Interview with Dr. Joseph Cox

Cox, Joseph T., 1946- ; McKiernan, Stephen

Dr. Joseph T. Cox is a retired army officer, educator, author and the former headmaster of Haverford School. Cox was also an English professor at West Point. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College and a Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

2009-11-09

In copyright

2017-03-14

McKiernan Interviews

109:05

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Joseph Fox
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 23 July 1987
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:12):
Testing, one, two, testing. Okay. So again, some of these are specific questions, and some are general. And I will keep looking at this, because the one time, the thing stopped. When you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, or that period of the (19)60s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?

JC (00:00:33):
Well, I graduated from college in 1968, so I think of the things that happened, the first thing probably is Martin Luther King's assassination. I was a senior in high school when Kennedy was assassinated, and then I had graduated from college when RFK was assassinated. But the real turning point in my head was when Martin Luther King was assassinated. It was just a kick in the gut, and just, "What is going on," kind of sense of things. I felt like we had started to slide with JFK's assassination, and you did not think it could get too much worse. And then the next two assassinations just really, I think, affected me.

SM (00:01:31):
Now, when you went to Vietnam and you came back home, what was the kind of America that you saw upon your return? Now, was it a welcoming America, or were you disappointed in the country that you came back to as opposed to the country when you left?

JC (00:01:50):
Well, I graduated in (19)68 and went off to Airborne and Ranger School, and then went to Fort Carson Fifth Infantry Division, assuming I was going to go right to Vietnam. And I remember the battalion commander called me in and said, "What do you want to do next?" And I said, "Oh, command B Company if you let me." I said, "I expect to go to Vietnam." And he said, "Well, we have got other plans." And they sent me to Germany to be a General's Aide. So I went to Germany for almost two years before, when I went to Vietnam from Germany. So, I had been out of the country, living in the country for three years. And when I came back it was totally different. I mean, I went to Germany in 1969, early (19)69, and I got back three years later. What is that? (19)71? It was just a-

SM (00:02:47):
(19)70s?

JC (00:02:49):
Late (19)71. It was just different... It seemed very, very different. And I felt alienated from that country that I came back to. I was told on the... I left Vietnam in my tan uniform, and we were told, "Going into Travis, do not wear your uniform," which made me a little bit stubborn. I just made.... I was going to wear my uniform. Nobody is going to tell me I could not wear my uniform. And I felt like people were staring at me. I felt ostracized. I thought the price of beer in the San Francisco airport was outrageous. It was probably a buck 75 or something like that. And I just felt kind of alienated to some things. And I remember that the 4th of July after I got home, I actually went down on a Gettysburg tour, and the buses that were touring Gettysburg, while Vietnam was still going on, were practically empty. But it was something I did just to kind of reconnect with soldiers and organize my thoughts about whatever. And I just felt a bit like an outsider. And as a funny piece to this, because I ended up staying in the Army for 30 years, and I am not sure why I stayed in the Army for 30 years. I could give you a lot of reasons. Probably the main reason was I enjoyed the people I worked with, and every job you have in the Army, the next job is kind of a challenge. You do not think you are really ready for it, and I liked that. But I stayed in for 30 years. And right before I was going to get out, I really had this anxiety over getting out. I could not understand it. And I reread Tobias Wolff's In Pharaoh's Army and that section where he is thinking about riding the bus and thinking about getting out of the army after he got back from Vietnam. All of a sudden, I identified with it, and I honestly thought, "Okay, this is what you were afraid of all the time. It is one reason you probably stayed in the army." And it really kind of put my mind at ease. And I retired after 30 years and a day and never looked back and felt very good about it. But it all was still connected with Vietnam, and it was all still connected with coming back to a country that had changed, seemed like that was different. And another thing that happened in coming back, all of a sudden, I had this huge passion for baseball. I could not play enough softball, I could not watch enough baseball. And I never had this passion prior to that. I liked baseball, but I did not play in high school, played little league and stuff. But I, all of a sudden, had this passion for baseball, and it was unexplainable except that I had been away from the United States. And that is when I came back, I identified baseball at the United States. It was strange.

SM (00:06:13):
When you went in, what college did you go to?

JC (00:06:15):
I went to Lafayette.

SM (00:06:17):
When you went to college, did you know you were going to go into the military?

JC (00:06:20):
No.

SM (00:06:20):
Or what were your goals when you first started?

JC (00:06:23):
Well, I grew up in Springfield, Mass. I went to Springfield Technical High School, and I thought I was going to be an engineer. I had a wonderful English teacher in high school, and he prepared me better than I realized. I got to Lafayette, I started, and I realized coming out of probably a pretty good high school, but I realized it was a lot of work in college. It was tough. And the only thing that came easy to me was writing in my English course, thanks to the guy who actually had a PhD and was teaching in a big inner city technical high school. So I ended up an English major, because I got my best grades in English, and I knew I was going to have to concentrate on something eight hours a day. And in addition to going to classes, and it turned out it was what I enjoyed. So I had no idea what I was going to do. I thought I would probably coach and teach English. When I went to Lafayette, they had mandatory ROTC. And I was in the ROTC program, and my father had been a sergeant in the Second World War, and then was a warrant officer, a full-time warrant officer in the National Guard. So, he did not make a lot of money, and the bills were piling up, college bills. And they offered a two-year ROTC scholarship at Lafayette. I think another guy and I were the first two to get the full scholarship, books, tuition fees, and a hundred dollars a month. So they paid for everything. There probably were not a lot of takers in 1965, (19)66. And I got that scholarship. And then I knew I was going to have to serve in the Army, but I wanted to serve in the Army. I wanted to go to Vietnam. I had read too much Hemingway, probably. So I had kind of a perverted sense, a perverted desire to go to war. And as I said, I graduated in 1968. I was a regular army officer and was sure I was headed to Vietnam. When I was in Vietnam, my boss was a man named Bill Reno, retired as a Lieutenant General. And in Vietnam, I was planning to get out of the Army, and General, or Major Reno, then I was a captain, asked me what I was going to do, and it was back to the same plan. "I am going to teach. I am going to go somewhere, get a Master's degree in English, teach and coach." I did not really know the prep school path, but I probably would have ended up at a prep school as an English teacher/coach. And that was always my plan. He said, "You can do that in the Army." I said, "Oh, I doubt that." And he said, "No, you can." And he paved the way, and I ended up going up to West Point, getting an interview. And the Army sent me to University of North Carolina for my Master's degree. And when I got up to West Point, I think those of us who were not West Point graduates were in a minority. And I ended up teaching four years at West Point before I went back into the regular Army.

SM (00:10:12):
[inaudible]. When you went to Lafayette College, what was the environment like? Obviously, there was a lot of anti-war people going on at that time on most college campuses. Did you feel the pressure that was going on in America regarding the anti-war movement? And how did you feel about your fellow peers that were your age who were against the war? And how did they treat people like you, who were in ROTC? Because I can remember when I was in college at Binghamton, we banned, they banned ROTC from the campus.

JC (00:10:47):
Lafayette was all male. And it is a fairly conservative school. Out of about 400, I guess in my class, I think 52 of us were commissioned in one service or another. It was small. People knew each other. I was in student government, I was elected to the student council. Also, I washed pots for my meals in a social dorm. There were 19 fraternities, and there was this social dorm. And I ate all my meals in the social dorm, and the social dorm had the radicals. So I would sit at supper time, and we would read Jim Reston's editorials in the New York Times and discussing, or breakfast and then discussing. So some of the guys who were the biggest "protestors" were the people I broke bread with, so they were friends. I was in student government with them. Actually, at that time, and again, this is (19)66, (19)67, things were falling apart, (19)67, (19)68, my senior year in Vietnam. But I did not have a sense, it was not Berkeley. It was much, much more conservative and much more civil. And it was funny, I was one of the two battalion commanders in the ROTC unit, and we would march through our drill and go back, put our weapons away, and guys would bomb us with water balloons. They were the same guys I would have supper with a half an hour later. And it was not as confrontational and as bitter as it might have been in other places. I think it probably got more difficult, but at least I came into Lafayette in kind of an innocent period in (19)64. They still had us wearing beanies and singing. We could still sing the alma mater, because they made us memorize it. And it was a big fraternity dominated school. So it just was a little bit different, because it was a smaller school. And you had formed friendships, and there were differences of political opinion. But it was all actually pretty healthy. One of my best friends is a man named Lowell Lifschultz, who is a lawyer now. Not as often as I would like, but we still talk to each other. But Lowell was a very, very bright guy, and intellectually would give me a hard time over it. But I was destined. I had signed the paperwork, and I was getting the scholarship. And I knew where I was going, and I had no illusions about that.

