the permission to do so because what it did, and a lot of what you are writing about is the baby generation. I told you what he said, the self-centered generation comes of age, but it is all, the first frame is the (19)50s and it is the golden age of television. There is a little kid sitting on a floor and the TV with the rabbit ears is up on a wood chest of drawers. Then it's the (19)60s, the next panel, the Golden Age, the rock and roll. You have got the same, the kid is not growing up now, but he is holding a guitar, watching a bigger TV set. In the (19)70s, golden age of drugs and the kid who is still a baby has got a cigarette in his mouth watching a TV in a cabinet. Then the (19)80s, the golden age of money. The kid's got a big cigar, this huge TV, the nineties, the golden age of healthcare. The kid's got to hook up to a blood pressure machines, still watching the TV. Then the two thousand, the golden age of arthritis. The kids pushing the button on the TV with a cane. Then the 2010, the golden age of death. That was his representation of the baby boom generation. I think there is something to that because we were not only growing up in a different world, we're actually watching ourselves do it on TV. Everything that happens is on TV anymore. The car chase, the plane crash, people on the hill, live C Span. Never before has a group of people been able to track their own progress in a mirror really like now. That was not the way it was before. The evolution of how you got your news from Life magazine to NBC, when they talk about life being killed by speed, that is probably true. It had its time. That is all. I was one of the last drivers hired by them, and it was a great tragedy for us but like so many other things I have moved on from there. SM (01:52:52): You say you moved on. That that leads me into, I only got three more questions then we're done. This question is regarding the issue of healing. We took students to Washington DC in 1995 to meet Senator Edmond Musky. The students came up with a question because they were not alive in the (19)60s and (19)70s, their parents were obviously, but they had seen a video of the year 1968. They put together a question dealing with all the divisions that were happening in America at that time. The question was this, due to all the divisions that were taking place in the boomer generation or in the (19)60s generation, divisions between black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who supported the war, those who were against the war, those who supported the troops, those who did not. Do you feel the boomer generation, the (19)60s generation, is going to go to its grave like the Civil War generation, not healing? Not healing because of the tremendous division's, animosity and sometimes outright hatred one had for the opposing point of view, or someone with a different perspective or whatever? Senator Musky, and they were thinking of the 1968 convention and all the turmoil there, the assassinations in 68, and they were thinking of Watts in 64. They were thinking of all the things about the (19)60s. What's your answer? Then I will tell you what Senator Musky said. DK (01:54:27): Well, of course we got a little, yeah, that is a different thing. I do not know. The healing. It seems a lot of that bad will is really carrying over to the here and the now. It almost does not seem to be getting better. I do not know about healing. I do not see how you- SM (01:54:51): Hold on one second. David, can you hold on one second? DK (01:54:54): Yeah. SM (01:54:54): My tape just ended. Okay. Alrighty. Go right ahead. DK (01:55:01): When you talk about a generation healing, I do not personally feel damaged, so I do not know how other people, it is such an individual situation that I could not tell you, but the world, it does. Things seem more divided now. I mean, that is a fact. Everybody talks about it. You have got Fox News on one hand is supposed to represent the conservative point of view and MSNBC on the other side, and people really polarize on certain subjects. That goes back to what I said earlier. I am not a Democrat or Republican, I am a photographer. SM (01:55:48): Right. DK (01:55:51): I have seen both sides. (End of Interview) Description 3 microcassettes Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with David Hume Kennerly Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kennerly, David Hume, 1947- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Photographers; Photojournalists; Kennerly, David Hume, 1947--Interviews Description An account of the resource David Hume Kennerly is a Pulitzer Prize winnig photographer and photojournalist. His portfolio includes photographs taken of the Vietnam War, Cambodia, East Pakistani refugees near Calcutta, and the Ali-Frazier fight in Madison Square Garden on March 8, 1971. Kennerly photographed every American president since Richard Nixon. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-07-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.6a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.6b; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.6c Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-01 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 237:33 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/2cdb17c591b796711d28b8d6503cfc04.jpg b6b98d87f46918965c563260659fcaec https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/59e828ee3c9d346379ff18ab1acec55a.mp3 d33468cea160fae75511e49a6856261b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2006-11-04 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Diane Carlson Evans Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Diane Carlson Evans served as a nurse during the Vietnam War in the United States Army. Before joining the Army as a nurse, Evans graduated from nursing school in Minnesota. She was the major contributor to the creation of the Vietnam Women's Memorial.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:4200835,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;25&quot;:[null,0,0]}">Diane Carlson Evans served as a nurse during the Vietnam War in the United States Army. Before joining the Army as a nurse, Evans graduated from nursing school in Minnesota. She was the major contributor to the creation of the Vietnam Women's Memorial.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Baby boom generation; Peace Corps; Conscientious objector; Civil rights movement; Women's Rights Movement; War protest; Watergate; The Guardian; Suffragettes; Activism; Troops; Congress; Women in military service; American Memorial; Lewis Puller; Lyndon B. Johnson.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14281427}}">Baby boom generation; Peace Corps; Conscientious objector; Civil rights movement; Women's Rights Movement; War protest; Watergate; The Guardian; Suffragettes; Activism; Troops; Congress; Women in military service; American Memorial; Lewis Puller; Lyndon B. Johnson.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 242:51 Subject LCSH United States—Armed Forces—Nurses; Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Evans, Diane Carlson--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Diane Carlson Evans Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 11 April 2006 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:06): Testing, one, two, three, testing. Okay, here we go. Okay, hold on a second. I cannot read this. Oh, you bastard. Diane? Hi, how you doing? I am pretty good. It is pretty early for you. All right, very good. Now let me put on the speakerphone here. Hold on one second. I got it. DE (00:01:23): This is my cell phone and I have just realized it is not fully charged, so at some point it will die. So let me give you another phone number you can call me on. SM (00:01:38): Okay. DE (00:01:39): That is 406-457. SM (00:01:41): 457. DE (00:01:41): 1977. SM (00:01:42): 1977. DE (00:01:45): I will get beeping on my cell phone to warn me that it is going to die so I will let you know and I will hang up and you can call me back. SM (00:01:49): Okay, all right. Well, before we start, I want to say I will be down in Washington next week. DE (00:01:57): Oh, you are? SM (00:01:58): Yeah. I will be there again. I will be there now, I think, since 1994 I have been there every year for Memorial Day and Veterans Day. DE (00:02:06): I have missed you most of the time, I guess. And you know what, I am not going to be there this year for the second time in 25 years. SM (00:02:13): Oh really? DE (00:02:14): I have been out there for 24 years every Veteran's Day and then we always have a board meeting in conjunction with Veterans Day. So, I am going to miss both this year. But my family is kidnapping me. I am turning 60 years old on November 10th. SM (00:02:32): Oh, wow. Well, 60 years young. DE (00:02:32): 60 years young and I have celebrated my birthday every year out there without my family. SM (00:02:39): Oh my gosh. DE (00:02:40): So, we all decided it was time for me to do something fun with the family on my birthday, so we are going up to northern Montana and we will all be together. SM (00:02:49): That is great. DE (00:02:50): Yeah, but I will be back there on the 14th because I am going to be on a panel that WE television, with Creative Streets Productions that did the Vietnam Nurses documentary, is going to have a screening and some of the women in radio and television and others are going to be there. And then following the screening I am going to be on a panel. SM (00:03:12): Excellent. DE (00:03:13): They are going to send the documentary off to film festivals. They are hoping to get some awards, which they just might. It was well done. Did you see it? SM (00:03:25): Actually, I got home that night and I could not find it on my TV set. DE (00:03:29): Yeah, it is on W-E TV. And I could not get it on my cable either. You have to have high end cable, I guess, to get it. SM (00:03:43): Well, will we be able to get that in... DE (00:03:43): Before we hang up, we are getting a shipment and it is supposed to come Monday or Tuesday to the foundation, and then we are selling them. SM (00:03:52): Okay. DE (00:03:53): And we have already had a lot of requests. They will be available next week, just go on online to vwmfcc@aol.com and just tell Cindy you want a copy. She will tell you how much money and all of that, where to send the check. SM (00:04:12): Super. DE (00:04:13): We still do not do Visa, we still do not do credit cards for our product. But anyway, yeah, you can get a copy next week. SM (00:04:23): Good, I will do it. DE (00:04:24): Yeah, it is very well done, Steve. I would highly recommend it. I was very pleasantly surprised. But finally somebody did a documentary that really got it. SM (00:04:35): Super. Well, I got a few questions here for you. Are you ready for your first one? DE (00:04:43): Sure, let us go. SM (00:04:44): Okay. When you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? DE (00:04:53): Oh, the first thing that comes to my mind is war. SM (00:05:00): Explain. DE (00:05:03): In the mid-(19)60s, my one brother got drafted. 1966 he was drafted. Before that, my older brother joined the military in early 60s. I was tuned in, connected to the military because of my brothers and because of my local neighbor boys who were getting drafted and going into the military. And then when my 4-H buddy and some other classmates of my brothers were killed in Vietnam and their caskets came home, and some of them were farm boys and my father was extremely upset. He hated the war. He did not like the war. And so there was a lot of war talk. Not a lot of war talk, but there was discussion about what was going on with our military. My dad was devastated because we were farmers and his two older brothers went off to war. Then when I started college in 1964, I do not know why really, but I was interested in what was happening overseas from a nursing standpoint. So, I guess that is the answer. SM (00:06:21): Is there one specific event during your youth that stands out above every other event that really had an impact on your life? DE (00:06:33): That is a good question, Steve. Man, you are narrowing in here, are not you? SM (00:06:40): Oh, I think we just lost you. DE (00:06:45): No, I am here. SM (00:06:46): Oh, okay. DE (00:06:48): I am thinking. SM (00:06:51): Okay. DE (00:06:51): I am thinking because that is a pretty direct question, more than anything that affected my life. And you are talking about an experience or an instance- SM (00:07:03): It could be something in your life. It could be something that happened in the world, in the United States, just something that really had an impact on you. DE (00:07:22): I think more than a direct experience or a direct impact, it was more of something seething inside of me to do something worthwhile since I saw the activism and my peers, all men, having to do something worthwhile, like join the military or do something above themselves rather than... how can I say this? Everything that was going on with the assassination of President Kennedy and the Civil Rights Movement. I felt like the little one room country school I was going to and my high school was not feeding me enough information. I was very curious about what was really happening in the country and around the world on a higher level than I seemed to be getting in high school. And so by the time I finished nurses training, by the time I finished college, I was really ready to move on into the world and discover what was really out there and be an active part of it rather than just someone watching it happen. I wanted to be part of what was happening and do something worthwhile with it. I do not know if that makes sense to you? SM (00:08:46): Yes it does. You are part of the boomer generation, in fact you are in the lead of the boomer generation, I think the Boomer generation are those people born between 1946 and 1964? DE (00:08:59): Yeah, I am one of the firsters. SM (00:09:01): Yep. Well, next year is when I hit it. But when you look at the boomer generation as a generation, what are some of the positive qualities this generation had and what are some of the negatives, just characteristics? DE (00:09:18): I would say that the positive things about my generation that I am proud of is that we did answer the call when it was given to us. Many of us volunteered, think about the baby boom generation among the women, 250,000 women joined the military during a very turbulent time in our country when it was very unpopular to go into the military, especially for women because there was still the stereotype of women in the military that they were something to be questioned, or why would a woman go into the military? But these were women who joined because they wanted to serve their country. So, I was very proud of these women, but I was also proud of my generation not only for wanting to do something and serve, and my friends who were going into the Peace Corps, and they were saying, "I do not believe in war. I am going to oppose this." And I thought that that took a lot of courage and they became conscientious objectors. So I was proud of my generation for serving, but I was also proud of my generation for speaking up and for using their voice to identify what it was they cared about and then moving forward with that rather than just sitting passively back in a classroom and watching the world go by and wondering what to do about it. They actually got out in the street. And the women's movement, the Civil Rights Movement, that was all part of the baby boom generation. And Steve, I will tell you, I really resent the use of the term that we are the me generation. And in fact, J. Carter Brown, and if this is identified I have the article, J. Carter Brown, as you know, was the chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts that rejected carte blanche the whole idea for placing a memorial in Washington DC to honor women. And that hearing, where the site and the design in our proposal to honor women was at Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and he absolutely rejected it. This was the first hearing. And then later when he was interviewed by a newspaper journalist, and I have the article so it is on record, I am not making this up. I can send it to you if you want the exact words. But he said that I was part of the me generation so he would just have to see where this goes. I was so angry about him calling me and my generation the me generation when it was my generation, because he was referring to me, I was a veteran, it was three million of us in the me generation that went to Vietnam and over 58,000 of that generation he was referring to whose names are on the wall. We were not the me generation. We were the generation that thought outside of ourselves and were willing to go to the streets to protest the war. I am one of the Vietnam veterans who... I do not hate the war protestors... I hate the results of what them did in that somehow the protesting of the war ended up on the soldiers. Now protesting the soldiers rather than protesting the war, it needed to be divided and protest the war but do not protest the soldiers. And somehow that got muddled. And when we look back on that, we wonder how that could happen but it did. I was proud of my generation for speaking out and doing something and going to the streets and being seen to protest something they did not believe was right. So I guess when I think, I had a knee-jerk reaction to Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, and it is okay to name a book that, but now all of a sudden it is like the only generation that was great in the history of America, the greatest generation is World War II, which I find just another hurtful thing that was put on the greatest generation, if that is what we were going to call them. We are the children of the greatest generation, so if we were the children of the greatest generation how could we be so bad? I mean, they produced us. SM (00:13:46): Right. DE (00:13:49): They produced us and they raised us. And I am proud of our generation. SM (00:13:55): Well, so am I. DE (00:13:57): Yeah. SM (00:13:59): If you were to just list a couple characteristics, qualities that the boomers possessed, what would you say would be the positive ones and what would be maybe some negative ones? DE (00:14:10): Okay, well, I would say we were bold. I would say we honored our parents, the World War II generation, and we looked up to them for what they did. I mean, I was very much in awe of my aunt who served in World War II, and she was a role model for me. I was proud of my dad for what he did in World War II. He was a farmer and he also worked at an ammunition plant. He had kids so he did not get drafted, but he did his part and he rationed his tires and he rationed sugar and my mom talks about that. I am proud of them for what they did and how they sacrificed for the war. They sacrificed for the war effort, and I knew how they sacrificed because I grew up on the farm that did not have what we needed because of World War II. So I think my generation, we had some role modeling and we used that and we used it in positive ways, and that is we too wanted to serve so we did. We wanted to be our parents and serve our country. But what my generation did was we started asking questions, and we started asking lots of questions. So therefore, some members of my generation became what was coined anti-establishment. And maybe it was not so much anti-establishment but questioning that establishment and not obeying it, but rather maybe wanting to change some of the old laws like civil rights, like the laws for gender, women, that affected women in negative ways. So, it was my generation that not only looked kind of in awe at our parents’ generations, but we also said, "Hey, it is time for change." And so it was my generation that made extraordinary changes. SM (00:16:14): One of the things you often read in the history books, and you will remember this when you were young, is the generation gap, that there was a big separation between our parents and us because we were challenging the war or getting involved in other things. What are your thoughts on the generation gap? That was a term that is often defined as part of the (19)60s generation. DE (00:16:43): Yeah, we are coming up with all those phrases that were just... Well, the generation gap is I think what might define the why we did challenge the status quo. And while I did not feel the gap with my parents, because my parents were very anti-war, they did not believe that war Vietnam was right. They were questioning the administration as well. So, I did not feel a gap with my family, but I know so many young men and women did because their parents said, "You serve and you do not question." So, I know some of my peers could not talk to their family so they did not. They literally did not go home and they had big fights, and they fought so horribly that they just avoided each other completely. So there was definitely a gap between parents and their children during this time. And some of those sons went to Canada, as you know, some just disappeared and either became conscientious objectors and were working at hospitals in states and their parents... I mean, there is one couple I know they did not know where their son was for about four years. He had gone off to live in a commune with a distant relative. And the mother, every time I saw her, she could do nothing but cry because she did not know where her son was. But he had gone off to live in a commune. He was not going to live with the status quo. So yeah, the generation gap was a distancing between the World War II generation and the Vietnam generation, because so many young people just could not seem to come to terms with that generation in that we were scorned, some of us, for questioning the government because you do not question the government. The commander in chief makes the decisions and you salute and you move forward. But we asked questions of everything and we defied a lot of the rules. When I am saying that it is collectively, many defied the rules, broke the rules and wanted new rules. The negative part of that, you and I both know, Steve, lots of rules were broken that should not have been and there was violence. There was terrible violence on both parts. There were violent young people who used their philosophical disagreements with what was happening in America and they took to the streets in violent ways, and that is never an excuse and it is never a way to solve problems in my estimation. And the blowing up of buildings on campuses, the harassment of others, the burning of the flag, I do not believe we should burn the flag but I also believe that you should not go to prison for it because if people are burning the flag they are making some kind of a statement that they are allowed to make that. So I think it created a temperament in the country that it was okay to do anything to show your rebelliousness or your displeasure or your disagreement. What was the other phrase we used? Let it all hang out? SM (00:20:23): Yes, let it all hang out. In fact, that was a record, remember? That was a song. DE (00:20:25): Right, yep, and then it was like let it all hang out. So consequently, Stephen, the younger generation needed to do this in a visible way so they wore clothes that had never been worn before in that manner. They let their hair grow long and ratty, that maybe had not been done since, I do not know, the 1600s or something. But the defiance was not only with words and behavior, but it was also in the dress of my generation at that time. And that they visibly wanted to show the world that they were different. And now I am using the word [inaudible] because I guess I did not rebel in that way. We used the word hippie, but I always said, "Well, I never looked like a hippie." I was part of the hippie generation but I did not get into the... I guess I felt, Steve, that I did not need to rebel. My way to rebel, I think, was to... I did not take to the streets, but instead I joined the military because what I wanted to do was something valuable. And the only thing that I knew that I could do that was valuable, and remember, I was pretty darn young. I was only almost 21 when I got out of college and 21 when I was in Vietnam. So actually, I was 20 out of college, went to basic training, went to Fort Lee, and then had my 22nd birthday in Vietnam. I was a farm girl who was raised to be a hard worker and dutiful, and the only thing I knew was nursing. And so, I guess I can look back now and say I had the courage to go to Vietnam and be a nurse, but I would never have had the courage to march down a street and throw rocks at buildings or start a fire somewhere. I could not do it in a physically, what is the word, aggressive way. Whereas some of my peers, they were not nurses, they were struggling with how do I show the government, how do I show the country, how do I prove to my parents that I do not like what is going on and I want change and I want a difference? And of course, the negative, Steve, we both know, is sometimes certain individuals, certain human beings, all they need is an excuse to be violent. And some were. It was an excuse to be aggressive. And there is no excuse ever for trying to, I guess, expose your beliefs and show how you care about things, there is no reason really to do it violently. Of course, I am a more peaceful person. But I felt privileged that I was a nurse and that I could do something with that and so I joined the military because I thought about my brothers and I thought it was the right thing to do. And I only joined if they said I could go to Vietnam. And of course the military does make you promises and they break half of them, but they did follow through with their promise. They sent me to Vietnam. SM (00:23:33): When you look at the years when you were young in Vietnam, and now, have you changed your thoughts on the Boomer generation? Are your thoughts pretty consistent, the same as they were back say in 1975? Are they the same today in 2006? DE (00:23:53): About our generation? SM (00:23:54): Yes. Have you changed? Some people as they get older they change their thoughts because it is part of the aging process. DE (00:24:08): I gotcha. I am going to have you call me back because my cell phone is beeping. SM (00:24:09): Okay. DE (00:24:09): Okay, bye-bye. SM (00:24:12): Bye. Yeah, the question is have you changed at all your opinions on the Boomer generation from the time you were young to today? You are still young, but- DE (00:24:23): Yeah, right. Well, I do not know if I am going to answer this in a way in which you are looking for, but I will say this. Of course it changed after I graduated from college went into the military and served my year in Vietnam and I came home. And when I came home, I was very disillusioned with America and I was very angry at our government for- SM (00:24:50): Diane, could you speak up a little bit more? I cannot hear you. DE (00:24:54): Now it is the phone that I am on. Maybe I will get a different phone. Does this help at all? SM (00:25:03): Let us see. Yeah, that is a little better. DE (00:25:06): I am going to get a different phone. SM (00:25:07): Okay. DE (00:25:08): Sorry, I did not recharge my telephone- SM (00:25:17): That is all right. DE (00:25:18): ... last night, because when I got up the morning, I thought, "Oh, shoot, my cell phone is going to run out too." Okay, I am going to try this phone now. Try this, is this better? SM (00:25:30): Oh, yeah, it is a lot better. DE (00:25:31): Okay, that is an old phone. So when I came home from Vietnam in 1969, it was a different country since I left. Of course, I was a different person too then when I left. But it did not take me long to see a 1969 the angry country that I lived in. I felt, on one hand, I was glad that my peers and so many people in America were opposing the war and had taken to the streets, but then I also began to feel, and things that I had heard about while I was in Vietnam, what was being taken out on the soldiers. And then I began the doubt and question, and how can people turn on us, on the soldiers? And I had just seen how these young men had suffered and died and I saw the courage that they had and what they had done for this country and then to be scorned when coming home. And being told literally, you have heard the stories, I was told to not wear my uniform home, and I did not have anything but my uniform to wear home. And of course, that caused some very unpleasant things that happened at the airport in Minneapolis. And I thought, "This is Minneapolis. This is Minnesota. Minnesota is nice." I could not believe the reception at the airport in Minneapolis. And so I began to have a lot of anger that the country could on one hand send us after to war like they sent the World War II generation, and were so proud of them and proud of them when they returned, and no one was proud of us. It was to the point where they were opposite of proud. They did not want to look at us, they did not want to deal with us. They turned on us. And when I say they, that is some, that is not the whole country, but many did. And so, I became very confused and frustrated and basically very angry, but I was internalizing it all. But at that time, Steve, I had not found my voice to be able to speak out, and I did not take to the streets in '69 like the veterans before. In fact, what I did was, because I was not dealing well as a nurse in a civilian world, I was out for less than a year and went back into the military and that is when I went to Fort Bend, Houston, and went back to taking care of wounded soldiers. They were coming right from Vietnam. I was in the intensive care unit. So, I went back to doing what I did well and that was nursing, and it probably saved my life because I did not fit in the civilian world and I was very unhappy and I was isolating myself. I just was not dealing well with anything except I could go to work in the military and do my job and take care of the soldiers. So, the rest is history. No, the rest is not history because then after that, I did not find my voice until the dedication in 1981. But getting back to the Boomers, so the way I looked at the Boomers then was that we were a generation that was trapped by a government that was trying to control us, and by some parents that were trying to, and old values that were trying to control us. And my generation was dying. I mean, I saw my generation dying one by one by one, because then after I came home my peers were committing suicide. And then I was learning that they had Agent Orange and they were dying of that. But my peers were dying after Vietnam. And of course I stayed in the military for several years still so I saw them dying in the hospital. But then when I got out of the military, I saw my peers dying. So, when anybody says to me that we were the me generation, which insinuates that we are selfish and self-absorbed and just think about ourselves, I disagree with that, and I find that is one more way to demean our generation. And this is what people in this country did, and the government did, was they denigrated us. They demeaned us. They named us drug-crazed, glassy-eyed baby killers. The movies came out and the Vietnam vets were portrayed as killers and baby killers. Well, what did the country spend them there for? They taught them in base camp, I mean, you go to war and that is what you do, you kill people. And these young boys did not want to do it. They were told they had to do it. The way I look at the Boomers today is that like the greatest generation, World War II generation, I have watched the Baby Boomers, my generation, really work hard to move up into the world and become good citizens despite the fact that they have had to internalize deep, deep pain and anguish over their service and overcome the enormous challenge to get on with life when we have been so slandered, which most people, plus the vets, even understand that. And that does not diminish World War II generation either. They came home with pain and anguish and drama from the war and wounds that never healed. And they had to overcome all of that too. But at least they could say to themselves, "I did something that I could feel proud of. We won the war. Look at what we did." And I do not think anybody's ever proud that they killed someone, so I am not saying that any soldier would say I am so proud I killed somebody. But they could feel proud that they made a difference for their country. Like World War II [inaudible] can say, well, this is what [inaudible] we were allowed to feel proud of- SM (00:31:45): Still there? DE (00:31:46): Yeah, I am here. SM (00:31:46): Okay. How important was the Boomer generation in ending the war? And I am speaking, one of the criticisms of the Boomer generation is often, well, there is 70 million people and only really 15 percent were involved in any sort of activist activity to end the war, be involved in the Civil Rights Movement. And oftentimes the media will portray the generation it was a small number of people that were involved in these kinds of movements. Your thoughts on number one, whether it is oftentimes how a media portrays the generation as smaller numbers of people being involved in these things, and number two, basically the overall impact that the young people had in ending the war in Vietnam. DE (00:32:38): First of all, Steve, the media is fickle. And now look at what the media does to Vietnam vets. Now, today, we are all heroes. We are all heroes. Anybody who wore the uniform is a hero. And in fact, now we have gotten a directive from the VA, maybe you know this, that the week of Veterans Day now we are all supposed to wear our medals to show that we served our country and our pride, and now we were all supposed to wear our medals. And of course, the media picked up on this, and now all the soldiers serving in Iraq are considered heroes. So, I am not quite sure what a hero is anymore, because when I was in Vietnam I knew who the heroes were and I never considered myself a hero. And most of the people I served with did not, we reserved that word for somebody who was really extraordinary. I mean, if somebody says to me, "Diane, you are my hero," I will say, "Well, I appreciate that. Thank you very much," and I will accept it. But I do not put that word on an entire generation or an entire group of people, because then who are the heroes? But anyway, now I lost my train of thought. Oh, well the media is fickle. And where was the media during Vietnam in that I was very proud of the media early on and during the years where they really tried to bring this home to America. That is another thing. The media during the Vietnam War brought the raw, horrible, heinous, tragic truth back to America on the six o'clock news. And at least the people were able to see on television how heinous war is and what it does to the human body and at what it does to civilians, children especially. And so, I am one of these people that actually believed, and still believes, that if we are going to have a war, let the American people, everybody, every single one of us, see what is happening. Let us see what it is doing to civilians. Let us see what it is doing to our soldiers, because then maybe we will have a gut reaction to it and maybe we will stop it... reaction to it and maybe we will stop it. So they brought the raw truth home. But when the soldiers came home, the media picked up on rag tag soldiers who somehow looked disheveled and the soldiers who became war protestors themselves. And somehow the media, to me, and it is not entirely true maybe, but on a very grand scale, I think the media was also to blame in how soldiers were treated when they came home from the war. Rather than keying in and picking up on the stories about what the soldier had done and how he had served his country, or she, and a report on that... And that happened. It did not happen until 1982, in my estimation. This is all my opinion. But in 1982 when the wall was dedicated, and I went out to the wall for that dedication and all of a sudden, I felt this sense of the country was turning to really look at who we were as soldiers and veterans. And I was followed around by this cameraman because I was wearing my booty camp from Vietnam. And he followed me around and finally I thought, "He is following me." And this has never happened to me before. And I looked at him and I said, "Why are you following me?" And he said, "Well, you were in Vietnam were not you?" And I said, "Yes." And he said, "Well, what did you do in Vietnam?" And I said, "Well, I was a nurse." And he said, "Well, can I interview you?" And I had such a knee-jerk reaction and so much distress like, "What is he going to do with this interview?" And so I said, "No." I said, "Would you please go away? I just want to be alone. Just leave me alone." And it was like I felt like he wanted to exploit me like I had been exploited before. And so, I did not trust the media. But after the dedication of the wall, there were stories that were published in every major newspaper across the country about Vietnam vets, who they really were, where they came from, what they were doing today, how they were feeling. And so it took a long time for the press to come around and start putting us in a more accurate light. And of course, that is all we wanted was the accuracy and we just wanted the truth. We did not