Interview with John Wheeler

Wheeler, John, 1944-2010 ; McKiernan, Stephen

2010-07-23

in copyright

2018-03-29

McKiernan Interviews

153:04

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: John Wheeler
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 23 March 2010
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:07):
Sometimes it is [inaudible]. I just clear it away. You stated in that foreign affairs... I am going to make sure I read these correctly because I have some quotes here. You state in a foreign affairs article in the spring of (19)85 that, how our country finally comes to grips with Vietnam will depend on how the Vietnam generation comes to grips with its own experiences. We are in 2010 now, that was (19)85. How would you answer this today?

JW (00:00:35):
We are doing it poorly because we live inside the human condition. One example is, we still have cases of stolen valor. You have got politicians running for office, making up that they served in Vietnam or that they served in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is just the latest shoot on that tree, but it is the human condition. Humans do not do well at adjusting to war and its effects. That does not mean that writing on the subject and the working on it is not a good thing. It just means it is hard. The debates we have now in Congress, in the Council on Foreign Relations of which I am a member on the current issues, for example, the rules of engagement or on the way the defense department's being run, the Pentagon, all echo for me now just another verse. It is like Dante, almost. Just another big verse and set of couplets out of, I am afraid, it is inferno. It is not the Paradiso. From 1968 to 2010, now we have Robert Gates who is making many of the same mistakes as McNamara. I know that because I was in the building with McNamara and then Clark Clifford, I worked there.

SM (00:02:13):
Right.

JW (00:02:15):
The difference is, Gates does not have the depth and breadth of character that Robert McNamara had, and that is a big difference.

SM (00:02:30):
What were the most important influences in your life? I know your dad and your military background and I interviewed Peter Coyote yesterday, the actor, and of course, he comes from a new left background. Totally different from your background, but when I asked him the question, I said, "When you look at your life up to this point in 2010, what are the specific events? Can you name three to five personalities, people, events, happenings that made you who you are today?" How would you respond to that?

JW (00:03:04):
Well, it has to be my mom who grew up on a ranch in way West Texas. We are not talking just Laredo and Webb County. We are talking Asherton, Texas. And she is Irish from that part of the state. My dad is an army brat. My grandfather was cavalry from Texas and so those are formative. My brother was formative for me. He died suddenly three years ago. That is a huge loss, helping me realize the answer to your question, how important my brother was. Shared memories and a sounding board through life. We were just barely 20 months apart in age. After that, it would be, I would have to say C.S. Lewis. Increasingly, as we age, we realize that people who influence us are not necessarily close friends. They are people whose-whose spirit or presence means a lot. C.S. Lewis and my uncle John Conley, who received the Silver Star for conduct in that first low-level raid of the B-29s over Tokyo, March 8 and 9, 1945. They were significant. Their memory, what they did and what they stood for. C.S. Lewis, because the way he writes and deals with issues of faith works for me, works for my DNA and my background. Although, and I believe in faith that I will meet him. I am a little nervous about that because he is a big gruff Irishman. I am not sure how we will get along. You know, he died the same day, and I actually calculated, the same hour as John Kennedy.

SM (00:05:05):
November 22, (19)63.

JW (00:05:06):
Yeah, the same hour, actually though, it is interesting, when you account for the time change between London and Texas. It was just interesting.

SM (00:05:14):
How old was he when he died?

JW (00:05:15):
He was 63.

SM (00:05:17):
Young.

JW (00:05:17):
He was young. Help me, one other guy died that day. You got to Google it. Three, and they were all Irish. I think all three were Irish. Anyway, Jack Kennedy and of course, Jack Lewis' nickname was Jack, happened to die that same day. At West Point, the Kennedy assassination was significant. Little did I know that also, at that same hour, another Irishman named Jack was taken and Google and find that other third. There were three significant personalities died that day. That is a good way to answer your question. West Point is significant. It is significant for everybody that goes there in different ways.

SM (00:05:58):
Yeah, yeah. I have actually known people who have gone to West Point. We had a couple of our students that went there and I do not know, they got in after they finished two years of college, but they wanted to go to West Point, so they got in and they graduated. One of them was the mayor of West Chester, Pennsylvania's son was at West Point. I know he served in Iraq, but duty, honor, country was something, even when you, in this book where there were differences of opinion about the war, even amongst the veterans of the Vietnam War, even there was still, no matter what the differences may have been and the frictions that took place over politics, no one ever lost that. The feeling of... There was a sense that that was something so important. How important has that been in your life? Just those three words, not only from your service in Vietnam, what you have done since Vietnam, but going into Vietnam West Point and serving for four years.

JW (00:07:02):
They are as important for me as any other man in my West Point class or for the women now, who go. It is important to note that it was in June, actually, May of 2005 that the 10000th woman graduated from the five Federal academies, and do not forget that James Webb and I parted company over that issue. The women going to the academies. That was his article November, 1979. Washingtonian women cannot fight. Now, he tells people when he runs for office that, "Oh, he has outgrown that article". Do not you believe it. Webb does not change much. I know him well. I edited his book, A Sense of Honor.

SM (00:07:53):
Yeah, I have the book.

JW (00:07:54):
About West Point. Have you seen it?

SM (00:07:55):
I have not read it.

JW (00:07:56):
Did you look at... Do you have the book?

SM (00:07:58):
Yeah, I have the book. I have read the Fields of Fire, but I have not read it.

JW (00:08:00):
Have you opened up... Have you opened the book up?

SM (00:08:02):
No.

JW (00:08:02):
Have you looked at the frontispiece?

SM (00:08:04):
Yes.

JW (00:08:05):
So I am in it. Are you aware of that?

SM (00:08:08):
No. I guess [inaudible].

JW (00:08:09):
All right, here is what you are going to do. By the way, it is 14:30 and we are going to have to come to a hard stop, so I want to make sure we go through your questions. Let us answer them crisply. Then you can come back.

SM (00:08:19):
Right.

JW (00:08:20):
What I would like you to do, sir, is, go to a Sense of Honor, open it up, go to the frontispiece and look at the dedication.

SM (00:08:31):
Okay.

JW (00:08:31):
And I want you to email me back and tell me what the green bench is.

SM (00:08:35):
The green bench?

JW (00:08:36):
Yes, sir. I want you to do that.

SM (00:08:39):
Okay.