SM (00:13:58):
Did you feel that when you were over in Vietnam that a lot of the things that were happening in America were divisions between Black and white, drug culture, the different styles, different political viewpoints forward against the war was actually also taking place within the Army and the Marines? Someone said to separate the Marines, Army. Someone told me separate the Marines, because they were gung ho. I am not sure if that is true. Because the hip people would say that the Military went really down during that (19)67 to (19)71 period, and then around (19)71, (19)72, it started changing. So just your thoughts that some of the issues that were actually happening in America were happening in the armed forces in Vietnam.

JC (00:14:45):
Well, I think units that... I think every experience was different depending on where you were, and especially when you were there. And I think things were a lot different in 1968 than they were in 1971. And I think by 1971, there were deeper racial divides. There were drugs... There were real lines between the people who used alcohol and the people who used marijuana. And then I know I was with a combat engineer unit. There was hardcore heroin use, where the heroin was so pure and so plentiful, the guys would melt it and put it on a cigarette. And the efficiency of that is fairly low, but it was so plentiful they could do it. So, you were dealing with those things. And I think people had no illusions about winning the war. My role as an Army captain with essentially seven platoons that were spread out in MR2, building roads, was to make sure that I did not do anything stupid to get somebody hurt. And my year started, what? My countdown started the day I got there, and everybody else had a different countdown. So, there was not a real cohesion, which did not help things either. But all the tensions that were there, I thought, as I said, from Germany to Vietnam, it was probably racial tensions were higher in Germany. And there were few by the Germans too than they were in Vietnam where people were more isolated and had a common mission. But they were there, and I am not... It was still a draftee army. So that created interesting combinations of people. I also had McNamara Project 100,000 soldiers in my unit.

SM (00:17:05):
Oh, wow.

JC (00:17:06):
I had a young man, and I wrote about him in one of the poems, who was just an incredibly hardworking young man. And he was very efficient, and I wanted to promote him. And I sat him down, and I said, "Larry read this." And he said, "Sir, I cannot read." And I said, "Quit kidding around. Read this. I want you to go before the board, and I want to promote you to sergeant." He said, "I cannot read." He started talking about his life. He had had a child when he was 14. He was from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and he had dropped out of school. And there was a project, 100,000 soldiers who were not mentally up to it, but I do not know if it was 100,000, but they brought some soldiers in. I looked at his records and realized that he was one of these soldiers. And it was just a very interesting social experiment. In the same unit, I had a guy who had a Master's in classics from Columbia, and then I had Larry, and another kid who... Larry was very, very productive. The other kid was like a little kid, and we had him take care of the dogs and paint the walls, and he was like everybody's little 12-year-old brother, who was kind of sad. But it was an interesting microcosm.

SM (00:18:29):
Did most of the people you served with feel that they could have won this war if the government had given you more support? And it depends on who you talked to again, but how many people really were against the war that was in this service over there? And how many were upset that they were not given the [inaudible] necessary to win the war? So, there is two different questions there.

JC (00:18:57):
Yeah. I think again, it is what time you were serving. And I was serving late in the war, and I do not think anybody had those... Honestly, I do not think anybody really felt... And again, we were building roads, we were trying to... We were turning the war over to the Vietnamese. So, I do not think anybody had a sense of not having permission to bomb here, or do this, or do that. I never really got into those kinds of conversations with folks. It was, again, taking care of ourselves, doing what we had to do. I did not have a sense of that kind of frustration, and I did not sense that even among my peers subsequent to the war. That was never really a big part of the conversation. And again, it was because we were so late in the war.

SM (00:20:12):
And you were there from what time to what time?

JC (00:20:15):
I am trying to think now. It was 1971 till, I may have come home in February of (19)72, so it was a year.

SM (00:20:27):
Before the last people really came out in (19)73.

JC (00:20:30):
Yeah.

SM (00:20:30):
The helicopter.

JC (00:20:31):
Yeah. Yeah. So it was later in the war. And all those kinds of thoughts were kind of... I think those had gone away. The being for against the war, that too was shaped by the inevitability of our withdrawal, which we were there to withdraw. And I remember going into Vietnam, and I had a choice. I could have gone to the 101st, or to, I think, the 25th. And I deliberately asked to go to an engineer unit, because I did not want to... We knew the combat units were getting pulled out, and I did not want to go to a combat unit and then go and get pulled out. I was there, I wanted to experience it. And I deliberately remember not making that choice. And they were pulled out while I was there. A lot of our security was turned over to the Vietnamese, which was an interesting experience, because we did not feel as secure. And it really created a whole different feel about it. It made it a little bit more wild west. It was just different, because we were coordinating with the Vietnamese for security. And in the Koreans, the White Horse Division, it was very much, I think, a different experience than some other people had, because the fighting actually was being done by the Vietnamese than the South Korean units.

SM (00:22:25):
When do you feel, individually, that the (19)60s, the genre, the (19)60s actually begin? Was there a specific event? Was there a series of specific events? Was there a specific year that separated, say, the boomers when they were in the (19)50s, when they were elementary school kids, basically? And I have had a lot of different responses to this. Just your thoughts of, was there anything, do you feel-

JC (00:22:58):
November 23rd, 1961. That begins the (19)60s. And I think that is the assassination of JFK, isn't it?

SM (00:23:03):
It was (19)63.

JC (00:23:03):
(19)63. Okay.

SM (00:23:03):
Yeah. November 20-

JC (00:23:03):
Yeah, (19)63.

SM (00:23:03):
November 22nd.

JC (00:23:11):
November 22nd, (19)63. Here I am, so sure my date. (19)63. That, to me, was the beginning of the (19)60s, because that was a loss of innocence, and that was a turning point. And for me, it was the beginning of the (19)60s, because I was a senior in high school. So, I am just starting to come into my consciousness of the world around me. I remember the Bay of Pigs. I remember the tension. I remember thinking... This tells you more about maybe what a weird kid I was, but I remember getting off the bus and walking to high school, thinking, "Should I go down, lie about my age, and enlist in the Marines?" Because something is going to happen, which is-

SM (00:23:59):
Yeah.

JC (00:23:59):
...pretty dumb on my part. But that was a period I remember. But I honestly see the turning point is, and I do not know why I keep saying (19)61, because maybe that is the Bay of Pigs.

SM (00:24:14):
Yeah.

JC (00:24:14):
(19)63-

SM (00:24:14):
Or (19)62 was the Cuban Crisis.

JC (00:24:17):
Yeah.

SM (00:24:19):
Do you remember the exact moment when you first heard the Kennedy was shot?

JC (00:24:24):
Yeah.

SM (00:24:25):
A lot of people that were boomers were in school, and they heard it in a class, or a teacher said it. How did you first find out about it?

JC (00:24:29):
I was a teacher's writer for our high school newspaper, and it was the newspaper period. So those of us who worked on the newspaper, we were fairly close, and it was informal. And Mrs. Shea was crying and told us, and we just could not believe it. It was an afternoon, I guess, near the end of the day in school.

SM (00:25:02):
Yeah.

JC (00:25:03):
And it was interesting, because I just had my 45th reunion, and we were talking about-

SM (00:25:08):
Oh, wow.

JC (00:25:11):
... about that. And there were about three of us, or four of us at the 45th year of reunion, who actually had first heard it together. So we were sharing that memory, and Mrs. Shea. It was-

SM (00:25:28):
And you lived on the East Coast at that time?

JC (00:25:29):
I lived in Massachusetts.

SM (00:25:30):
Yeah. So if you were in class, it was probably close to the end of the school.

JC (00:25:33):
It was the end of the school day.

SM (00:25:35):
One period left. Probably one period left.

JC (00:25:35):
Yeah. That was our last period.

SM (00:25:36):
Yeah.

JC (00:25:37):
And my father, being a Boston Irishman, non-practicing Catholic, but he had the Boston Irish stubbornness. And I remember one time in Holyoke, Massachusetts, they used to paint the center stripe green. And one time, John Kennedy was leading the parade, and they went by, my father got right in my face and said, "Someday, he's going to be president." I did not say this to my father, because I did not talk to my father this way, but I am thinking, "Do not get mad at me, dad. I am not sure... Why are you..." And it was that stubborn Irish pride. And my neighborhood was very... It was Italian and Irish. So I grew up in a very ethnic Catholic part of Springfield. So, it was a big deal.

SM (00:26:38):
But you just said it was a magic moment. See, that reason why I am titling my book A Magic Moment is that in every interview I have had, there has been magic moments that I did not expect. And I only picked that when I think I was on my 30th interview, and I had not gone up for the title yet. And someone said, "We have already talked about the magic moments that you have had in some of these interviews. That would be a great title for your book."

JC (00:27:03):
Somebody else has had said the same, Kennedy assassination, have not they?

SM (00:27:03):
Yes, they have.