want to be turned into a bunch of heroes or turned into something we were not. We just wanted the truth. And of course, then that gets into the next phase of my life, Steve, which is there was something seething inside of me again that I just wanted to do whatever I could to help this truth be told. And the truth was that the women who served in Vietnam were completely invisible and then they were invisible again at the wall after the dedication of the statues of three men. And so, I just felt like, "I need to do something constructive with how I am feeling or it is going to kill me." In about five minutes, I have got to switch my tape here, but a very important question. And that is, when you look at the issue of trust, one of the questions I have been asking all of my interviewees is the question of this quality of trust and whether we have it within the Boomer generation because of all the experiences we had growing up as young people watching Lyndon Johnson say the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. And of course a lot has been written about that. That was a lie. We go back to President Kennedy and how we got in Vietnam and there was some questions there. We go back to Eisenhower and the U2 incident and how we lied in public. And then of course we all go back to Watergate, which was an unbelievable experience for young people. And many of the Boomers, if not most of the Boomers, just did not trust anybody in positions of power and responsibility. And my question is basically this, as Boomers have grown up and have gotten older and raising their families, are we a generation that just does not trust? And by not trusting people and not trusting leaders based on our experiences, what is this doing to the next generation? Well, I think, Steve, that it is only some members, and of course neither one of us know. SM (00:39:56): Diane, could you speak up just a little bit? DE (00:39:58): Yeah. SM (00:39:58): Okay. DE (00:39:59): Neither one of us know what the percentage is of our generation, but they are out there, who do trust. And that I am so surprised. And I am so disappointed in many, many members of our generation that would trust this president of the United States to go to Iraq, preemptive war, without the evidence that states that they had... And from the very, very beginning, I was absolutely against preemptive war. And I did not trust. And of course, one of the things that I came home with Vietnam was the sense that I could never become complacent. I was actually afraid of becoming complacent because I was a little afraid after I came back from Vietnam and I was so quiet that I had all this stuff going on inside me but I could not use my voice and I did not know how to be an activist and I did not know what to do with all these thoughts inside of me and all the feeling that our generation had been betrayed and lied to. And so, after the dedication of the wall when I was able then to take something tangible and move it forward, and it took 10 years, and maybe it needed to take 10 years for those years to have to raise the awareness and raise discussion and bring in the support that was necessary and help people become educated and change their minds and all of that. But where are the members in my generation who did not stand up to this government and say, "We learned lessons [inaudible] and are not going to [inaudible] and we have not been attacked by Iraq. We were attacked by Al-Qaeda. Let us put our energy there?" Where were the members of our generation in influential positions in government and Congress and as consultants that did not rise up against like we rose up in the (19)60s and said, "No, we will not support the president on this?" And I have had discussions with fellow Vietnam vets who have just saluted President Bush and said, "Well, I agree with what he is doing. I think we need to go over there." And so now look at the mess that we have. And I think that we could have risen up against the president. And as you know, Steve, I have been all over the country talking to university students and I talk to honors groups and I talk to political science classes and I talk to history classes and I talk to gender, women's studies classes. And when I am through talking, invariably one of the people in the room will say, "I do not know what is wrong with our generation. Your generation revolted to protest it. You went into the streets and you did all this stuff, but we were not doing that and we do not know why. How come we are not... Why are we still doing nothing?" And I just found that really interesting because now why are not they? And where were the [inaudible 00:43:19] country? There were some of us who were protesting in our own way by writing letters to our congressmen and disagreeing with the policies of this war in Iraq. But members of my generation who have been there and who could have made a difference, and some did, some did speak up against it, but it was not powerful enough. And we have lost our reputation around the world because of what this president has been allowed to [inaudible] SM (00:43:56): Good points. One of the things that we look at our generation when we were young, many of us said that we were the most unique generation in America history. We are going to be the change agents for the betterment of society. We thought we were going to be the panacea and the cure-all to ending war and on basically a lot of the bad things that were happening in the world at that time. When you look at the generation making those kind of comments when they were young, just your thoughts on is the Boomer generation the most unique generation in American history? DE (00:44:38): I do not think so, Steve. Because [inaudible] like saying that World War II was the greatest generation, what about [inaudible]. What about that- SM (00:44:46): Diane, I cannot hear you very good. Could you speak up just a little bit more? DE (00:44:51): Yeah, I will get a little closer into the phone. SM (00:44:54): Okay. DE (00:44:59): I personally do not like to categorize and put everything into a box because when we talk about the greatest generation, what about the Civil War generation? What about the Revolutionary War? What about the founding fathers and what about the generations of immigrants that came and leveled all those trees in the land and built log houses and battled every kind of hardship, every kind of horrible hardship possible that you and I cannot even imagine? They were a great generation and they were a unique generation too. So, no, I will not say any generation is the most unique or any generation is the greatest because I think that is unfair to all generations before us who have done enormous things to build this country into what it is. So, we could say we were a unique generation in that we stood up to establishment. And the outcome of that is women do have it better. Civil rights did make a difference. And we were not there yet. And women still are not there yet. We still have a long way to go, but that is the process and that is life. Keep fighting old battles over and over and over again because we are human beings, we fall into old traps. But I guess where I am disappointed in my generation is that we did not do more to prevent this president from entering into a preemptive war without solid factual information. And I am not a pacifist because I believe in defense and I believe our nation- ... that is going to happen because we are human beings. And human beings seem to love war and trample on other people's territory and [inaudible] other people's territory and want what others want. But where was my generation in defying the lies that were being said to us? And I blame the media for a lot of this because here, the fickle media again, some of our media sources which are headed by corporations who have agendas that slant the news to a point where the media is an arm piece for the politics of the administration rather than telling the truth. Where is the truth anymore? And the American people are hard pressed to know what the truth is unless they read The Guardian. And I read about 10 newspapers. Thankfully, I can go online now. But I am certainly not just going to read the Independent Record, which is my paper here in Helena. And I go online and I read papers from all over the world and I read all kinds of newspapers to try to get the news because I know I am not getting it on television. But that takes time and it takes interest. But if people just watch Fox News, very intelligent people when they say that they watch Fox News, they support everything the president does because they are watching Fox News. I just find that abhorrent. And I guess maybe that is because I am of my generation where you do not believe everything. You question, question, question, question. And for me to be... There is this blood thirsty, counterfeit patriotism in the country right now. And it is blood thirsty and it is counterfeit not through patriotism. And patriotism is not supporting the president. Patriotism is supporting the Constitution and believing enough in the Constitution to keep the Constitution intact. And it is believing in America. You were not in the military, Steve, but in the military, we were taught as officers that we are... We take an oath to uphold the Constitution. You do not take an oath to uphold the president of the United States. What if the president is wrong? And so, to me, there has been a lot of phony patriotism in this country with the flag waving. And if you think if you put a yellow bumper sticker on your car that says Support the Troops, that is all you have to do.... So, I have given a lot of talks here and all over about what it really means to support the troops. I said, "Bumper stickers and flying the flag are ceremonial. And it is good to fly the flag. It is our flag, it is America's flag. But if you fly it only because you think America is best in the world and we can do anything we want to protect ourselves to the point of imperialism and moving in on a country and just setting up bases and all under the guise of lies, I differ with that." And so, I have been called unpatriotic because I do not support Bush. But they do not hurt my feelings. I know who I am and I know what I have done. And I have dedicated my career... My entire life, my entire career, has been dedicated to advocating for veterans, for the soldiers. And talk is cheap, but it is what you do that is the truth. SM (00:50:43): That is beautiful, Diane. That is beautiful. A question here. What will be the lasting legacy of the Boomer generation? When the best history books are written, they are often 50 years after an event end. The Vietnam War ended in (19)75. So really if you look at that, the best history books are still to be written on this year are probably in the year 2025. Just your thoughts on the lasting legacy of the Boomers? DE (00:51:13): Yeah, well, the lasting... Let us hope, Steve, and I will make this very clear, let us hope that whatever the history books write that they try to write the truth. And that is always the problem. It is like history according to whom, Lee or Grant? But if they write the truth and they really look at our generation, they will see that our generation was exploited and used by a government on false premises, on lies. And look at the historical, the war itself, and what that did to my generation and what it did to the people back home and how it enriched a lot of people and corporations. And what those enriched corporations have been able to do with the money to abuse next generations, which is the corporate greed, the corporate... Halliburton and how corporations and newspaper corporations and how that evolved so that they could one day use their agenda to exploit the American people. But I think the legacy of my generation is also that we defied the system, that we asked questions and we made a difference. And that maybe in every revolution there has to be, not has to be, but it seems like in every revolution for people to be heard, they have to do radical things like women going braless. I never took off my bra [inaudible] to make my statement known, but some women felt they needed to do that. To be heard they felt they needed to be radical. And the suffragettes, they were radical. Think about the early 1900s and what the suffragettes had to do to get heard, they were radical. Of course, my radicalness was to join the military. But each person in my generation found a way to either use the system by defying it by... Because of the deferment, college students could stay in college and not go to Vietnam. And now we can criticize that, but that was the system. That was the way the government set it up. Now, I believe that there should be no deferment. And I believe in the draft. If we are going to have a war, draft every man and woman in America. And then because it is going to touch every man and woman in America, every son or daughter, then they will speak up and say, "Hey, this is not a war I think is worth fighting." And if they do believe it is worth fighting, they will put the uniform on. But a draft is a great equalizer. It makes people think. It is going to affect them. It is not somebody else's kids like the voluntary draft. But having said that, the legacy of my generation will also be that they went to Congress after the war and told Congress what their problems were and that they needed help. And they filed a class action lawsuit against Agent Orange because the VA would not help them. When they were dying from poisonous exposure to their war experience and the government was not there to take care of them, they filed a class action lawsuit. That is one example. They went to Congress and said, "We are committing suicide by the tens of thousands. We are depressed, we are having problems." And because of Vietnam Vets, we now have the Vet Center. The Vet Center, by legislation, was adopted in 1979 and it is now a place where Vietnam vets, World War II vets, any vet, is now able... It was set up for Vietnam vets, but now it is any vet. And veterans coming home from Iraq are already going to the Vet Center. And they are being identified more quickly with post-traumatic stress disorder and they are getting the help that they need soon rather than years and years and years after the war. So Vietnam veterans have made a difference in legislation and civil rights. And because of us, women today have more rights. That is part of our legacy. And I know I am forgetting a whole lot. And we also have a memorial on the Mall in Washington DC, something no other veterans had not done. And it was necessary for the education and for the healing and for helping to expose the truth. And following those memorials, there were all the others. And there is one more thing, and that is we forgot our prisoners of war. All other wars, we have left them behind and the case was closed and the issue was over. Vietnam vets today are still out there demanding that POWs return home. So my generation of Vietnam vets changed how America looks at how we treat our POWs and bringing them home. Of course, this administration under President Bush has gone back to the dark ages with the whole issue of torture and how we treat other prisoners of war. And that is a whole other topic. SM (00:56:50): Right. I want to ask a question about the term activism. Activism on college campuses today, at least at our university, they look upon the word as a negative term. They say, "This is a term that is from another era, another time, and it is not really defining today's college student so come up with another term." I just did an educational session at a conference on this with a couple students. DE (00:57:19): What is the term? SM (00:57:21): Activism. DE (00:57:22): Oh, okay. SM (00:57:23): There seems to be feelings that activism is a negative term for whatever reason. Your thoughts on just saying the word activism in today's society and just your thoughts on activism as not only as an action, but as a word? DE (00:57:41): Well, I think we need to listen to our younger generation and what they are trying to tell us. Because the word feminism is the same. They do not like the word feminism. They do not identify with it. They wonder why we use it. And my son, my oldest son, when he started college, because he grew up with me in a feminist household because my husband is definitely a feminist, and we had discussed it and he knew about it and he was very proud of it. And so he was in class and he was shocked because the teacher brought up a discussion of feminism. And the women in his class, literally, they did not consider themselves feminist. They did not care about the word, what does it mean to be a feminist? They were just oblivious. So, it is not our responsibility. It is up to the young people, the younger generations today, to come up with their own terms, to come up with their own beliefs and to come up with whatever works for them. And if activism and feminism conjure up some old fogy or, "That is in the dark ages," kind of reference like maybe we looked at references from my parents' past... And I hardly knew what the word... Honestly, Steve, I do not think I knew what the word suffragette meant or disenfranchised. Those were not words I was familiar with until I got into college and really started reading about it. So the younger generation today needs to come up with something they can believe in, something is their torch. What is their torch? What is their mantra? I do not really know. And I get the same thing when I talk to students all over the country. It is like they have not come up with some guiding principle or something they are willing to lay down and give up their time and their money for. They were very worried about, and as they should be, their jobs and how they were going to feed themselves and how they were going to pay the bills. But maybe that is the generation that is self-absorbed. And I am not going to call any generation the Me generation because I do not think it is fair. But the generation now, I think because they are seeing the disillusionment with the war in Iraq... But again, it is not touching a lot of them. Because unless they are in a family where they have a sibling serving in Iraq, it is still pretty remote. So, I do not know. SM (01:00:13): The question here about healing. I want to read something here and I would just like your comment, "Do you feel that the Boomers are a generation that is still having problems with healing? The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Women's Memorial did a great job with veterans and in some respects the families of veterans. But do you feel that the healing has really taken place in large numbers beyond the community, and for that matter, within the community?" I am referring to, have these memorials really healed the nation from the Vietnam War? And there is two kind of questions here. Number one, what job has it really done for the veterans and their families? I see it every year when I go down there. I think there has been a lot of healing in the Vietnam veteran population, their families. But what has it done to the nation, to the Boomers, the 70 million who were alive during the Vietnam War and has it really healed the nation? DE (01:01:14): I am not sure it has, Steve. And I agree with you in that of course- SM (01:01:19): If you could speak a little louder. A little louder. DE (01:01:21): Yeah. SM (01:01:21): Okay. DE (01:01:22): For the better part of, well, all the part of that I have, like you, watched what has happened in this nation and early on how they treated the veterans. And then their own issues, their issues of guilt, their issues of anger, all of the issues that the whole generation had, not just the veterans. But when the nation saw us come together as veterans, they started to look at us differently and begin to feel that, "We should not have taken this out on the soldiers. We should have separated our views." And then there is the guilt about... And I have had many, many people, a lot of women, coming up to me and saying, "I was a war protestor and I am so sorry. I am not sorry I protested the war, but I am sorry that it hurt you, that it hurt the soldiers." And so that healing and being able to articulate your feelings about that I think is healing. And I think the veterans community, individual veterans who come together now, we are healing each other. We help to heal each other. But I do not think we have felt a lot of healing coming from our nation. It has come from each other. Veterans hug each other, they bond with one another. We understand each other. And we go to the memorials and there is a ton of healing that is done there. And hopefully these memorials and the fact that we have come together has prevented thousands of suicides from happening. Because there were thousands before those memorials were dedicated. And they are still happening. You and I both know that. SM (01:03:08): Yes, yes. DE (01:03:10): But when I am around the country and because of my activism here in Helena and... I helped to draft a resolution to present to the City Commission here. And the name of the resolution was Support the Troops and End the Military Occupation in Iraq. I cannot tell you how many people came out of the woodwork and how they lined up at the City Commission. And one woman told me I was sick. She told me I was sick for not supporting the war in Iraq. And yet I had just testified about we need to support our troops and I identified how you support veterans and legislation and mandatory funding and what the needs are for the soldiers and it takes letters to congressmen to provide the financial backing to help these soldiers. It is not just supporting the soldiers, it is going to take money, it takes effort. We have to help the VA here and we are not. Time after time Congress is voting against benefits for veterans. So, I went into all of that, but all she could see was that I wanted to end the war in Iraq. That is all she could see and she called me sick. And then all these men got up, mostly men, but this one woman, they got up and defied everything I said and said, "If we do not fight those terrorists over there, they are going to be here." And I took a lot of flak and I was accused of this, and I was accused of that. And some of these are members of the Baby Boom generation. So, there is still a lot of, I think, anger left over about Vietnam and people wanting to finish that war and not wanting to believe we lost that war so they cannot stand the fact that we might lose another one. And there is this pride thing, "We lost the war in Vietnam. We cannot lose this one." And so of course, I am miles apart in thinking with that. We are in Iraq now. We have to solve these problems, but let us have a plan. Let us have some leadership and let us have the truth. SM (01:05:25): Yeah. I remember when I interviewed Gaylord Nelson, the late senator from Wisconsin. It was several years back and I am sitting in his office and he had a tendency at times to go off into environmental issues because that was his number one issue in his life. But he said, "Steve, are you asking me if people go around Washington DC and they are showing that they are not healing on their sleeves?" He says, "It is not possible." But he did say that, "The body politic will never be the same." And he was referring to the Vietnam War and in response to the question of healing. And I think on the other person that had an influence on me was Lewis Puller before he killed himself. And if you recall, I took students down to the Vietnam Memorial two days before the Women's Memorial was dedicated and Lewis met seven of our students at one of the benches not far from where the Women's Memorial is. And when I take students to Washington now, I always make sure they sit at that bench. And when Jan Scruggs came over to the wall and they were sitting at that bench, we took some students down in the spring, Asian American students, and two people were visiting from Vietnam, from North Vietnam, who actually work with I think it is Bobby Mueller, I had them sitting at the same that bench. But what they are really getting at is the healing issue. When we sat with Lewis for two hours, Lewis talked about that and how he had healed. And then if you remember, Bill Clinton had come to the wall that one year. DE (01:07:15): Yes, I sat right behind him. SM (01:07:17): Yes. And I have this question here as well. This is what I asked from Senator Nelson, actually, Senator McCarthy and Senator McGovern, "Do you think it is possible to heal within a generation where differences and positions were so extreme? And then is it important to even try? Should we care? Is it feasible?" And for example, this was written a little while back, "During my many trips to the wall, I have been to several ceremonies with veterans in the audience. They hate or seem to openly hate Bill Clinton. They hate Jane Fonda. They hate all those individuals who protested against the war and never gave veterans a royal welcome home on the return to the mainland. The wall has helped in a significant way, but the hate remains for many. At least this seems apparent from my perspective." Then this is how Senator Nelson responded, he looked at me and he said, "Steve, you cannot heal 70 million people." Should an effort be made to assist in the healing beyond the wall? Your thoughts? And it is because I have been so impressed with the wall and what you have done by the memorials in Washington being non-political and just caring about the vets, I wish they could take these examples and take it into society as a whole. So just your thoughts on just the healing within a generation, is it even possible? DE (01:08:43): Well, I do not know. And I struggled with that during the building of the Vietnam Women's Memorial because I soon realized, oh my gosh, Steve, you know this, but after I started the effort, my God, I had no idea there was still so much anger and hatefulness and mean spiritedness. And I learned about what the word misogyny means, build a hatred towards women. And it was killing me, Steve. I was losing weight. I was grinding my teeth at night. I went to a physician and I was anemic. I was a mess because it was becoming toxic. I was taking in all this stuff. And I am a healer. I am a nurse, I am a mother, and my role in life through compassion and touch and wanting people to heal and this is what I wanted this memorial for. And then here I am, this person who is a nurse and just trying to help people heal, and all of a sudden, I am the bad person. A woman called me and told me that I was no better than whale shit. That is just one example. And finally, I had to overcome this and- I had to overcome and just... I had to overcome this and realize and turn my nursing skills around in saying, "There are people I cannot help. I am not God, I am not omnipotent. I cannot help these people. They have to help themselves. All I can do is get this memorial built and the memorial will be the healer." And then I just decided I am not the healer. I am not the healer. I am not God. I am not... The memorial will do the healing and the education will help with the healing and bringing the veterans together. And I totally had to have sort of like this epiphany that if I was going to survive this, I had to detach myself from all of this anger and realize some people will never be helped. I actually had to have some police surveillance around our homes because I had threats. We had threats; people called in the middle of the night. SM (01:10:53): Oh my, God. DE (01:10:54): And so my husband was worried about me. It was either going to kill me or I was going to rise above it and just say, "Hey, I cannot [inaudible] these are people I will never be able to help." But I want to talk about something, Steve; this is my view of what President Bush and this administration have done in exploiting Vietnam veterans. They have used us and I will tell you why. Because they know that during the Vietnam War and after, that when America did not support the war, they also did not support the veterans, or some did not and it hurt the veterans. So, this President has made it very clear, and so I argue with and debate with have made it clear that you cannot have it both ways. To support the troops, you have to support the war. So, it is all or nothing. You support the troops, you support the war. And that is where a lot of people in the nation are coming from. And that is because of Vietnam. They are afraid that if they do not support the war, it is going to hurt the troops. This country is so guilty for feeling what they did to Vietnam veterans because they took it out on the troops. So now this President is exploiting that and making us all heroes. All Vietnam vets are heroes. Everybody is a hero. And you cannot have it both ways. The former governor of the state Judy Martz... I disagreed with them, spoke up against what she said, and that was Governor Judy Martz said that you have to support this war because we are supporting this group and you cannot have it both ways. And I said, "You can have it both ways." We have a right and we have a duty, and we have a responsibility to oppose a war we believe is wrong. We have a right and a duty to support our... And by supporting... Those who think our troops would want to vote when they are overseas, we are not hurting their morale. That is my [inaudible]. Do not you say, "Is not it only fair to our troops, our soldiers who are serving overseas to think that the Americans back home are asking questions about the war they are serving in and are asking questions about its mission and its role and asking questions about when they get to come home and asking questions about being redeployed and redeployed and redeployed, and is that right for our soldiers to have to be redeployed three, four, five times? Should not other people in America be sharing this burden that maybe we need to grasp or maybe we need to stop going and find other solutions?" But this is not fair how we are treating our troops. The longer they are there, the more they are realizing this. And I think our soldiers have a right to know that Americans back home are asking questions and are really concerned about their needs and what they are doing and questioning the war as well. So yeah, I think this generation... I think the politics of America right now in this war in Iraq is a lot of the thinking is right out of... Because of what happened during Vietnam. SM (01:14:03): It is interesting because I work in a university environment and I have paid a heavy price for doing a lot of programs on Vietnam. By heavy price, I will not even go into detail here, but one of them is I just do not want to hear about Vietnam anymore. DE (01:14:20): Right. SM (01:14:20): On anything. DE (01:14:21): Right. It is denial. They want to put their heads in denial and live in a fantasy world. And it is coming out now in major newspapers and articles, and it was New York Times and CNN last night that President Bush is living in his little fantasy world. Well, when American people do not want to face the horrors and face the fruit, it is easier to live in your little world of denial. Let us not think about it. Let us not talk about it. But that, I think, is what is frightening in this country is that as a whole, America has been willing to follow this administration without asking the hard questions and believing what they see on the news because it is easier. SM (01:15:10): Well, the last part of my interview is just for you to... I am going to list some names of people from that era and just your gut-level reaction, your feelings on them. Just a comment here or there. Are you ready? DE (01:15:25): I am ready. Uh oh, I am in for it. SM (01:15:28): All right. Tom Hayden. DE (01:15:30): Pardon me? SM (01:15:31): Tom Hayden. DE (01:15:34): No comment. SM (01:15:36): Jane Fonda. DE (01:15:37): Okay. I knew that was coming. Okay. I have a visceral reaction to Jane Fonda for a very explicit reason. She was one of the few women that were heard during the Vietnam War and the press, the media, the country, and the world capitalized on Jane Fonda and what she did. So it was almost like Jane Fonda was the spokesperson, or she was what women were doing. She was like, "Be representative, be symbols of the Vietnam War." And I am angry and resentful about that because she is the woman that is being heard. And yet there were more than 10,000 women in Vietnam doing the hard work and the courageous work and the brave work. And they were in there getting their hands dirty, doing the work, and 250,000 women were serving around the world and supporting the armed forces and doing the hard work. And they were not heard from. The press did not interview them. The press did not photograph them. They were not in the newspapers. They were not in magazines. They were not on the six o'clock news. And so we were working behind the scenes and behind the cameras doing the hard work, but it took the Vietnam Women's Memorial in 1993 to show who the women really were in this country and all those women who were working for women's rights and the women who were working for civil rights and so on and so forth and then we have Jane Fonda. So I have no highest esteem for her because what she did was pitiful. And the way she protested; she could have protested in a different way. SM (01:17:27): Lyndon Johnson. DE (01:17:29): Well, I have a visceral reaction to Lyndon Johnson. Steve, I rarely use the word hate. I do not think it is healthy to hate anybody. It hurts the person more than... It is hurtful to you; it is to yourself when you hate. But I have to admit and be candid that I hated that man. I hated him so badly for what had happened under his watch and the thousands of soldiers that I had cared for because remember, I worked in military hospitals in the United States for several years besides Vietnam. I realized that for me, he was the epitome, he was the target, he was the symbol. And when I was at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and Program Medical Center, working as a nurse in the intensive care unit, the chief nurse came to me, Colonel Cleveland, while I was on duty, and I will share this with you. This will portray for you my distaste for Lyndon Bates Johnson. And the seventh floor of Brook Army Medical Hospital was reserved for LBJ. He had a lot of health problems, and they would bring him in by helicopter. The ward had to be opened; the whole seventh-floor suite. We could not go up there; it was locked. Nobody had ever seen it. We would only heard about the seventh floor; just for LBJ. Colonel Cleveland came to me while I was on duty and said to me, "Captain Carlson, here are the keys. I want you to take the elevator." The elevator was locked. You had to have a key to get in the elevator to go up there, "And open up the seventh floor and prepare it." And I knew what that meant. Before I could even think about any career in the military or disobeying an order or saluting and saying, "Yes, ma'am," I looked at her and said, "Colonel Cleveland, I refuse to take care of that man." She looked at me, and of course, if I ever thought I was going to have a career in the military, it went out the window. But at that point, I spoke my conviction and I said what I thought, and I was not going to care for him. She looked at me and said, "Captain, it is not Mr. Johnson coming in. It is Mamie Eisenhower. She is coming in by chopper. She is having some kind of an allergic reaction to something." And I said, "Yes, ma'am. I will go right up there." So I went up and opened up the seventh-floor suite and I got a chill because this was the room that LBJ had been in many, many times. You could see it was set up for a former president because it was all telephones everywhere and everything was nice and perfect and wonderful and huge. And I got a chill because when I was up there, this was where he had been, and I was extremely uncomfortable. But I went into my professional... I went into nurse mode, my professional mode, I got the respirator set up, and the breathing apparatus that I had used and everything was ready. So when Mamie Eisenhower came in, I was there to admit her. And then I was her private duty nurse for about three weeks. But I am just sharing this with you to let you know how strongly I felt about him, that I had so much disrespect, so much anger, and that I could look at the good things he did too. But for me, sometimes you wrap everything up in one person. For a lot of vets, it is Jane Fonda, they wrap it all up in her and that is where she is the lightning rod; same with LBJ. SM (01:21:28): Wow. How about John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy? DE (01:21:32): JFK? Are you talking about- SM (01:21:35): Yeah. JFK and Bobby Kennedy. DE (01:21:39): Oh, my distrust. I was feeling okay. With JFK, there was a lot of confusion because later I learned that he is the one that got us into Vietnam and he could have kept us out. And then also, I later learned about his escapades with him. I mean, he had hundreds of women coming and going. That is a fact. And then I felt the hypocrisy with Bill Clinton. We had JFK, and then the government does this to Bill Clinton. So, there is this hypocrisy that is just so blatant among Americans and politics that... Who cares [inaudible] Bill Clinton that I did not... But I guess when I was younger, it was ask not what you can do for