JW (00:08:39):
You are going to have to work a little bit to find out what the green bench is.

SM (00:08:42):
All right. I shall do that. You said in the same article that I just mentioned up briefly-

JW (00:08:47):
Anyway, I edited for Webb. I know the man.

SM (00:08:50):
Yeah. I tried to interview him before he became senator, but he was busy running for the Senate and then I was never able to interview me. So you said in the same article that the events of one generation shaped the attitudes of the next, and you brought up examples in your book about the results of the harshness on Germany in World War I and how it shaped many of the Germans and their attitudes and due to the reparations and the tough stand that was taken against Germany. How does that apply to Vietnam in terms of the effect that maybe what happened in World War II affected the Boomer generation?

JW (00:09:33):
Two ways. One is, the intellectual and story level, which happens in every culture because of a war. There were so many of us that went into Vietnam. The generation was roughly 30 million women, 30 million men, roughly. Roughly 60 million in all. When you count, not just technical baby boomers, but also those born a little before because so many youngsters born in (19)44 and (19)43 fought in Vietnam, but you do not count all the baby boomers born late in the (19)50s because they were just nine years old during the Vietnam War. So you use 60 million. Well, that is 30 million women and 30 million guys, and so the children grow up knowing that something happened and they pay attention. They listen and they learn like any youngster does in a family. Regardless of what the parents were doing during that period, it was significant for their parents. That is one way, story and culture, family. But there is something more significant. Everyone who fights in a war, goes through trauma, and now, in the year 2010, we understand what PTSD is. By the way, my own West Point classmate, Jim Peak, who was Secretary of Veterans Affairs, uses this term post-traumatic stress dash normal reaction. Now, he is a doctor, an MD, first MD to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs. My point is, Jim is saying, that is what happens in war. And do not forget, Jim was an infantry platoon leader in combat in Vietnam, then he went to medical school. Then he becomes in many years later, secretary of Veterans Affairs. Post-traumatic stress, normal reaction. My dad had PTSD. By golly, I hope he did. I mean, that would be normal. Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge.

SM (00:11:45):
Right.

JW (00:11:47):
He was at Remagen when they found the bridge was still standing. He fought all the way to the liberation of the death camp at Nordhausen. It was a hard fight. He had a little, that small Sherman tank, fighting Panzers. That was a very risky thing to do. I am saying that that effect on those fathers, there were so few women that fought in the Vietnam War or were even in the military at that time, compared to the number of men. For example, there is only eight women on the wall. There is eight nurses. That had to hurt the children. That hurt the children. It hurts the children in every generation. Those are the two effects. Let us march on.

SM (00:12:41):
I have a couple of other quotes here from these two books. One of the quotes from you is, "I think the challenge that lies before us is not to forget ourselves, set up in some kind of super minority, one more special interest group, but instead, to figure out what it is we have to offer". Now, I say that because today, in our society we have a lot of people who criticize special interest groups, particularly, different minorities. You have heard the whole politics of... The year of special interests and everything. But Vietnam veterans, I know, when I worked at Ohio University in my very first job, a lot of them could not get jobs, and we had Vietnam Veterans affairs officers at Ohio University because of getting jobs and the way some of them were being treated upon their return, they were not going to be hired. So they became part of the affirmative action plan. So I just wanted your thoughts on, you made this statement about being a special interest, but in affirmative action, they became a special interest because they were being discriminated against on their return. Just your thoughts on that.

JW (00:13:54):
Well, there is two thoughts. One is, there is a sense in which all of us became a nigger for a while. Everyone who came back from Vietnam became for a while, a nigger. That means we became a disenfranchised group. We became someone whose particular story was not... Society did not want to hear our story. And we were stereotyped, as if we knew what stereotype was. I mean, back in the (19)40s when I was born, who used stereotype, man? But we understand what all that means. Or in another sense, we were the (19)50s housewife women sent out for coffee. What I am saying is, we were a disenfranchised group. Our fathers and our forefathers, the Civil War vets, the World War II vets, the Teddy Roosevelt era vets, they were esteemed. We were the opposite. We were disesteemed. We spent a while being niggers. I am using the term to make a point.

SM (00:15:15):
Yes.

JW (00:15:17):
But what it did, was give us great empathy. It gave many of us great empathy, actually. We did not know it when we were building a wall, but it became a fulcrum on which our country turned so that our period in that particular silo, in that particular disenfranchised condition ended. We did not know that. We were just kids. That is why that book, Hal Moore's book, We Were Soldiers Once-

SM (00:15:49):
Great book, with Joe Galloway.

JW (00:15:51):
But the last part of the title, it is not in the movie title, and young. We were young. The wall would never have been built if we were not so young and we could take a licking and keep on ticking, so to speak, when we were young. But it gives great empathy to the guys who served in Vietnam. There is no anger, and by the way, there is no big sense of entitlement. Bobby Mueller is a minority among Vietnam veterans. Most Vietnam veterans have a great sense of personality and self. They actually know where they were and what they did. That is not all. They know that and they know two other things. They also know who their fathers were and their grandfathers and that they kept faith with them. And that gives you a pretty deep keel. They know something else. It is kind of like the funnies or the cartoons because every once in a while someone pops up and says, "I was in Vietnam", when they were not. Well, why do they do that? I am going to tell you why. Have you read the book, Vanity Fair? That is okay.

SM (00:17:15):
No, I have not read it.

JW (00:17:16):
Do you know anyone who's read it? Do you know somebody who has read it? Well, sure you do. Think of the really best English teacher, probably a really good woman at Ohio. Professor at Ohio.

SM (00:17:25):
Right.

JW (00:17:27):
Anyway, anyway. There is a line in Vanity Fair, was written by William Makepeace Thackeray, "Bravery never goes out of fashion."

SM (00:17:44):
The one thing that I think upsets me more than anything else that I have seen in the last, is the imposters. The people who say that they were in Vietnam. It is really interesting, and this is still part of the interview because there was a book that was written about this and there was a professor up at Harvard-

JW (00:18:06):
Stolen Valor.

SM (00:18:07):
Yeah-yeah. Stolen Valor.

JW (00:18:09):
Jug Burkett.

SM (00:18:11):
Yeah. And there is others that have actually, when it was not popular to be a Vietnam veteran, and then when it becomes popular, then they come out and say that they are one. Many of them made money off it. To me, it is a crime. It is a crime. They will have to face You Know Who, above.