JC (00:27:03):
Oh, yeah.

SM (00:27:03):
Yeah. And other-

JC (00:27:03):
Not that magic.

SM (00:27:10):
Some said Kent State.

JC (00:27:11):
See, I was out of the country.

SM (00:27:13):
Yeah. Kent State. Well, that was the one that... No, when you look at the boomer generation, which is those born between (19)46 and (19)64, and of course, a lot of the people that were in the anti-war movement were born in (19)43 and (19)44. And a lot of the people I have interviewed, over half are not in boomers. They lived during the time that boomers were young. So all their opinions count. What is your thoughts on the boomer generation, this generation of 70 to 74 million, depending on... The millennials now, the young people that are here in this school, now are part of the largest generation in American history. They are 80 million strong. And I think boomers would be a little sensitive to know that they are no longer the biggest group. But just your thoughts on the boomer generation, what you-

SM (00:28:03):
But just your thoughts on the boomer generation, what you think are some of their strengths or their weaknesses?

JC (00:28:08):
Well, I think boomers were idealistic, obviously idealistic in both left and right causes. I saw Vietnam as part of the Kennedy's column. I was idealistic. I do not think I had any illusions about it, but I still saw it in those terms. And so I think very, very idealistic. Very, I think selfish in many ways. I think for whatever reasons, I think boomers think of themselves as a chosen people. Special time in history, unique time in history, deserving more than perhaps we think we should. In contrast to my father's depression era attitudes, we always just thought that things should be ours, material things should be ours in ways that I do not think too many generations before us felt that way. And I think we are selfish in... Although there is an awful lot of rhetoric about one world. I think Americans are, I think, we are uniquely ethnic centric about our experiences. I do not think we are very open-minded, even those who... I just do not think we are that open-minded. I think the kids today have a much more real sense of how flat the world is. I do not think we still even have that sensed the way we should. Let us see. It is hard to characterize a group of people. I think we... I do not know. I have a sense that something has owed us and it is an unrealistic sense that something he has owed us. And it is going to be interesting as we become the non-productive age, the non-productive part of our society, how that is going to work itself out. Because I do not think other generations have that sense of entitlement as much as our generation does.

SM (00:31:21):
That was one of the questions, and you already answered it, that there was a feeling of uniqueness. That we are the most unique generation of history. And not only when they were young, there was this feeling, I remember being around it, that we can really make a difference in this world by ending war, by bringing the races together, by showing equality toward all groups, stealing the... Like a panacea, a cure-all. We are going to be the group that is going to be able to do it. And even talking to some people today that are our age who still feel... Some have gone on and made a lot of money but some still feel it.

JC (00:31:59):
That is good. I am encouraged. I just felt... I do not know. I understood all that and felt that a lot of people feel that way. And there is a lot of generosity. Part of it too is the Vietnam experience. Paul Fussell said, "Once a pissed off infantry man, always a pissed off infantry man." And I could always tell when I met somebody in the army, a career soldier in the army, I could always tell a fellow officer who had served in Vietnam or one who had not, there's an element of cynicism in the person who had served in Vietnam and there is a skepticism there. Part of my more pessimistic take on the idealism of our generation is probably a result of that Vietnam skepticism because so much was promised there and so much in the delivery was so short.

SM (00:33:12):
How do you feel when... George will does this all the time. He will write an article, and he has done it for years in all his books. He loves to take shots at the older generation, the (19)60s generation and prove that he was against the war and then supported McGovern (19)68 and (19)72 and the whole history there. And certainly in (19)94 when Newt Gingrich came to power, he loved it too. He has made a lot of comments about it. I tried to get him to be in this project, he has rejected twice and I know people close to him. But what are your thoughts when you hear people like that who will just condemn the generation as all the reasons we have problems in America today. That all of our problems will go back to that time when things were loose, the sexual revolution, they just had a television show on that the other night and we saw it. It was unbelievable, there were things I never saw before. And division between black and white, those who supported the war, those who were against it. Just your thoughts. The blame game.

JC (00:34:18):
I think that is too easy. I just think there is certain tensions in society that exist, have always existed. Lots of good people trying to do good things to relieve those tensions, and the tensions are still there. I think a lot of it is a function of just society. And I think trying to blame a period or trying to blame a generation, that is a cop out. That is just too easy. I never really had that sense. Here is an interesting moment for me. Going back to graduate school, coming back from Vietnam, playing softball for the English department softball team, graduate team at University of North Carolina. One of my teammates was a man named Gordon Ball. Gordon Ball wrote Ginsberg Verbatim. Gordon Ball was my fellow graduate student at Carolina and he gets nominated for one of the best... He gets a Pulitzer nomination for a critical book, Ginsberg Verbatim. Gordon was a North Carolina farm boy. When Ginsberg started a farm, a co-op or whatever, Gordon's there and he actually knows how to run a farm. He is part of it and he takes the notes and writes Ginsberg Verbatim, which is a pretty good book. Well, he likes to play softball, I like to play softball. We are teammates, we are friends and both of us from probably different directions are completely outraged by Watergate, completely outraged by the abuse of the presidency. And so Gordon and I at University of North Carolina manned a petition booth together. And we are about as far away from each other politically and in every other way that you can imagine. And we are both just upset about what happened and just outraged by the abuse of power and the abuse of fundamentals and the constitution and so on. That is a bookend event for my generation.

SM (00:37:01):
It is a very interesting thing that, Max, because when I interviewed Chic Canfora, who is the sister of Allen who was a Kent State, she is a professor, she is a dynamic professor there. But she was one of the students that was at Kent State. And when I was listing the names as I would do at the very end of the interview and I mentioned the name John Dean, some people just revile and maybe just a lot of negative stuff. But for this anti-war activist who was there the day the four students were shot, she looked upon him as a hero. And she went on and said, "I wish he had run for president because he was a Republican who has been very critical of Republicans and Democrats and his recent writings he is on the conservative movement, liberals. He is just fair in every way." It is interesting how...That is what the whole Free Speech Movement was all about at Berkeley. It was not about being a liberal or conservative, it was about that Dr. Kerr tried to shut down a booth on campus and the students that were against that group, they did not like him politically, did not like him personally, but when the president tried to shut them down to hand out literature, they all came together, Liberals, Conservatives, because it was students, It was students uniting on a cause, so you made a very important point here. One of the things too is just your thoughts on the movement. Before I get to that, what kind of parents have boomers been? When you define the boomer generation you also oftentimes think of the term activism, it was an activist generation, both Liberals and Conservatives. Young Americans for Freedom, which is a very conservative group, was very anti-war and were involved in the movement. And just like Harry talked about, let us get the military point of view on war, we need to get the conservative anti-war movement war, which has been excluded from the books. But just your thought on how they have raised their kids and their grandkids. Have they shared their ideas with them? Have they created another generation of activists? Because it does not seem like they are. How have they been as parents and grandparents? You're dealing with probably parents of these kids now who are in that generation and there seems to be a tremendous link. There does not seem to be a generation gap between the parents and their kids like there was between our generations.

JC (00:39:29):
I do not know. I put myself in this category, I think the parent... Probably my generation, boomer generation parents are much more tolerant. I would hope. Maybe because I did not have kids until I was a little older, a little bit more open to all the crazy stuff that goes on. I think there is another generation of parents who are the younger parents now who are very anxious. And I am not sure, I think parents are getting even more anxious as we go on. I am not sure what the reason for that is, but I think... And it is funny, I have met kids who parents have really grown up as loose as possible who were in the army. We have got a friend who is the head of the school in San Francisco and he called me and I could tell by his voice something was really bad and he is a dear friend and I said, "What is it?" He said, "My son wants to fly a helicopter and he's enlisting in the army." It was like the end of the world for him. I am exaggerating a bit, but you could tell he was concerned. And I calmed him down. I just said, "Well, he will do this and this and this." And he calls me and he said, "I was just out at the basic training," or whatever, maybe it was a helicopter school, and he said, "They are just like us, they are teachers," talking about the sergeants in the army. But it was such a foreign experience to him. And his son obviously had these desires to do that. And maybe he did it partly in rebellion, I do not know. But thank God his son is safe. And this guy who did not have any experience with the military has I think a very favorable experience. It is just difficult to generalize.

SM (00:41:53):
Do you sense that just from young people you deal with, not only here but the other schools that you are aware of, that there just does not seem to be activism anymore? There are activists, students are involved in a lot of different things that we may not be aware of just the media just is not covering them.

JC (00:42:10):
I think there is a real strong service ethic among our kids. Kids here, actually, because I belong to that social dorm and my friends had organized... I actually poled for McCarthy when I was ROTC.

SM (00:42:32):
Oh, wow.

JC (00:42:33):
But I went out and I did it because I was living with these guys.