you... I mean, he was inspirational. He had charisma. I looked up to him. I mean, I was in high school. I remember exact... As most of us do, I remember exactly where I was. I was in speech class and I was in the middle of giving a speech. SM (01:22:41): Oh, wow. DE (01:22:41): Came over the intercom and that JFK had been killed. And of course, the horror of that. I guess I was not a lot like... I guess I was kind of different. But the girls started crying and they got... But I was crying. I [inaudible 01:23:00] sobbing and I was just, "Oh my, God." But it was also... I do not know. I did not enough about history. I had not read enough about Joe Kennedy and that Kennedy, that Camelot family, was not what they were portrayed [inaudible]. So I was disillusioned. I was disillusioned by them. SM (01:23:27): How about Dr. Benjamin Spock? DE (01:23:32): I do not know. I was raised with five siblings and was taught... I do not know. Dr. Benjamin Spark influenced, yes, generations of babies and mothering and babies. But I did not read him. I was sort of out of text with that. I was interested in other things. I did not read Dr. Spock on how to raise my children. SM (01:23:57): He was involved in the anti-war movement too. He was a protestor. How about the Black Panthers? Huey Newton, H. Rap Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, that group. DE (01:24:10): Well, for somebody like me, they were pretty scary people. I am not giving you very... I do not know... In-depth answers here. SM (01:24:24): But still it is just- DE (01:24:26): What I am thinking about at the time, not now. Is that what you want? How I felt? SM (01:24:30): Yes. DE (01:24:32): It was just another one of those extraordinary, out-of-the-ordinary things that were happening at the time in my generation where... I mean, all of a sudden I went from this little girl wearing skirts and little corduroy dresses and tights to school and having to dress up. We were not allowed to wear pants in high school to all of a sudden graduating from high school and now girls are going without bras, and they are wearing miniskirts and white boots. (01:25:04): I mean, things are so bizarre. And the teenage [inaudible], the hairdos and makeup or no makeup. Everything was so out of whack and so weird and so strange. And so it was like, "Well, this is just normal for my generation to be abnormal." So then it was the Black Panthers. I would see them on television, and it was just very bizarre to me. But I think I just rolled with the punches. SM (01:25:33): How about... Well, I guess here is another. The Berrigan Brothers, Daniel and Philip Berrigan. DE (01:25:40): See, maybe I am out of touch. I do not even know who they are. SM (01:25:40): Okay, how about Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin? DE (01:25:50): Well, I do not know. I do not if I had any real thoughts about them. I cannot remember. SM (01:25:55): Timothy Leary? DE (01:25:57): Uh-uh. Who is he? SM (01:25:58): He was- DE (01:25:59): It is tough. SM (01:26:00): He is psychedelic. He was the man... DE (01:26:00): Yeah. I have to tell you, Steve, anything that was psychedelic or the crazy music, Black Panthers, all of that stuff, I could not relate to it, so I did not. I do not think I thought too much about it. I just kind of knew it was out there. SM (01:26:20): All right. DE (01:26:21): Remember, I was this curious [inaudible]. I mean, during this period of time, it is like my husband said, I did not go to movies. I was going to school full-time. I had two full-time... Not full-time. I had two part-time jobs. I was working at a nursing home and I was working at a hospital. When I was not studying or working at the hospital where I was training, I had jobs. And then I would go home to the farm and if the kids needed me and I would help with the farm. I would go home and help with farm work. I would go home and help with harvesting when I could. And so my life was very focused on jobs and college and the farm. I would go home and help my mother fill the freezer with meat and vegetables from the garden. I mean, these were the practical things that farm kids had to do. And it was like, could I be listening to music or going to movies or caring about the Black Panthers or psychedelic shit? I was so focused on the reality of life, my life at the time, just to get through college and to help my family on the farm. And then when I went into the military, I have to tell you, I was working so hard, the long shift, that I was not doing what you might say normal kids my age normally would do. Girls my age... I did not date believe it or not. I was not dating. And so, I think I was pretty isolated in my own little world of work and college and the necessities of life, the surviving life that I did not pay much attention to the music side or the Rolling Stone or a lot of that stuff that my husband, even though he was in medical school... I mean, he went to all these movies, and then later after we were married, he would talk about these movies, but I had never heard of these movies. Hey, you have never heard of that movie? [inaudible] music? SM (01:28:26): How about... Well, obviously you knew about Robert McNamara, your thoughts on him? DE (01:28:28): Oh, my thoughts on him are the same as LBJ. I disliked him. I did not trust him at all from the beginning. I did not like him. I did not trust him. I guess I was paying more attention to politics, Steve, [inaudible] to other stuff and the generational stuff. But McNamara was, for me, the epitome of sleazy. He reminds me a little bit of Rumsfeld. Now, the arrogance, the I am right, the... It is just the arrogance, the one-sidedness. And how I knew at the time, or I think I knew, but I knew later how there were... McNamara and LBJ had all kinds of bright people coming to them and telling them, consulting with them the truth about not getting involved in the war in Vietnam and what would happen if they did, and trying to enlighten them about history. But he was so self-righteous and arrogant and like Rumsfeld just self-righteous and arrogant. It is their way and no other way. So that is how I felt. SM (01:29:50): And two other people I know you really loved, and that is Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. DE (01:29:56): Oh my God. They were, for me... I think that is when I really started to become internally depressed because I think I have... I know I have because it has helped me throughout my life. I seem to have... Maybe it is nursing skills and being able to observe personalities. I distrusted him from the beginning. And of course, Agnew and Nixon, for good reason, were non-trustworthy. But I think when Watergate happened, I really shut down. It was during that time that I quit watching television. When I got married, I told my husband that we would not have TV in our house. I could not bear anything on television. It just conjured up this extreme emotion in me to the point where it was frightening in that our country is... I was frightened for our country and what these men... I used to call them their wargasm. Men in their testosterone and men in their orgasm and the power that they had and what they could do to our nation. And I still have that feeling today. And I sensed it with Bush from the beginning after 9/11. I saw it in Bush in this warmongering, this wargastic kind of testosterone, this sense of power and control. And for some people, it absolutely goes to their head where they become so self-righteous and so arrogant that it is an aphrodisiac, Steve. It literally becomes an aphrodisiac for some men. I think that is what it was, certainly for Nixon and Bush, whereas at least LBJ, the one thing I can say about him is he did not run again. He did not run again. I think he did feel some honest sadness and some remorse, but I never felt that with McNamara. I never felt that he had authentic remorse. I felt it was disingenuous. Watching the fog of war made me sick. He still came off arrogant and disingenuous. These are the frightening men. These are the men that frightened... That have led countries into their downfalls. SM (01:32:43): Diane, I got only a couple more questions then we will be done. I am just going to switch my tape. All right. I am back. Just a few more names. Muhammad Ali? DE (01:58:02): I will pass on that one. SM (01:58:04): Martin Luther King, Jr.? DE (01:58:06): Oh, well. He is a hero. He is a true hero and an absolute hero. He made a difference in my life in that I actually had someone that I could look up to and believe in and was so proud of. I do have hope for America because there are so many good people in this country. I meet them all the time, like you do when you are out and about. It is just my concern is how come these wonderful, good people who have integrity, why do not they become president? Why do not they become Secretary of Defense? Why do the people who get into power are the ones who are not the leaders and have the vision to make our country what it is based on and its principles and its true values, not their personal values. I do not know what our values anymore are when President Bush talks about values. Yeah. Well, his values are not my values, so whose values, are they? (01:59:22): But Martin Luther King was brilliant and had those qualities where he could lead people together in song and in speech and with the kind of values and with the kind of leadership that gives people hope. It came from love rather than a need for control and power. They say... What is the saying when love overcomes the need for power... I forget exactly what it is, but he provided for this nation, I think, something that was so necessary and so powerful. And then, whew, he has gone. And then who replaces somebody like him? Who replaces Gandhi? SM (02:00:23): Right. The other power figure here is Malcolm X. Any thoughts on him or? DE (02:00:31): Oh, I will pass on that one. SM (02:00:32): Okay. Some of the other political figures from that era, President Ford. Gerald Ford. DE (02:00:39): Well, President Ford granted amnesty to those who went to Canada, right? SM (02:00:49): Yes. DE (02:00:50): Well, there were a lot of Vietnam veterans who were angry about that. I had mixed feelings, but yet I was not angry at him for doing that. I was glad those men were able to come back to the United States. Many of them did not. Again, I think it was my sense of compassion and forgiveness, and that these were young men who absolutely did not believe that they needed to go to Vietnam. To go to Canada and leave their families, bold acts of courage. Some could say it was cowardice. Maybe it was both. But I am not the judge. The war was wrong. We were lied to. We were sent for the wrong reasons. And I was okay with them being granted amnesty. I admit that. I do not apologize for that. We were a generation that was used and abused and exploited, and there were so many men... That is another thing. What about all the men of my generation who went to prison and the men who were in the, we called it the Long Binh Jail, it was LBJ Jail. You know about that? SM (02:02:11): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. DE (02:02:11): [inaudible]. SM (02:02:13): Yes. DE (02:02:14): While I was in Vietnam, I knew of a lot of men who were going to that jail. Again, I felt the unfairness, and the war is just so horrific in what it does to people. So I think coming from a nursing standpoint, coming from a compassionate, forgiving standpoint, I was sad. I have always had this overwhelming sadness for our generation, for those who went to jail, for those who went to Canada, for those who lost their innocence and lost their family ties where they could not speak to their fathers. Their fathers just literally disowned them. This is what our government did to us. And for what? For what reason? Outside of their aphrodisiac needs for war and power and control. The fact that they could have gotten us out of Vietnam, Steve, because remember, I was there in (19)68, and that is when, 'Oh, we are going to wind the war down. We are going to [inaudible] troops home." While I am there, I know more troops are coming, more are coming and more are dying. We lost more... The majority of names on the wall in Washington DC are from (19)68 and (19)69. So, you can see why I feel so strongly the way I do. I have to say one more thing because I know we want to end this, but it is one thing when your country lies to you. It is another thing when they want you to lie for them because when I was in Pleiku at the 71st Evacuation Hospital, we were just kilometers away from the Cambodian border. We were getting all these wounded from Cambodia. This was the time that the administration was telling America we were not in Cambodia, but we were in Cambodia. And I knew it. We were getting all these patients. I was told not to put anything in the records, that patient's records, that he was in Cambodia. I was to lie. I was supposed to lie for the government. I think that is when my political conscience was galvanized, at that. SM (02:04:21): Wow. DE (02:04:21): So if you talk about galvanizing moments, when I was told to lie on a patient's record that he was not wounded in Cambodia because the nation was saying we were not there, for me, that was the straw that broke... That did it. I think from that point on, it was like, "You can lie to me, but you cannot force me to lie back." I think that is what really propelled me to build the memorial and want to tell the truth and... Well, I know it is. SM (02:04:54): Wow. Actually, there is only four more questions here. Very brief. I just list all these politicians, put them in a nutshell: George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace, Barry Goldwater, and certainly Dwight Eisenhower. They were all politicians that were around when the boomers were there, when they were young. DE (02:05:19): Yeah. But how am I going to answer to all of them? They are also different. Dwight Eisenhower, my God, he is the one that warned us about the military industrial complex. It was prophetic. We are right now in the military industrial complex at its height in what he prophesied in that it would be a train going down a track so powerful, there would be no stopping it. And look what is happening. It is a corporation. So, how can we put them in the same... I cannot... like with George Wallace and George McGovern. McGovern is still out there speaking against the war. In fact, he was supposed to be a speaker here because his daughter lives in Montana, out there in Hamilton. I do not know how to... What would you say about putting them all [inaudible]? SM (02:06:08): Well, I would not put them all together. I would say just a few comments about each of them. Certainly, McGovern, last night I watched on television on what is going on with politics today and the elections coming up next week. They are still talking about the negative influence that George McGovern and that generation had on the political process. And then they interviewed him. It was just like his name keeps coming up over and over again in terms of the decline of the Democratic Party. We have had him on our campus, too. Certainly, you could have comments on each of them. And you have already done it on Eisenhower. What are your thoughts on George McGovern and the 1972 election? DE (02:06:53): Well, I feel that there is a faction in this country that is very good. They are experts at denigrating people who tell the truth and who have integrity and who defy them. Their way of denigrating them and diminishing them is to distort who they really are and what they really believe in. I think George McGovern is one of those. SM (02:07:30): Mm-hmm. Of course, Hubert Humphrey, we all know that he ran with Lyndon Johnson. If he had separated himself from Lyndon Johnson early on, he may have been president. There is a lot of thoughts... DE (02:07:41): Well, I come from Humphrey country. He was our neighbor. His daughter worked with my mother. I met Humphrey on many, many occasions, just lived across the marsh from our farm. He was in Waverly, Minnesota. I grew up on a farm south of Buffalo. You could look across the big marsh and see the Waverly Tower. That, of course, was where Humphrey had his lake home. But I grew up believing Humphrey was a great man and he was compassionate. The welfare system in Minnesota became what it was because of Humphrey. My parents definitely supported Humphrey. Yes, if he had separated himself... But back then, the vice president had no power. It is like they were just in the background, unlike Cheney today. But think of how the country might have been different if it had been Humphrey or McGovern. I wish that Humphrey could have made a difference, but I do not feel like he was in a position to make a difference with LBJ as the president. So, I feel there was some failed... Some things that would never come to fruition because he was in the shadow of LBJ. But in his own right, he still did some wonderful things. SM (02:09:10): Even with Barry Goldwater, so much has been written about him recently, that he was the man that really is the leader of the conservative movement. There is actually several books out right now on him. It was ironic that he and Hugh Scott were the two that walked into Nixon's office and told him he had to resign. So, there is pretty powerful... I am going to end with some terms from that era. You do not have to give long responses. It is just a gut-level reaction to them. Woodstock. DE (02:09:42): Okay. I wish I had been there. I missed out. I missed Woodstock. Because of my upbringing on this farm, I guess I felt too timid to think that I would want to be there at the time. But it was unique. It was extraordinary. I wish I had witnessed it myself, but I could not have gone naked or done any of those things. Politically, I am not conservative, but personally, I would have been a witness to it, watching it happen. Steve, I would have been on the sidelines. I would have been watching it happen. SM (02:10:27): Right. How about communes? DE (02:10:28): Communes? SM (02:10:30): The communal movement? DE (02:10:32): Yeah. Yeah. We had a distant relative who got involved. Again, I felt that my peers, the people of my generation, were moving outside the normal course of traditional life and leaving the security of their homes and wanted something different. Because I grew up on a farm and communed with the Earth every single day, I could not quite understand why they felt they needed to bring teepees out. My dad laughed about it because we had communes out around us where some kids brought teepees out and they just put their teepees up on private land, farmers' land, and then the farmers kicked them out. But they wanted to commune with the land. And of course, I grew up commuting with the land. But I guess, again, I think I was pretty non-judgmental of... I was very judgmental of the government. But I was pretty non-judgmental of my generation and my peers thinking that, hey, they have different ideas; they have different thoughts about things and they want to try something different. I guess I did not feel judgmental about that because for me personally, my way of breaking away was to go into the military and find out something about life in the military, I guess, and do something positive with it. So, I figured if they want to live off the land and get rid of all their materialism because my generation, really in the beginning, did not want the materialism that their parents accumulated. I mean, they sold their skis; they sold their car; they sold whatever they had. They did not want any materialistic objects. They just wanted to go out and have free love and live off the land and get away from it all, which was an escape. Of course, that was just their [inaudible]. SM (02:12:36): How about the counterculture? DE (02:12:36): The counterculture I never quite understood because I never felt a part of it. I was not in the drug culture and I was extremely [inaudible 02:12:48] it. I had been invited to some drug parties, Steve, and I did not know because of my naivete, that I was being invited to a drug party. When I got there to this house, I was pretty shocked because I smelled the smells and the doors to the bedrooms were all closed. The person who invited me came out and said, "Hi, Diane." I looked at her and I said, "If you had told me this was a drug party, I would not have come." And I turned around and left. It pretty much scared me. SM (02:13:27): Right. How about Kent State and Jackson State. DE (02:13:33): Horrific, sad, tragic, awful that our own National Guard, our own government... That is another thing. Just briefly. I talked about how my generation spoke out, rioted, protested. Some did it violently, which was not as acceptable, really. But look what our police did and our National Guard did to two young people and their violence and the beatings and the sticks and whipping them with guns and then shooting. Again, I had a visceral gut reaction of this awful sadness that I could not... disbelief and horror, and again, anger that our college students could be unsafe and shot like that in really cold blood. SM (02:14:32): The Chicago Eight? DE (02:14:34): I will pass on that. SM (02:14:36): How about the Democratic Convention of (19)68? DE (02:14:41): I was in Vietnam, Steve. I was pretty busy focusing on saving patients. But I heard about it. Again, I was becoming used to the volatility, that this is normal. This volatility that is going on in the United States, for me, it was now almost the norm. So, what happened at the Democratic National Convention was just crazy. It was just crazy. I have often said that serving in Vietnam was like living in a hallucination. Some of what was going on in America at the time was also like the hallucination. Apocalypse Now is a movie I actually related to. When somebody asked me why, they said, "Well, that movie is so nuts; it is so crazy." And I said, "Yeah, but that is how I felt. That is what I was living at the time." I was living in an hallucination. Things were crazy. Things were out of control. You could not put piece things together because they were so out of control SM (02:15:50): And Watergate? DE (02:15:54): Watergate for me was like a watershed. It was like they got caught. They got caught. There is justice. There is justice! When he was impeached, or when the impeachment process took place, I had this sense of relief, almost. It was a sense of relief. They got caught. Thank goodness. There are people in the country that will work hard to expose the evil. I hate to use that word now because [inaudible]. SM (02:16:31): Now, I have three more terms here and then we will end. Two of them are probably very important to you. Tet. DE (02:16:44): I arrived in Vietnam in late July, the first part of August. I knew about Tet because I was at Fort Lee, Virginia at the time, and I was getting patients in the orthopedic unit. We were filled. There were no extra beds. We were shipping patients and evacing back and forth to Walter Reed. I took care of patients at Fort Lee, Virginia that had been in Tet. That was my first real exposure to what happens to men who have been in war. They have gone through something horrific. I learned a lot on that unit. First time I dropped a bed pan in the middle of the night, it was really frightening for me because I had just dropped a bed pan. It was a little bit noisy, but every single patient was on the floor and some of them were in flashbacks. It was really eye-opening for me. One of the patients told me, "Do not ever do that again. You might find yourself dead," because they just were out of control and crawling around on the floor and looking for their weapons. So for me, Tet was the tragedy of the loss of so many human lives and so many wounded with horrific wounds. But it also showed the determination of the enemy. I do not think I really went to Vietnam wholly naive like so many of the women have said. I think I was really prepared. I prepared myself for the worst. I think Tet helped prepare that inside me because I knew it would come from anywhere and nowhere and at any time. This enemy was determined. These were not [inaudible] were intelligent warriors. SM (02:19:01): How about the Gulf of Tonkin? DE (02:19:04): Well, Steve, for me, the Gulf of Tonkin was one of the sick lies the government got by with. So, if they got by with that one, why would not they get by with the weapons of mass destruction? For me, it was so deja vu, that the level of my anger during Shock and Awe was so high that my daughter told me, "Mom, you have to do something about your anger. It is going to kill you. It is just way over the top." And my response was, I said, "What have we learned? The lies from Gulf of Tonkin..." SM (02:19:41): Go right ahead. DE (02:19:53): It was the ultimate betrayal. It was the ultimate betrayal, that we did not learn that lesson from Vietnam, that the American people could be duped with a lie to get us into... But the American people could be duped to the lie to get us into a war, and Bush got by with it. So, for me, again it was a visceral gut reaction. Another offset betrayal that the government can abuse, abuse of power and convince people of their lives. And of course, I cannot be convinced, so then I am at odds with a lot of people who are convinced. Then I begin to wonder how can people believe this stuff? Why are they so... I do not know. That is enough, Steve. SM (02:20:43): Okay. And then, when did the war end? Was there something that happened in the United States? Some people say that when the war came home to middle America, when bodies came home in caskets in Ohio and the Midwest, middle America finally said, "This war has to end." Others say, "Well, it was what happened to Kent State University. When they can shoot their own children on the homeland, that is the beginning of the end." In your opinion, what was the magic moment that ended this war? DE (02:21:25): Well, for me, because I was a nurse, it never ended. The war did not end until the helicopter landed on top of the embassy and... What did we call it? The Presidential Palace? SM (02:21:42): Mm-hmm. DE (02:21:42): Saigon? SM (02:21:43): Yes. DE (02:21:43): In 1975, right? SM (02:21:46): Yes. DE (02:21:47): And that picture where the people just hanging on to the rudder of the helicopter trying to escape with everybody else, and those last people dying. That was the kind of official moment. My god, we were out of there. That was the moment for me that the war officially ended, but the war never did end. The war has not ended for most Vietnam vets. We are still battling it, fighting it, dying in VA hospitals. But symbolically, I think you are looking for a symbolic ending. For me, there is no symbolic ending. None. Because for me, I watched the soldiers suffering for years following that war, and taking care of them in hospitals. So, there is some symbolic ending. SM (02:22:42): My very last question is, when did the sixties begin? Not necessarily for you personally, but when do you think was the beginning of the sixties? DE (02:22:57): I would say '64. SM (02:23:05): Is that after Kennedy passed away? DE (02:23:09): Well, Kennedy was killed, and then the Gulf of Tonkin was (19)64, was not it? SM (02:23:14): Yes, it was. DE (02:23:14): So, for me, that is when it began. SM (02:23:21): I guess the last, do you have anything else you would like to say or comment on? DE (02:23:26): Yes, one more thing, and that is I want to talk about what the sixties meant for me as far as women in the military opening doors for the next generation women. SM (02:23:41): Diane, could you speak up just a little bit more? DE (02:23:43): Okay. I do not think I have addressed enough about the military women in the sixties, who signed up during that unpopular war, and going to Vietnam and serving all over the world. And how my generation of military women opened the doors for the next generation of military women. And which prior to me, the military women opened doors for us. But we really threw that door open wide in proving that, in Vietnam, that we survived. And that we did have the courage to be in a war zone and work hard and get through it and rise to the highest level of ability and capability and service. Of course now, we have women in Iraq who are carrying weapons and are using them. Whereas in Vietnam, I say we were not issued weapons in Vietnam, but we should have been. And we should have been trained to use them. We were in a combat zone. The only difference was we could be shot at, which we were, but we could not shoot back. Today, women, without being clearly defined that they are in combat roles, they are certainly in combat. We have almost 80 or more of them who have been killed in Iraq. I do not know what kind of advancement we can say that is, that we have opened the doors so women can be killed in combat, but I think what it says is that men and women today are serving side by side pretty much in equal roles. For many of these women, it is their choice. If they have joined the guards, of course, it is all by choice because nobody is drafted. But women have proven themselves and prove themselves every day, but it is just... I have been asked, and I will say this, that I was asked several years ago when the war broke out in the first Desert Storm in the early nineties, how I would feel about daughters coming home in body bags. I said, " I have sons. What is the difference if my daughter or my son comes home in a body bag? I do not want either one of them to come home in a body bag." And certainly, there is really no difference. It is both horrific, it is both tragic, and it is both, it is unthinkable. But I am proud of women in the military today and what they have achieved and what they do. I am very proud of them, as I was proud of my generation. I am just so sad that we have to have a war at all and that they have to be participating in it. But I am very proud of the military women today. SM (02:26:37): When you sit there at the ceremony every year at the Vietnam Memorial, on Veterans Day or Memorial Day, and you are sitting on that stage before Jan goes up and starts the program itself, and you have a chance to look. You are looking over all those veterans and families of veterans and just friends of veterans and just interested observers. What are you thinking? I know you are thinking about the introduction of this person that is going to speak, but what is going through your mind when you sit up there and you are glancing over all these people every year? DE (02:27:14): Well, I often think, Steve, that we are unusual in that there is a sea of love out there, and we come together out of love. There is just this overpowering sense of understanding and love among us. We all have some needs that we come there every year. Some of us maybe like myself, I should be there because I am the chair. But I need both, too, for my own sense of being together with like-minded people whom I love, and I feel a sense of peace with these people. But I also feel this ordinary responsibility that it is so important that we continue to come there to show our honor and memory of those who died during Vietnam. And to show the country that these memories have to be kept alive. I feel a sense of responsibility to be there as a veteran's advocate, but on a personal deeper level, I just feel this sense of, like Jan Scruggs and myself and all those who work so hard with us, to make sure those memorials got there. We did not do it alone. It took thousands, thousands, and thousands of people and dollars and work. We were just the symbols because we were the leaders of the efforts, but we did not do it alone. I just feel this tremendous pride for the people who did make it happen, and relief that it is there because it is so important for a nation to remember those who-who have served and died. And so, I do not know. I never can put it into words, Steve, because it is pretty overwhelming for me. (End of Interview) Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Description 3 microcassettes Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Diane Carlson Evans Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Evans, Diane Carlson ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource United States—Armed Forces—Nurses; Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Evans, Diane Carlson--Interviews Description An account of the resource Diane Carlson Evans served as a nurse during the Vietnam War in the United States Army. Before joining the Army as a nurse, Evans graduated from nursing school in Minnesota. She was the major contributor to the creation of the Vietnam Women's Memorial. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006-11-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan-7B_01.wav ; McKiernan-7B_02.wav Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-01 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 242:51 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/3dc5a8e44b25942ae612f0bb7d09ef0f.jpg 46cad48db578547499c30b4a2271bd27 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/73caefc69f61acfde0eff5fa0888b5c2.mp3 9dfb83bd4edb322a0081fed67797dd6c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2011-02-21 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Bernardine Dohrn Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Bernardine Rae Dohrn is a former leader of the Weather Underground, a group known for bombings on the United States Capitol. Dohrn has a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Chicago. Currently, she is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15105,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Bernardine Rae Dohrn is a former leader of the Weather Underground, a group known for bombings on the United States Capitol. Dohrn has a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Chicago. Currently, she is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;College; Race Issues; Women's Issues; The War on Poverty; Non-Violence; Chicago; Red Lining; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; The Other America; Michael Harrington; Gay Rights; Patriotism; Students for a Democratic Society; Kent State; Chicago Eight.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14281427}}">College; Race Issues; Women's Issues; The War on Poverty; Non-Violence; Chicago; Red Lining; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; The Other America; Michael Harrington; Gay Rights; Patriotism; Students for a Democratic Society; Kent State; Chicago Eight.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 236:57 Subject LCSH Weather Underground Organization; College teachers; Dohrn, Bernardine--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Bernardine Rae Dohrn Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Dohrn, Bernardine ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Weather Underground Organization; College teachers; Dohrn, Bernardine--Interviews Description An account of the resource Bernardine Rae Dohrn is a former leader of the Weather Underground, a group known for bombings on the United States Capitol. Dohrn has a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and a J.D. from the University of Chicago. Currently, she is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-02-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.8a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.8b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-01 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 236:57 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/4dd9b79e07b905eebb184c938db06c62.jpg 87bb7515db9433bb3b1f46d0cd97cb1c https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/d64fde35685b4bc7bb1d20f9c70ec91f.mp3 57ca2e5d45e5e68a725e28abb87ad020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2003-05-28 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Paul Critchlow Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Paul Critchlow retired from the Bank of America as the head of communications and public affairs. Previously, he served as the chief political writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and then as press secretary to Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh. Critchlow has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska, Omaha and a Master's degree from Columbia University.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15243,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,4995385],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:11}">Paul Critchlow is a Vietnam veteran with years of experience in government, finance, and journalism. Critchlow retired from the Bank of America as the head of communications and public affairs. Previously, he served as the chief political writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and then as press secretary to Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh. Critchlow has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska, Omaha and a Master's degree from Columbia University. Paul Critchlow served in Vietnam and he considers this experience the watershed event in his life.