JW (00:18:36):
Do not get excited about it. It is okay. They are just dogs chasing the bus. It is okay.

SM (00:18:42):
Remember the professor at Harvard that did it? And I forget his name. The Long Gray Line is a great book. I read that quite a long time ago. I have not read the rewrite. It was probably 15 years ago. 806 people were in your class, and how important were Kennedy's words, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country", as well as, "Pay any price, bear any burden". How did that affect the 806?

JW (00:19:20):
There are two big effects at West Point. One of them is, ideals expressed by our fathers or by our spiritual fathers, so to speak, like Kennedy. I want to give you one concrete example of a guy for whom that quote meant a great deal, and that is Frank Rybicki, R-Y-B-I-C-K-I. He is in the book, the Long Gray Line. You can look Frank up. He was killed. He was one of the first in our class killed in the Rung Sat Special Zone in 1967. Infantryman. That quote meant specifically, a great deal to him. So he is an example of how that imprinted on some of us. That is not what forms you at West Point. Far more important is the second thing. On July 2nd, 1962, from my West Point class, we all reported in and Uncle Sam issued us to each other.

SM (00:20:35):
Some of the statistics here, which you well know, you were part of the first class at West Point that took the full impact of the Vietnam War. What I gather, the information I have here, is that 30 of your classmates died in Vietnam. I never got-

JW (00:20:50):
They did not die. There is this great line in Mash, it is where Hawkeye is talking and someone says, "Oh, sir, they died". And it is Alan Alda. He says, "They did not die. Old people in hospitals die. These men were killed."

SM (00:21:09):
Very important. That is a magic moment in this interview for me. I have never thought of it in those terms. Do you know how many of your classmates were wounded that survived? Because I do not... I have never seen that statistic.

JW (00:21:24):
Here is what I can tell you. My West Point class, the class of 1966 was decimated. One in 10 either lost his life or a part of his body. I went through the entire register of my class, and for every Purple Heart, that meant they were either killed or wounded. I did not count all the wounded. I counted those who were wounded in a manner that significantly altered their life. So one in 10, which means... The number is 83 or 87, were killed or lost a part of their body. Which, if you convert that back to the legions and what the effect of those wounds would have been in Roman times, my class was literally decimated. Decimation was levied on allegiance as a form of punishment. My class was not punished, but it was literally decimation. That is what I know about that.

SM (00:22:35):
You were involved, obviously, in building something. I did not even know this, that you were involved in building a memorial to Southeast Asia at West Point.

JW (00:22:46):
Yes.

SM (00:22:47):
And that was one of the main reasons why you were picked to be the leader of raising funds or building the Vietnam Memorial.

JW (00:22:54):
I was chairman of the board for the Memorial Fund.

SM (00:22:58):
Could you tell me, we know about the wall, but I do not know anything about what happened at West Point. Could you tell me a little bit more about that? And-

JW (00:23:07):
It was an idea I had in... It was my idea. It was just on the eve of our 10th reunion, 1976, and I said, "Why do not we build a memorial at West Point for everyone killed?" And the reason I did it is because we were disenfranchised and our country did not know about us. What we would do for our fellows, and their next of kin and widows and kids we had to do for ourselves. With that thought in mind, I went to Wes Clark, Jeff Rogers. This is in the book, the Long Gray Line.

SM (00:23:44):
Yes.

JW (00:23:45):
And Matt Harrison, and we met right here in town at Matt Harrison's house just down the street. Wes Clark and Matt and I met, Jeff was up at West Point. We called Jeff. At our reunion, we all together presented the idea to build a memorial at West Point. It would take money, some money, and we would have to get permission to use land. We worked together to get the land from West Point. That was a good drill for getting land and wash it and in order... We were all very young, right? In order to have some money, my solution was to unite the 10 classes of the (19)60s. That is how it got built.

SM (00:24:33):
It is unbelievable. And then, correct me if I am wrong, but then many members of the class of (19)66 were involved in working on the Vietnam Memorial as well.

JW (00:24:43):
Yes.

SM (00:24:44):
And how did you meet Jan Scruggs and I think Bob Dubak and [inaudible]?

JW (00:24:47):
Again, that is in the long line, the details.

SM (00:24:50):
Right.

JW (00:24:51):
So you could look it up there. I met Scruggs because it is actually a chapter that begins in the book The Long Gray Line. But I read an article... So, look it up there.

SM (00:25:00):
Yes.

JW (00:25:01):
Save us time here. But I went and I read an article that he raised, whatever it was, 200 and some dollars. The exact sum is actually Rick Atkinson has the exact sum, and people were kind of making fun of him on national television, but we were on the cusp of finishing the memorial at West Point. So this is the summer of 1979, and I made a point to call him up when I got back to Washington. He came over to my home. It was a day like this. It was kind of a hot day, summer day. And I listened to what he said, and I said, "I got a Rolodex. You can do this." I said, "You can do this." And then he paid me a compliment, which is what a soldier can do, and he is a soldier. He said he trusted me and there were all these reasons not to trust me. I went to West Point. That is a good reason. If you have been a trooper in the one 99th, you learn that these officers with good ideas can get you hurt, no matter how good their ideas. It may be brilliant, you can still... Just like Afghanistan. General Petraeus may have a great idea, but someone is going to get hurt.

SM (00:26:20):
Yeah.

JW (00:26:20):
I am only half kidding. I am saying that he learns to be wary. He trusted me, even though I went to West Point. He trusted me, even though I was an officer and I have been to these Ivy League schools. That was really... I mean, who would... What sense does that make? So he asked me to be chairman. That is how it happened. The greatest compliment that the field soldier will ever give you is to trust you, period.

SM (00:26:58):
And it is important because Jan has done a great job [inaudible].

JW (00:27:04):
Yes, he did.

SM (00:27:05):
And under a lot of criticism too, from God knows how many people.

JW (00:27:12):
They were not there during the fight and it was a fight.