SM (00:42:37):
Clean for Gene.

JC (00:42:38):
Neat and clean for Gene.

SM (00:42:39):
Yes.

JC (00:42:44):
You about the motivation, I was doing it just to help a friend, and my motivation was not that strong. I think kids today... I will tell you the kids I am around, they really want to make a difference. And I think they are much more generous and honest in their desire to help other people. At least the kids that I have seen in the past 10 years around here.

SM (00:43:18):
Do you think that, this is important, volunteerism is activism. On university campuses 95 percent of students are on volunteer duty. Some that is mandatory like in fraternities and sororities, so many hours, some groups are required to do it. The key question here is, I am not saying it is not activism is, when they leave school, is it more of, I am going to do this every two weeks for two hours-

JC (00:43:45):
No.

SM (00:43:45):
... or is it a mentality of 24 to seven and it is part of who I am as a person?

JC (00:43:49):
I think it is part of who they are. We do not have mandatory community service and we do not even call it community service. We call it service learning, it is integrated into the curriculum. It is part of what you do as a frame of mind. It is a state of mind and it is a piece to the larger global state of mind that I think our kids have too. It is a sense of, we are all in this together. It is a real strong sense of what is right and wrong. Fairness issues. I think I could go out and grab a kid out in the hallway and we start asking him those questions. I think you would be very, very positively impressed with... It is part of their ethical makeup. I am very optimistic about that. And the kids will make fun of a lot of things, but they do not make fun of that.

SM (00:44:50):
Your views are very important because I had many that are very negative, not about young people because they all believe in young people. You would not be in higher ed if you did not believe in people. Some people may develop at a different time. You may not see them activists when they are a junior or senior in college, but you can darn tooting they will be doing something in their 20s or 30s. It is just they involve at different times and we have to have respect that amongst younger people. But some of the people I have interviewed have been very negative about today's generation with respect to the lack of activism but the sense of volunteerism is there, but whether it is really part of them as a human being. This gets right into the issue of movements. One of the things that defines often times the boomer generation are the movements. Obviously the Civil Rights Movement was already happening when boomers were in their teenage years. You have got the Women's Movement, the Gay and Lesbian Movement, the Chicano, the Native American movement, the Environmental Movement, all these movements that came about, anti-war movement around the late (19)60s and they just abound through today. Your thoughts on how important they are in America, but if you really can link them to define part of what the boomer generation is?

JC (00:46:07):
Obviously, I think they are historical, really significant. I think they were focused on in ways that raised everybody's attention to certain issues. And they are unique for the boomer generation and obviously the boomer generation were people then and... I am not sure I am answering this question fully. I think, again, this is probably the post- Vietnam skepticism. I am a little skeptical of movements, whether they be the kind that were bigger and more boisterous in my younger days. But even in terms of I am a registered Independent and proud of it. I am just skeptical of things being... Just skeptical of movements in general and I think that is probably left over from my experience. I am not sure I was ever fully invested in a movement.

SM (00:47:48):
I am going to read this one because this is a very important part of the project. There is two big issues that I have shut in on. One of them is this issue of healing and the second one is an issue of trust. The question I am asking right now, and I want to read because I feel I have missed something. Do you feel that the boomer generation is still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore this nation apart in your youth? The division between black and white, the divisions between those who supported authority and those who criticized it, the division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. Of course, I will throw in here too. What role did the Vietnam Memorial play in healing divisions, not only within the Vietnam veteran community and their families, but also the nation as a whole, or do you feel that the boomer generation will go to their graves like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made the statement, time heals all wounds the truth? And I prefaced this question by something. I took a group of students from Westchester University to meet Senator Muskie before he passed away, he was not well. I got to know [inaudible] quite well and he set up some meetings with us on our Leadership on the Road program to talk about his leadership. And I asked the same question to him and I have it on tape. And he did not respond right away to this question. He gave a melodramatic pause and actually had to show tears coming up. The tears that we saw that when he was attacked because he'd showed he was more feminine because he cried. And his response was that, "I just got out of the hospital. I just had an opportunity to see the Ken Burns series that was on public television about the Civil War." He went on and talked about the 400,000 men who had died in the war. And then he said, "I am not going to answer your question because I know you're asking the question regarding 1968 and all the things that happened in that convention. And I am not going to answer it that way because I cannot. The way I am going to answer it is that we have not healed since the Civil War. I just ask you to go to Gettysburg and just drive on each side you will see." Your thoughts on whether this is really even an issue. Some people will say, "Steve, people do not walk around Washington with lack of healing on their sleeves." But then others have said, "This is a very serious question because if we have not healed as a nation is what we are seeing today, not what you just explained to us about people from different points of view coming together, but this constant, you are the problem, you are the enemy, you are the..." This division of not coming together and no healing and the effect that it might be having on the boomer generation, and then that is having on their kids and their grandkids by witnessing these feelings. Is healing an issue in your viewpoint?

JC (00:50:59):
Absolutely. I think the issues that were at the root of the Civil War were never fully resolved, that is why the Civil War looms so large in our imaginations. To a certain extent those issues were revisited in the Vietnam War and they are still unresolved so intellectually it is still part of our...

SM (00:51:25):
Please speak up too.

JC (00:51:28):
It is still part of what's going on. However, I do not know if Bill Ehrhart explained how we met. We met at Vietnam Reconciliation Conference in 1992 at Notre Dame and Father Hesburgh brought people together for this Vietnam Reconciliation Conference. I think it was one of the first times they included Vietnamese voices and the Vietnam War took place in Vietnam, but it was all about the American experience, but the (19)92 conference made us a little bit more honest about it. And I may be naive, but I think a lot of the sharp edges are smooth. Bill Ehrhart and I are best of friends. We still have our probably fundamental political differences and I think most people are like that. And I may be naive because the past couple of presidential elections, not the last one, but the ones before it were so evenly split down the middle. You worry about that and it seems like we could go back to that 49/51 split and everything that you see in politics, in the way people position politics, it does seem to be a zero-sum game and it does seem to be a 50/50 split down the middle. I may be completely, absolutely wrong in my gut feeling that time does heal wounds, but maybe I am being naive in that. But I honestly believe that. I would not blame the boomer generation for what we see today. I do not think the roots of that 50/50 split is in the boomer generation, I think it is in the issues that are around us today. I am not going to take the blame for that one.

SM (00:53:52):
To me, the wall moves an awful lot. It is just one person. I lived in California in 1980 through (19)83 in the Bay Area for a while. And first thing I had to get to the wall as soon as I moved to Philadelphia to work at Thomas Jefferson University. And within a week I was on the train and got done to DC because I had not gotten a car yet. It means an awful lot, and I am not a Vietnam veteran. How important has the wall been? I know already it has been important for vets and their families. As Jan Scruggs says in the title of his book, To Heal a Nation...

JC (00:54:30):
Saving electricity.

SM (00:54:37):
Okay. To Heal a Nation, "We really heal the nation from the wall beyond just the mess."

JC (00:54:44):
My personal experience with the wall is interesting. I was in the Army, I did not really get involved in it. I knew the controversy. There was a part of me that wanted some kind of recognition, there was a part of me that heard, obviously, an abstract representation of it. I did not have a problem with that as much as some other people did, wanting a more literal representation. I think for me it works the way it is supposed to work in an abstract sense. I had not visited the wall and I was at the Army War College in Carlisle and we were on a trip to Washington and I got up in the morning and I ran to the wall at Sunrise and I looked up the names of the four or five people I knew that were on the wall. And it was an incredibly moving experience, primarily because it was an individual experience. I do not think there was anybody else around... For me it was a very, very good experience. If I'd gone there when people were...

JC (00:56:03):
... if I had gone there when people were walking around and it was a busy mall, I do not think it would have been the same. It worked for me. There is an interesting guy named John Wolf, who is an artist and he is a good artist. I hope he is still going strong. He actually got hit by two RPGs and it blew off one of his legs and he died on the operating time two or three times. He actually writes about dying on the operating table, and I was doing a Vietnam summer workshop at West Point, and I think we had Bill come up but we had lots of Vietnam veterans come, and John came down from New Rochelle ... I am sorry. Not New Rochelle. [inaudible]. He has a studio in [inaudible]. He is a successful artist but he is the kind of guy who would not park in a handicap spot. He is on crutches. He is an exclamation point and very interesting guy. One of the female cadets asked him what he thought of the wall, and he looked at her and he said it is a fucking abomination, and I am speaking both as an artist and a Vietnam veteran. It represents nothing of what my service in Vietnam or the army was, and then he went on to really get vulgar about the [inaudible] in the earth. It was interesting. When the younger officers met Bill Ehrhart and they met John Wolf, they said, "We got to bring them together" but they would have fought ... Back then, Bill ... They both would have fought like cats and dogs and it was really a surprise, to me, to somebody who is an artist, who was so badly wounded, had such strong feelings about the wall, and I tried to explain to him my experience and that I really felt like I was honoring the people that I knew, who were on that wall. He did not get that. He just thought it was a political statement, so to say that it ... Does it bring people together? It brings some people together I guess but ...