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 102:40 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Vietnam War; WWII; Hiroshima; Baby boom generation; Anti-War Movement; Veteran; Dwight D. Eisenhower; John F. Kennedy; Richard Nixon; Tom Hayden; Jane Fonda; Lyndon B. Johnson; Conscientious objector; Benjamin Spock; Environmental movement; George McGovern; Robert McNamara&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14281427},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Vietnam War; WWII; Hiroshima; Baby boom generation; Anti-War Movement; Veteran; Dwight D. Eisenhower; John F. Kennedy; Richard Nixon; Tom Hayden; Jane Fonda; Lyndon B. Johnson; Conscientious objector; Benjamin Spock; Environmental movement; George McGovern; Robert McNamara</span> Subject LCSH Bank of America; Journalism—Political aspects; Press secretaries; Critchlow, Paul--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Paul Critchlow Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Benjamin Mehdi So Date of interview: 28 May 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 0:00 SM: When you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, what comes to your mind when you think of that period? 0:10 PC: Well for me it was a, it was a very exciting, it was a very exciting period. It was also clearly; I was very aware that it was a tumultuous period. I was raised and born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. And I remember, I went to high school in the from (19)64 through-through, I am sorry, from 1960 to 1964. So, the Civil Rights Movement was somewhat underway. I was a little isolated from it in you know, Nebraska at that time was a fairly conservative state. It still is, but much more cosmopolitan now than it was then, and I remember certainly reading about all these things and being interested in curious and did not necessarily have a lot of exposure to them. I remember that I actually had no interaction with any-any black people until I was on the high school, track and football teams in uh Omaha Benson High School and competed against them. We had no blacks, had no Hispanics, no Asians at all in my school we were I was basically all white. That was a big school, 2500 kids. And you know, I remember running against them and track Gale Sayers was one of the guys that ran against yeah, he was two years older than me, but I still had two years of overlapping, competing with him and he, he beat me. But then and then when I went to Nebraska University, I got a full-full scholarship to play football there. And of course, there were quite a few African Americans on the football team. And, uh, and yet, there were not still not very many blacks in the school in the university, which was a very-very, it was a big school, there must have been 30,000 kids in the school. And so that was kind of my exposure to them. I absolutely remember, John, uh, John F. Kennedy, getting killed. I was a, uh, I think a sophomore in high school. And then I remember in college Robert F. Kennedy being assassinated in Los Angeles. And I just remember being incredibly bereft by his assassination. I remember being out with a girl who was a go-go dancer in the, from, you know from the one of the downtown Lincoln Nebraska bars. And I remember laying out in the cornfield with her and we decided, you know, we were both upset by his death, and we decided that we would meet the next morning and, you know, drive out to California. And we did not. [laughter] We did not meet, and we did not drive. So, you know, I, I had I had no direct experience with any of it but clearly had some consciousness of it. And I knew as an exciting time I knew the war was starting the Vietnam War was starting to heat up and I had entered the University of Nebraska in 1964. And was a redshirt which meant I had five years of eligibility, so I figured I got five years to avoid the draft and all my friends were thinking the same thing. They were all you know a number of them begin to take steps to-to avoid being drafted. All middle-class kids, nobody wealthy but you know, middle, middle, middle economic strata and the-the, um, a number of them as they got closer to the end of school, join the National Guard or the Air National Guard. Some of them got married. Now they, in every case they were truly in love. They had girlfriends and they got married and nobody you know, as far as I recall, it was not like there was a whole lot of debate on the campus of Lincoln. The only protest I remember is probably in my junior or my third or fourth year, which would have been (19)60. Well, probably in my fourth year, which was (19)67/ (19)68. There were about 50 protesters outside the administration building. And I remember, uh, I remember that irritating me for the first time I think I had a sensation of patriot-patriotism. But at the same time, I was kind of like a lot of kids in the (19)60s, also into the (19)60s, you know, flower child, hippie kind of lifestyle was interesting. You know, an intriguing, of course I never lived it, did not really even do drugs then but I did drink a lot of beer. And so, I remember the, in the, uh, it was just it was sort of a lot of partying, partying, it was going on. And I remember getting, you know, drunk most nights and that I was not, you know, in football training, and even some nights when I was and so I do not know how long you want me to go on, you know. 6:38 SM: That-that is good. Okay. When you think of the boomer generation, sociologists will say that the boomer generation are people that were born between 1946 and 1964. Although anybody who knows history knows that some of the leaders of the antiwar movement were born in (19)41, (19)42, (19)43 and (19)44. It is hard to kind of differentiate the two. But do you get a lot? A lot of people today, sociologists oh, George rolls even done it tax the boomer generation as being a very negative generation in American history because of drugs, the sexual lifestyle, and certainly the antiwar movement, the protest, what are your thoughts on the boomers? Do you consider them a group that added to our history in a positive way? Or, or do you feel that some of the things that they did we have really set back our nation and we still have some of these problems today because of what happened in the (19)60s? 7:45 PC: Hmm, it is a very, very interesting question. I mean, the, uh, well, the boomer generation was the largest population wave United States, you know, post all the immigration occurred here, but the I do not know, you know, I guess the, the, uh, the, there were- you know, I framed so many things in the context of the war because I went and I can, I am amazed to this day by how when another war is contemplated, the divisions resurface. And I am amazed by how people still write op eds and speak you know about the war from the Vietnam perspective. And when I came to-to-to participate in the forum you conducted you know, the-the fella who was an antiwar- 9:02 SM: Larry Davidson. 9:03 PC: -Guy, you know, uh, I found myself just really in my gut, angry at him. And knowing that was not rational I mean, intellectually I knew that was not rational. But clearly those-those the-the direction that I ended up going shaped how I view the world and I am sure in the direction he ended up going shaped how he viewed the world and informed him throughout the rest of his life. You know, I believe that is probably a safe statement to make. But on balance, I think that-that is like a subject for a sociological study, really that question but on balance, I think that the boomer generation has created the enormous wealth that we have, and I think it probably is the diversity of backgrounds and beliefs and opinions. That have caused American society to be so innovative, you know, people have not been afraid to voice their views and come up with-with ideas that might have seemed unpopular and they have been willing to go ahead and, you know, put their money where their mouth is or put there, you know, put their lives on the line and or, you know, just to state how they feel. I think that is probably better than having grown up in a, you know, homogenous culture that would have had everybody thinking more alike, so I mean, I think [phone rings] I think on balance, it is probably stimulated the, the country's economic and social progress. [phone continues to ring] 10:56 SM: Did you want to answer? This leads right into a perfect segue into the next question. What are the qualities you most admire in boomers? And what are the qualities you least admire? Again, from your vantage point, yeah, sir. 11:14 PC: Hmm I think the boomers came from a very rich environment in terms of the conflicts that they grew up, you know, in their formative years with the fact that they came from the World War II generation you know, they are the offspring of the World War II generation you know, the greatest generation as broke all called it. I was born on August 6, 1946, you know, exactly one year after the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. And so, I was always aware of the dropping of the bomb and of course, in the (19)50s we went through the you know, the, uh, the Cold War, we went through the-the bomb shelters. And so, we had that. We grew up with that, in our for-formative years we grew up with, with that sort of overhanging fear and anxiety of nuclear war and worrying about the stability and personal trustworthiness of our leaders and leaders of Russia. You know, and so, you know, the-the and I and, and then to go into the (19)60s when I say worrying about the trustworthiness of our leaders, I think having confidence in the trustworthiness of our leaders through the (19)50s and then hitting the (19)60s. And having that confidence undermined by questions about the prosecution of the war, whether it was political, you know, questions about the establishment. I mean, we were children of-of a very establishment center, you know, way of life. And all of those feelings and attitudes became challenged in the (19)60s, you know, by the, by the civil rights movement, and I am talking now from the perspective of a shelter, white boy, no, without a lot of exposure to a black population. There was one in Omaha there was a and they lived in one part of Omaha. And there was not really a whole lot of integration, you know, so I mean, I was just not exposed to it. And then to have all of that have that sort of, you know, that sort of set of attitudes, that everything is the way that I am used to it having all that being challenged and undermined in the (19)60s and probably the (19)70s. I think required boomers to become more adaptable and forced us to maybe be more thoughtful about our own ideological beliefs. And so, we were about you know, I-I think it was the one I that was what I talked about when I talked about the context of where we came from, and-and what we went through. Gave us gave us an ability to-to be more adaptable to, to different ways of thinking and different ways of looking at things and- [doorbell rings] 15:14 SM: Right in the middle of that questionnaire regarding the quality you most admire or at least admire and antics. 15:21 PC: Yeah, I, I think the boomers demonstrated both admirable and not so admirable qualities. I think the boomers unfortunately also became known as rather self-centered and sort of became the, you know, the- because there was such a period of economic prosperity. They got a reputation for being a little materialistic, you know, the me generation like but I also think that they they-they have stablish you know, a tremendously much more informed kind of body politic or electorate, if you will. That has, uh, I mean, I, to me, what is amazing is you really had during Vietnam, kind of roughly half the population favored the war and half the population did not favor the war. And the debate and the divisions were very sharp, and you were kind of either forward or again. And if you think about how the body politic has evolved in the United States, you know, the parties are almost constantly shifting back and forth in terms of control and elections. So, so there is there are there are rooms there is room for a sort of the more left leaning ideology and the more right leaning and ideology and it is, it just never ceases to amaze me that the It is- stays consistently so, you know, for decades, you know, for down through the decades since the (19)60s and (19)70s. And I think that, you know, that has to have come from the from the divisions and the different-different experiences that people had. You know, as you said, everybody was touched by Vietnam one way or another. Right, everybody, you know, I mean, just was- 17:28 SM: Some of the books will say that 15 percent of the population was actually involved in some sort of an activist movement, but that the other 85 percent effective their subconscious in some way. So, the whole 70 plus million boomers were in some way affected. 17:43 PC: By oh, definitely. 17:44 SM: By-by Vietnam. I like your thoughts on the impact that boomers have had on their kids. Because I think this is interesting, because I just my perception is once your thoughts as I looked at some of the young people from generation X, which was the generation the foul in the (19)90s, and now generation Y, which I believe is your son's, my nephews group too, um, our they as activist minded as the people from the (19)60s that it was almost like when they look at the (19)60s or the seven, early (19)70s, they do look upset with boomers because they are nostalgic for they wish they have lived during that time. Because, of course, this is before 9/11 is really yeah. 9/11. And certainly, has changed everything. But your thoughts on whether boomers have passed on their activism to their kids in following generations. 0:18:42 PC: I mean, boy, that is a tough one. You know, I mean, it is like- I think boomers, I really can only speak from personal experience, but I think boomers have tended to pass on whatever their basic attitudes and ideologies were. I passed on a stronger belief in authority in authoritarianism and establishment way of life. My wife is 10 years younger than me. So, she is a half generation, you know, removed. Born in 1956. She has always been very activist and always very, very challenging of government and authority and she has passed that on to the kids. So, there has been a little struggle for the little bit of a struggle for the soul of our children's souls of our children. And each of them has picked up my daughter is probably more- I am sure there must be some conflicting impulses there, but my daughter is more is more activist and more liberal, more left leaning and she is, she will challenge authority, you know all the time, and yet likes the comforts provided by the more establishment way of life. My son is probably more like me, and more, more respectable, more respectful of authority. And-and yet he is also not afraid to ask questions, but he does it with he does it without the edge that my daughter does. So that is a tough one. It is hard for me to generalize about that. I do not know how to do that. It is good. 20:46 SM: It is good because you from an individualistic point of view, right. Yeah, generalists? Well, I think that learned from working with college students that you cannot generalize. 20:55 PC: No. 20:56 SM: You cannot and be around a group one year and then the next year is totally different. And when I was years ago used to say every 10 years, you can see the difference between generation now it is every four years. 21:10 PC: I do think there was a generation X which is, you know, I mean, I had him fairly late. So, I mean, I also have a 28-year-old son by a first marriage. But I was not around we set we divorced. And that generation was known as the slacker generation. And they were more into me they were more into just getting by. But now I see you know, now I see him come, you know, he has come out of that. And he is-he is a, I think we are more I think boomers, most boomers tend to be more tolerant of experimentation by their kids. Because they did not, you know, I mean, there is nothing, there is very little that I did not do. I mean, I, you know, you know, was very interested in sexuality. You know, I think everybody is, but you were more free to experiment with it. I was more likely to experiment with drugs not the way the generation X I think got into it more, I believe. Well, that is not true. I think there is quite a bit of drug use in the (19)60s. But anyway, I cannot remember the basic question now. [laughter] 22:42 SM: Sure, man, let me show this to you talk about-about the antiwar movement. Could you comment on your thoughts on those individuals who are involved in the antiwar movement and secondly, how what kind of impact did they have on ending the war. I interviewed him. I have had some unbelievable mixed responses to this question. To see your thoughts on the antiwar movement. 23:14 PC: Well, first of all, you know, as a veteran, and relating more to the way I was treated well, relating the two things that I can specify one when I was there. First of all, I mean, I think, you know, I volunteered for the draft. You know, I did not enlist I literally called my draft board and said, I am ready to be drafted even though I had another year of college eligibility. And what happened was, I just got I broke my leg and football, and you know, began drinking even worse and just sort of decided, you do not want to play football anymore and you are screwing off in school. You know, and I knew that Vietnam was going to be the defining experience of my generation. And I made a conscious decision, if that is what it is, I would rather go be there and see it, than to oppose it or avoid it. And it was not out of any great sense of patriotism at all. Steve, it was much more out of a sense of adventure, and curiosity. You know, what, what, what is this thing? I mean, how can this be, you know, I mean, you saw a lot of images on TV and read about it, but it was sort of like, you know, I want to go see, I want to be there, I want to be at this, I want to be at the center of action. Now, there are two ways to do that. You know, one was to be in the antiwar movement. One was to be in the war. And so, I am very careful to explain that I am, I am not a great patriot. And then I went there thinking, oh my God, I have to defend my country. I mean, I was aware that there was opposition to the war that there were questions about how the politicians were conducting it. And part of it was just to escape, you know, an unfortunate, you know, sort of a downward spiral that I was in I just I just wanted to get away from Nebraska and get out and get away from football and get away from the, you know, the-the defeatism that I felt, you know, from breaking my leg, you know, I was just sort of like depressed, you know? So, I uh- 25:31 SM: Did you fear losing your life. Did you when you want to be in the center of action? 25:34 PC: I was, I was aware, but I did not care. I mean, it was like, I mean, I truly just thought, you know, I wanted the experience, but it was more of an experience seeking was not thrill seeking, it was just, I want to see what this is all about. If it is, I absolutely knew, as you say, I knew at that time that it was going to define my generation I just knew it and I and I decided I do not want to be on it. I want to be there and experience what it really is more than I want to be on the other side opposing it. Okay, so. So, I went over, and the first specific thing is that I remember hearing and reading, you know, and I knew because I went over in (19)69 hearing and reading that, I mean, the (19)69 is when troops started to get withdrawn. You will recall that was sort of the turning, turning point of the of the war. And so, I knew that the politicians were starting to react to the antiwar protests. So, when I went over, morale was not-not very good. And I attributed that to the antiwar protesters and in particular to the kids on college campuses. So immediately, the, the, you know, the first time that I saw an American, you know, get killed. My anger toward the enemy became very great. And I did in fact, equate the enemy with communists and, uh, and then I wanted to, you know, and then I felt great anger toward the antiwar protesters. Then I came back, you know, badly wounded, almost died and was treated, you know, very badly and with great disrespect by the moment I came back, I mean, it was just unbelievable. I mean, my-my friends would not return my phone calls, they would all virtually I would say 95 percent of my friends had avoided the war one way or the other. Old girlfriends would not even come to the phone when I called. I remember going to a party. And these were not particularly antiwar people, but I sort of lumped them all together. I remember going to a party I was on crutches. And it was in a big room and the whole room just gradually moved away from me. And all of a sudden, I was standing there alone in a corner on crutches and just thinking, oh, my God, I just these people hate me. I feel terrible. They did not want to talk to me, you know, I mean, and-and so what did I do? Then I healed and I went back to undergraduate school and finished up my undergraduate degree, and then I went to, uh- but I had a deep, you know, antipathy for the protesters. And then I went to Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. And on the very first night that I went to campus for the first organizational meeting, there was a huge, so now we are talking 1970, (19)70, uh, 1970 like 19- Fall of (19)70 there was a Huge antiwar protest right in the quadrangle, and I had to walk through it to get to my first sort of class meeting, the incoming class. And I just remember thinking, you know, I want to kill these motherfuckers. And yet I was also terrified that they would find out I was a Vietnam veteran. Right. I was the first Vietnam veteran to go to the Graduate School of Journalism. And so, I sort of put my jacket over my head and just sort of snuck through the group. You know, there was thousands of and, and I and I literally thought to myself, you bastard, you fucking spoiled you know, college kids do not understand that you are causing people to die, causing Americans to die by not supporting them. Those are my feelings. Okay. So, and then I hid the fact that I was a Vietnam veteran for six months. Nobody in my class knew it. Until finally after about six months, I got to know people well enough, let them know that I was a veteran. And I listened to all the antiwar, crap and rhetoric. And just I was just full of anger, you know, most of the time. And yet, because I had four years of undergraduate school before I went into the army, you know, I did not go over as a 17-year-old or 18-year-old draftee, I mean, I went over to draftee, but I was already 20. You know, 23. So, and, and I had an intellectual understanding, which was strengthened over, you know, over time that the antiwar protests were, in fact, helping to bring about an end to the war. And so, I knew overall that was good. But as you say, the defining factor for me in terms of how I felt about the antiwar movement was that they disrespected- [audio get cut off] 31:21 SM: Did you were a military garb? 31:22 PC: No, I never know I never want military garb. 31:26 SM: Did Professors treat you when they found out you were a vet. I have heard mixed stories about professors. 31:32 PC: Well, there were some, there were some absolute super left-wing professors there and I think I just avoided you know, like I say I was it was only it was a nine-month program, the Graduate School of Journalism. And for six months I mean, I just avoided talking to them about it. But I hated it. I still performed you know, all right. I got threw in blah, blah, blah. And I became more because I became interested in journalism in really as a result of my experience in Vietnam, then I began to read a lot more. And I became acutely aware that the antiwar movement in the end, probably was intellectually understood that it was a positive force. And but you have to separate the emotional and the intellectual. Right. And I have always done that. And, uh, sorry I cannot remember what the basic question was. 32:40 SM: No, but you covered up beautifully. One of the things that is interesting, you probably remember this as a young person to that. I can remember this on college campuses. You would go to a rally; you would be in a class. The Boomers would always say, a lot of students would say we are the most unique generally in American history, we are going to change the world. There is nothing like us. And there will be nothing like this. No generation that will follow us and we are going to make the world a better place. We are going to solve all the problems of the world or an end racism, sexism, you know, all kinds of things, peace in the world. Was that boasting? You thought? You heard that when you were a young person? Oh yeah, I heard it all the time when I was a student, no-no. And, and now, boomers are all in their mid (19)50s. Mm hmm. And so just kind of reflecting again, maybe- 33:41 PC: Yeah, I think I well, okay. I mean, I think there was a real sense of idealism. You know, especially on the college campuses. And again, you know, we have to remember we are talking about from our experience, you know, we were in college. There were a lot of boomers who were not- did not go to college, but I cannot speak for them. I do not really know. But their worlds were like, but the, there was the idealism of the (19)60s, as I said, the flower power you know, the tune in, the drop out, tune out, tune in or whatever it is, you know that the thing was, yeah, Timothy Leary, and all that there was a, a sense that there could be, there was a sense that that peace was a, an ideal to be achieved, and that there was a sense of individual empowerment to be able to achieve peace or at least reduce or eliminate war if individuals simply decided not to participate. And so, there was that there was a sense of power and that you could do important things and yeah, I mean, I think it was, you know, I met I think there was that sense. And I, I think boomers today have moved into all, you know, boomers today are in all these positions of leadership, partly by virtue of their age, but I do not think there is any lack of, you know, confidence that social ills and, you know, other major, very tough problems cannot be tackled. I mean, I think that is, I think that is sort of intrinsic in the boomer generation. By the way, I forgot to mention that. Another thing that caused me to decide to go to Vietnam was that my father was a pilot during World War II, in the Army Air Corps, and he trained on B-29 bombers. And, but unfortunately, he was [phone rings] unfortunately- I mean, I say unfortunately says what you think. I mean, he, just as he finished his training, the war ended. And so, he did not ever go overseas. And that always bothered him. And they regret it that he never had a chance to go. And so, I think that was in the back of my mind, you know, you have a chance to go have this experience. So, you should do that, you know. And I wanted it to make him proud of me. Did I miss your last question? 36:38 SM: No, you understand the culture, some of these? Talk about the importance of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC, and the whole concept of healing. I think, to me, what was described, and others did, and the creation of that wall is set an example for everyone in terms of healing. But I would like your thoughts on as the wall itself from your personal feelings, the effect that it has on veterans today. And also, the effect that it has on those people who were the antiwar movement. And I have probably read stories too about members of the antiwar movement and Larry Davidson, who said, you are right, was down in Washington with his son and his son, his son is only the same age as your son. He said dad what did you do in the war? And you know, Larry never really talked much about it, because he is a Messer. And so, he had to explain what he did, because there is so the basic question is, what-what impact has the Vietnam Memorial had on Vietnam veterans, the people who probably worried about the antiwar movement and the nation as a whole and how and in terms of healing? 38:00 PC: Yeah, well, I believe the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is has had an enormously positive and very powerful effect on the Vietnam veterans themselves. I remember when it was first being debated discussed 20 years ago, 20 years ago. Yeah. I did not really, I still had not fully, quote come out about being a Vietnam veteran. Because I felt sort of, I mean, I was proud of that of my individual service. But it was not something that I talked about a lot. I guess that stems from, you know, the reaction when I came back, you know, and from my friends and from, you know, going to Colombia and you know, I mean, it just was, it was it was a nascent feeling for me to have any sense of pride in it because, you know, the war was so widely condemned as a bad thing. You know, and-and the- and, you know, the other part of it is, I think you come to terms with what you actually did, you know, in the war yourself, and I was in a lot of combat, and I did, you know, participate in some killing and, and, and I think that, you know, there were some really terrible, you know, incidents and situations and most of us, you know, who were in combat. You know, you carry that with you, so you feel you feel a little guilty about what you did, too. And so, the-the, the drive to create the wall I-I sort of hung back from it. I sort of watched it, but I did not get emotionally involved in it ever until years after it was built. In fact, it was years before I went saw it. 40:17 SM: Yeah, I know several vets who have not gone yet. 40:20 PC: Yeah, and-and then I remember when I first did go to see it. God it was like it was only maybe it was probably about must have been about 12 years ago or something like that. It was about eight years old. And I remember just walking down into that wedge, you know that and just thinking, oh my god, this is just overwhelming. I mean, it was just so powerful and-and it was just it was in fact very, very healing and I went back to my hotel room. I was down there on business, and I immediately called, you know, Clearview Florida and got directory assistance for my best friend in the army who was killed their Roland dePaolo. And, and I had gone to his home, I knew his family and, but I had never ever contacted them ever, ever since. You know, coming back myself, and I called her and I talked to his mother and I said, I just want to know, I just went to the wall, and I found Roland’s name and I just, you know, I just, you know, I was thinking that was the first time you would ever yeah, wow, first time I had ever contacted her even though I knew them and I knew where they lived and I had been to their home because he and I used on leave from Fort Benning used to go there to his home. But that was how conflicted I was, you know, not wanting to deal with things that went on. Just not wanting to deal with any of it you know, other than sort of distantly and emotionally and. And so then of course, I began to go, you know, every time I went to Washington, and so it has become it became enormously healing but I did not know anybody in the in the move- I mean, I did not know anybody in the movement. I got interested in vet veterans. I was active in Veterans Affairs, but it was mostly because of politics because I was big former military. So, I did it as because I had entree, and I could get the veterans to line up behind Thornburg. But I was not really emotionally. And by the end, by the way, it was all World War Two, you know, and Korean vets, you know, it was it was the American Legion types Basically. The Vietnam veterans, or the Vietnam Veterans of America had just formed up and I sort of, they were sort of like, there were some real crazies who started that thing up and I saw I sort of kept my distance from them. 42:59 SM: Bobby Muller one Bobby. 43:01 PC: Bobby Muller, who I knew now I have known I have talked to and, and, and a guy named Dave Christian, remember him in Philadelphia, he was kind of an operator. But anyway, so-so the war so the wall became a tremendous-tremendous healing mechanism for me personally. And then I was able to deal with it and you know, I love going there and of course subsequently, I got involved with the people on the corporate advisory board. And actually, I actually got involved through the women's Vietnam Memorial that was how I got involved because I somebody asked me to meet with Diane and I helped help raise money in Maryland. So, and then the more I got into it, you know, the more I got, you know, then I met Scruggs and Right. And I just got more and more drawn into it, you know, and it was just an enormously healing device for me and through the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation, then of course, I got invited back to, to go with a delegation to Vietnam, a heck of an experience on the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. And that was just an extraordinary opportunity to go back. And in the article that I wrote in American heritage, you will see that I, my wife, Patty, said to me several years earlier, you know, I think you should go to Vietnam, and I will go with you. And she said, so my gift to you is, you know, we will go to Vietnam together and I said, oh, that was nice, but I did not really want to go, you know, I just always found reasons not to go. Then when I got this invitation. All of a sudden, there was no reason not to go and I went. 45:00 SM: How many people went all together? 45:01 PC: There were about I think about 20 business, businessmen in the delegation, you know, which was led by Jan Scruggs and James Kinsey. And, you know, people I knew, just absolutely astonishing experience and I found the battlefield where I was wounded. And that was, I found the exact spot. I mean, I did a lot of tremendous amounts of research again, which is all documented in that article, but- 45:29 SM: Still look the same. 45:31 PC: No, it was built up. No, it was jungle, and it was farmed. It was being farmed when I got there. So, I actually it was easier for me to spot than I thought because I knew that topography. I knew the map. And through research I found, I knew it was Hill 102 and I found the hill and I found the spot and it was really just that to me that was it was the probably the, the most emotional and greatest moment of my life was to find that spot on the battlefield to find the battlefield. And then finally, when I say spot generally, you know, the, the place where I was almost killed. 46:12 SM: If had not been for visiting that wall, you never would have been there. 46:15 PC: I would never have, would have never gone there. And I just would not, well, I might have gone on my own, but probably not. You know, so. 46:27 SM: I have a question here on trust. We all know the history about Lyndon Johnson, and, uh- 46:38 PC: Is that really going to affect your tape. 46:40 SM: It might I am not sure. [they pause to fix the audio] Do you think of Lyndon Johnson you think of Richard Nixon think of Watergate you think of Vietnam. You had mentioned earlier in the interview about during the (19)50s. We looked at our leaders as young people, there was a sense of trust. But then we get into the (19)60s and there is a lack of tremendous lack of trust because of what was being told to us about the Vietnam War. And McNamara and the body count on the other things and certainly Richard Nixon and Watergate kind of a lack of trust in leaders was something that many people in fact a lot of the boomer generation looks on that period that is why I think they oftentimes continue to distrust leaders. Your thoughts on the- what that is really done to America? Because you know, you live you work in the corporate world, and you have seen it in recent years about people, young people, we are always looking at young people and how they look at leaders, whether it be in the corporate world, whether they be in Washington, DC or whoever they are, university presidents, and whatever. What-what did that have? What effect did that have on the movie regeneration returned to their psyche as they raise their own children and then we head into days here because you talked about the boomers are a fluid group, yet they grew up around leaders that they did not trust especially in their formative years. 48:20 PC: I would guess that it-it has generally had a negative effect on-on American society certainly on the formations of the sustainability of different administration's okay. Watch your tape or something. I you know, I think that the-the boomers are somewhat more ready and always have been too ready to believe bad things that are said about their leaders as a result of having been having grown up in the (19)60s. And so, you know, in in the days of Eisenhower and JFK, you know, there was enormous confidence. Now, it is a little naive not to not I mean, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had a lot to do with that theory, by their behaviors, so, but that is what I am talking about, you know, so Nixon was probably driven to do the things he did, you know, by-by, by fear of, by, obviously by a paranoid fear of not being trusted. So, you know, it there is probably there is probably too much skepticism on the part of boomers, about their leaders, the leadership of their country and the leadership of their states and cities. They are too ready to believe bad things they are in and that in and of itself creates a market for the media and for political, for other political people to make negative statements about people in office, or people running for office. It is a very, I mean, politics has become very negative and very poisonous. And I think that has, you know, that must have some of its roots in the, in the willingness of the body of the major part of the body politic. to, you know, to believe all the negative stuff or to want to hear it, you know, I mean, it is like, a lot of the negative stuff is real. Irrelevant to governing. 