SM (00:27:16):
Right. Talk about your work with the wall and your beliefs with respect to helping the healing process. One of the questions I have asked everyone from Senator McCarthy when I first started this back in (19)96 part-time, to my full-time work of last a year and a half, is that the students that I worked with at the university, when we used to go on these leadership, on the road trips, we always talked about healing. And we took a group to see Senator Muskie in 1995, 6 months before he died. And the question we asked, the students came up with is that, due to the divisions that were so intense in the Vietnam generation or the boomer generation, the divisions between those who served and those who did not, the divisions between those who supported the troops and did not, the divisions between black and white, male and female, gay and straight. The burnings within the cities, the riots and so forth and certainly what happened in 1968 with the assassinations. Is this generation, the Vietnam generation, going to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? I have a quote I am going to read from this book that you wrote, but what is your thought on the healing process and the role? And the second part of the question is the role that the wall has played, not just for veterans and their families and the people who lost loved ones, but the nation?

JW (00:28:51):
You got to read the quote first. What did I say?

SM (00:28:54):
There is a quote in here. Where is it here? It is on page seven and I... Page seven, and it is bottom paragraph. "Bonded by the heritage of World War II in the electronic media and profoundly shaped and divided the freedom rights, the Peace Corps, the women's movement, and the Vietnam War, the 60 million Americans who came of age in the (19)60s are healing their divisions through remembrance and dialogue. This work is vital since we will be the leaders of our national institutions in the year 2000, we are the century generation." So you were talking back when you wrote this book about the healing process, and you were very confident that it was happening. Just your thoughts now in the year 2010.

JW (00:29:51):
Well, there is three things about that. I always check those pictures. Three things to answer your question. First, it is in the nature of life, like a large tree, to take a wound in the trunk or a whack, but still grow and the bark heals around it and could still be a pretty sturdy tree. So that is natural. That is just natural for a human tribe. The effect of the wall was some healing. It was worth the effort, not just for its main purpose, to remember those who were killed or for the deeper remembrance, which was really for the next of kin, particularly, the mothers. Sometimes I thought, there were a number of years where I thought, we really did it for the moms as I thought about it. But there was also healing. And by striving for healing and using the word and putting the thought into.

JW (00:31:03):
Using the word and putting the thought into consciousness. It added materially to what might have been the slower process by nature. In particular, it accelerated the process of freeing the Vietnam veteran from disenfranchisement and being almost taboo because we were walking remembrance of things that were taboo. One of the biggest taboos is healthy manhood, that the idea of healthy manhood has 10,000 volts in it. Actually, it always does. That does not change in human culture. Probably will not change for another couple of thousand years. 800,000, I mean, that is in our genes not going to change much. The idea of healthy manhood, it has to do with stolen valor. Of course, it is a badge of healthy manhood to go out as a war fighter. But the third process goes back to CS Lewis. It is grace. I am at a point in life now where I can say not just asserting it, but affirming as CS Lewis did when he was in his (19)50s and near his own death. And that is the wall got built by grace and there has been healing by grace and our country, as do all countries and tribes of humans walks in grace. So think about grace.

SM (00:33:01):
You are okay. It is okay I got the main one there. Yep. Yeah. I tell you, when I go to that wall, and I am been honored to be at over 30 times on Memorial Day and Veterans Day events now. It just touches me every time I am there and I am not a veteran, and I sit usually after the ceremonies and I just sit there and reflect on, I knew a lot of Vietnam vets. I know two people on the wall, and to me, it is one of the greatest things that is ever been done in my life.

JW (00:33:38):
Well, it was built by grace.

SM (00:33:40):
Yeah.

JW (00:33:40):
It was not built by, I will tell you this. It was not built by a bunch of ragtag soldiers.

SM (00:33:45):
Yes.

JW (00:33:45):
I mean, which is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, our team. Let me tell you something John Warner said, and you can still ask him. God bless him. He actually might even be in the club. We are at the Metropolitan Club, so he could be here right now. He comes here often, and I will tell you what he said. He said, "I know how that wall got built. You were," and he was talking to all of us. We were young men. And then this was decades later, so we were not so young. But he said, "You were in God's hands." He actually did not say that. He said, "You were in God's hand." That is John Warner. "You were in God's hand." Go ask him.

SM (00:34:41):
That was, I loved him. I know he retired.

JW (00:34:45):
He said it.

SM (00:34:46):
That is Unbelievable. The wall that heals is a follow up to that question is Dan, when he wrote the book to Heal a Nation, I think you have already said it, but where does the nation stand with respect to healing from all the divisions in our society? How did, I have not had a chance to even interview Dan. I sent him a letter once and he did not respond, so maybe he does not want to-to be interviewed. But how does he feel, do you think, with respect to the nation part? I know he-

JW (00:35:17):
Dan has to speak for himself.

SM (00:35:19):
Yeah.

JW (00:35:19):
I will say that if you read with Carol, hear all the references to [inaudible] in this book, Touched With Fire in the Long Gray Line, and then the books he has written and go to the website for vvmf.org and read his stuff, you will get a take on his attitude.

SM (00:35:38):
Right.

JW (00:35:38):
It is a solid and faithful soldier's attitude. It is all one could ask of the American soldier.

SM (00:35:47):
Yeah. Well, we brought him to Westchester for our Wall that Heals. I did not mention, we brought the traveling wall and we had over 6,000 people who came and quite a few veterans after midnight. The Women's Memorial, obviously, Diane Carlson Evans has played a very important role. Again, I have gotten to know her too. I interviewed her for the book. But a lot of the movements from the (19)60s, whether it be the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement, women were put in secondary roles, were women thought of when the original Vietnam Memorial was built. Because it is my understanding, Diane had to really battle to get that in the beginnings before Congress to even get them to think about building the Women's Memorial.

JW (00:36:34):
Right. In the book Touched With Fire, you will find the first part of the answer to that. Several women have written, and you can Google this idea, out of the anti-war movement came the women's movement. The idea of standing up came, as women, came out of the anti-war war movement.

SM (00:36:54):
Yes.

JW (00:36:54):
That is 0.1. That is actually grace from Vietnam. There is a sense in which women came to the front of the bus and the war fighters were put in the back of the bus for that to happen in a great and poetic cultural sense, and that is great. That is okay. We are fine. I mean, you take the war fighters and say, "Go back to the back of the bus." We were disenfranchised. They were treating us like, but we were still back there remembering how great it was in Vietnam and what were they going to do. Send us to Vietnam, the bus was still air conditioned. I am just, I am making a joke. But in a sense, we went to the back of the bus while they got to the front. That is what the women were doing. In large. It was a good thing. Second, it was women were absolutely key in getting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial built, and the women will tell you they were not at the back of any bus. We were out there in the slot wrestling with Webb. But the real efficient, practical work was done by the gals. Sandy Forio is one. She could tell you about the other women on the Memorial fund, but she was our lead fundraiser. I mean, the gals were, and do not forget, it was a woman who won the design, all the productive work.