SM (00:58:38):
It is interesting. When I came to Jefferson, [inaudible] posttraumatic stress disorder with Dr. Schwartz up at Jefferson, I am not sure if he's still there, the [inaudible] going to be about PTSD and it ended up being [inaudible] all the Vietnam vets that I guess [inaudible] Dwight Edwards, the whole group that was involved with the wall in Philly, and they had this politician from Pittsburgh. He had a Purple Heart. I cannot remember his name. He was a Congressman, and he came, but he refused to shake the hands of any of the other vets, because they supported the wall in Washington and he did not. He would not even talk to them and they were all... I did not quite understand that.

JC (00:59:27):
I do not get that.

SM (00:59:28):
And they never did and then he kind of blasted Dr. Zuckerman, for being an anti-war person [inaudible] were still there but...

JC (00:59:36):
I do not know.

SM (00:59:37):
You know, Lewis Puller, who wrote Fortunate Son, which I think is the best book ever written, I just reread the book in the last month and hoping to interview his wife Toddy, if I can get her to be interviewed, that would be a coup, but he loved the wall, and they tried to make it as non-political as it is, a non-political statement but even I, as an observer, who sits there, has a sense that some of the comments being made, not by Jan Scruggs but by others, are very political and so he might ... Jan might have to rethink some of the things some of these people are saying and the wall. Some of the other questions here... The issue of trust is one I want to bring up. This is very important, because I can remember in the psychology 101 class when I was in college, I think, and a professor talking about do you trust your neighbor? Do you trust your friends? Do you trust your parents? He would go around the room. He also, the next class, [inaudible] and we were all stuck with this guy. We wanted to get him fired but he was [inaudible] distinguished professor of philosophy, his father was well-known at Johns Hopkins and all the other stuff. He was new then. He really struck something that was very important to me. He said that if you cannot trust someone in your life, then you will not be a success. You have to trust people. That has always stuck with me, not as a college student but as I have gone on into my life, because I am wondering... I have a sense that many of the boomers... I know boomers were distrustful of the leaders. It is very obvious. They did not trust presidents, they did not trust college presidents, they did not trust religious leaders. They did not really accept corporations. They did not trust anybody in a position of responsibility, including all the college administrators I was around, because they had been lied to. The lies came from Watergate, they came from the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. They came from Eisenhower, who lied to the national public about U2. They lied on [inaudible] 1959. Then the continuation of here in the Reagan administration, of course, the... It is a long story here but boomers have seen it. But in their youth, they did not trust leaders and that is why they went out [inaudible] so many times. Do you think this quality of lack of trust in many a generation, and I preface this by stating that only 15 percent were truly active, so we are talking about 85 percent who were not, but subconsciously, that 85 percent had to be affected also by what was going on in their youth. Do you think they have passed this lack of trust onto their kids and their grandkids? Again, it's a long question but it has a lot of meaning. The fact is if you are a study of history and political science, which I am, a lack of trust in your government is healthy. It is the first thing you learn in political science. That is how you learn and then that makes government better. But just your thought on the issue of trust, whether we really have a problem here in the nation, not only today, but throughout the boomer’s lives, because of experiences they had when they were younger.

JC (01:03:10):
Well, it is interesting and I will bring it back to my experiences. I was a company grade officer in Vietnam and there was a sense and, of course, I was a military region too ... Actually my corps commander was John [inaudible].

SM (01:03:27):
Oh, wow.

JC (01:03:28):
He was in charge while I was [inaudible] there. Yeah. You talk about trust and so on, but I, obviously, did not know him or work closely with him. However, there was this sense, at least ... I do not think I am speaking entirely for myself. Part of it is those bastards at platoon headquarters mentality that is in the army. You know, the higher the headquarters, the more screwed up, but there was another dimension to it and it was I had ... You will read in the piece I gave you, there is a perspective on somebody who is trying to get a star, and a distrust of that next level of leadership in the army, and as I stayed in the army, I worried about the generation of leaders, the next generation of leaders, and I was unbelievably pleasantly surprised with the Colin Powell or the commanders, the ... My direct boss in 101st, when I was a battalion commander, was a man named Herb Watson, who got killed with the president of Pakistan when the president of Pakistan's plane got blown out of the sky. The commanding general of the 101st and the 82nd airborne, two units, I would ... Just incredibly trustworthy, wonderful leaders. It was like they saw what was happening in Vietnam and they were not going to repeat it. Colin Powell, I think stands out, because [inaudible]. He stands out as that kind of exemplar. I ended up with the healthy skepticism and the natural, "Those bastards at platoon quarters" mentality that is always in organizations, I came out with a lot of confidence and trust in that next level of commanders. It really sustained me through 30 years in the army, because I would not want to be in an organization where I did not have that trust. That said, maybe one reason I stayed in the army, because I was working for people I trusted, and maybe I had a fear of going out into another world where you did not have that trust. The other side to that or the larger piece to that I guess is the whole notion of politicians and there is a deep distrust of politicizing things, drawing up lines, making arguments based on political motivation rather than what is the best decision, and, again, I agree, that is healthy skepticism. Maybe there is more of that when it comes to politics among boomers, and now are you infecting your kids or your grandkids? I do not know. I think there ... I just got an email from a friend and he could verify these numbers for me, like out of the two million whatever Vietnam veterans who served in Vietnam...

SM (01:07:00):
Three million. Three million served and I believe 450,000 and 500,000 were on the front lines.

JC (01:07:08):
Okay, but of the 380,000 or whatever it was, only 270,000 left. It was mind-boggling. I could pull up the email. I remember having a colleague, a guy I actually taught at West Point, his name is Elliott Gruner, who wrote a book about POWs, it is pretty controversial, and he would always... We had discussions, he was a colonel, and he was a major I guess at the time, but he would ... He would always just cut the conversation with, "You're still my favorite burnt out Vietnam vet." Actually the person who sent me those statistics I think is kind of a dig that you are a dinosaur, assigned it your favorite burned out Vietnam vet, so there is that I think stigma and there is probably some truth to it but I do not think... I think most of us look at it with some fabrication and some sense of humor. I do not think we're really trying to make everybody else that skeptical.

SM (01:08:26):
What do you feel is the number one reason the Vietnam War ended? How important were college students on the campuses in ending the war?

JC (01:08:36):
I think it is what is going to end Afghanistan and Iraq, just exhaustion, just our attention span is not that long. I do not think college students were a huge factor. Although, it was a strong voice that contributed to the overall exhaustion, but I do not think it was a primary cause. I think we are going to declare victory and get the hell out of Iraq, and we probably have a right to declare victory.

SM (01:09:19):
Do you worry that when you read articles, Afghanistan is another Vietnam? How do you feel when you hear that people get upset by every comparison of conflict around the world? Or they always bring up Vietnam. I sense in the university, they get very uptight. It's just a bunch of boomers, again, trying to be nostalgic or remember but that is not the purpose. Vietnam had so many meanings. Just to bring the word of Vietnam in a conversation with fellow boomers who may be in leadership roles in the universities, like, "There he goes again."

JC (01:09:59):
Well, it is a useful metaphor but it is ... I think it is an oversimplification. You worry about ... I worry about Pakistan. I mean, I worry ... That is the nexus of what you really have to worry about I think. I think we have probably exhausted ourselves in many ways in this. That is another story.

SM (01:10:31):
When did the (19)60s end? Just the (19)60s itself. Was there a period that you knew it was over?

JC (01:10:36):
Maybe Watergate.

SM (01:10:36):
Okay.

JC (01:10:40):
The Kennedy assassination, Watergate, that is a good 10 years...

SM (01:10:44):
How important was the music? Because when you think of the music, it had so many social messages in it.

JC (01:10:48):
It was great music.

SM (01:10:49):
It was great music and it is still being played today [inaudible 01:10:53] showed you the article he has on the wall in there, about one of the (19)60s ... A member of the Who refuses to sell his music for TV commercials. I think that is a lesson for students, he is not selling out.

JC (01:11:10):
Yeah.

SM (01:11:12):
He wrote the music for that generation to not be selling out. How important was music within this boomer generation in terms of not only their anti-war and their involvement but just your thoughts on the music? Who were your favorite musicians?

JC (01:11:31):
I remember my first wife, our first date, we went to a movie, the Cardinal, and then we went and saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show at my friend Jacques [inaudible]'s house.

SM (01:11:45):
Right.