51:02 SM: When you look at the media today and how they looked at some of the corporate leaders that have gone down? Yeah. And, you know, what is the media's role in all this too? And certainly, basically, what you are saying then is that some of the individuals that are our age, who are in the antiwar movement or against the leaders, there are, are not easy targets, but are individuals that believe, immediately when they hear the stories about the corporate leaders, right, I think about the willing to generalize the generalization again, which we can never get into analyzing all corporate leaders, because the bad actions of a few. 51:47 PC: Exactly that is what I think you said it better. And it could I mean, it is just there is just this tremendous sort of susceptibility to believing that if a few people are bad at actors that the whole corporate scene or the whole governmental scene is full of bad actors, that it is that it is intrinsically corrupt. And that is just that is not usually I believe that most, the 99 percent of all the people in government public service, you know, are more in leadership are good and decent people. But there is a willingness to generalize, the opposite, you know, fan by the media, which, I mean, the media would not be fanning out if there were not an appetite for it. So, I am not blaming the media. I am blaming the appetite. You know- 52:44 SM: I have names here that I have some names here that I want to read off and just some quick responses and your thoughts on these individuals, just your personal opinions. And these are people of the era, right. Tom Hayden. 53:05 PC: Tom Hayden, you know I have a very negative had a very negative view of him which stayed negative which is still negative because I know I know his activities as a state senator in California. 53:23 SM: Jane Fonda. 53:26 PC: I do not use the word hate lightly, but I hate her. I mean, the picture of her sitting in an anti-aircraft. Battery was a-a, an North Vietnamese Army helmet on her head in Hanoi is just infuriating beyond belief. I think she committed the ultimate act of treason. She had no standing to do it. You know, she no standing to do it so. So, I sort of suspend my belief in free speech when it comes to Jane Fonda. And I link her with Tom Hayden. So, they were married. You know- 54:10 SM: There was a slogan in Washington DC this past week. And then I saw him It says, I will forgive Jane Fonda when the Jews forgive him. I would say that was amazing. And it was a big sign. And it was, it was right as people were walking in to get tickets. Yeah. 54:25 PC: I do not know if I would go that far because- but I-I-I just despise what she did I despise, by the way, now you are getting my real innermost feelings because I despise celebrities. All celebrities who make, uh, anti-war statements who have no standing whatsoever to do that except by virtue of their celebrity. If you give me a you know, if you give me a-a university professor who has studied history, and he opposes the war in Iraq, I will bet, that I respect but if you give me some of these actors who stood up, most of whom never went to college, you know, Susan Sarandon, they can all kiss my ass are concerned, I would not even go to a movie to see him. But other than that, I do not feel strongly. 55:26 SM: It is okay. Just-just quick thoughts on Lyndon Johnson. 55:31 PC: Lyndon Johnson, I think was I have you know, I have mixed reaction mixed feelings about him. I mean, he, I think was he inherited a war situation I think he was a victim of his own pride and, but it was also somewhat tied in his in his pride in America, that he did not know how to extricate America from that war with honor. But I also give him enormous credit for advancing the civil rights agenda of the country. And I think that history is looking more kindly on him. And I think he demonstrated enormous courage not running for another term. 56:18 SM: It is interesting. There is some, everybody seems to dwell on the foreign policy of Vietnam. The Lyndon Johnson brand new book just came out on Lyndon Johnson and NATO. Johnson in Europe and others are starting to look more about other things that he did in the world besides the Vietnam era, which is when. Bobby Kennedy. 56:37 PC: Bobby Kennedy, in many ways, though, he had an antiwar bent. He was so articulate, you know, that I admired him. And in fact, when he came in Nebraska University to speak, he had a huge reception, even though it is a very conservative place, he had an ability to inspire and uplift people. 57:00 SM: Certainly did, boy did I was I was a student in New York at that time campaigning. 57:06 PC: And also, he was, you know, the keeper of the Kennedy flame. And you know, and I, like everybody else. I idolized JFK because he was young and vibrant. And he showed he demonstrated courage on some bad pay in the Bay of Pigs in the Cuban missile crisis and all that sort of thing. So- 57:26 SM: Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, the Black Panther Party. 57:29 PC: I have very negative feelings about them because you know, they were trying to undermine the rightful process of government. 57:45 SM: Benjamin Spock. 57:46 PC: And they resorted to violence to do it. Right. I have by the way; I have completed and total respect for conscientious objectors who stood up for their beliefs? In other words, if they went to Canada, then I do not have respect for them if they declared themselves and went through the process, you know, the government process for dealing with that. Or went to jail or whatever. I have a lot of respect for them. You know, I do not, I do not, I have no disrespect to them at all. 58:27 SM: It is interesting. One of my best friends served two years. He was a conscientious objector. And he had two years up in newfound land and he did not like it down, but he paid the price for it. Yeah, I need your choice in two years now. Dr. Benjamin Spock. 58:44 PC: You know, I heard he was antiwar. I do not have strong feelings about him. One way or the other I mean, I would probably give him a break on the grounds that he was, he was, he was interested in children in life and things like that. So- 59:00 SM: The Berrigan brothers, Daniel and Philip. 59:02 PC: Um. I did not like them. They were radical left wing cuckoo birds. 59:16 SM: Andy Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. 59:18 PC: Radical left wing cuckoo birds. And my-my feeling about a lot of these people who-who position themselves as leaders of this movement was great flamboyance was that they were, you know, in it for themselves. They were promoting themselves rather than their cause. And by the way, I do not know if that is fair or not, but that is just my feeling. 59:39 SM: But one of the things about Abbie Hoffman, he committed suicide I remember this taking was in (19)87 or (19)89 forgot what year it was zip in Bucks County and apart is an amazing story. He lives in Bucks County in an apartment. He had $2,000 to his name and he made a lot of money in his life. He gave all his money to causes He wrote a note when he committed suicide and he said, basically, no one is listening to me anymore. And to see he had left even involved in the environmental movement, and even on the Phil Donahue show when he came hiding it. He just wanted to show the world that he cared about a lot of issues besides the war. Yeah. And, and well, it was interesting and- 1:00:22 PC: So, he paid a price then too. 1:00:23 SM: Yeah, he got upset with Jerry Rubin because he moved to California and became a businessman. Timothy Leary. 1:00:32 PC: Oh, he was just a quack. 1:00:35 SM: How about Ralph Nader? 1:00:36 PC: Snake oil salesman, Ralph Nader. I actually have a little more respect for him because he buttressed all of his statements with research, these know even if I disagree with the reason. And I think he was probably a necessary force at the time to-to, you know, he came into being for a reason. 1:01:08 SM: And pretty consistent throughout as well. 1:01:09 PC: He really has he stayed true to his own ideology, and he has not been afraid. 1:01:14 SM: Daniel Ellsberg. 1:01:20 PC: I think he did a courageous thing in terms of getting the truth out, you know, the Pentagon papers and all that took a lot of courage to do that. 1:01:32 SM: George McGovern. 1:01:34 PC: I thought McGovern was one of the biggest phonies, and I met him. I covered him as a reporter. He is one of the biggest goddamn ponies I ever met. He would go around and talk about you know, neighborhoods looking like bombed out areas and you know, and I just got so sick of it because he said that about everything that he saw and, and I think he was a pilot or something. 1:01:57 SM: Yeah, 28 missions over- 1:01:58 PC: Yeah. So, I-I mean, I am happy for him, but I felt like he was exploiting his-his own war experience. 1:02:11 SM: And again, Hubert Humphrey. 1:02:13 PC: Yeah, you know, I mean, I have, you know, he is pretty nice. The happy warrior. I did not, you know, he just he was. I do not know; it was just interesting. I had no strong feelings about it. 1:02:25 SM: Yeah, a couple more names. And then part two final questions. Certainly, President John Kennedy. 1:02:34 PC: Well, yeah, I mean, I have like, like everybody else, I had a highly favorable impression of him and, and was felt deeply crushed, you know, when he was killed, and did not understand at the time as I do now that he is the one who got us really into the war. So now there are all sorts of stories being written about, you know, would he have been smart enough to get us out? You know, the wood before we went so far. And who knows, nobody really knows. 1:03:13 SM: It is interesting. It was mentioned that because when, the hour before they got into the car, when Eisenhower was leaving and President Kennedy was coming in, they were talking about Vietnam. And that is something that President Kennedy wanted to keep, because Eisenhower was involved and still being linked to Vietnam because of the support of the French interest. And so, and if you remember my office, so Harry Truman, by when Ho Chi Minh sent that letter to him, after the war, about trying to create a friendship there, so the links between all of our presidents from Truman and Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and then for sure Ford, truly linked to Vietnam. 1:03:57 PC: That is true. 1:03:59 SM: Martin Luther King Jr. 1:04:02 PC: I had a very favorable impression of him. And still do. I mean, I think he was a very inspiring leader. 1:04:13 SM: What are your thoughts on he was one of the few civil rights leaders that was against the war. 1:04:18 PC: And he was off, I felt like he had the moral authority to do it. You know, I mean, he was so eloquent. And I do not remember that. I am just giving you my feelings now. I cannot remember. Right. You know, I do not remember anything that he said about it. But, you know, I think his opposition to some extent was based on the fact that it was young and poor people who were being drafted, and that, that was a valid concern. I as I said, I have a lot of resentment still of my friends in high school and college who avoided the draft through manipulations. 1:05:10 SM: Have you ever, have you ever met any of those kids that shied away from you that day when you came home around the crunches if you are going back to Nebraska Yeah, you know ever talk to them about what they did to you. 1:05:24 PC: No-no, I have never talked to them just-just not spoken of- 1:05:27 SM: But they talk to you now. 1:05:29 PC: I mean, you know, casual I do not I do not hang out with them. But- 1:05:33 SM: Robert McNamara. 1:05:38 PC: Well, I did not have much I had very little impression of him at the time. Now I have generally unfavorable impression of him just I mean, that is with the benefit of historical hindsight. You know, where he is concluding that his- where he finally I guess conceded, that is the buildup that he championed was flawed. The logic that he employed was flawed. And no one really understood the depth of willingness of Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese people to resist forever. They were willing to sacrifice every single male and many young females, you know, to, you know, I mean, they, their desire to be free, is historic. 1:06:36 SM: Let us get right into your thoughts right now in terms of why did we lose the war? In brief synopsis your thoughts on why we really truly lost this war. 1:06:52 PC: I am not 100 percent okay, let us say we probably, I believe that we could have subjugated that country if we had brought the full force of American society to bear on the effort, I think it would have been unbelievably costly in terms of American lives. And even more costly to use the metaphor you damn, damn, damn near would have had to pave the country over. But it could have been done, you know. So, I say that the end of winning the war would have been awful probably would have ended up being too costly. However, having said that, we have hugely crippled our ability because of political considerations. We hugely handicapped our ability to wage the war effectively, in my opinion, and I base this on my own real experience, because I was a fourth observer attached to an infantry company, and on many on numerous occasions, when we came under attack, I could not respond with artillery until there had been a series of clearances that had gone all the way to a village or provincial, D at South Vietnamese chief. And as a result, I think we suffered more casualties and, you know, we were just always crippled [inaudible] I often felt like we were fighting with one hand tied behind her back. And so, I do not know if that answered your question. But- 1:08:38 SM: One of the points that, uh- 1:08:40 PC: But the real reason I think we lost is because of the Vietnamese people themselves. Ho Chi Minh himself said in interviews we have always throughout our history, with various quote, colonial powers, you know, trying to occupy our country, and they had the Japanese they had the Chinese they had the French they had the Americans; you know, we have all these powers have always underestimated our willingness to sacrifice. And they would just keep sending people into the killing machine forever. I mean, they were they had limitless patience. So, I think we lost because you know, the will of the Vietnamese people to not be occupied was simply too strong. 1:09:37 SM: Getting back to the names here, but I have read quotes that when middle America finally money gets to war, Ohio, Nebraska, Kansas, that was when the war was over really was ending. Because of the you can debate with whatever you want to on whether the antiwar movement was the reason why the war ended. When middle America when sons and daughters start coming home with body bags, and you agree with that, the middle America- 1:10:12 PC: I think, politically, that was probably the final straw. I think the-the campuses and the East coast and the West coast. You know, went against the war fairly quickly, early on. But yeah, I think Middle America, I define it more broadly, because I think the culture of Middle America, so to speak, is also to be found in upstate New York, you know, Pennsylvania in places like that. And so, I think that they, uh, yeah, I think, I think that turned it for Nixon. I think when Nixon said, oh, my God, I am losing, losing, you know, I am losing. I am sure they were doing polling back then. And I am sure when-when the polling started showing that, you know, more conservative Republican voters were turning against them because of the casualties. And the feeling there was no end to it. I mean, it was it was viewed as a quagmire. 1:11:21 SM: Reading that we used to couple thoughts on Richard Nixon. 1:11:27 PC: Well, I think clearly one of the great tragic figures in our history, um, had a great, you know, intellectual capacity. But was, in fact, power, mad and paranoid and was so scared by his earlier defeats that you know, he just could not have, he just went overboard, you know, he crossed the line in terms of trying to win reelection. And, uh, I actually-actually this is sort of an aside, but I actually flew with Henry Kissinger on-on the corporate jet Maryland's corporate jet I took him out to he was giving a speech. It was just me and him in a corporate jet. And I told him that he met with the, uh, the Vietnamese foreign minister, I cannot remember the name right now, three days before I was wounded in secretly in Paris. It will be Acme no doubt he is a general I know it will-it will come back to me. I have got it in my one of my books somewhere. And I said to him, I said to Kessinger, I said, Dr. Kissinger, I said, if I wish you just started earlier, because if you had maybe I would not have been wounded. And he just kind of looked at me at all. All he said, “I am sorry, I did not start earlier”. I mean, it was a very, I mean, to think of me, you know, this little kid from Omaha, Nebraska, talking to the great Henry Kissinger, you know, on a corporate jet about these connections, I mean, him. I mean, it was just fucking amazing. 1:13:34 SM: Some people on the left want to put him on trial for some of the things he did in Vietnam. Some of the way-out people some of- 1:13:41 PC: It is pretty tricky, but I think that he I think he was so smart. I believe he recognized before others in the administration that this was a no-win situation. 1:13:55 SM: That is what upsets you more than anything else, when you read McNamara's books. That is, he leaves in (19)67 but really knew they could win the war prior to and the revelation. Exactly right. One of the things I like about the Vietnam Memorial and especially even with Mr. Scruggs in one little polar was there around, they believe in bringing people there to the wall may have been a little controversial but try to heal do not even go to the extent of healing. That was when Bill Clinton came. And of course, he was, you know, he was cheered, but, you know, I have often wondered, what extreme would-would the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund go in terms of a healing? Would they ever as McNamara ever been invited and would not [inaudible] calm? And would by him coming would that really do something in terms of the ultimate healing where he admits his mistakes and says he is wrong and I do not know how the veterans respond, but you know that to me, that is the ultimate healing. And of course, we mentioned the ultimate healing to with Jane Fonda. Yeah, it was a book written on her right now that she should have been court martialed. And back to the lawyers and lawyers have written that she-she could have easily gone to jail. 1:15:12 PC: And what she did was treasonous. Right. 1:15:14 SM: And the question is, would she ever come to the wall and that would create a stir, but it was certainly would-would be the ultimate healing the courage to say I was wrong because everything she said- 1:15:25 PC: I mean, I think everything has to come at a time. You know, I believe what you were saying I believe, and I believe that you bring your most extreme opponents into your own 10-year-old home at some point, and you try to break bread with them, and you try to find common ground. I really do believe that. But I think there has to be- healing comes in stages. And I cannot conceive that most Vietnam veterans have healed enough, right to have Jane Fonda into their home. I mean, but I think at some point in time that that could- it should happen though she may not live long enough for that to be the case- 1:16:27 SM: She is like 68 or- 1:16:29 PC: Yeah, I do not know how she is, but I mean, she may not, you know, be alive long enough for that to happen, but-but I think or as you said, over time, Jan is actually a very smart guy and he, he evolves. But Jan is also pretty good about touching base with a lot of people before he does something. If he thinks it is the right thing to do, he will do it. But, uh. 1:16:54 SM: It-it is interesting, that is an interesting point when I knew Louis was the end of his life, and he wants to be right after remembering, he wanted to be right up on that stage next to Bill Clinton. And we took the students down there in the clip was coming, I was not there that time, but he said, I am going to be up there. I am going to sit right next to him. I am going to get my wheelchair up there. To show him and it was a statement. No, and, uh, and I think an absent Mr. Scrubs is in agreement with that statement or a given layer. So, a couple other names here. Gerald Ford. 1:17:26 PC: Nice, you know, nice guy just kind of hapless. But, you know, I think did a very courageous thing and pardoning Nixon, which I think was a healing an act of healing, preventative healing almost because it prevented a long drawn-out criminal trial that would have really ravaged the nation, you know. 1:17:52 SM: Muhammad Ali. 1:17:56 PC: You know, uh, God I mean great athletes, inspiring athlete in many ways. I think he was pretty open about I mean; he was a conscientious objector and good he stated it. Hmm. 1:18:11 SM: He lost his title. 1:18:12 PC: Yeah. So, he stood up. I mean, he stood up and was counted. So, I have respect for him. 1:18:17 SM: Spiro Agnew. 1:18:19 PC: Sleazeball. Totally sleazeball. Absolute scummy low level award healing level politician should never been in that office. 1:18:30 SM: I agree. And I got I got I got a couple books on him. I do not know how he ever got. I do not know. I just do not understand. Gloria Steinem. 1:18:39 PC: I have a lot of respect for Gloria Steinem. I know her. I met her several times. She has always stood up and been counted. 1:18:49 SM: Barry Goldwater. 1:18:53 PC: I- you know, Barry Goldwater. I mean, he is too far right for me. You know, but he has, you know, he has-he has always he always spoke his mind and-and, uh, he just was too far right for the country. 1:19:13 SM: Bringing them all out for this here. John Mitchell. 1:19:18 PC: Oh, I think he was just a hack-hack, hack political lawyer. 1:19:23 SM: I want to ask you about his wife by the way. She was a trip about. 1:19:29 PC: The whole thing was just such a trip. 1:19:30 SM: Noam Chomsky. 1:19:32 PC: I do not know who that is now. 1:19:34 SM: He is the professor up at, uh, MIT. He is the antiwar. 1:19:39 PC: I know the name, but I do not have I have no knowledge of it very little knowledge of him. 1:19:43 SM: John Dean. 1:19:46 PC: You know, ambitious young guy there but for the grace of God go I somebody who got you know, swept up in the power thing and, and did some bad things, but in the end had the courage to stand up and be counted. 1:19:58 SM: He is from Binghamton, New York. 1:19:59 PC: Really? 1:20:00 SM: Yeah, and I can never forget. I was a student at SUNY Binghamton, and they had these articles and how we met that beautiful mole. His wife- 1:20:09 PC: Oh, she was beautiful. 1:20:10 SM: Oh yes. And she was sitting behind him and. Uh, some of the musicians of the year of Jimi Hendrix Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan. 1:20:18 PC: Loved them all. Love them all. Still got all their music. 1:20:24 SM: And their stand against the war, uh. 1:20:26 PC: Did not care, did not matter. I mean, I thought their music was romantic and it was not music of our times. You know? I mean, I love the doors. I love the Beatles. 1:20:38 SM: We have a- 1:20:38 PC: I love the Rolling Stones. I love Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. I just I loved her music, but I did not, just did not take them, seriously what I resented the actors today, were you know. I mean, that was the (19)60s. I mean, it was-it was like, so I guess I have a little bit of a double standard. 1:21:00 SM: But when I was when I was in that accident when my arm was my senior year, 1970 and I was in the operating room on April 30, the night Nixon gave his Cambodia speech. And I was in the hospital for at least 10 days, and I had tickets to the Grateful Dead concert that it was at SUNY Binghamton. And if you go on the website for the Grateful Dead, they considered one of the top three concerts they ever did in their history, because the music was on edge because it was it was it was right after Kent State and it was like, tension was like something else. We will see. Sam Urban. I am getting near the end of my names here. 1:21:41 PC: You know, he was a- you know, courageous politician. 1:21:47 SM: And, uh, some terms SDS. 1:21:50 PC: Uh, radical left wing rabble rousers? 1:21:57 SM: The term counterculture. 1:22:02 PC: Uhm, an accurate term, just an alternative view of life? I guess, you know, one of the things that bothered me about all the counterculture was that it was, you know, it was mostly people by people who had some means of support. They were living somehow there was money coming from somewhere, probably their parents. So, I probably somewhat had this thing for them because I figured they were just-they were just having a good old time with, you know, drugs, sex and rock and roll on their parents’ dime. I do not know if that is fair or not, but that is my that was my view at the time. 1:22:46 SM: We a minister on the corner of the university, Pastor Steve capsule, Myers see now he is now he is the pastor of the church. But his claim to fame is he was at Woodstock for two days and he will not let anybody know that at church because it is an inside thing. He was there the first two days when he was 17. 1:23:05 PC: And the last day of Woodstock is the day I was wounded. So, I always am mindful of that. 1:23:12 SM: Did you know about Woodstock was going on? 1:23:12 PC: No, I did not know about it till after I came back. 1:23:18 SM: What about John Lennon? 1:23:22 PC: I love the Beatles. I loved them all. 1:23:25 SM: He was one of the biggest antiwar rights to the very end. 1:23:29 PC: Yeah, but, you know, there we go again. I mean, I have a double standard because yeah, he was-he was but his music was so beautiful. I mean, it just, I just, I guess, like, so you are sort of catching me in double standard land here. But that is what it is. I am just giving you feelings. 1:23:47 SM: William Westmoreland. 1:23:52 PC: I thought he was known a great command presence who was either fooling himself I mean; he I think he engaged in wishful thinking- in his prosecution or at least his presentation of the war. He was a source of a lot of statements that turned out not to be valid. 1:24:26 SM: Yeah. And that is the that links back to the Johnson, Nixon. 1:24:30 PC: Yeah. 1:24:31 SM: Truth. Where is the truth right? Two individuals in Vietnam one of them was the one we are talking about bringing the Westchester General Cao Ky and President Thieu. Just your thoughts on them as leaders in president to some of the leaders during the Vietnam War. 1:24:48 PC: Well, you know, I, I do not have that much knowledge on them and so I was a little you know, I mean, I think Thieu was basically a puppet in a corrupt man. I do not really know much about. 1:24:59 SM: Did not like each other Ramsay Clark. 1:25:03 PC: I do not have I have no reaction to him. 1:25:06 SM: And last couple or Maxwell Taylor and Henry Kevin Lunch. 1:25:10 PC: I do not have any real thoughts about- 1:25:13 SM: Chicago 8, Chicago 8 trial. 1:25:17 PC: Yeah. You know, they are just radicals as far as I was concerned, any-any of the antiwar types that advocated violence, or encouraged or used it, I resented. 1:25:33 SM: That is what split SDS beginning it was an antiwar group. But as soon as the weathermen started doing the violence- 1:25:40 PC: Well, we have you know, we are two blocks, literally two blocks away is where the, you know, the weathermen. People are two blocks away from me, let me straighten your goddamn out here, Dustin Hoffman's apartments right next door and they just blew the whole goddamn from the building off. Killed a couple of them. Couple of young people were killed. 1:26:02 SM: When the best history books are written, and oftentimes the best history books are written 50 years after an event. What do you think will be the ultimate, uh, what do you think historians will say about the Vietnam War and about the young people who are against that, or the people who served in that war? Because right now we think 1975 that was when the war ended. So, I think we have great books now. But I know the greatest books on World War II are coming out right now. 1:26:34 PC: Yeah, no, I think that- 1:26:35 SM: And so, we are still about 20 years away from probably the best books on Vietnam. What is your- 1:26:39 PC: Thoughts on? 1:26:42 SM: What do you think they will say, about the boomer’s impact on society? 1:26:49 PC: Well, I think so. I think they will say that. You know, maybe this is self-centered. Because I am a boomer was in the war? I think they will say that it was that it had one of the greatest impacts on the course of American history that it left the greatest imprint on an entire population of people. Of any event, you know, uh, since World War II and that was because it went on so long, you know, and it was it was just such a grinding experience for so many different Americans. And I think so many people were touched by it in many different ways. And I think it will be seen as a viewed as a, just a sort of a boiling cauldron of conflict and decentralization. Here we are, what 30 years, you know, 30 years later. And as I said, you still see people-people have not changed their views of the poor. I mean, it is-it is quite amazing. You are probably getting more appreciation for the for the soldiers who fought in it. And that will probably soften over time, and they will come to be viewed as agents of misguided government policy. But I think it will be the end up being viewed as misguided government policy. 1:28:46 SM: It is interesting, because it is amazing that all the years since the war ended, every conflict, every involvement, foreign policy. Vietnam always comes up and then of course, during the Bush administration, Bush number one talked about that, uh, the Gulf War or Vietnam, the Vietnam syndrome. And then President Reagan, when he came into the presidency, he wanted to end the Vietnam syndrome to pride in America. And it is interesting, but still, everything comes back. That is why I believe the building of this building in Washington, Vietnam Memorial that they are trying to do on top of the wall has to be built. Because eventually over time, the boomers will all pass away and the people will walk down there and they will people remember the experience, but by having the building there, the documents, the lessons of Vietnam cannot be lost. And that is why it is important why we do with the university is saying despite the fact that the oh c'mon is the past it is not past. 1:29:51 PC: No, I agree with that and look at it. I mean, I think it inform the debate about the first Persian Gulf War, I think it informed the debate about the Iraqi war. And, uh, you know, certainly it was the way that I viewed what was going to happen. And the difference in the way the wars were, the wars were carried out. You know, the military technology and the precision. I mean, I am good friends with Bob Kerry. Senator, former senator from Nebraska, the president of The New school, The New School, and he and I are social friends. And I was talking to him about it. He-he said, I mean, he was, he expressed all the advances in the military weaponry. And the fact that the moment any Iraqi soldier would, would fire a mortar round within-within moments, the location of that soldier could not be precisely plotted, what kind of weapon was fired? And within seconds after he fired that round, they could hit him using, you know, spies in the sky and I mean, you know, I mean my God, I mean it was just it is just amazing. We had what I thought was pretty I mean; I called an artillery and airstrikes a lot. And I was always sort of impressed at how precise they could be. But this was this is like, oh my god, it was underground gun. I do not think any and I do not think any at this point in time. So, there is a resurgence of pride in the ability of America to-to create this kind of military capability and it is, but it is a reflection, not just power and strength. It is a reflection of the ability in America to create [phone rings], you know, something that effective, you know? So, I do not think it is, uh. 1:32:09 SM: Last question and that is any final thoughts you have on the overall legacy of Vietnam and America? And getting back to the issue of healing because we you talk quite a bit on the healing within the veteran community. Where are we in America with respect to healing on the Vietnam War? So really, we are talking about the overall legacy of the boomers and the- where we stand as a nation in terms of healing over that war. 1:32:38 PC: I think it is a very, actually it is a very good question I-I found, I am going to give you a really candid answer, and I am sure that I am not alone as a Vietnam veteran, but I found myself after the First Gulf War and a little bit after this war, resenting the American, you know, the sort of the praise and the respect that America was giving to the soldiers who fought in those two wars. The first one because it was so brief. And the second one because it was so easy, you know, relatively easy. And-and the resentment comes from I mean, it is, it is, a it is, it is parallel. The dual feeling of resentment comes from the fact that American Vietnam veterans were so poorly treated upon their return in a war that was in again, we are all sort of self-centered, I guess, but the war that was fought under really- much more rugged conditions. The dual feeling was the feeling of pleasure and happiness, you know that the contradictory feelings were happiness that these veterans are being treated as heroes. And-and so I think that there is more healing to do I am guessing my feelings are not alone, you know, and I and I am not alone in my feeling-feeling that way. And most Vietnam veterans probably would not say that, but I think it is a real feeling and uh, but I am happy that the military has become a source of pride in America again. And not a source of scorn, even the most ardent antiwar activists could not, did not and have not attacked the capability of the military to carry out a mission. And so that is a source of great pride and should be a source of morale, you know, it within the armed forces. And, uh, and I think that is, I think that is good for America. So, the healing process has yet has-has further to go and I think the successful prosecution of these two wars is actually in the end. A net plus but it does underscore it does, it does remind some of us once again, about the tremendous, you know uh, disrespect that that we were shown on our return. 1:36:17 SM: Really good points, one- You are right on here because you talk about at least I have been around universities now all my life. There is only for about six years and no question that everybody this time regardless of the fact that you do not criticize the troops. 1:36:36 PC: That may be a lesson in Vietnam too. I think it is. 1:36:38 SM: I think it is and even Larry Davidson. Yeah. And it was-it was all George Bush. 1:36:44 PC: Mm hmm. Right. 1:36:44 SM: It is all the policymakers. And so, I think I am hoping that is to me, that is one of the lessons learned that cannot be lost. So never give the warrior you are serving and what is interesting made ball is the fact that I am amazed that our Vietnam veterans, for warriors can sit down with the warriors who fought on the other side. And the respect is there because they were called by their leaders to fight. There is no sense and hatred. Ongoing hatred should be a learning for the general public, forget. 1:37:25 PC: It is very interesting that you say that because I met in in Hanoi. I met the commander of the second NBA division, which was the division that had my company in one other surrounded in the Khoisan Valley in 1969. And he was there, and he was the commander of the whole division. And we talked, I mean, through interpreters, and we embraced, and I think we both were teary. And, you know, and I walked away, and I said to Patty, I said, he is just a man, you know, he is just a man just like me. I mean, it was, uh, [clears throat] and I-I have I have no anger or hatred left for the Vietnamese partly because they were so welcoming, you know when we came back. But I do still have resentment for Americans who are not respectful of the troops. And what that meant, by the way to those troops. I am not just talking about disrespect, I am talking about people whose lives were ruined, or damaged. You know, because they came back. Fortunately for me, I was a- you know, I was a college guy, you know, so I had the intellectual wherewithal to understand what was happening and rise above it in the course of my life. A lot of these kids who went straight from high school into this and then came back and were dissed and humiliated and-and you know, criticized and-and shunned, uh, you know, that had to hurt a lot of people, you know, and it was just-just so patently unfair. 