SM (00:38:13):
Not Linda Goodacre?

JW (00:38:15):
The women did. No, not Linda Goodacre. The Women's Memorial was Linda Goodacre, but Maya Lynn designed the Vietnam. I am just saying, if you look at it, the guys were out there. We were like pigs and slop doing whatever with inefficient things there. We were just basically keeping the barbarians at base. So the women actually did the productive, effective work of fundraising and designing it. Did anybody notice that the creative and sustaining work? I mean, I am just saying if you unfold the memorial story, by the way, they gave as God as they could. I mean, the people, when Sandy Borio was speaking at meetings about what Webb and Perot was doing, we had to restrain her man. She was all set to go hurt him. So I am just saying, right. If you want women's liberation, I mean, it was happening right there. That is just, it is a good part of the story. Absolutely. However, to his great credit, and everybody should be proud of this, the minute the women came, James Gregg said, "We will help you." And I did too. And then a lot of people wanted to burn us at the stake and beat us over our head and shoulders, but we did not notice any difference because we already were already being burned at the stake and beat around head and shoulders because they did not like the design to begin with. So the fact that we were helping the women with the statue, we could not tell. The pain threshold was beyond noticing the difference. I am just making a soldier's joke, to his credit, James supported it. So did I.

SM (00:39:49):
What is amazing is that-

JW (00:39:50):
And we testified you could go hear our, we went and testified together.

SM (00:39:56):
From knowing Lewis in that timeframe when Bill Clinton came to the wall with the bringing kinfolk to the wall, and all the speakers that have been brought in, the entertainers that had been there. To me, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and the people that were involved, the wall have been the greatest advocates for healing in this entire nation, because I have witnessed it as a non-veteran who sits there and watches it. And I had conversations with Lewis about it. He was really pushing for Bill Clinton to come because he felt it was important, and he was also the reaching out to Vietnam and helping the warriors in Vietnam.

JW (00:40:35):
But is there a question here?

SM (00:40:37):
The question is, to me, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund seems to be one of the leaders in the healing within the nation, period.

JW (00:40:46):
It is not the fund or the wall.

SM (00:40:48):
Well, the group in bound in the.

JW (00:40:52):
It is grace.

SM (00:40:54):
Okay.

JW (00:40:54):
That is the better door to go in through, I think, because we are just human beings. But it is grace. From a scientific point of view, that is an anthropological point of view. The wall is a liminal place, L-I-M-I-N-A-L. It is a liminal place. It is a phenomenon that happens in human tribes. It is a way of saying it is a sacred place. I will give you an example. At the dedication. Dan and I were alone after the speeches. We were alone, by the way, president Reagan had not come to the dedication. It was too controversial. He came two years later when we dedicated the statue, but he did not come to the dedication of the wall. We were alone in a sense. So what? We were alone in Vietnam too. Do you know what I mean? We were soldiers and young, so to speak. Anyways, what Dan and I both noticed was even though there were maybe 112,000 or 150,000 people around us, we were walking along the top of the walls. We could look over to our right. It was almost as silent as the room that we were in, with 150,000 people. And Dan turned to me and said, "When we die, there is going to be a heck of a party." My wife saw it on TV. She saw everybody going to the cathedral to read names. John Walker, the Bishop of Washington, gave us permission to do that. It is in the book, The Long Green Line, and my wife was watching that. She is an Episcopal priest. My wife at the time, not my current wife. This is my wife Lisa. There was a divorce because the wounds in the family that went with my daughter's birth defect and my selfish dedication to the wall, I took myself away from my family, ended the marriage. I did not have a family meaning saying, "I am going to do this." I did not give them a vote. That was selfish. But when we were married, she looked at the names being read at the cathedral, and she said, it was just out of the blue. I was not even paying attention because I was so tired. Matter of fact, I was so tired that week I could finally de-stress from a hard three years. And I did not know that I had seven more years of fight to go because Jim Webb and Ross Perot and John McCain were going to spend the next three Congress was trying to sneak through changes of the design. Yes, they did. But the manager here made me a sandwich. The club was closed. But-

SM (00:44:34):
You can eat it. You can-

JW (00:44:35):
No-no. I will get it. But I am just saying it was the same thing. He went, himself and personally made it because the whole town was filled with veterans, and I just came here to be alone, just like we are now. God bless him that manager. I lost my train of thought. I was talking about my wife. I was so tired I [inaudible] past three, my wife turned to me and I was almost, I could not go to sleep. You know sometimes you are so tired, you cannot go to sleep. I was just zoned down out, and she was watching the reading of the names, which was very moving. I was grateful for it. And the president went, finally, just, the president grabbed the first lady and they went to the cathedral. I was so grateful to John Walker and God bless him. He died too young. And so what I am saying is that in this mood, just out of the blue, she says "You are going to heaven, Jackie Wheeler."

SM (00:45:58):
You are going. No, just you are. Because I know personally the effect that it had on Vietnam veterans in my community, two in particular, WHO until we brought the traveling wall, when Dan came, they had never had the courage to even go to Washington. And they told me point blank, they were not going to even walk over. But the day that Dan was there, we had our greatest crowds in the evening because OF classes. But we had the ceremony outside with the president of the university and the mayor, and we had Vietnam veterans and their kids speaking, and Dan spoke. We had country Joe. But over in the corner, along the wall, by the science building. I saw both of them. They were emphatic that they were not ready yet. That is as close as they came. They did not walk up to the wall. But that is another thing. When I left the university, one of them thanked me for the wall. But Dan Scruggs and what you have done is just, to me, the most important thing within the generation, the boomer generation. To me, it is the most important thing that is ever happened within the boomer generation, because you cannot define, in my opinion, the boomer generation without talking about Vietnam. As Paul Critchlow says, it was the watershed moment in everyone's life. But Paul said to me, he said, "I felt I wanted to be part of the most important happening in my lifetime, that watershed moment." That is why he served in Vietnam. And even the anti-war people and all the other things. The war is the center core. So I do not ever have a chance to say thanks to Dan Scruggs and all the people that were involved like you, but to me, in my life, as a non-veteran who deeply cares about Vietnam veterans, it is the most important thing that is ever happened in my life. And I am not even a veteran.