JC (01:11:47):
There was a ... The Beatles were ... I remember waking up and hearing on the radio and just, "Wow. This is ..." But there is the ... You go from the Beatles to more of a Stones fan now, so that is the loss of innocence. I became a Stones fan pretty quickly.

SM (01:12:15):
I think I would ... Well, I like rock music but my mom used to watch As The World Turns, which is a TV show in the afternoon. I can remember coming home once and I had a day off or a two day break or whatever. She was watching it and on the background music on As The World Turns, they were playing I Cannot Get No Satisfaction. I said if it gets on TV like that, it is certainly getting into the mainstream and that was around 1967. Yeah. The folk music of that period, all the messages and, certainly, the Motown sound.

JC (01:12:47):
Yeah. Very-very important.

SM (01:12:49):
It was important.

JC (01:12:50):
You know, it brings you back in the best ways I guess but...

SM (01:13:01):
Before I get into the names here, just were there any books that were an influence to you that you read when you were young? Novelists or non-fiction books.


JC (01:13:14):
Yeah.
SM (01:13:14):
That you can think of in the (19)60s or (19)70s.

JC (01:13:17):
Well, they are not... I was a 19th century American guy, so I read a lot of Walden and Emerson, Moby Dick is my favorite... If I had a favorite book, Moby Dick and Absalom Absalom, but I remember I was reading Herman Hesse in Vietnam and I can actually remember sitting on an air strip reading...

SM (01:13:48):
Herman Hesse?

JC (01:13:49):
Yeah.

SM (01:13:49):
Wow.

JC (01:13:51):
You know, just... You got free books in Vietnam. I still have books probably on that shelf that I got from the Red Cross.

SM (01:13:57):
Hard backs?

JC (01:13:58):
No, paperbacks.

SM (01:13:58):
Oh, paperbacks.

JC (01:14:00):
Nobody in the unit was getting them, so I... English major. I brought lots of books back from the Red Cross book boxes.

SM (01:14:11):
They might be valuable if they are first editions. Even paperbacks.

JC (01:14:15):
I do not know. They were pretty beat up. I had them in a rucksack. There was a lot of time... A lot of time to read. I did have a reading experience, which isn't directly related to your question but when did Going After Cacciato get published? About (19)76 or so. (19)77.

SM (01:14:38):
I do not know.

JC (01:14:39):
I remember being in a bookstore and picking up Going After Cacciato and looking and reading, reading, reading and looking at my watch and it is about two hours, two and a half hours later. It was the first time anybody had written about and processed and written about, for me, the Vietnam War.

SM (01:15:01):
Wow.

JC (01:15:04):
In a way. I had become good friends with Tim O'Brien.

SM (01:15:08):
Oh, yeah. Book one [inaudible].

JC (01:15:10):
Yeah. I remember the first time I met Tim O'Brien, I met him in a ... He was doing a reading at University of North Carolina Wilmington, and I was actually camping on the beach in Wilmington and was in the men's room and Tim came in and we were standing there. I explained how important his Going After Cacciato was for my processing. I said, "Did you ever read J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors?" Tim stopped and he goes, "Not too many people know about that book. You appreciate it because [inaudible]." J. Glenn Gray...

SM (01:15:46):
Is that G-L-E-N?

JC (01:15:48):
J G-L-E-N-N Gray.

SM (01:15:54):
J. Glenn...

JC (01:15:56):
J, just the letter J.

SM (01:15:58):
J. Glenn.

JC (01:15:58):
Gray, The Warriors. He got his draft notice for the Second World War the same day he got his PHD of philosophy from Columbia, and he went and was a military intelligence officer, and saw action all through Italy and all the way up. Then he had a Fulbright and went back to Germany, and then his Fulbright, he took topics in war and analyzed them as a philosopher would analyze them, so attitudes toward the enemy, all the different attitudes toward the enemy, love in war, he analyzed that like a philosopher would, [inaudible] experiences. It is a fascinating book and it is exactly I think what incredibly influenced Tim O'Brien, like you cannot believe and I think he... It is one of those books.

SM (01:16:53):
Yeah. Well, I am at the part of the interview now where I just mention some names or terms of the period and you just give short responses to them. Some may have a greater effect than others. We already talked about the wall. What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you?

JC (01:17:12):
Again, I was out of the country, so the full impact did not affect me. I am sure if I were in college or in the States, it would have been a different impact.

SM (01:17:24):
What did you think when you heard that four college students were killed on a university campus?

JC (01:17:32):
Well, it was... This sounds small but it was an undisciplined National Guardsman versus a disciplined regular army. It said something about the National Guard was a way to avoid the draft, and like Lieutenant Calley, there were people in positions they should not have been in. It was an insult to the profession of arms, and to the profession period. I, obviously, have a regular army officer view of it. It was a breakdown.

SM (01:18:07):
Watergate. You already mentioned a little bit. What did Watergate mean to you? How do you think it affected the younger generation?

JC (01:18:18):
Well, I think it was something I did not want to believe and when all the facts came out, it was really disheartening. It reinforced skepticism and cynicism but it also, at the same time, gave me great confidence in the system, the justice system.

SM (01:18:41):
Woodstock?

JC (01:18:43):
Again, I missed it. It just was not part of my life, because I was in the army with my head shaved.

SM (01:18:58):
[inaudible] this year. It has had a lot of different meaning. Everybody seems to [inaudible].

JC (01:19:01):
You know, if I could live my life over again, I might want to be there but I probably would not want to not do what I did in the army.

SM (01:19:14):
All the cars going down the 81 heading toward that area, and I can remember ... I never thought once about it. I was a student [inaudible] and I never thought about it.

JC (01:19:24):
I am surprised you were not there.

SM (01:19:25):
I did not have a car and that did not stop anybody, though. 1968?

JC (01:19:34):
Year I graduated. Some great movies, Cool Hand Luke, Bonnie and Clyde. Martin Luther King's assassination.

SM (01:19:55):
The conventions.

JC (01:19:56):
Yeah. The conventions... I was in ranger school during that stuff, so I was in a gulag.

SM (01:20:07):
How about counter-culture? Just the term counter-culture?

JC (01:20:11):
Useful term. Does not give me any feelings.

SM (01:20:16):
How about hippies and yippies? There was a difference.

JC (01:20:21):
I guess the yippies were more political. I do not know. The hippies were just laissez faire. I liked San Francisco.

SM (01:20:30):
Yeah. SDS, Students for a Democratic Society.

JC (01:20:34):
I think a bit of... I think I am not sure of the best motivated.

SM (01:20:49):
Of course, the Weatherman were [inaudible].

JC (01:20:49):
A hard line.

SM (01:20:49):
The Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which was real big in (19)71. They kind of took over the anti-war movement through their throwing their awards away. Your thought on that? John Kerry has always identified he is the man who spoke but the biggest names in that group were not John Kerry.

JC (01:21:09):
Bill Ehrhart.

SM (01:21:10):
Yeah. He is very proud of it. [inaudible] was in the group.

JC (01:21:15):
You know, I was out of the country. I may have been in Vietnam during a lot of that. I do not have real strong feelings one way or another. I did not see it. I was not here to witness it.

SM (01:21:31):
What about... These are names now. Jane Fonda?

JC (01:21:38):
I watched Jane Fonda movies. Barbarella. I have got friends who... I mean, that is the trigger name. I just think somebody is not the brightest.

SM (01:21:52):
How about Tom Hayden? Her husband at that time.

JC (01:22:03):
Well, he was a politician, and became a politician. I do not have feelings one way or another.

SM (01:22:03):
How about Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin? They were the yippies.

JC (01:22:09):
Kind of comic characters. There is a certain very prankster part to that that I may not have the full story but that is my impression.

SM (01:22:21):
Timothy Leary?

JC (01:22:23):
Yeah. [inaudible] LSD. Seemed like an interesting guy.

SM (01:22:29):
Dr. Benjamin Spock?

JC (01:22:31):
Obviously, I am part of the boomer generation and he supposedly influenced... I think he probably gets more credit than he deserves.

SM (01:22:41):
How about Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew?

JC (01:22:47):
I think petty politicians.

SM (01:22:52):
Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern.

JC (01:22:55):
I really respected Eugene McCarthy. I do not know why I liked him as much as I did, but I think it was partly because he was kind of above it all. George McGovern, consistent, basically very good man. I liked McCarthy better. I would have voted for McCarthy. I did not vote for McGovern.

SM (01:23:29):
The ultimate mystery that I asked him is why he did not... Why he just dropped out. He said, "Read my book." He is a nice guy. I am Irish, he is Irish. I had met him twice before I interviewed him, but he... The one question where he really got upset is when I mentioned the name Bobby Kennedy. He said, "Read my book." I mean, he was dead serious. He did not want to talk about it. I go right into it now, John...