1:39:09 SM: And I was at the Vietnam Memorial two years ago. I sat next to a gold star mother. She was not wearing her white outfit. She was there. And that was the day that John McDermott was sitting there prior to the ceremony. Mm hmm. And she said, my son's on the wall, right behind, farther back where John's singing. Can you take a picture? I have a picture of him. I took a couple of them. I did mail it to them. But she told me a story. They were from Penn State that she grew up. Right her son grew up and he was buried and came home. And she said she started crying and she said when my son was home for his funeral was near the Penn State campus and the students were kind of spitting on the cars as we are going into the cemetery again and that is the memory I have about my, my dead son was treated on his return to be buried. And to me that was an unbelievable anecdote, a memory that the books some of the books that I read that it is not that the veteran portrayed as bad as some people say, a bunch of garbage because I read, I have heard so many stories, even. Even the people in 436 in Westchester, John Morris, who the man who came up and shook your hand at Westchester, he was invited, uh, he was brought to the American Legion event. And they did not want him around. He was a Vietnam vet. When he first came back, he was young and so somebody invited him to an American Legion event. And then he also went to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and he was really not welcome there because he was a Vietnam vet. It was for Korean War veterans, World War II veterans, and he never felt he could not believe that feeling is stayed with him his whole life. Now he is a big person in the community now friends with everybody there and it has accepted now for Vietnam vets, but at that particular time, it was pretty quick and abrupt. 1:41:14 PC: It was- I will never forget it. I mean, I think that is why when I see antiwar, you know, my wife, you know, participates in antiwar protests and things and it, it is a- it is a sore point between and I-I have said to her, I just do not want to talk about with you mean, we are just going to, you do your thing, and I will do mine. But, you know, I just, I just cannot go there. So it is, and that is a result of the way I was treated and the way I know that a lot of my girls were treated and if I was treated that way, I mean, I you know-you know, I mean I was when I think about the kids who came back who were black, and how they must have been you know how they were treated, right. It is just amazing-amazing. 1:42:09 SM: Well Phil, there is a high school in Philadelphia in the largest number of African Americans killed in the war. 1:42:14 PC: Oh, really? 1:42:16 SM: Edison, Thomas Edison High School. Actually, I interviewed first interviewed the, uh, Hispanic principal. They are hired since you know, brother died in Vietnam. It is really interesting. The real bad section of town we are going over the nighttime. I guess that is it. 1:42:37 PC: All right. That is good. Thank you. 1:42:39 SM: Well, it is great. (End of Interview) Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Description 2 Microcassettes Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Paul Critchlow Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Critchlow, Paul ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Bank of America; Journalism—Political aspects; Press secretaries; Critchlow, Paul--Interviews Description An account of the resource Paul Critchlow is a Vietnam veteran with years of experience in government, finance, and journalism. Critchlow retired from the Bank of America as the head of communications and public affairs. Previously, he served as the chief political writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer and then as press secretary to Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburgh. Critchlow has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska, Omaha and a Master's degree from Columbia University. Paul Critchlow served in Vietnam and he considers this experience the watershed event in his life.   Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003-05-28 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.9a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.9b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-01 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 102:40 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/3e552a490b720ba705c15a53280b95a8.jpg 8c6abded810844a07a8626191148c1bf https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/af782958240fefecea9e978be9369600.mp3 4bfdc68517a109c5d509bc853a49dff0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 1997-07-23 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed F. Forrester Church Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church IV (1948 - 2009) was a minister, theologian, and author. He eventually became a prominent advocate of Universalism. He wrote 25 books, most of which were about religion in his life. Church was a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Divinity School. He earned a Ph.D. in Early Church History from Harvard University.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13057,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;\&quot;Calibri\&quot;,sans-serif&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:11}">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church IV (1948 - 2009) was a minister, theologian, and author. He eventually became a prominent advocate of Universalism. He wrote 25 books, most of which were about religion in his life. Church was a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Divinity School. He earned a Ph.D. in Early Church History from Harvard University.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Baby boom generation; Body politics; Music; Laissez Faire parenting; Voting; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Black Power Movement; Watergate; Activism; Elitist; Generation gap.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14281427}}">Baby boom generation; Body politics; Music; Laissez Faire parenting; Voting; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Black Power Movement; Watergate; Activism; Elitist; Generation gap.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 57:13 Subject LCSH Clergy; Theologians; Unitarian Universalists; Church, F. Forrester--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Frank Forrester Church Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Benjamin Mehdi So Date of interview: 23 July 1997 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 00:11 SM: First question I would like to ask you, for churches. There has been a lot of criticism recently, even the last couple of years about the boomer generation, looking at the problems in America today, whether it be the breakup of the American family, the increase in drugs, the lack of trust in elected leaders, lack of respect for authority. Basically, zooming in on the boomer generation, that generation that grew up between (19)46 and (19)64. And that is the reason why we are having problems in America placing all blame back on that particular group. What are your thoughts on the criticism that oftentimes comes from the media, and even not political leaders placing blame on-on a generation that the (19)60s and early (19)70s in particular? 01:01 FC: Well by definition, because of its numbers, the boomer generation, as you call it, is a dominant or I imperialistic generation. I call this the python in the snake. Each decade as this disproportionate number of people go through life, they according to their age, and interests, disproportionately affect the lives of all the other Americans. So, in the 1950s, when the taking the snake was a child, everything was-was suburbs, churches and education, it was a passive time, the child was demanding an enormous amount of his parents’ attention. And this led to a sort of domestic period within our, within our history, in the 1960s, to pick as an adolescent. And as all adolescents do, it rebelled. And so, with a greatly disproportionate number of adolescents, at times of crisis, the crises were made more spectacular, whether it be the response to the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement. Again, the peak was right on schedule. Expressive, rebellious, and by virtue of its numbers, very effective in the (19)80s, and (19)90s, to take those to the snake further. And we have the me decade, the decade of the (19)20s when people are all of a sudden, looking to their own interests and needs and sort of dropping out from groups and finding their own way. And in the (19)80s, the greed decade, where the pig is now moving on, into its (19)30s. And through its (19)30s. And thinking of rather selfishly having an enormous impact, I think this enormous number of 30-year-olds who happen to be disproportionately in the marketplace out there wheeling and dealing and cutting, jabbing. There is no question that the bat process to a degree was driven by this unusual, predominant number of young, hungry, green and somewhat callow executives. In many cases, what you have now, in the (19)90s, which could not become a decade, it is hard to know, is that the pig has in many cases settled down has children of its own, there was almost a reprise to the (19)50s. But with the memory of the (19)60s intact, the (19)60s and tact, there is a return to religion, there is a return to family values as a stronger set of concern for community values, individual. expressiveness is less treasured than group togetherness. And so, every level and through every decade, there is no question, but this generation has had a remarkable impact, sometimes for good, sometimes pretty ill mostly for both. And I see this process continuing as the pig goes on to the end of the snake and becomes enormously imperialistically demanding of rights of support of benefits. And at that point, perhaps we More than any other in the course of this generation’s life, the body politic will be taxed by the hunger and demands of the boomer generation, we have at this point for a decade or so have the opportunity of seeing the mature take, perhaps at its best and doing for others more than doing for itself. And almost every other point, with the possible exception of the (19)60s, where others, at least idealistically with a goal to be served. The tape has been a narcissistic one, it seems for a time that we are going to have the benefit of this large generations. That time will again pass as the needs of the older boomers are, weigh in. And I use the term pig with-with amusement, but nonetheless, not without a certain amount of rhetorical or metaphorical effect. Because there is no question that this generation by virtue of its size, its appetites, and its power has been the major feeder at the American trough, from the very beginning. 06:28 SM: Excellent, I just want to double check me anyways. That is acceptable or has- 06:36 FC: To be spun, spun out. 6:38 SM: Okay, this leads right into the next question. And that is, it is just a very vague, vague, but also very general question, what has been the overall impact of the boomers on America through 1997? Knowing that boomers are just turning 50. Because the group that was born though, front of this generation is now turning 50. This year, they certainly got many more years ahead of them. But they are still in now in midlife. If you look at 197-1987, as we are heading into 1998, what has been the overall impact of boomers on America? 07:10 FC: Well, as I said, and each-each decade of our life, our impact has been due to the particular needs of our age. We today are concerned about health, longevity, fitness. And that movement is being tremendously driven by people who are getting old and refusing to accept the fact; there is an economic driver in every generation. And as- put another way, there is this economic driver that the boomer generation pushes through each decade. And there has been a disproportionate amount of power success. And influenced by this generation, to the extent that others, both previous and following have been and rightfully so, somewhat jealous of the impact that this remarkably large number of people has had. Let me give you an example. In the 1960s, when the boomers were adolescents, oldies in music, were from the 1950s. No one in my generation listened to anything of our parents’ music. We had no interest in our parents’ music, we have noticed movies in the (19)30s, the (19)40s, up to (19)55. (19)55 on those things were interesting because they were the precursors to the Rock and Roll, we were here in the 19(19)70s oldies became (19)50s and (19)60s, in the 1980s they became (19)50s (19)60s and (19)70s in the 1990s, there (19)50s (19)60s (19)70s (19)80s and early (19)90s. So, what you have here is a generation of people, which has imposed its own taste, its own memories, its own experience upon the entire country. There still are no oldies from the (19)40s or the (19)50s the (19)30s in the (19)40s. But so long as this generation is alive, the oldies will begin when they started to listen to music. Now that is a fascinating cultural example of the imperialistic overweening power of my particular age group. We have determined not so much the tastes of everyone in the country. But we have imposed our tastes upon the country. 10:09 SM: What are your thoughts on the impact that boomers are having on their kids and getting it back that in the (19)60s and early (19)70s, the boomers were involved with or course trying to end the draft, they were fighting to get the vote. The old slogan at that time was, you are old enough to send me to war that I should be old enough to vote. So, they got the right to vote, get the boomers really have not used. voting records among boomers has been very poor. And it is even poor amongst their children, which is today's current college generation, the generation I am dealing with, could you kind of reflect on the impact that boomers have had on their kids with respect to the aspect of activism, which so many took part in their youth. But we do not seem to be seeing that amongst today's youth. And we are seeing some of the characteristics that have been passed down from parent to child. 11:04 FC: Well, if one were to take the, the selfishness, low teeth, and play it out, I would say and this is far too general to be applicable to an entire generation, because you have so many different people here to try to make generalizations. It is great mistake, that I would say that having blamed all of their own problems on their parents, and therefore becoming so aware of how vulnerable parents are to the criticism of their children. Our generation decided to liberate its children, and excuse itself from responsibility. So that we have not both ways, we blamed our parents, but we will not accept blame for our own children's lives choices in future. So, you have, in some ways, a more passive group of parents who have been to a degree and again, one has to be very careful with generalizations to a degree exculpated themselves from responsibility by providing the freedom that they felt that they were not given as children, and then washing their hands of the consequences of that kind of laissez faire parents. 12:42 SM: Going back to a mindset as a boomer, what, and looking at the generation, then and now, you changed your opinions of boomers over the years. You were a boomer; I think you are in your late (19)40s. And what have been your you have been pretty consistent on your thoughts about boomers from over the last 30 years or- 13:13 FC: When you are, when you are part of a phenomenon, you very rarely examine it objectively or critically, you take it for granted. I have never thought of myself as a boomer. I occasionally recognize the advantages that have come with being a part of the pig to the snake. But I have I do not I do not think of myself in those terms. 13:32 SM: Using some adjectives, what are the qualities, the positive qualities that you see? And some of the negative qualities you- 13:38 FC: See, most of them are the same qualities that exist in all people at all times. I do not think that the group is any different than any other group. Quality is different qualitatively, which means, again, that the impact that has at any given age in any given decade is going to be to a large degree determined by the interests, passions, concerns of 10-year-olds, 18-year-olds, 28-year-olds, 38-year-olds, 50-year-olds. So, we are not talking about a group different in kind, only different in size. So, one might more correctly ask, what would any group of 18-year-olds tend to have in common with one another? And if you have an awful lot of them around, how is that going to change society? That is certainly what happened in the- 14:48 SM: Statistics differently different size. I have read that there were 65 million boomers and then another book that I have read material say that we are (19)10s [inaudible]. That is a big gap there but- 14:59 FC: It is still in the taking this thing, there is no question about that. It has been a larger generation than its parents and a larger generation than, than the ones have following it by-by a considerable amount. 15:15 SM: Two of the major issues facing boomers’ life in fact, I read a book recently defining the difference between the activism of today and the activism of say 30 years ago. And the activism of 30 years ago really concentrated in two major areas, and that was fighting this war in Vietnam and civil rights movement. And then many of the other-other women's movement, the environmental movement, were offshoots of learning from the Civil Rights Movement. Could you comment on? How important the students were in ending the war in Vietnam? Your thoughts on why the war ended, the major reason for the war ending? And how important are the young people that are worried anymore? 15:58 FC: Well, I think, I think the war ended primarily because of the unrest in the streets. I think that my father Frank Church, held the same view, I felt that until there was the ongoing threat of societal chaos. The American people were not concerned about a little war, halfway across the globe. Indeed, its casualties began to bounce. More and more families were intimately involved. But had it not been for the student protest movement, the war would have continued, my guess is much longer than did certainly Lyndon Johnson would not have been replaced as president in 1968. 16:53 SM: Smith, from ABC News, I interviewed him last summer. And I was there for five hours getting a one hour one hour interview. Yeah, I will be back. But it was good interview, and it gave me the time. I really appreciate it. But you are caught on to the reason why the war ended. Because middle America saw body bangs. And that is politicians realize what middle America was against the war in the war had to stop your thoughts on that. 17:24 FC: I am sure that the body bags as they began to pile had an effect and impact is no question about that. But I also think that the ripping of the societal fabric was tremendously destabilizing for the leadership of this country. And let them find it to recognize that so long as they were to continue sponsoring this war, they were going to be sponsoring chaos. 17:53 SM: Back to your commentary, when what your father said about the unrest in the streets, from growing up with the distinguished senator, and hearing the talk, probably coming he was coming home and sharing it with the family some of the discussions in congress and the feeling that he had. How close were we? You know, some people will say, well, you can never compare the (19)60s, early (19)70s to the Civil War. Nations coming apart, but some will say leader this close to come into power. How close were you? 18:27 FC: I do not think we were nearly as close as the students. I believe we were I mean, I and my friends all thought there was about to be a revolution. We were a bunch of idealistic pipe dreamers in part, I suppose, because we were a bunch of hedonistic pipe smokers, but there is no comparison between the 1860s and the 1960s. On the other hand, because of the disproportionate number of adolescents acting out appropriately and age appropriately, there was heightened sense of drama, urgency and crisis that helped us finally move along the civil rights movement and extricate ourselves- 19:17 SM: From the threat in the civil rights. And again, I have interviewed quite a few people so far, and some of us have different opinions. How important are boomers in the Civil Rights Movement, knowing that Freedom Summer really took place in (19)64? And that was that (19)64 was and-and I think boomers were 18 years old, the oldest group was 18. So, a lot of things like civil rights that already happened. So, some people try to downplay boomers’ impact. 19:44 FC: I think they had next to no impact in the early years of that movement, but there certainly was a strong contribution of Black Power adolescents in the mid to late (19)60s and early (19)70s. In helping to define and continue to define the Civil Rights Movement in a sharper and more confrontive manner that has been defined under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. 20:16 SM: What are your thoughts on Dr. King respect to the fact that he was one of the few people that saw the linkages between the war in Vietnam and civil rights and how we treat people at home and how we treat people abroad and of course, the division of the Black Power Movement and many people that were posted after King really criticized him for making those statements I believe in 1967. 20:34 FC: Dr. Martin Luther King was a large roundabout soul he was not in any way parochial. He was one of the few prophets we have known throughout the past 50 years. 20:48 SM: A lot of things that are regarding looking back, it is this issue of trust. Trust is an issue that seems to be a problem in America today, for obvious reasons, but historians and analysts will say it goes directly back to that era of the (19)60s when Lyndon Johnson and McNamara were in charge of the war in Vietnam and for the line the American public and actually seeing the news media. For the first time were critically critical of the government. Of course, Watergate is very obvious. So elected officials being dishonest. How, what are your thoughts on this issue in America today? The issue of trust and the lack of it, and how can we really be as successful nation around this? 21:43 FC: [audio cuts] The lapse of trust has directly to do with my opinion, not just Vietnam, but Watergate, and the empowerment of the investigative press. There had always been an old boy compact between the politicians and the press, which protected the politicians and to a degree protected the innocence of the American people. We lose something when we when we become so avidly interested in the peccadilloes of our leaders that we lose sight of their potential greatness. Here is, here is an interesting progression for you. In in the 1900s of this country, this century President Wilson was so completely incapacitated, that his wife was president, in effect for months at the end of his term, and no one knew. In the 1940s and (19)30s. When President Roosevelt was president, he was physically incapacitated, but no one knew because no one pointed out and no one known that he was physically incapacitated, he may never have been elected president [inaudible] was elected three times. In the 1960s. John Kennedy, a great national hero and-and in many ways, fine president was morally incapacitated by a strong sex drive and pension for womanizing, which was never shared with the people of the United States. Today, the smallest thing that anyone does and many things that a person does not do are fodder for gossip columns, the subject of commentaries, it is no wonder that a relatively ordinary man, although enormously talented, such as Bill Clinton, is the constant subject of innuendo, of character assassination. This would never have happened before. So, we have moved from a situation which was in many ways much more dangerous to the republic, actually having a president who could not think with no one knowing or having a president who could not move carefully without anyone knowing was the president who was acting wantonly without anybody knowing. And now, everything sucks. There is no question but that has an impact upon our trust level. It is not just because rumored quote unquote generation has so many people who were turned off by government in the 1960s that we are all a bunch of untrusting people. As a matter of fact, this iteration has as predictable moved from being radical to being conservative as it is become more money. So, you do not have a group of people who are, by definition permanently radical out there changing the trust quotient. You have a changing, set not of mores, but standards, which may in fact become impossibly hard. And if we are going to go back to a time when we took pleasure in and respected our leaders, we may have to be a little bit less prudish and a little bit more forgiving the human foibles that every human being including our greatest leaders that we manifest. 25:48 SM: This it gets right into the whole issue of cynicism. Now, I again, I read quite a few people so far. And one, when that question was asked, if you were to define one of the major weaknesses of the boomer generation, again, relating back to history is that that is the most cynical group I have ever seen in my life. Cynicism has is, of course was linked to trust. You know, I do not know how you feel about that. But well- 26:14 FC: I do not I do not sense that my generation is any more cynical than the one that was followed, or the one that was following that. I think cynicism is growing pace. I call this cynical chic. And it is combined with something I call sophisticated resignation. And he knows so much about the problems that face us, that we resign ourselves to the fact we cannot do anything about if anything, my own generation is more willing to attempt solutions and change. Because we were raised at a time when our impact was so great, that we have not forgotten that. So, I would say, yes, there is to be a label placed upon this generation. While cynicism is growing across the board in this country, I would not call this the cynical generation. I would, I would call it the imperialistic or confident generation. And therefore, when we have opportunities to work together and do something, we tend to rally and do that. 27:26 SM: You were to look at you made some commentary about the size; we know this is the biggest generation American history. And the fact is that a lot of the books that I have read sociology, books, history books will say that when you look at this generation, they will use this term 15 percent are really involved in any kind of activism. And the rest of them decide what their daily lives wherever. And so, and thus, what they are trying to say. And these are some of the critics of the generation again, we will come back and say the problems. It was really just a bunch of elitist snobs and elitist schools that are involved in this many have gone on to politics or whatever. And they credit downgrade anything that was positive about that period. 28:03 FC: 85 percent of any generation is self-absorbed and unconnected and not involved. However, 15 percent of a very large generation is going to make a disproportionate impact over 50 percent. However, 15 percent of a smaller generation. That is, it. This is why I mean generalities. Of course, 85 percent were involved, or interest never, never will be; that does not change that much from one generation to the next. If you have a lot more people though that 15 percent ways given with a much larger and more powerful voice. 28:43 SM: Do you feel that many people within the boomer generation and then this gets directly back to our conversation from the interview started with Senator Muskie that a great portion of this generation are have a problem with healing from the visions when they were young. I am specifically gearing toward the Vietnam War. Those were for the war those were against the wall. 29:06 FC: I think they will be served. The people who have had the hardest time with healing or those were the soldiers the Vietnam veterans. I do not sense that being a problem outside of that group, in any kind of- 29:27 SM: I have been to the wall several times in the last couple of years Vietnam memorial and tried to get an ambience and a feel for what they really truly are healing which was the goal of the wall in Washington still sent just from overhearing conversations and talking with veterans that they come on with-with this going along. Because there is- 29:46 FC: We will never be completely healed, and there is so much scar tissue there. Among the victims of the Vietnam War, perhaps the-the-the most neglected and therefore damaged group, at least among American citizens, with the veterans themselves. 30:17 SM: Again, I am just trying to get a feel for the people under so those who were against the war, I had a chance to interview Senator Gaylord Nelson, last summer and he said that I do not see anybody any boomers walking around with, I have not healed on their sleeve. But he said there was no question the body politic has never been the same thing. It was dramatically changed, right? 30:40 FC: It was dramatically changed. But I do not think those people who protested the war came away feeling at least most of them anything other than to a certain degree, morally superior and idealistically smart. With age and [audio cuts]. With age and the tempering of experience, we have mellowed in our pretensions, and attained, I should hope, greater humility. Again, I am speaking here of the 15 percent of people who were active, and I must, my friends were among one. And I have I have certainly noticed a mellowing that I take simply as a growing cynicism, I see it as a sign of maturation. 31:51 SM: Thoughts, and I want to emphasize this point, because a lot of what I am trying to do here is to interview people to metaphors, their feelings, so we better understand the times better and respect different points of view. Do you think there should be efforts made to bring together again, either through university symposium or through the media, better understanding of the divisions of those times, so that we can share why we felt that way? Because those were intense times with intense feelings, and is one Vietnam veteran said to me, I do not know, I am not upset with a protester if there was a sincerity in the protest, of sincerity. And that just running off to Canada, and I am just saying that I have talked to people with the wall and there was many guilty people because they did not serve and they have not gotten older and they brought their kids to the wall. There is that feeling, oh, my God, they did not have any of the young, but they have not now, maybe I could have served should there be efforts made to bring those who served those who did not serve together try to understand education wise. So, feelings of right time so that so that will not only help history but will also be an educational tool for future generation for future generations. 33:15 FC: For people who desire this and to take part of that I think that is that can only be for the good, I would put it low on my own set of priorities for tackling the present and future problems. I-I, however, was not traumatized. As many people were people who have been traumatized need to get together with other people to go work on their, on their problems, so that they can become more functional and happier and more fulfilled and less embittered humans. 33:56 SM: Define the generation gap as designed back in the (19)60s, and the generation gap of the (19)90s. 34:07 FC: I think that because of the size of the adolescent generation in the (19)60s, there was a greater sense of solidarity and power, which made it easier in a corporate manner to reject the preceding generation. Today, I see it more individualistic and idiosyncratic. Remember that the parents, today's children, are also continued to be the dominant group, even though they were the dominant group when they were the children of their own parents. That has to have an impact on the relative sense of empowerment and entitlement that the two generations feel Again, I speak of this as the imperialistic generation because it was, it was far more powerful as children than were its parents, at least in a, in a relative sense to other groups of children. It is now far more powerful as parents than its children in a relative sense. 35:23 SM: Can you feel that is a very important term, because in higher education terms, we are trying to work with students’ day in and day feeling self-esteem and empowerment. Now- 35:32 FC: That is why I call it the pig in the state, right? It is, it is a pig in more ways than what- 35:35 SM: I sense today's young people do not feel that many getting a scenario in 18 years of working with college students. And you probably see that I do not know, seeing this from the church. But the fact is that when young people today look at that period of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, to come away with two fields, either they come away with I am sick of hearing, you guys live in the psychology of right time, I am tired of it or I wish I could have lived in that time. Because I do not see the issues today like their work. 36:04 FC: The point to remember is that in either case, they are still defining their own experience, according to that of their parents. We in the (19)60s did not define our experience, according to that of our parents when they were young. We could not have been less interested in our parents when they were young. Our own children are fascinated by us when we were young. And that is because we continue to have the power. And the- we set the scene we set the stage, I could not have told you a single song that my violin parents had sung, I could not have identified it, I could not have cared less. While kids sing along with me as I am playing the Beatles on the radio. That is a huge difference. And it is not just a difference because of a change in communication styles and times and things. It is a difference because this big imperialistic generation, as has set the cultural political scene where the entire country by virtue of its disproportionate size. 37:14 SM: Let me just double check here. You referred earlier to the fact about size that we are, the boomer generation is their size, has tremendous impact on anything that needs to spread generation itself. When I was a young person on college campus, one of the terms kept coming up over and over again is and I do not know, the pace. on college campus, we are the most unique generation American history. In other words, there was, he might say almost an arrogance that it really did not have anything to do with size. It was just it was a feeling within it was within the mind that we were going to change the world for the better. 37:49 FC: I see. Again, I will disagree, I think it has enormously to do with size. There is, there is a disproportionate demographic, cultural power that comes with numbers. Take a look today at the focus of the major magazines, they have to do with health, and people in their (19)40s (19)50s and (19)60s, being young when you are 50. But we were in our 30s people in their 50s did not exist in the cultural media. Everybody was in their 20s and 30s. I think that this sense of entitlement has predominantly to do with the size of the generation. Also, the fact that the generation was pampered in the 1950s. It was pampered in part because of its size again. The- this my generation helped to shape the character of the (19)50s as much as it did in the (19)60s. And the character of the (19)50s was a very child friendly environment. Relatively speaking, where this generation by virtue, its number and its demands, was treated. Specially that to a degree has something to do with the sense of entitlement that followed in the (19)60s. But the generation was not just blown from the Prowler Zeus is some kind of special group of people who arrived at a critical point in history and made a difference by virtue of being different from everyone else. It has to do with size. 39:49 SM: If you to pick the one event in your life when you were young that had the greatest impact on you. When you were either in your teens or early during college. What was that incident what event the greatest impact on your life? 40:04 FC: Probably the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. 40:14 SM: Where were you at that time? 40:15 FC: I was at Stanford. 40:18 SM: I asked this because people that you described where they were, how did you find out about where were you at the moment? 40:30 FC: In both cases I was in my dorm room or house room and was called by in one case friends and in another no and in the Robert Kennedy case I campaigned for Kennedy for the Democratic primary, and I was actually watching the returns and the other in the other case, I was called the telephone for the television by friends. 41:04 SM: Did this event have any impact in terms of the direction you want your life saving here as a minister? 