JW (00:48:29):
Understood.

SM (00:48:30):
I come to the wall and I bring students to the wall because I know how important it is. And when you see those names, it is just unbelievable. I read books and every time there is a Vietnam veteran whose name is mentioned, who passed away in this book or that book or that book, I go to the wall and look the name up. There must be a couple hundred names that I do not even know who they are except the fact they were in books.

JW (00:49:03):
Okay.

SM (00:49:04):
So one of the conversations that I think this book is tremendous, I wish they would reprint this book. In fact, I mentioned to James Thalas when I interviewed him. I said, what would be great is to bring all these people back together again from the, that are in the symposium? And he said, and James Thalas said, "I would be willing to do it." And I know Bobby Mueller real well, and I know actually Phil Caputo, he is out in Arizona right now. But what I am getting at here is I would like your responses to some of their commentaries back in when this was written, this came out in (19)81, and you make a comment. You make a statement to, a quote here that I think is very important because you praise James Thalas, "And there are too many guys in our generation who do not understand how the war shaped them. Unlike Jim Thalas." And I said this to Mr. Thalas when I interviewed him, and you praise him and others that he admitted he was wrong. He admitted that he was a coward to obey the draft the way they did it, and not protest against the, it is not like protesting against a war. It was evading the draft. And he feels guilty about it, and he does not, I do not think he feels guilty now, but he was.

JW (00:50:30):
It was an article what did do in the class war end. Yeah. But he did. He stood up to it. Right. Manfully.

SM (00:50:36):
Right. And your thoughts on, did you think that many within the generation did that? Or was he still a rarity?

JW (00:50:43):
Jim? Jim is exceptional and a rarity.

SM (00:50:47):
Yeah. Too many did not.

JW (00:50:48):
Yeah. He is one that the Rhode Scholar people got, sometimes they miss, but they got it right. When he became a Rhode Scholar. He makes that program look good. You know what? You can knock Jim Thalas, just do not knock him around me.

SM (00:51:01):
No. Yeah. He respects you. I am telling you. And he actually respects Jim Webb too. He mentioned that the, and I have a comment from Jim Webb.

JW (00:51:12):
Well, that is right. You better respect Jim Webb and you better watch out for his right hook.

SM (00:51:18):
Right. He mentioned something when we were talking about that, when you look at the Vietnam generation, it is a generation of service. It was a generation that went in the Peace Corps. It was a generation of Vietnam veterans who went to serve their nation. It is a generation that went and volunteers in Service to America. It is a generation. And then he said, "Hold it. Hold it. I think one of the weaknesses of the boomer generation is that they are not a generation of service because they avoided the war." And he brings up the reasons why in his own-own way. So when you talk about the (19)60s generation as the generation of service, yet Jim Webb challenges that idea what do you think of Jim Webb's thoughts?

JW (00:52:21):
Could you restate the question? Just-

SM (00:52:24):
The question was-

JW (00:52:24):
Closer. I mean, just-

SM (00:52:26):
I think what Senator Webb was saying at the time is that we all look at the (19)60s to the (19)60s and the (19)70s, and the boomer generation that grew up at the World War II as a generation that was really inbound in service. It is one of the characteristics, the qualities, whether it be service by serving in Vietnam, or serving in the Peace Corps, or volunteers in Service to America, or alternative service, or at least for those who were, is objectors doing alternative service for two years in a very hard way. A couple of my friends did in Newfoundland that would have qualify. But he says, "Too many avoided the war through avoiding the draft and what a so and generation has such large numbers avoiding service, and they should have fought in the war." Is what he is really saying. Response on that?

JW (00:53:38):
First, Jim is right. You still got a wide shot for his right hook. I am just pulling your leg.

SM (00:53:45):
Yeah.

JW (00:53:46):
It is a combative statement, but he is right. That is the first thing. Second, he is touching on something fundamental. The people who lost the most from not going into service, as Jim said, were those who have made that choice themselves. Those good things they could have done, people they helped, did not benefit from their service, but they themselves suffered most. That is why I used this quote and why this is called Touched with Fire.

SM (00:54:38):
Just right there in the front.

JW (00:54:43):
You do not have to read it. I am just pointing to this quote. You either enter the action of your time or there is a sense in which you have not lived. So the real loss was for those who made that choice. By the way, not all of them made some kind of selfish choice. Many had no choice to make. Many were drafted. That was not choice. And yet they stood too and served with their fellows. A lot of them are on the wall. There were many women who were treated like women in the (19)50s were, they did not have much choice. That is cruel. Our society in ways was cruel to women in the (19)50s. Thank God for Catherine McKinnon and the women who did lead and still lead the women's movement. So we were, many people did not have a choice. We were so fortunate, those of us who could go to West Point or Annapolis to be able to choose. Then there is something deeper, and I will tell you who taught me this, was Elliot Richardson, God bless him.

SM (00:55:54):
Died of [inaudible].

JW (00:55:55):
Yes. It is the, you must read the essay, the Moral Equivalent of War. Google it and read it.

SM (00:56:07):
He wrote it.

JW (00:56:08):
No, it is a classic.

SM (00:56:10):
Okay.

JW (00:56:13):
It is not Holmes, but I am embarrassed. It is a classic. You read it.

SM (00:56:18):
Okay.

JW (00:56:19):
The Moral Equivalent of War, Google it, turn of the century. Elliot pointed me to it because war evokes the deepest signatures of grace actually, and of sacrifice and of those things worth not just dying for, but living for, of any human experience. Maybe even more than birth. Maybe more than birth, because war's death. “You must read the, think about what Elliot was saying, just like I think about it. You figure out what he was saying." He said, "You read that Jack, Elliot Richardson, God bless him," and his name was on, I put his name on the back of the wall. You know there is names on the back of the wall.

SM (00:57:10):
No, I did not know that. Yeah.