SM (01:24:03):
That meeting was dead serious. You do not want to talk about it. And I go right into it. Now, John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.

JC (01:24:13):
Well, again, I shared some of that. I was very idealistic, and obviously Western Massachusetts and really worshiped Kennedy. Actually, here is a boomer echo. I honestly feel that Obama is the first president we have had since Kennedy, who has that kind of ability to synthesize things, makes sense, and talk public policy. I just live in fear that somebody is going to kill him.

SM (01:24:47):
I worry that, too, and I know the students at Westchester worry about that. The fact is he is a boomer, you know. He's a very late boom. He was born in (19)62 or something like that. (19)61. He is 48 now, but he is the real youngest boomer. But I had the same kind of fears and let us pray to God that does not happen.

JC (01:25:07):
But I have got the idealization of JFK. RFK I think was probably a shit, but he was a good shit. He was good at the-

SM (01:25:16):
The last two years of his life.

JC (01:25:20):
He was a pragmatist. I thought it was a real loss. I got a little bit of my father in me, I guess. My father used to scream and holler at Teddy on the TV and then go out and vote for him. It is that kind of whatever. Whatever gene it is that happens to Boston Irishmen.

SM (01:25:50):
How about Lyndon Johnson now?

JC (01:25:51):
Oh, I think he became such a cartoon of himself, and I think that was just sad.

SM (01:26:05):
Robert McNamara?

JC (01:26:05):
I am not a McNamara fan. I think he knew he was sending people to die. I blame him more than probably a lot of other people.

SM (01:26:09):
George Wallace?

JC (01:26:28):
I think he was kind of a caricature of a lot of different projected hoops. I was in Georgia when he was running.

SM (01:26:30):
Oh, when he was shot?

JC (01:26:30):
Well, no, when he was running.

SM (01:26:30):
Oh.

JC (01:26:31):
I was at Fort Benning, Georgia. I will tell you what, for a northern boy had never been south from the Mason-Dixon line to drive down there and to see that and to live that, where the majority of people really thought he was going to be president. Then I was an aid to a general from Mississippi. One time I said something about how stupid I thought all this was and he said, "Well, I completely disagree."

SM (01:27:07):
Yeah. I forget how he took a lot. Well, he got a lot of votes.

JC (01:27:09):
Yeah. Yeah.

SM (01:27:10):
Eight or 9 percent. It was a lot of votes.

JC (01:27:13):
And it was just such, for somebody like me, it was just... I cannot believe it.

SM (01:27:20):
How about Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford?

JC (01:27:25):
I think Gerald Ford was a good man and did the right things to heal the nation. I actually think, I know, I think I know because a friend of mine was a military aid to Reagan, that he was not the buffoon everybody portrayed him to be. He was a pretty sharp guy and he played that role pretty well.

SM (01:27:46):
I want to mention Jimmy Carter, too, because he is the guy that created the amnesty for those that went to Canada.

JC (01:27:53):
Even at the time, I think I was there at West Point at the time, that was fine. It was part of the healing process. Jimmy Carter, I think was just too smart for his own good.

SM (01:28:09):
Your thoughts, you always talk about the Vietnam syndrome. We got to get rid of it. Well, during the Reagan administration, we're back. It was basically a statement saying love America again. Love the American flag again. And certainly bringing the military back to stature. But also with George Bush Senior, you talked about the Vietnam syndrome is over, and he talked about it when he was president. Your thoughts on, looks like they were also making a criticism of that particular era, both Reagan and Bush. What are your thoughts on...?

JC (01:28:45):
Well, it is interesting because I was in the Command General Staff College. I think all of us felt that Carter was going to get us in a shooting war. I think the weaker your position, the more vulnerable you are. One reason I went to the 82nd was I wanted to be in the best unit I could be in, because I honestly thought I was going to war. Then when Reagan came in, it was all of a sudden it is an era of triple volunteers. Volunteer for the Army, volunteer for the Airborne, volunteer for the 82nd. All of a sudden you have got equipment that you can use, so it really was a turnaround. I put it in professional terms. I do not think I thought in terms of Vietnam or not Vietnam. I remember being in the, maybe it was, I think it was Battalion Commander on 101st when Platoon came out. I remember coming out of a theater and my younger soldiers were there, and it was an eye-opener for them. I remember saying to them, I said, "It is not pretty, is it?" And I had Oliver Stone come to West Point.

SM (01:30:06):
Oh, wow.

JC (01:30:06):
I taught his trilogy. It was in the sense of the use of Vietnam from a professional point of view was, I think Platoon was a very, very accurate movie. It is not pretty and there's a lot of... It is obviously a drama. All that did not happen, but all that did happen and Oliver Stone has put it together properly. But I think first President Bush is sitting on a hill, too. I actually have a theory about, we have been using the same myths to talk ourselves into war since the periods. There is the John Smith myth that one European can take on 200 Indians or any other non- Europeans. And we're using that I think in our thinking even today. And then there is the God [inaudible] city upon the hill and chosen people and war is a purifier. To a certain extent, we use that, too.

SM (01:31:19):
When we think of Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush, they are boomers.

JC (01:31:27):
Yeah. Interesting.

SM (01:31:29):
So, what is it about those two that really... They have the characteristics of boomers. A lot of people do not like to answer that. A lot of them say they are typical booms.

JC (01:31:38):
Yes. Yes.

SM (01:31:43):
How would you define them as typical boomers?

JC (01:31:54):
I do not know if I want put this on tape. So full of shit. No.

SM (01:31:54):
[inaudible]. Hey, I have only got to come up 10 more. Well, I might go-

JC (01:31:54):
I do not know if I want to be directed that way, but there was that element to both of them, I think, that more of a common denominator than a difference. We go back, you were talking about the characteristics, the sense of entitlement, the sense of uniqueness, self-serving part of it. I am not sure they are the best representatives of the boomer generation, but they did seem to... I do not know; the mental laziness of Bush and the self-indulgence of Clinton are two things that...

SM (01:32:38):
Yeah, enough said. Your thoughts on Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X? Because they were the predominant figures there.

JC (01:32:47):
I have got a funny story. I also was a dorm counselor for my room. I was trying to make money any way I could. AI got a call right before my senior year and they said, "We got a guy," and he was the founder of the Black Student Organization at Lafayette. He was from New Rochelle. His name was Jerry Gill. He died a couple of years ago. Got a picture of him. We became very good friends because we ended up rooming together. They said, "Can we put him on his floor?" Because they were worried about him. They wanted somebody to watch him because he is this Black radical.

SM (01:33:34):
Want this on tape?

JC (01:33:34):
Sure.

SM (01:33:34):
Yeah?

JC (01:33:37):
I just hired a woman, English teacher, who graduated from Tufts. She's sitting here and I am interviewing and I said, "Do you remember Professor Gill?" She burst into tears. He had made that much of a difference in her life.

SM (01:33:51):
Wow.

JC (01:33:52):
But Jerry, then they called me and said, "Cannot find a roommate." I said, "I will room with him." So, we are in a room and it is not very big, and over Jerry's bed is big picture of Malcolm X. About a month after we have been rooming together, I walk in and Malcolm's gone and there's a big picture of The Supremes. He goes, "I did that for you."

SM (01:34:17):
Oh, wow. That is nice.

JC (01:34:19):
So, we became very-very-very good friends. Obviously, he got honored by Lafayette College and when he came back, I went up there and he gave the talk. He said the best thing about rooming with Joe Cox was I realized there were white people that were poorer than I was, which is-

SM (01:34:41):
Economics. Economics. Dr. King talked about that.

JC (01:34:41):
Which is on the record. I knew Dr. King from my lenses, and obviously he was such an elegant person and such an articulate person that even as a dumb kid, that made a big difference. Malcolm X, I probably did not know him through my own lenses. What I learned, I probably learned from a young Black radical. And I saw the movie, so I think I know Malcolm X. But I thoroughly understand it. I understand the Black Muslim movement and thoroughly understand, I think, where he was.

SM (01:35:32):
What is really interesting when you talk about Malcolm X, "By any means necessary," which is that there is an indication that use guns if you have to. Of course, he changed the last two years after he came back to Mecca. That is what is amazing when you compare, I worked at a piece once on Malcolm and Bobby Kennedy, because Bobby Kennedy was always known as a ruthless guy. But the last two to three years, he had done great things with his brother. All you have to do was read 13 Days to understand that. But something about his personality changed. He was more likable. He was more empathetic, more passionate and caring. So, I have always compared the two of them and the fact that people can change in their lives. But when you look at three quotes by any means necessary by Malcolm X, then the Peter Max, who I always thought had the best quotes on his paintings to define the generation, which is, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, that will be beautiful." Of course, the third one was the quote that Bobby Kennedy used when he was in Indianapolis, and it was actually a quote from I think Henry David Thoreau. Is something about a time, "Some men see things they are and ask why I see things that never were and ask why not." When you look at those three statements, which one best defines the boomers? "By any means necessary," "You do your thing, I will do mine. By chance we should come together, it will be beautiful," and then Bobby Kennedy's, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were going to ask why not." Are they all part of the generation?