41:10 FC: Because I already I mean, it confirmed me in my own path, which was not that kind of vocational path. It was, it was a path to make the world a better place, less violent place. A more companionable and neighborly place. This sharpened my passion and-and confirmed my commitment, rather than doing the opposite, which would be to lead to despair or citizens. 41:57 SM: Which on, again, have an impact on society, do you feel that you personally have had an impact on society? What is the greatest impact? 42:05 FC: I have had a small impact on society, but I believe you save the world, one neighbor at a time. And the institutions are far more powerful than individuals in making a difference in society. To what extent I have had any impact it has been through the-the collective work of this 1500-member congregation. Which is far greater than anything I could possibly do on my own. 42:36 SM: Some names of individuals from (19)60s and early (19)70s and just your thoughts on that. 30 of them okay, go ahead. How many minutes we got here? 42:48 FC: I have got a I have got to be. I have got about a half an hour. 42:52 SM: Okay. Okay, you are okay, because I have another interview for clients. The other side of town. Great, good. Good. Just your thoughts on these individuals Jane Fonda. 43:05 FC: Frivolous. 43:06 SM: Tom Hayden. 43:19 FC: He was, um earnest. 43:24 SM: Eddie Hopper and Jerry Rubin. 43:27 FC: Lightful and tragic. 43:30 SM: It is takeoff to Eddie Hoffman, he-he is outside of Philadelphia, and he let them know that no one is listening to me anymore. And [inaudible crosstalk]. When-when I read that, I was wondering how many boomers feel that way. Then they get abominations that no one's listened to them anymore. 43:57 FC: Very few. That, that is a function of celebrity and the and the withdrawal pains when one is no longer one of the 50 most talked about people that has nothing to do with the generation. That is true of any individual who has his 15 minutes in the sun. And then the sun is covered by clouds, and no one can see it feels as if he is invisible, whereas most people would never expect to be visible in the first place. 44:33 SM: The Black Power advocates, Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Seal, Huey Newton, [inaudible] 44:39 FC: Strident and powerful. 44:43 SM: Political leaders and there were some really good probably political leaders at that time, but they have a lot of things wrong for them too. And that is I am going to start with John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. 44:59 FC: Kennedy was charismatic and inspiring. Johnson was powerful and tragic. Richard Nixon talented and sinister. 45:30 SM: Gerald Ford. 45:31 FC: Kind and pathetic. 45:40 SM: George McGovern. 45:42 FC: Humbly moral and everlastingly decent. 45:44 SM: He was on our campuses this past- Yeah. Eugene McCarthy. 45:51 FC: Narcissistic and supercilious. 46:03 SM: Bobby Kennedy. 46:05 FC: Great and [inaudible] 46:14 SM: Jordan Wallace. 46:19 FC: A-a creature of his time. 46:32 SM: Luther King Jr. 46:34 FC: Inspirational and worldly brilliant in the highest sense of the term. 46:45 SM: Malcolm X. 46:51 FC: Dedicated and powerfully impressive. 47:02 SM: Hubert Humphrey. 47:05 FC: Joyous and irrepressible [inaudible]. 47:16 SM: Ralph Nader. 47:23 FC: Earnest and grim. 47:26 SM: [Inaudible] Larry. 47:28 FC: Irresponsible and delightful. 47:32 SM: Doctor Benjamin Spock. 47:40 FC: Complicated uneasy. I knew him pretty well too. 47:47 SM: Barry Goldwater. 47:51 FC: Solid and dual integrity. 48:01 SM: Gloria Steinem, Abigail Adams and Shirley Chisholm, people that were leaders of the women's movement. 48:11 FC: Gloria Steinem, basically indefatigable, courageous, idiosyncratic. 48:24 SM: Mohammad Ali. 48:25 FC: Endearing and amusing. 48:33 SM: Richard Daly. 48:38 FC: Born in the wrong century. 48:44 SM: Robert McNamara. 48:48 FC: Brilliant and heartless. 48:52 SM: Spiro Agnew. 48:55 FC: Second rate. 49:02 SM: Daniel Ellsberg. 49:07 FC: Accidentally important. 49:11 SM: Woodward and Bernstein. 49:16 FC: Dedicated and self-absorbed. 49:21 SM: Music of the (19)60s. 49:26 FC: Ruthlessly delightful. 49:29 SM: I know there is so many but if you were to pick your favorites, the musicians that you personally love and secondly, music that may have had the greatest impact on the generation and future generations. Who would those musicians be? 49:43 FC: Head and shoulders above all others I would say Bob Dylan both in terms of personal impact and impact upon generation. He is in a class of his own. culturally I would say that the Beatles the Rolling Stones were also in a class of their own, but if there is one if there is one thing here to stand out in the music, the (19)60s it is Bob Dylan. 50:12 SM: He was sick recently. He is okay-okay. Something, yeah. People around Richard Nixon, John Dean, John Michell [inaudible] 50:28 FC: Pure blind bureaucrats. 50:31 SM: Sam Ervin. 50:33 FC: I mean that is Dean Mitchell was just an egregious narcissist. 50:43 SM: Men and [inaudible] man in that [inaudible] 50:45 FC: Era in the, in the third line bureaucrat. 50:50 SM: Sam Ervin came in that [inaudible] 50:58 FC: Just a real country original. 51:05 SM: Senator Fulbright. 51:06 FC: Quite complicated and courageous. 51:14 SM: Senator Muskie. 51:17 FC: Steady as the day with law. 51:21 SM: Gaylord Nelson. 51:25 FC: A man who cares but also enjoys life. 51:36 SM: Dwight Eisenhower. 51:42 FC: A lot better than he seemed at his job. 51:49 SM: Senator Church. 51:54 FC: I would say [inaudible] patriotic, passionate, 52:17 SM: Most of the questions because we doubled over on one but I want to end by repeating myself. Please apologize for my doing so, but I am trying to get a grasp on the healing and regeneration as a minister, a person that worked with your parishioners you deal with this day in and day out as you started in the opening of your book lifelines, that letter that was left under the door about dealing with adversity. I want to, if you do not mind, I would like to read this. And-and again, I am repeating myself, but I must get clarity on this before some say that the Civil War generation went to their grave, still bitter toward the other side. And then again, it is going to should efforts be made to prevent this from happening again, because Senator Muskie really alleviated to this in our conversation. And he felt personally that this generation is even though it may not have been the same thing as a civil war, as you brought up. Still, it is his perception that many people in this generation are going to go to their graves, still bitter. And you know, as a minister, obviously, you know what bitterness can do to someone. And so, I am trying to do is try to understand this better. Because during my numerous trips to the wall, I have witnessed several ceremonies with veterans in the audience, some still openly hate the president. They hate Jane Fonda. They hate still the people that were protesting against the war. As the I interviewed a gentleman last night, who was the head of the Vietnam Veterans of Pennsylvania, and he says, I still I use the term hate, I will never forgive those who were against the war, who protested the war. I mean, they are a bunch of other words, they are just feeling guilt now because they did not serve. 54:04 FC: I know, I do not see how we can possibly legislate either forgiveness or reconciliation. Obviously, time will heal to a degree and people getting together as a positive thing. But if you were to talk about this generation as a whole, I would say that the-the healing between parents and child that is to save the child who that was to say adolescent in the (19)60s and now as a parent him or herself and his parents are getting older, or dying, is by far the more existentially pervasive gap because of the sense of entitlement of many people in this generation. And the obvious disappointments that have followed normal life development. The amount of blame afforded to parents given that there are so many children doing the blaming, I would see as the number one healing issue. Beneath that and well beneath it but-but-but probably more dramatic would be the healing that one might hope could commence or continue to commence between those who serve this country and Vietnam and those who oppose the war. I think the passion play is played out mostly in the minds hearts and souls of the Vietnam veterans, not in the minds hearts and souls of the war protesters. 55:52 SM: Again, when the best history books are written, and the best history books are always written 25 years after an event because the best World War two books are being written right now. Like Steven Ambrose’s D-Day. We were only 25 years removed 30 bucks. And then that 50-year period goes forth what will be the lasting legacy in the boomer generation, how will history treat this, how will historians when they sit down and write it the Doug Brinkley is of the world when he is writing. 56:24 FC: As creative, narcissistic, demanding and influential within every decade of their lifespan according to the needs and desires their age may not be clearly put you know what I am talking about having heard me for the rest of the year. 57:04 SM: Any final thoughts? Thank you very much. (End of Interview) Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Description 1 Microcassette Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Church, F. Forrester ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Clergy; Theologians; Unitarian Universalists; Church, F. Forrester--Interviews Description An account of the resource Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church IV (1948 - 2009) was a minister, theologian and author. He eventually ended up becoming a voice known to speak for Universalism. He wrote 25 books and most of them involved religion within his life. Church was a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Divinity School. He earned a Ph.D. in early church history from Harvard University. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997-07-23 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.10 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-01 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 57:13 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/ed9b9f39b8458eec0f12ff50d5b7fd07.jpg af3555387f2ee7602fd77eb78b1e9bd4 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/22258b27b9ddea79791638bc75048364.mp3 0bd5b5fcb4e2263c4fe87e8602e90697 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-07-22 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Peter Coyote Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Peter Coyote is an author, actor, director, screenwriter, and activist. Coyote is also a narrator for his own films and for a plethora of other events including the 2002 Winter Olympics and various Historic films. He graduated from Grinnell College with a Bachelor's degree in English Literature and attended California State University for a Master's degree in Creative Writing.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:7043,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Peter Coyote is an author, actor, director, screenwriter, and activist. Coyote is also a narrator for his own films and for a plethora of other events including the 2002 Winter Olympics and various Historic films. He graduated from Grinnell College with a Bachelor's degree in English Literature and attended California State University for a Master's degree in Creative Writing.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 84:26 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;The New American Poetry 1945-60; Folk music; Beats generation; Bohemian; Jazz music; Rock music; Guerilla theater; Baby boom generation; Counterculture; Richard Nixon; Civil Rights; Diggers.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14281427}}">The New American Poetry 1945-60; Folk music; Beat generation; Bohemian; Jazz music; Rock music; Guerilla theater; Baby boom generation; Counterculture; Richard Nixon; Civil Rights; Diggers.</span> Subject LCSH Authors; Motion picture producers and directors; Screenwriters; Political activists--United States; Coyote, Peter--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Peter Coyote Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Benjamin Mehdi So Date of interview: 22 July 2010 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 00:04 SM: First question I want to ask is, you were still, you are recognized as one of the most well-known counterculture leaders in the late (19)60s and (19)70s. And I have several questions linked to that. Why did the counterculture and the activist boomers linked to the multiple movements of the time not succeed in changing society for the better? One of the things that even I recognized when I was a college student is that many of the boomers thought they were going to change the world for the better they were going to end war, bring peace, end racism, sexism, homophobia, all the isms that were just going to make the world a better place to live and save the environment and actually truly make a difference in the world to. I do not think they did that. What is your thoughts on the counterculture? 01:03 PC: Well, first of all, let- 01:10 SM: Please speak up to- 01:13 PC: Let us dismiss the idea that I was anyone's leader. I was part of an anarchic gang that did not recognize leaders, tried to be authentic, and we tried to follow our own counsel. So, I can speak as that I cannot really speak as elite. But the counterculture aspirations they talk about, were simply part of a long line of American reform. I mean, there has been reforming as long as there has been America. And while it is true, that the counterculture failed, and all of its political goals, it succeeded in every single one of its cultural goals. And by that, I mean, we did not end war, we did not end racism, we did not end imperialism, and capitalism, that, fair enough. I can also say that there is no place in America, you cannot go today and buy organic food, find a women’s movement finding in for metal movement, find alternative medical movements, find alternative spiritual practices, yoga, Siddhanta, [inaudible] Buddhism, you name it. So those were all direct outgrowth of the six that we succeeded in that so far beyond our wildest dreams. That was changes have become ubiquitous and invisible. And it is my belief, actually the culture, Trumps politics, that in the long run the way people live every day, Trump their ideas about political system? So, I do not, I do not chalk this all up as a failure by any means. Now, your question was, why did we fail? Well, failed for a number of reasons. One is that the idea of a counterculture in itself is a failure. It condemns you to mark formation. And we as being members of counterculture, we missed the opportunity to organize and gage relationship with a lot of people who did not want their kids around long hair and drugs and free sex, and all sorts of wholesale experiment. They just wanted a fair deal out of the economy out of this. And we missed those people. So today, if I were going to create a radical magazine, you know, I would never have I would never have a marijuana leaf or anything countercultural on it at all, I would make it look this like time in life. So that is one reason we fail. The other reason we fail is that we brought all of the problems of growing up in the (19)50s with us, just because we thought that we were against a lot of the mistakes that are fake that our parents made did not mean that we are absolved from the consequences. In other words, if you think that your parents were sexually repressive, and you decide that the cure to that problem is sexual license and absolute freedom. Well, you have created a whole bunch of problems. Have not really ever really solved any just shifted from the left and the right. And thirdly, because we were concentrating on great revolutionary goals, we were not concentrating so much on kind of interpersonal dialogue and requirements that are needed to live together. So, we did not have very developed vocabularies of interpersonal relationship. You know, if I wake up in the morning, and I like to wash my face in a clean sink, and you do not care if it is a greasy pit where you wash your hands after you have just dismantled an engine, there is no revolutionary philosophy I can, I can write, as a cause for authority as to why you should clean the sink. So things like that. And then finally, the emergence of children created pressure, all of our ideas that were not fully thought out, or were not, you know, humanly sound and the communal system per se, fell apart. But that is not to say that we traded in our values for our beliefs. We are still connected as family. My daughter and her children share friends that she grew up with, are now mothers, very self-consciously a part of that world and its history. So we look this like everybody else today with that thing. That means we can all work, but do not the culture and myriad places do not buy, what we do with our lives is immediately translated by other people. So that is the long answer. But I think it is a pretty complete answer. 06:50 SM: Yeah, I have asked a lot of people that I have interviewed, particularly in the last half of people I have interviewed to define the term counterculture, a lot of people have come up with different terms. But what-what most of them have said, it is more than just being different from the mainstream. My basically, what my question is, is counterculture culture, more than being different from the mainstream, having long hair, wearing bell bottoms and colorful clothes, taking drugs, living in communes, having sex with multiple partners, of course, the pill played a part of that, where religion went to new spirituality, and where one does not have to go to church and a feeling of more meditation than before. Are those all the definitions and what the counterculture was? Or is it much more? 07:39 PC: Well, they are not definitions, their descriptions. I think the short thing to answer was, for those of us who felt that the system of the United States and capitalism was crumbling over internal contradiction, we were going to try to create a parallel structure and parallel institutions that would offer people refuge, I guess the thing fell apart. So do that we had to do a lot of experiments. We did not know how to live. We did not know what rules were worth following and what were not. I mean, a law is in agreement with a stop sign up on the street corner. But if people do not honor it, it is not a law. So, we began looking at everything that created a system that we did not like the system based on profit and private property, enhanced by racism, turning the planet and some fodder for profit. We did not like it. So we began to try to invent one from whole cloth and you make a lot of mistakes when you reinvent the wheel. 08:51 SM: Around that time in the (19)70s, when you were out there in California with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which I saw, and I thought they were great. I lived in the Bay Area from (19)76 to (19)83. So I know about Golden Gate Park and I missed San Francisco so bad. I may end up moving back up there one day, but one of the things about that particular time while I was in graduate school, there were several books that came out and I-I want to know what books may have influenced you. The two books that I am referring to that were very popular in college campuses around (19)69 to (19)73 was Charles Reich's Greening of America. And the making of a counterculture by Theodore Roszac. And I want to know if you have ever read either one of those two? 09:36 PC: No, I never read either one of those two books that the books that I read that really kind of turned me around. One was called life against death by Norman O. Brown. One was the entire Don Juan series by Carlos Castaneda. The other was called the Three Pillars of Zen by Philip Kapleau. And what was Alan Watts Famous? 10:08 SM: Well, he did a book called Zen. Yeah, I have that. 10:13 PC: Those were the books that most influenced me. 10:17 SM: Did you read any of the beat writings to from the mid (19)50s on? 10:20 PC: Lots of it. when I was in college, my bible was a book called New American poetry 1945 to 1960, edited by Donald Allen, published by Grove Press, and me and my friends just ate that book up. And one of the reasons I came to San Francisco was to study poetry with Robert Duncan, University of San Francisco's creative writing department. 10:52 SM: What is what role did the beats play in shaping the or being the precursors of the of the (19)60s? I say this because there is a question that I will be asking you later, you do not have to answer it now is, when did the (19)60s begin? And I have only had two people that told me that they felt the (19)60s began with the beats, your thoughts on how important the beat writers were. And of course, Ginsburg goes through the entire era from the-the whole period, he goes right up to the very end, where some of the other ones have passed on, very early. But what role did they play in shaping the attitudes of not only maybe many members of the counterculture, but many members in the new left, and the activist students of the (19)60s and (19)70s? 11:42 PC: Well, you know, when the when the Beats were coming up, I was a young man, I was 12, 13 years old. And it was I was starting to get interested to then folk music. And folk music was one of the vehicles that kind of took you off the bourbon sidewalk and into the kind of trackless wilderness of Bohemia. You started hearing music that sounded more authentic voices, stories, histories that were more authentic. And when you got out there, like Greenwich Village and Washington Square Park, and the place where music was being made. You also met older, Bohemians, and Beatnik. And you got turned on to literature. So, these guys were the first kind of formative adult, other than jazz musicians I would ever meet, who were kind of guides and intellectual mentors. So they were very, very important. And, I mean, preeminent among them, for me is Gary Snyder. Yes, who was not only remained one of my closest friends to this day, but also kind of informal Zen teacher and a mentor and a whole number of ways. Same for Michael McClure. Same Lou Welt was my roommate, Gregory Corso was a later roommate. Wow. Ellen Ginsburg was a friend. So these guys were, you know, sort of the first. First representatives of wisdom that I ran into. 13:25 SM: Do-do you, a word that is very important. Oftentimes, when you talk about people and what they do, and the perceptions that other people have of them, the perception that I have always felt is they were truly genuine. It was not a putt on. It was, it was a real engine just to make publicity. That was who they were it would you agree with that? 13:45 PC: Oh, without a doubt. I mean, anybody who would guess that this was all a canard for publicity, is really reflecting their own shabbiness of character. These people were making trenching and deep and the observed critiques of the culture, which was beginning to be corporatized and standardized. And there was there was a lot to criticize. 14:14 SM: One of the things I always ask of each guest is, how did you become who you are? I read your whole background. I know your whole biography. I have read the book. And- 14:25 PC: You read on book you read the story of how I became Peter Coyote. 14:29 SM: But I mean in in your own voice. [chuckles] The basic question I am asking is, what were the greatest influences in your life in your life’s path that if you were to look at from the day you were born till today, are there two or three or four major happenings that really shaped you with respect to who you are? 14:55 PC: Well, yeah, one of which was being raised by a black woman, from the time I was two until I was about 13. And she and her friend’s kind of took over our house, my mother had a nervous breakdown, she was unable to care for me. My father was away working. And this very brilliant young woman just kind of took over the household in a very beneficent way, gave me safety and structure and by traveling with her friend, and I got a whole look at a nonwhite world. Saved me from being a white man, I mean I am Caucasian, but I am not a white [inaudible] men. And so that was a huge introduction to kind of, you know, the life of people who were invisible to disenfranchise, I witnessed, you know, 100s of little insults and things that I would never have seen if she had not been like, my mother, and I was not so observant of watching the way people treated her. So that was a huge and formative influence. We are still close day. I am writing a book about her. I talk to her all the time. 16:18 SM: Oh, when that is coming out? 16:22 PC: I do not know. I am still writing. Okay. So there was that the second one was meeting the world of jazz musician, through a bass player named Buddy Jones, who was Charlie Parker's roommate for three years in Kansas City. And buddy with became a close friend of my dad, and he brought all of these great musicians to our house to play up in the country, out calm and do Sims and Irby green and Bob Dorough and just lots of them. And buddy became and I met these people and saw them when I was about eight or nine years old. And they were the first adults I have ever seen who loved what they did. I knew right then that that is what I want. I did not have the talent to become a jazz musician, which is what I would do if I had any ability to do that. There is nothing else I would rather do. But running around with Buddy, and he took me to hear Billy holidays last concert in (19)92. He introduced me to Miles Davis when I was in, wow. traveled around took me to it. I spent all of my birthdays at the half note, a club in New York on Spring Street. From the Time I was about 12 to 18 when I left home. And, you know, I heard everybody heard Charlie Mingus John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, not only that, heard him with a guy who knew how to listen. That was a huge introduction into the life of an artist. And then, there were a lot of political people in my family. A lot of communists and socialists and left wingers. My dad used to play chess with Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy, the editors of the Monthly Review. My mother's cousin, Irving Adler was the first man fired in the New York City public school system for being a communist. My mother was the secretary of the Englewood Urban League. And so I grew up in this rich broth of political debate and dialogue. My dad was a capitalist. And so some combination of sort of growing up under the tutelage of black people and hearing learning white political theory. I would say were the two formative and also something about the community of outsiders, which is what jazz musicians were in those days. That kind of formed my whole worldview. 19:12 SM: That is interesting. I am a big jazz fan. My brother in law just passed away and he was a jazz performer in the Bay Area for quite a few years before he moved back East. They played with a group called they actually performed at Henry's at the top in San Francisco, which was they were Casey and Angel and Craig was the drummer and the whole mess of the jazz guys came out to San Francisco in (19)73, (19)74. And then they many of them are still out there, Ray Lockley, King Koi whole group of them. 19:43 PC: Well, I used to be a drummer, I studied drums with Cozy Cole- Was a great jazz drummer in the (19)40s (19)50s, Big Band drummer. 19:53 SM: You know, they always you know, what they always say yeah, Peter about jazz musicians, is they-they grew beyond rock they had the experience of rock, a lot of them did. And then they went on to the next phase, which was jazz, which was improvisation and really the ability to be creative and to be your own person. And I am, it is- 20:13 PC: Oh, I mean, these guys were there before there was rock. Mm hmm. You know, I mean, they began, you know, these guys were out there in the (19)30s and (19)40s. They these were just world class artists. And, you know, data they are not they do not owe their genesis to rock and roll, right? I am so tired of the self-importance of rock and roll like a cute. 20:38 SM: Yeah, one of the things in San Francisco Mime Troupe is historic. And you were one of the not only directed it, but one of the leaders of the group. One of the questions I want to ask is about the whole issue of guerrilla theater, how important I do not know a whole lot about it. But when I was in college guerrilla theater was very important on college campuses, because out of nowhere, she would see these people come into the student union. And they would talk and do these little skits about the Vietnam War or civil rights, or, you know, what was happening in the world. And they come you never knew they were coming, and then they just leave. And I did not know how much how important the San Francisco Mime Troupe may have been in being the inspiration for these things on college campuses of Do you know? 21:26 PC: I think they were; I think the word guerrilla theater was coined in the San Francisco mime Troupe. And, you know, we, what can I say we were revolutionary Theatre Company. And we were trying to invent modes of performance and places to perform that were appropriate to what we were talking about. 21:48 SM: What-what was the actual goal was it to inspire people to think, beyond their everyday lives to make changes, or, you know- 22:00 PC: I have changed my thinking about that. But when we were younger, I think that we were following as re-found edict that the artist is the antenna of the race. That leads to a kind of arrogance. In other words, we thought we knew what was going on, it was our job to tell everybody else. But if you look at that for even five minutes, that that does not hold up. The truth is that everybody knew what was going on. They sense that it comes up on the planet itself. And the artists are the ones who can articulate. But if the audience has done not know what was going on, they would not find what you did funny or amusing or entertaining. They would not understand it. So, what they appreciate why they clap, and holler is because you are articulating something they feel but they cannot put words. So, you know, but I think our job was to try to explain issues clearly. Break them down into kind of bytes of understanding so that they would be they can be analyzed clearly. And hopefully that that would lead people to action. 23:16 SM: Do you think that the-the so-called status quo in San Francisco there is- remember reading there your book or some of the information I saw on the web that the artist liberation from that was very important around the time San Francisco Minecraft was trying to perform, or being prevented from performing at various locations that it was a threat to the status quo? And that was why there was such resistance. 23:43 PC: Oh, I suppose so. I mean, everything. I mean, I had to laugh. Years later, when I read about how paranoid Richard Nixon was about the counterculture. You know, we could not have overthrown a-a frosty free. Our intention was that, and I guess paranoid people take that, seriously. Yeah, we were, we were fighting the status quo. And they resisted with what they had available. The police- 24:18 SM: What I really liked about the mime troop and the gorilla theater in the Bay Area that she talked about and were part of is the fact that people could see it, and he did not have to have money. And in living in the Bay Area and going to theater there. I know how expensive it is and to be able to have artists who understand the people and that a lot of people do not have the money to go see these very expensive plays or, or entertainment acts. It was really way ahead of its time. 24:50 PC: Yeah, well, I mean, that was part and parcel of going to where the people were right. And it was also something essentially honest because if-if people do not like you, they are not going to pay. 25:05 SM: Right. Quick question now Grinnell College is a very prestigious school. I am a- my whole career has been in higher ed. And I am curious as to how you picked it. 25:16 PC: I did not pick it. I, I sort of was told by my guidance counselor that I was going to go there. I had already been in jail for trying to bring a lot of marijuana across the border. And you know, I thought I was going to go to Harvard or reed or one of these photos. And she said, no-no-no, I think I think you will go to Grinnell, and it turned out to have been an inspired choice for me. I did really well. 25:47 SM: You were President of Student Government. Yeah. And then what is really impressive is the experience you had in Washington where that organizing those massive protests that was, I think you had and just mailing out all the literature about it and think you had about 25,000 people there. Could you talk a little bit about this first mass demonstration and President Kennedy's response, and you are meeting the President? And I believe it was some forget the guy's name, McGeorge Bundy. 26:20 PC: Yeah, it was getting a little ahead. So, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, we thought the, we thought the world was going to end. And a bunch of us thought that banning college and class was counterproductive. And so, we organized a group of 12 people to go to Washington to do a three-day hunger strike and protest the resumption of nuclear testing and support Kennedy's geese rate. And we were pretty skillful about that. And so we got there, and Kennedy was in Phoenix. But he saw us on the sidewalk, supporting his peace race, and he gave instructions that we were to be invited in. And it was the first time in the history of the White House that any picketers had ever been invited in White Mountain, and that made national headlines. So because of that, we mimeograph those headlines, we duplicated those headlines. And we sent them around to every college in the United States. And it was after that, that the first student demonstration in Washington took place in February, I think of (19)63. So, they were different events. And I cannot, I cannot fully say that we created that. But I can say that we were certainly a part of it. And it was certainly a big kick off to the student movement. 28:17 SM: What was it like being on a college campus between 1960 and (19)64? This was kind of before all the-the anti-war movement was started in the (19)66, (19)67 was a kind of dead at Grinnell except for these activities you were involved in? 28:35 PC: Well, no there was a lot of stuff going on. And but you know, you have to distinguish sort of between before November 1963, and after November because once Kennedy was killed, suddenly there was a whole new whole new climate feeling. Things got really serious. But there was lots of political ferment. I cannot say it was dull. No, we were doing lots of political stuff. And there were student convention, you know, political conventions. Matter of fact, in sort of protest of the war at Bucknell college students’ convention. Kennedy was president Then and I actually got the convention to not nominate him. Going to nominate Hubert Humphrey, good at politic, and the dean of the college, put his foot down and intervene. Not going to be the only college in the United States that insult the sitting president. So that was sort of a political lesson right there about how much power it has. 29:59 SM: Do you remember exactly where you were? When you heard John Kennedy was assassinated? Could you explain? 30:11 PC: Yeah I do. I was going to lunch in one and the women's dorm at Grinnell at the name of the dorm but and a woman came running out to come here, listen. And I went in and started listening to the radio with her. And we heard about it. 30:33 SM: Were you like a lot of the people just watch TV that whole weekend? Yeah. You see how it is all shot? Yep. So many people did. Thanks. I want to, I asked a couple of people. Can you remember the two announcers that were present? One was NBC and one was CBS and they both passed on. Do you remember who? 30:53 PC: I mean, I have I have all that on tape. I do not. I do not remember who they were. But I remember their tan suit for you know, yep, I was serious at all. Look, and they were smoking. Interesting. 31:09 SM: What I am getting back to you lived in a commune for a while in the Bay Area, you had a specific community were involved in what were the pluses of living in the commune? And what were the negatives? And I guess that is the question. 31:24 PC: Well, the pluses of living in a commune were-were and remain that. It was cheaper, that you had many more people to divide up the rent. So you needed to make less money. And it was also fun. That was like being in a big, like in a dorm with all your friends. 31:51 SM: What was a typical day like, I would like to do that. Were you responsible each week of preparing certain number of meals, what duties you had been able to stay there? 32:01 PC: Well, nothing really, people kind of did what they wanted. It was not too later that that things have to get a little more organized when children came along. But at that time, we just needed a place to crash and sleep. 32:21 SM: You went on the road with a show called the minstrel show civil rights and cracker. 