JW (00:57:11):
Well, you go, if you look in The Long Gray Line, there is a set of names. I thanked everybody that was significant in getting the wall built. I called Jay Carter Brown and said, "I want to do this." But I said, "If I have to ask permission, it will never happen. It will become public." He said, "This is Jay Carter Brown, God bless him." Jay Carter Brown on the telephone, chairman of the Fine Arts Commission, the Commission of Fine Arts. He says, "Oh, I think it is like putting the builders name on a cornerstone of a building, do not you think? Comma Jack?" And I said-

SM (00:58:03):
Yeah.

JW (00:58:04):
"Well, sir, yes." And he said, "I think it would be perfectly routine." And I said, I was chairman of the board at the morning front. I said, "Yes, sir." And he said, I was on the phone. And he said, I said, "So there would not be a need for a hearing?" "I would not think so, would you?" And I said, " No, sir," I make things up. I am not making that up.

SM (00:58:36):
Elliot Richardson, we all know him in history because he resigned because of-

JW (00:58:41):
That is why I am making the point. Okay.

SM (00:58:41):
Yeah.

JW (00:58:43):
Got that, got that. That is you go, you go do that work. How we doing? It is 3:20.

SM (00:58:50):
I got a few more questions and you can eat your sandwich over here. Bobby Mueller, in that same discussion, talked about how disappointed he was in America, that the leaders had let us down, that he went into service. And I wonder how many people who served at that time thought like Bobby with respect to, upon the return to America, there was a thinking that when you went to Vietnam, that America was always the good guy, but now that America's the bad guy?

JW (00:59:32):
Bobby was reacting, but we were young. We were all overreacting. That is the way Bobby. That is the way Bobby, God bless him, overreacted. It was a little too much. There was some truth in what he said. A sense of alienation was understandable because we were alienated. I mean like a good marine, since we were alienated, he figured out that he was alienated. But you overreact. It is a little bit much to ask a guy who was 25 years old or 31 years old at the time, to have a sense of growth, maturity and history. Especially when you have had the wounds he had.

SM (01:00:18):
Right.

JW (01:00:18):
So he was putting his finger on some real truth. It is just that there was surrounding truth. Bobby sees it, I think, in a larger context now. Was he right? Yes. Was it a little overstated? Maybe. God bless Bobby.

SM (01:00:36):
Bobby was at my retirement party. I invited him and he came and it was an hour and a half in there. We actually met him a couple times. What is interesting, I will never forget [inaudible] telling him at the extra room at this session that you were in, he said, "Bobby, you have a temper." I do not know if you remember that. He has said, "Bobby, you have a temper." It seems like today that there are efforts by the right and conservatives to divide our nation by making references to the (19)60s and (19)70s for creating all the problems in our society today with respect to the counterculture, the new left, the activists of many movements for creating the following, the drug culture, the divorce rate, the breakup of the family, the irresponsible behavior, the welfare state, dependence on government, dissent mentality, which actually what Mr. Webb talks about in the book. Special interest, controlling ideas in universities where various studies programs are being taken over by the troublemakers of the (19)60s. Phyllis Schley and David Horowitz said, but in the two, talking about that "Universities today are run by the troublemakers of the (19)60s because they run all the studies programs from women's studies to gay."

SM (01:02:03):
Because they run all the studies, from women's studies to gay and lesbian studies, environmental studies, Native American studies, black studies. Your thoughts on- Actually, the people that made these comments some of them were people like New Gingrich and Governor Huckabee and George Will in some of his writings and others.

JW (01:02:28):
It is all as American as apple pie. If Ben Franklin and Abigail Adda, I would rather talk with Abigail before I talk to John Adams. I just think I would rather spend the afternoon having a tea with Abigail more than-

SM (01:02:45):
A couple of biographies done on her recently-

JW (01:02:47):
Oh, she is pretty good. Abigail is pretty good and John, he could come along. My point is, if the Adams' were here and Ben Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, they had listened to everything you just said. The question you just said. And, they would say "Well, it is working out. What do you think Tom" and Tom said "Well, it is working out. It is working out." Of course, they are all sitting there knowing that Tom has got this thing going with Sally Hemings, but they are not going to mention that. No one is going to, I mean you know. I am just saying they are all human. We are all human. And, they would say "Well, it looks like it is probably the Republics, looks like it is working out. What do you think?" And, they would say "Yeah." Dolly Madison, I would love to talk with Dolly Madison as well as James Madison. I am saying they would look at everything and say "This is Americans apple pie, Chris. Who knew what apple pie was and what America was?" But, I mean, that is how they look at it. Everything you have just said can be transformed by a mathematical formula so that it is the right [inaudible] while they are beating us up from the left and it is all working out. It is all just mud wrestling. And, it goes with the system that was set up. Here is the biggest thing to remember about the very healthy condition that you defined. I see it as healthy, just slinging mud at each other. What the founding people did, some of the guys being well advised by their wives, and I am talking about Dolly and Abigail, just to start with, Betsy Ross too. God bless her making the flag. Molly pitcher, God bless them. Seriously that the whole generation that fought the revolution. The condition of controversy, it is just built into our republic and it tends to work out okay. What they did in order to keep an envelope around everything, like a rocket ship has a steel shell or a metal shell, do not pierce it the oxygen will leak out in the space and we will all die. I mean, we are a big rocket ship actually. As Buckminster Fuller says, we are on a spaceship, it is called Earth. Be careful. Do not leak the oxygen out of our planet. There is some truth in that, but I am trying to make this point. What holds it all together is how they balanced. In our republic, the branches of government, executive has some powers, everybody's got some power. But, here is my point. We assume once we get the idea, do not leave. Do not take your eyes off the blackboard too quick. What we are learning, you got to pay attention to it. They were not balancing each other's virtues. They were balancing their vices. What I mean is pride and ego on one side will be a very effective antidote for pride and ego on the other side. You do not have to worry about the good impulses of one side being balanced by the good impulses of the other side. Actually, good impulses tend to work together. It is the human condition on one side, a little bit of pride, a little bit of ego, a little bit of illicit sex going on. We are shocked. We are all human. I am just saying. I am just trying to exaggerate a little bit to make a point that what they did was balance, not virtues, but balance, weaknesses or vices, so to speak. That is the genius. So, you got- I am going back to your question. Oh my God, they are calling us rascals. Well, we called them rascals. Oh my God. You never ever forget the vitriol. Just to be clear level that Abe Lincoln or Tom Jefferson or FDR. It is just we live in an envelope of life that is short. Even if we are 65 or 85 years old. It is a short envelope. A little more perspective and we could see things the way Abigail and Dolly too.