JC (01:37:04):
Well, I think they are all part of it. I think the cynic would say, you do yours and I will do mine. I think most would pop for the Bobby Kennedy.

SM (01:37:14):
Is that the quote?

JC (01:37:16):
No, it is the one from South Africa, but it is a good one.

SM (01:37:23):
I will read this to the tape here if you do not mind. "Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope in the crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current, which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance," Robert Kennedy. Wow. Very nice. Just a couple more names here and then we're done. The Black Panthers, which is Huey Newton and Bobby Seal and Eldridge Cleaver and Angela Davis and Kathleen Cleaver and that group. Just your thoughts on Black power.

JC (01:38:08):
Well, in Vietnam, one of the books I got out of the Red Cross was Eldridge Cleaver's book.

SM (01:38:16):
Soul On Ice?

JC (01:38:17):
Yeah, Soul On Ice. I think they were criminals, but they were fashionable criminals. They are accepted-accepted.

SM (01:38:27):
How about Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers?

JC (01:38:32):
Well, I think what he did ultimately was, I mean shedding light on things is good. I wonder about his motivation. I do not know him at all, but it is people with towering egos, boomer egos, who are going to shine a light on themselves no matter how they do it. So, there's a piece of that you kind of resent, but at the same time, the product is... I try to operate; do not do anything I would not want to see on the front page of the New York Times. You hope a lot of people work that way.

SM (01:39:11):
Yeah. How about the women, the Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan? They were three names that really come to the forefront. Shirley Chisholm's in that group. The Women's Movement.

JC (01:39:23):
They were pioneers and good spokesman. It is funny, though, I had a situation of someone I knew at North Carolina that was a student and worked with Bella Abzug, and Bella Abzug stood her up and kept the money. So, she did not come across as a nice person from that one experience. Of all of them, I have got this sense of Bella Abzug is not being a person of character.

SM (01:39:55):
How about the Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, because-

JC (01:39:58):
Yeah, good judges. Good judges.

SM (01:40:03):
Yeah. I actually had both of them on our campus, and we actually had Phillip on our campus. He gave his last public speech there at Westchester University before he died. A couple other quick things here. Barry Goldwater?

JC (01:40:22):
I understand why he lost, but there is almost a, I do not know, there is a nostalgia for... He seems from a different time, not even the (19)60s. He seems from even an earlier time. There is a certain elegance to what he said. I remember the campaign and I remember given my- I could not vote, but it was a bit shocking to me where he was coming from. But it did not...

SM (01:41:00):
I think there is a lot. Bill Buckley admired him, and Bill Buckley has been standing a lot of today's conservatives. He has passed away. But I can remember that when you think of the irony of a man who was destroyed by Lyndon Johnson, voting wise, numbers wise of the (19)64 election. And the fact that in 1974 it was himself and Hughes Scott, the senator from Tennessee, that were asked to go to the White House to ask Nixon to resign. His stature as a senator is very honest.

JC (01:41:34):
Well, there is an elegance and an integrity to him that at least looking back now, I appreciate much more.

SM (01:41:41):
He was a Korean War vet, too, I believe. A fighter pilot.

JC (01:41:44):
He was a general in the Air Force. My father looked a lot like him, too, so there is that part playing on it.

SM (01:41:53):
Two or three more here and then we are done. Tech. Tech was obviously very big in the military, big in Vietnam, big in the United States. There may have been lies on this in terms of the American public, too, about the impact. It really, really changed things.

JC (01:42:09):
Yeah-yeah. Walter Cronkite saying we have lost. Again, that is where Larry Summers, I think, gets it right. And that is why when I went to the Army War College, we were studying Clausewitz. There is a larger impact than just what happens on the battlefield or in one place. So, it was a victory because it impacted so many different areas. It was not a military victory, but it was a victory. It was a turning point.

SM (01:42:43):
The last person I was going to say was John Dean again, because he is the guy that went before the hearings there. Just your thoughts on John Dean. He was Nixon's lawyer.

JC (01:42:54):
Yeah. I think obviously there is a, in retrospect, you got to respect what he did. I probably should not end on this, but I remember thinking he had a very nice-looking wife.

SM (01:43:08):
And she came. They are still together. They live in California. Although, there are rumors that she had been a call-girl at one time. That really got him upset. Remember the bombshell that was... I forgot the congressman. Wanda.

JC (01:43:20):
Oh, yeah. Dancing in the fountain there.

SM (01:43:23):
Yes, there is that. The last question I want to ask you, because we have been talking about the time that boomers were basically teenagers and the rest of their lives. How important were the (19)50s? The (19)50s themselves in shaping the boomer generation. I am always fascinated because when I think of the (19)50s, I think of my parents giving me all they could give. Great Christmases, great Thanksgivings, great birthdays, just always being there kind of good times. But we knew there was racism, we knew what was going on in the South, but it was kind of hidden. It seemed like a time of peace, but the Cold War was on. We came so close to nuclear bomb. But as children, though, maybe they do not have a sense of understanding. We'd watch Mickey Mouse Club every week and we would watch the TV westerns. We did not really see the difference between good and bad. The bad was always the Native American Indian. Hop Along Cassidy, all the shows seem like a time of peace. And all of a sudden you start getting into the (19)60s and everything is kind of rebelling against the parents. What was it about the (19)50s that shaped the boomers?

JC (01:44:41):
You watch Mad Men?

SM (01:44:42):
Yes, I do. Yes, I did.

JC (01:44:47):
I think all those hidden tensions. I just think that is one of the best shows I think I have ever seen. There is so much of maybe what I want to remember, the tensions and the unspoken frustrations. In the (19)50s, I think that lack of confrontation led to more of an over confrontation. My parents were products of the depression and products of the Second World War.

SM (01:45:34):
So were mine.

JC (01:45:34):
My father never really got over at the Second World War. He was a pretty hard man until he moved back to the Catholic Church later in life. Claire used to say, "Your father is wonderful. Why cannot you talk to him?" I said, "Claire, that is not the man I grew up with. You have changed him." I grew up obviously wanting to please my father in so many ways, but not ever going to acknowledge him in an open way. I think that probably creates a certain schizophrenia that showed itself in the boomer generation.

SM (01:46:17):
Yeah, those times. I had nothing but good memories of those times, but then I am always deeply reflecting on things. I remember, my dad used to win trips. He worked for Prudential and he won trips to Florida for sales and (19)57, (19)58, (19)59. We took trips for two weeks, got out of school and we drove. You had to drive by the poor homes in the South. It was just eye-opening. One time we were at a restaurant and it was like Aunt Jemima was doing all the serving there. I started to, as a little boy, started to put things together. If you saw them, I met John Kennedy when I was... We were coming back from a vacation during the summer that he was campaigning, and he had been trying to get on a Roosevelt support. I have only read about this in later years. But my mom was tired. She said, "On the way back from vacation, let us stop at Hyde Park." So, we got there. My mom was tired, she crossed the street. They had a place where you could buy pictures back then, it's now gone. But my dad and my little sister and I, we walked in. We did not know what all the promotion was all about. Well, John Kennedy was in the library with Eleanor Roosevelt. So, we got in there and we were all waiting for him to come out the side door. I have been there many times since, and they got rid of the drive there where he was. But came out the side door, or someone was yelling, "He is coming out the side door," and so I ran over there and only one person shook his hand. Well, I got to be honest. I did not catch the grant, but I catched the top as a little boy. And he looked at me with his pin striped suit with that million dollar smile. My sister was on my dad's shoulder and she touched his suit and whatever. Little did I know that he would end up beating Nixon and then becoming president of the United States. When I went to college, that was my first one-minute speech, the most memorable moment in my life up until that point. So anyways, are there any, last question I always ask, is there a question that you thought I might ask that I did not ask that you'd like to make a final comment about the boomer generation and the generation that you grew up with? Or just some final thoughts on them as a whole? Because do not forget, they are approaching 62 now and they have still got their old age, the impact with their old age. So, any other final thoughts?

JC (01:48:50):
No, I think you covered an awful lot of ground. Pity you having to make sense out of it.

SM (01:48:58):
Well, I love doing it because... Thank you very much. Now, to turn this off.

(End of Interview)

2009-11-09

Stephen McKiernan

Joseph T. Cox, 1946-

109:05

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

Audio

Soldiers; College teachers; Cox, Joseph T., 1946--Interviews

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