32:26 PC: Civil Rights in a cracker-cracker barrel. 32:30 SM: What was the message of the play? Why did people react negatively? And why was it banned is several colleges. 32:39 PC: Well, we were arrested, it was closed, because it was basically it was basically a look at race relations from a black revolutionary perspective. And it was also very funny and very battle logical and race was a very charged issue, and they could we made it easy for them to, you know, get distracted by talking about the-the dirty jokes and the foul language. But the real reason people were upset was because of the kind of political point of view basically came right out of Malcolm X's book. 33:25 SM: I mean, the autobiography of Malcolm X. Yeah. Look, college, you know, did the students book you and then they were told that you had you could not arrive, or you could not show up or what? 33:37 PC: Well, it depends where you are talking about in many places that happened. That happened in Canada where we were arrested. Some students turned to us in for laughing in the-the bathroom, they assumed we were on drugs. And we were not, and the police came, and they say, they searched our luggage, and they found some old marijuana seed, in the sock in the base of somebody's shoe, one of our technical guys. And they arrested him and the school canceled the show, and we held a big rally. And we pointed out that we have been hired by the students up this pool. And in the middle of that rally, they came in and pull the plug on the microphone and arrested two of the faculty members who were sitting on stage supporting us, I guess, because they had beards. We overlooked the six-foot six-inch, one eyed black guy and a six foot long stocking cap sitting next to them. We had to run away and get out of there and because we needed to make money to get on to the next gig and we were arrested and there was a long story. its told pretty clearly in my book. Yeah, and- 34:57 SM: Yeah, well what is, what is amazing thing is that being an administrator has worked on college campuses for over 30 years. Even in recent years there has been people where universities have done that, not to your groups like u but for speakers. And a whole battle over freedom of speech and the rights of students to bring a speaker still goes on and on. So what does the word digger mean? 35:27 PC: Well, the diggers were a seventeenth century group started by English pamphlets here called Gerard when family w y m f t l n e y. And they were a protest for when the it 18, I think it was Oliver Cromwell. Yeah, no, that was Cromwell was seventeenth century. 35:56 SM: Please speak up. 35:57 PC: I am trying to remember when Oliver Cromwell, what century he was. I said seventeenth century but yeah, he was just he was seventeenth century. Anyway. So what happened was the king of England took over the common where people graze their sheep. And King wanted to raise his own sheep or his woolen mill, his new woolen mill. So, they took the people's land and the people fought back on this guy [inaudible]. And they were the first people to take a position against private property. And they were called the diggers, because every morning they were seen bearing burying their dead. So we named ourselves after them. And the diggers were our kind of anarchist alternative to, you know, young communists and socialists, we-we did not want to be, you know, artists performing plays about heroic bus drivers and elevator operators. We wanted to live in a culture where we could be authentic. And we did not want to be subjugated from you know, centralized ideology. So, we created this movement. And when we did everything without money, we did everything anonymously, figuring that if you were not getting either rich or famous from it, you probably meant it. 37:40 SM: Yeah, it was. It was free medical care; I think in the summer (19)67. Because the Summer of Love, very historic event in Golden Gate Park and actually in the whole San Francisco area was, was big. And I know you had the free medical care and free housing free food for the runaways. 37:59 PC: Yeah, we fed about 600 people a day in the in the park. Wow. And we had lots of people at our free medical-medical clinic. It was pretty interesting time. 38:13 SM: Now the, in your own words, the Summer of Love, Scott McKenzie, that song that came out? Are you going to you know that one out? Are you going to San Francisco. I mean, a lot of people did not go out to San Francisco when they heard that song. Or it was an inspiration. But can you define what, whose idea was the summer of love? And then the second this in the 68th? the summer solstice, it was kind of a follow up the second year. Well, whose ideas were they in? What were they? 38:43 PC: The first idea like the be in, and you know, the Summer of Love, these were kind of ideas of what were called the hip merchant, but the hate independent propriety. And they were always trying to put this lovey-lovey spin on things. You know, that everybody, okay, and meanwhile, cops were coming in and kicking the shit out of the kids, in their doorways, and we were just not buying. So it was sort of their idea. And then the diggers came in. And we-we put up a bunch of we did the summer solstice. And our purpose was to, you know, create events that had a bigger frame, where the sun itself was the frame. He became quite famous for putting on events where kind of, you know, there was no violence. Nobody got hurt. When in fact, I think be in was turned out to be a great and surprising thing. And I think they were probably righter than we were that there was but the learned by seeing how many of us there were. But there was a lot of tension between the diggers and the-the Haight Ashbury merchants, because we felt that they were, they just wanted to, you know, change the facade on the office storefront, they had 88 inches of powder. And that was what they wanted to maintain, and they fell, you know, hash pipe. We did not think that was particularly relevant. 40:35 SM: Yeah, one of the things about that particular period is this, he talked about the Summer of Love the summer solstice, and all the things that the kind of the diggers did, there was no violence. It was all about more love and peace. But then- 40:54 PC: No-no it was not about love, it was just about if you create a frame where people are equal. For instance, this is what we warned them about our outcome, we told them what was going to happen at Alcamo. It cannot, it cannot come into a free community, and put up a stage and say, these guys are more important than those guys does not work. So, when they first came to us, the Grateful Dead wanted Peterburgs. And I to design a show for the Rolling Stones. And we said, you know, sorry, the Rolling Stones are not the occasion for a show, we will put up six stages in Golden Gate Park, and they can have one of them. And we will create an event that will celebrate, you know, something more important than local, celebrity. So what we did was we created these planetary events like the solstice or the equinox, which are not manmade, they are events under which everyone is equal. And within that frame, you can do whatever you want, and you are just expressing yourself authentically. It is not creating a hierarchical status, where the guys on stage are the most important than the guys who get closest to the state are most important. And you are basically replicating the status hierarchies of the society. 42:19 SM: That is very well put, because if you go on to the web, you see the Grateful Dead performing at one of your free events, well, on the streets, and it was very organized, and people were just walking by. And- 42:31 PC: it was before the record companies came in and started spreading around all this money they were just the guys in the neighborhood. So yes, of course they played. 42:42 SM: One of the things we need to talk about the real bit beyond what we are talking about here about the antiwar movement is that the antiwar movement at that particular time was pretty peaceful until we got into the latter part of the (19)60s, early (19)70s When SDS went toward the weathermen. And then why other people had problems with the Black Panther Party thinking they were violent as well, and the Young Bloods and the Latina communities, especially in Philadelphia, and in Newark, your thoughts on just that whole concept of, you know, Malcolm X, we have had a lot of, in my interviews, a lot of people had different feelings toward him, because of his words, by any means necessary, and so you can interpret any way you want. But some people think it is more well, by any means necessary means violence. I am not so sure if he meant that because I saw him in a debate with Buckley over in England, and I do not think he meant that. But your thoughts on when the movement went violent? 43:42 PC: Well, wait a minute. The movement? I mean, antiwar. Yeah, that that statement has so much push it. I do not know where America has been a violent country since its inception. 44:00 SM: Hold on a second. Let me change. Go Right ahead, I am back. 44:12 PC: It was founded in genocide. Let us just start with the eradication of 2 million indigenous people. Bounty still being paid in 1920 on that spoke about the 500 million buffalo that were wiped out. Let us talk about slavery as entry after Britain as made it illegal. Let us talk about let us talk about exploitation and enslavement all over the Third World. So then, when a cup a bunch of college kids who are morally outraged that we invade a third world country, and conscript them to go kill people who are not harming them are ignored long enough that they begin to fight back, you call that violence. We live in a climate of violence. And nobody talked about, you know, the 5000 lynchings that were going on of black people. But when Malcolm X stands up and says, by any means necessary, suddenly the niggers are getting violent. I mean, it is just insulting. It is insulting. White people can hang niggers from a tree. But let a black man pick up a gun. And the whole white world goes crazy. A black president is speaking. And you have got white guys walking around outside his speech, carrying guns, fully loaded weapon. And nobody is doing anything. Can you imagine what would have happened if it was a white president, and black guys were out there carrying their guns. So, if the movement got violent, it is because they got tired of having to shift kicked out of them being ignored, having murders created in their name and not being listened to. But they existed in and were trained by a climate of violence. So, to pretend if there is anybody in America, whose wealth is not based on violence, even if that violence is invisible, backed up by cop with truncheons, backed up with soldiers in the Third World, backed up with soldiers all over the world siphoning wealth off for America to pretend that we are not participating in the violence is an act of self-delusion and hypocrisy. 46:43 SM: Very good response. Thank you. When you look at the period of the boomers have been alive, and of course, the period boomers are defined as people born between 1946 and 1964. And I preface this by saying that many of the people I have interviewed 1/3 were born before 1946. Yeah, and many other people from (19)40 to (19)46. Have a, have an attitude that we are really boomers ourselves. And Richie Havens told me that, but in your own words, could you describe the years the boomers have been alive, based on what it means to be? Excuse me? Just these years, what they mean to you as a person? The years that the boomers have been alive from (19)46 to 2010. The first period is between 1946 in 1960, what did it mean, to be alive in that time? 47:50 PC: I mean, it is my entire life, but my life me. I do not know, it is everything. It is not a very good question. 47:59 SM: Well, the question I am trying to get at as I am breaking down periods of what, what, what it was like to be alive during these periods of time? 48:08 PC: You know, 1940 to (19)46, I was a little boy 1946, to about 1953. I was pre-adolescent. Starting at my adolescence, I started to become political started to listen to different music. But I mean, I just do not know how to. I just do not know how to grab that question. Yeah, it is just life, life is always just life, but it is always the same, but it always has the same elements that are recycled. [inaudible] percent 10 perfect free. Falling in love the first time, you know, having children getting married, growing old, dying. Political mischief. I mean, I just do not know how to answer your question. 48:58 SM: Yeah, I think that was what he was getting at. And the question is the difference between the (19)50s, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, and the (19)80s. As a generation what they- 49:06 PC: I do not pay up? Yeah. Really? looking at it from the outside. 49:15 SM: How do you respond to the critics that say that a lot of American problems today go right back to the (19)60s and (19)70s. And- 49:23 PC: They are too stupid to respond. Why and, you know, those people thought Bill Clinton was eight. Like trying to have a debate with a moron. What America's problems do not have anything to do with free market capitalism. They do not have anything to do with the post Roosevelt. Betrayal of labor. They do not have anything to do with the communist witch hunt. They do not have anything to do with the Treaty of Detroit and the disenfranchisement of working people is- are too stupid to pay up. 50:02 SM: I know that (19)94 when Newt Gingrich, when the Republicans came to power, he made some pretty strong statements against the (19)60s generation. And I know that George-George Will has oftentimes in his writings really likes to take jabs at the end whenever you can. And there is he could not read any of his books. And now I have an essay in there about it. George Will- 50:26 PC: Oh, he is another one is another niche for the CIA. These guys are unprincipled opportunists. They are people who are in the lifeboat beating at the people in the water with the oars. Why listen to them? 50:42 SM: Now, it is the other point of view. So I just get responses. 50:46 PC: Other point of view, there are 500 points of view. They pretend they are the other point of view, what they are is a center, right pro corporate capitalist point of view. I understand it to my bone marrow, I do not need to listen to them. 51:02 SM: when did the (19)60s begin in your-your viewpoint? 51:08 PC: I would say around (19) 56. Maybe. I would say like the middle of the decade. 51:17 SM: And when do you when did it end? 51:22 PC: Well, for me, it ended about (19)77. Maybe. 51:32 SM: Is there what was the watershed moment? 51:36 PC: Well, for me, it was losing the lamb that my come in was on my father died. The land was easy for debt. The you know, we could not we could not keep it up. And so suddenly, for the first time in a long time I was I was living alone is the nuclear family. 52:02 SM: I mentioned that the boomer generation is defined by educators and because I am from higher education, and they always have to look at generations. Whether it be the boomer generation, Generation X, the millennials. Tom Brokaw called the World War II generation, the greatest generation, but and this is kind of a general question. But the way I want to ask it is based on the people that you knew worked with, in many different capacities, the boomer generation, what are your thoughts on this generation in terms of maybe some qualities you think were some of their strengths and maybe some of their weaknesses? 52:51 PC: I do not pay any attention to this term, right? I think it is meaningless, But I would say that the strength of this group were that they grew up in a kind of economic security well of wealth after World War II, and it afforded them a kind of platform, and security in which to be experimental and buy things out. They grew up at a time where the adolescent culture was just emerging and becoming its own independent event. That gave them a kind of autonomy and freedom. Culture had not been reduced to quite a homogenized math as it is today. Rebellion has not been quite so effectively coopted. I would say the weaknesses were that, like, sort of all young people you think you are smarter than you are. You think that you know everything, and you think they are going to live forever? And you do not take care of your bodies. Those are their weakness. 54:32 SM: The term generation gap was very common in the (19)60s and (19)70s, between parents and their children. Did you have a generation gap with your parents? 54:44 PC: Oh, yeah, I really did. You know, in most cultures in the world, there is no such thing as adolescence. That kids when they become at puberty, they are taken out of the house of their parents. The girls are raised by the aunt. And the boys are raised by their uncle. And they do that because they have got real critical life skills they need to trim, and they cannot run the risk of, you know, Oedipal tension, stopping the kids from learning this stuff. So a young boy becomes the lowest status guy in the men's group, he gets this tools. And all of his imitative group energy, as an adolescent is focused on the adult, figures out who he wants to be like, who we want to imitate the who he does not. But in the kind of post war boom. Adolescents had their own spending money, they had their freedom, they had no responsibility, they were sort of kept out of the job market. So, they did not compete with returning soldiers and adults and unions. And they developed their own kind of culture. And it turned out to be a huge motive force and a capitalist economy. They had lots of disposable income. So huge that it, it determined the shape of the entire culture. So, it is sort of run today by people between 14 and 30 least run in terms of peaking their disposable income and their money and trying to get them to buy your product. The early new phenomenon. 56:31 SM: I interviewed a Vietnam veteran a couple of weeks ago, a well-known Vietnam veteran. And when I asked him this question about the generation gap between him and his parents, he immediately said, people talk too much about the differences between fam between moms and dads and their kids. But he felt very strongly that the generation gap within the boomer generation was between those who went to war, and served in Vietnam and those who protested, but mostly those who avoided the draft. So he was saying that the generation gap was really within the generation itself, your thoughts on that? 57:12 PC: Well, he is entitled to his opinion. And you know, if you felt it was immoral, if you felt that America had invaded another country, without provocation or cause, and you felt that it was a moral to go to their country, and so people, you would not call that just because somebody is in the armed forces. And just because they are following order, does not really make it service. And it does not exempt them from moral judgement. I was shot in the United States, I was beaten in the United States. So, I was also taking care of soldiers and we were passing out, only draft guards, the people on the free store and leave their uniforms and disappear out of the street. So I have a lot of respect for the military. And I got a lot of respect for people who served. But, you know, from my point of view, it was and remains an immoral war, we killed 3 million people trying to, we defoliated, the Plain of Jars in Cambodia. And we sent home young men with ghosts, and post-traumatic stress syndrome, and wounds that have lasted them the rest of their life. And they did it for them, you know, the Cold War ambitions of a bunch of old men. So let us not put more of a spin on it. then there is 58:55 SM: What do you feel established religion waned in the eyes of many boomers in the (19)60s and early (19)70s. And why was spirituality so important? To these same people, but in different ways. 59:06 PC: That established religion has become a handmaiden of the state. And it had separated itself from through spirituality. People had a hunger that they were seeking to satisfy. 59:23 SM: You in things I have read Zen Buddhism is very important to you. 59:29 PC: Yes, I have been I am an ordained Buddhist, and training now to be a teacher. I have been a Zen Buddhist for 38 years and I take this thing seriously. And, you know, less of religion than it is a way of living your life and practicing your life practicing kindness, compassion. I have never reached the bottom and unlike Judaism or policy ism or Islam, or always good to their own members and not so good everyone else who does not does not leave anybody out that like that. 1:00:13 SM: You feel in these 38 years, like it is really made you a more gives you peace of mind, meditation, I have a couple nephews are really in the meditation, they said that they cannot meditate they be well, they would be sick. So, they-they make sure they have an hour of meditation each day and they try to think about nothing except just to meditate the Zen, this has really changed your life in so many ways. 1:00:43 PC: First of all, that is not the way that we understand. You know, I probably be killing people, if I was not Buddhist. What being a Buddhist is, is basically studying the self? And, as great teacher Logan said, study the self, by forgetting I just I cannot think of another way to express fully what being human is by taking some time every day, and sitting still and checking in the- what is happening in my body and my mind. We are not trying to stop. We are just trying to detach from them enough, even, but not be jerked around by the mind is a gland using thought. When you meditate enough, it will go down on its own, but try to stop your thought of fanatic. So most people are afraid to build a very radical practice. But when you do that, it puts you in touch with what is really going on with your life. And your life is not so separate from the rest of creation. 1:02:15 SM: There is two examples that I think that most of the boomer generation saw, particularly in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. One was on college campuses, and the other was just in the news, the Beatles and how they be changed so much. And when they went to, I guess, forget the person that they went to over in India, then the Allen Ginsberg traveling through a lot of college campuses, and she came to three campuses in my area, Ohio State, and he just chanted the entire two hours he was in the room and one heck of an experience it was a spiritual happening is what it was. 1:02:57 PC: Yeah. Well, he was he was introducing people to spirituality. 1:03:05 SM: One, one question supporting them asked everyone is- 1:03:09 PC: I am starting to get tired. 1:03:12 SM: Okay, yeah. What? I have about 20 more minutes, is that okay? 1:03:17 PC: Let me just look at my calendar. Well, let us see how quickly we can get I have an appointment at one o'clock. Let us see how fast we can get through this. 1:03:29 SM: Okay, you are- one of the questions. The advanced everyone, that group of our students took a trip to Washington, DC in the mid (19)90s. We went to see Senator Edmund Muskie. And the students came up with this question after seeing films on the (19)60s and particularly in 1968. They said the question they wanted to ask the senator was based on all the protests that were happening in Chicago in (19)68. And the question went like this, due to all the divisions that were happening in America at that time between those who supported the war and those who were against the war, those who supported the troops and those who did not, between black and white, male and female, gay and straight, and then they also brought up the-the riots that were happening in the cities. Do you feel that the boomer generation is going to go to its grave, like the Civil War generation did not truly healing due to the tremendous divisions that took place at the time that they were young? And a lot of these issues and they thought he was going to answer based on the crisis in Chicago in 1968, but he did not answer that-that way. But I want to get your response to this whole issue of healing. If you think this is an issue? 1:04:55 PC: Well, there has been a fracture in American life No, there have been those people who want unfettered access and liberty to do whatever they want to have been those who think that the government should be a mediating influence for Berna [inaudible]. And that fracture has been in America since the founding fathers. It exists today between, you know, are conservatives and liberals are big boulders, and so they represent points of view, but they are never going to go away. So, I am not sure that America has any more fractures than it ever was. I mean, they started a civil war, to protect slavery. How fractured was that? So, you know, I think that we call unresolved arguments fractured. But that was assuming that it was hold. It was never hold. America was created by millions of indentured servants came over here, and owed their employers, seven years of their labor. You know, there is a, there is a guy named doubt, wrote a book called The Twisted Dream, which marked the history of America. And it is eye opening to read. Because, you know, if you were paid somebody stick it over here, you had his labor, seven years, to build your barns and your mills and your greeneries and your dams, and amass you all this wealth. And when it came to vote, who are you going to vote for? So, I do not think that anything that involves human beings is ever old. I think human beings are always fractured and independent, even when they ascribe to some great overarching political philosophy, just looked at religion, look at the way religion fragmented in the face of the Enlightenment, and suddenly had, you know, Calvinism and Methodism and press theory and they are just all reflections of different points of view on any given issue. And that is what human beings do. That is what the world is. So, I do not know, it is worse now than it ever was. I do not know. 1:07:31 SM: Senator muskie did not even respond about the (19)60s in 1968. His responses that we have not healed since the Civil War due to race, the issue of race and then he said, he actually died six months later, he was not well, and we were lucky to have the meeting. And he said he had just gotten out of the hospital, and he had seen the Ken Burns series, how we lost 430,000 people almost lost the entire generation of men. Back then, particularly in the south, so he says the issue of race, and he did not even talk about (19)68. 1:08:06 PC: Yeah, well, I think race is the big one. I agree with him on that. You know, I think a lot of what you are seeing today is the kind of panic of previously privileged white men realize that they are being submerged under a kind of new lotto tide and they are freaked out about it, because I am sure they imagine all these people of color plotting some hideous revenge on them for their persistency. 1:08:36 SM: What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you because it has played – it has certainly played a role in healing men in the Vietnam vets and their families and lost loved ones. But when Jan Scruggs wrote the book to heal a nation not only was his goal when not only was the walls’ goal to heal the veterans but to play a part, even a small part and healing the nation from this terrible war. Your thoughts? Have you been to the wall? 1:09:05 PC: Yeah, so indescribably sad. It is so beautiful. You know, I am one of those people that thinks that the way you support the group is not the sentiment of a stupid war. And my heart goes out to each and every one of those people who serve both the survivors, those that fell, you know, nobody survives a war. The way they went in, they come back scarred, they come back having seen extremes of human behavior, they come back having done things that nobody should ever have to do. And for those of us who can see it, beforehand, we are out there on the streets shouting and screaming and people think it is about politics. But it is about the soldiers I mean, you look at Afghanistan and Iraq today, what is it? One half of 1 percent of the people are making these blood sacrifices, so the rest of us can shop. It is fucking hideous. It is obscene. See, you know, and people think you want to get the troops out of there, you are against the group. I want these kids to come home with their arms and legs and their brains and their, you know, passion and their generosity and their hopefulness. They do not even know why they are there. Yeah. So, you know, healed we did not make the wars. But people that resist the wars. Yeah, we are one side of a fracture, I suppose. But do not blame me. 1:10:52 SM: In your in your view. and I am getting a lot of different opinions on this. Why did we lose the Vietnam War and, and wha- and George Bush, the first said in 1989, the Vietnam syndrome is over? Which is this war still with us as a nation, in mind and spirit? 1:11:14 PC: Well, I think, you know, I think the Korean War, morphed into the Vietnamese War which morphed into the Iraq War, which morphed into the Afghanistan war, they were all in the service of an empire They were all in the service of bracketing or protecting wealth to bring home for the mother country. So, I do not know that Vietnam is still an issue except among those who fought in it. But the underlying issue of empire and policies which you know, bombed the wealth of other people, they are still, they are still operating. And I think the reason we lost the I think the reason we lost the, or, because we had someplace else to go, most people had nowhere else. So they would never quit. And that is why we are not going to beat the Afghans. They have no place else to go, where they live. And they will fight and they will die there forever. And eventually, the body count will get high enough that Americans will say. 1:12:25 SM: that we. Yeah, this is a two-part question. It can be sure. What can we learn from the (19)60s in the (19)70s? And secondly, what is the responsibility of the artist? And what role should they all artists play in times of crisis? And I, I prefaced the second question, part of the question, based on the fact that in recent years, entertainers had been attacked, as you know, your entertainer should keep your mouth shut and just entertain. And as if entertainers do not are not a part of the American citizenry. That guess the first part, what do we learn from the (19)60s and (19)70s? 1:13:07 PC: Well, let me just let me talk about it is the height of hypocrisy. You know, there are huge industries which are dedicated to everything that entertainers do. They are a magazine devoted to who their fucking where they shop, how they decorate their home, everything, except should they open their mouth about a political opinion? They are herded back onto the ranch. Now, why do you think the simplest answer to that would be is because their real function is as marketing brands. And when they venture an opinion, they divide the consumer base. You know, if they say Democrat, you are going to lose the Republic. If you say Republicans, you are going to lose the Democrats. And so everybody is using and harnessing the charisma of celebrities to sell ship. But God forbid that the celebrity should harness their own courage to talk about something that so, you know, that, that the two edged sword if I have the charisma to sell, or to be exploited by other people, I should certainly have the ability to exploit it and use it myself. So, there is that and what was the other part. 1:14:42 SM: Of just what-what did we learn overall from the (19)60s in the (19)70s? Nothing. Okay. You made replicating. 1:14:51 PC: The same mistakes in 2010 that we that we made in the (19)70s. 1:15:00 SM: You made reference that you have a problem with the term the boomer generation, and I am telling you I have a problem. 1:15:05 PC: With it-it just does not describe anything to me. 1:15:11 SM: Well, I am finding from the majority of the people I have interviewed that they do not like, they do not like generations being labeled. 1:15:18 PC: That well, we did not make it up. It is going to with some media term, right? We did not call ourselves hippies either. 1:15:26 SM: One of the qualities of the counterculture is that money is not important, or at least I. And in a lot of the in the question is, and again, another criticism of the boomer generation, not so much the counterculture, but the boomer generation is that, well, some of the wealthiest people are now our boomers who had were idealists, and now have gone on to make a lot of money. So, they are no different than any other generation. How, how credible is the fact that that is one of the qualities of the counterculture is that money was not important. 1:16:04 PC: Well, it is hard to live in America without-without money. So, but it just stuff, it was not important. It just was not going to be our organizing. 1:16:24 SM: I-I-I know you are tired. And are there? I have other questions here. But I will ask you. Are there any questions? I did not ask you that I thought I was going to that you thought it was going to. The last question I have is what do you think the lasting legacy will be the-the best history books are often written 50 years after an event 50 years after World War II, the best books came out. But I think good books are coming out every year on any every topic, but it is the thought that what do you think? The historians the sociologists, the writers will say once the last Boomer has passed away, what do you what do you think they will say about this generation that that was that grew up after World War II? 1:17:24 PC: Something stupid. Something stupid, you can count on it. I mean, I do not know what they will say, I do not care what they say I am, I collect my letters, along with Barry Snyder, along with Michael McClure, along with a bunch of people, I give them to the University of California, hopefully to give original sources a future historian, you know, so that my generation and my time is not defined by other people. Not an original observation to say that history is written by the winners. So, we have tried to create a body of literature and stuff that would at least describe the world the way we saw it the way it felt. That is all I do. 1:18:27 SM: You have any final thoughts you want to say on anything? On the boomer generation? 1:18:32 PC: Yeah, I do not know. I mean, you have asked really good questions. I do not mean to be cranky with I am sorry. 1:18:38 SM: Well, no, Peter, that was exactly because you have a passion. I can hear it in your voice. 1:18:47 PC: And I guess what I feel is that one of the reasons I became a Buddhist is because the endless debate and discussion does not seem to lead any does not seem to lead to wisdom does not seem to lead to anything but opinions. Borrow. And I would rather day make a sandwich for a hungry person. And debate hunger. I would rather take in an orphan and wash them and debate federal policy about orphan just where I have come to in my life. 1:19:32 SM: And you notice I have not asked one question about your years in Hollywood and all your movies. So I appreciate that. Because you a re much more your every year of what is the word, I want to use your if you lose quite a life, that ss all I have to say. Well, thanks and-and I will keep I will keep you updated on where I am at. interviewing 200 people. I will be transcribing all the interviews. Wow. I am doing it myself between September and April and then you will get a copy of the I guess I will send it to your assistant. You will have a chance to read it and make sure it is okay get the approval to printed I am going to need two pictures of you for the top of it. 1:20:24 PC: Let me give you, my email. 1:20:25 SM: Okay hold on one second let me write this down. Okay. 1:20:31 PC: It is Peter at W D like David 1:20:38 SM: [inaudible] You said Peter at WD light. 1:20:46 PC: W, D be like David. Okay. Yep, P like Peter R like Richard. Oh, D like david.com It stands for Wild Dogs Production. Okay. So that is my email. If you send me an email I can email you back a photo or something. 1:21:08 SM: Very good. Well, thank you very much Peter. 1:21:12 PC: Thank you very much. 1:21:13 SM: You have a great day. Thanks a lot. Night. (End of Interview) Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Description 1 Microcassette Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Peter Coyote Description An account of the resource Peter Coyote is an author, actor, director, screenwriter, and activist. Coyote is also a narrator for not only his own films, but for a plethora of other events including the 2002 Winter Olympics and various Historic films. He graduated from Grinnell College with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and attended California State University for a Master's Degree in Creative Writing. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Coyote, Peter ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors; Motion picture producers and directors; Screenwriters; Political activists--United States; Coyote, Peter--Interviews Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-07-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.11 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-01 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 84:26