SM (01:07:31):
You give a good perspective there because some people may look at this and say, well, what those students were saying about the divisions and the lack of healing in the nation is just continuing with these. We see it in Congress today that no one talks to each other. Everybody has got the right answer and what other people's answers are, they are totally wrong. So, those kinds of things. And, you have a great quote here too. And, I think this is on page six, and I am not going to go over any more quote this the last one, but-

JW (01:08:04):
Oh, the cruelest thing you do to someone is read their book, Adam. Oh my God.

SM (01:08:08):
I want you because this is important. I thought of this too, growing up in the (19)50s, our generation. See, you see things- I think that is what the wall does too. You see things in terms of commonality as opposed to things that divide. You think of things that unite and you say it in this paragraph. "Our generation shares the features of common experience, background and power. We grew up in the (19)50s and (19)60s in a country united by electronics, radio, television, and many shared attitudes. For example, we watched John Kennedy's inaugural address. We watched Disneyland. Davy Crockett with S Parker who just passed away last year. We know what Conrad and civil defense drills mean. We danced together. We turned rock and roll into cultural force. Such similarity was unique in history among so many young people at one time." What you are doing there is you are doing something very positive. You are showing- Instead of always talking about the divisions, what are the commonalities that make us want, try to understand each other better through our shared experience.

JW (01:09:18):
That had not changed.

SM (01:09:20):
Yeah.

JW (01:09:21):
How are we doing? I am having trouble, because I know we were budgeted to four, but for various reasons I only got five hours sleep last night trying to hold my family together with what we are dealing with.

SM (01:09:36):
Wow. How much time do we have here?

JW (01:09:37):
Well, it is only 3:30.

SM (01:09:39):
Do you have enough time?

JW (01:09:40):
Yeah, I have got some more time. If we could do some more questions.

SM (01:09:44):
These are real [inaudible]-

JW (01:09:45):
Also, you can come back on the phone. I mean you can adjust this and maybe talk even on the phone tomorrow. I am just having trouble.

SM (01:09:55):
In your feeling. When did the (19)60s begin, in your opinion? When did it end and what do you feel was the watershed moment of the (19)60s?

JW (01:10:06):
First, it is talking about the people. That is why I come up with the 60 minute. I say, let us not talk about baby boomers per se because that does not capture the social energy and the social framework. The social framework, and that is the question you are asking. What is the- What are the bookends socially? And then, we can talk about the human beings that were caught in that. That is 60 million, not 76 million. It is 60.

SM (01:10:31):
The front edge of the so-called generation is more from 46 to 56 basically.

JW (01:10:34):
No.

SM (01:10:34):
No?

JW (01:10:38):
No-no. I am going to be very clear on that correction. You got to go back to (19)43 or (19)42 even because you want to talk about people who were young and malleable and shaped by the events. So, forget 46, it is too late. You got to go- I am 44. I know I am in this group. So, let us first talk about the markers and then talk about the human beings in it. That is why this baby boom thing is... It is stupid. It is not measuring the right elements. It has got the bulk of them right, but it leaves out too many important people. Those born before (19)46. I mean there is- You get my point.

SM (01:11:18):
Oh yeah. Many people have brought it up to-

JW (01:11:21):
So, let us first talk- So forget baby boom. Baby boom was a label put on a bunch of human beings that were born [inaudible]. Let us talk about events and then talk about who's framed by them. Let us talk about the valley and then we will talk about the people who live there. The valley is on one side- Well, 64 let us start- When the number of funerals at West Point began to get pretty significant. That would tell you when the war was on us. That will be (19)64. Because, we are talking about either life or death. That does not mean- I am not saying West Point, I am just saying there is an indicator and that is when the funerals began to get numerous. And, how do I know? Because I marched. I was on funeral details. I know. So, it would be (19)64 when awareness of war and the simultaneous coming of age of a pretty united group of people and self-awareness among the group. Because, we were all just in college, (19)64. So then, the era would go on, has to go through (19)75 at least, which would be when the war ended with the helicopter leaving (19)64 to (19)75 would be pretty good. Now, who were the people who were 18 that is newly liberated from home, and newly empowered as young humans at that time? Well, it would be the freshman in college, would not it? So, you want freshmen in college or people in college in (19)64. Not necessarily just in college, many were not in college. But, I am saying take people who were 18 and older in (19)64 or who turned 18 in... You are going to be in college in (19)64 if you were born in (19)43. So, it would be Americans born in (19)43. And, this is how I came up with the 60 million, going up to Americans who would be... In 1975, they would be... You got to be aware in (19)75 you got to be an aware human being. So, if you were born in (19)43, you are going to be an aware human being, 18 or so, come (19)64. But then, you are going from (19)43 up to (19)50, (19)55. You add 20 years, you get 75. So, it would be 57, 43 to 57. But, that arbitrary, and that is how I gets 60 million. You go to that 40, you- and I define it in the book. That is actually defined in your book. I go through the numbers, whatever I say there is the how I got the 60 million. But, my point is (19)46 to people born as late as (19)75. That is bullshit.

SM (01:15:20):
64 is-

JW (01:15:20):
Oh, (19)46-

SM (01:15:22):
(19)46 to (19)64.

JW (01:15:24):
Oh, so you were born in (19)64 then in 1974, you were 10 years old. You were not affected by the events of the [inaudible] of the greater world when you are 10. That is an exact example of why that whole construct of looking precisely at a baby boom like a social engineer and saying that has anything to do with cultural interpretation is bullshit.

SM (01:15:59):
And, you know I [inaudible]-

JW (01:16:00):
You are not going to say that someone who was 10 years old was really affected by that. Do you get the point on-

SM (01:16:04):
Yeah, yeah. And, Todd Gitman, the person who was with SDS and actually was the second leader of SDS, was born in (19)42. So, I was the leader of SDS and [inaudible]-

JW (01:16:18):
All I am saying is the first 10 pages or 20 pages of that book, I answer that question. How are we doing?

SM (01:16:30):
Okay, just three more. Three more. What was the watershed moment? Was there a watershed moment in this period, when you talk about the period?

JW (01:16:35):
In what sense, for who?

SM (01:16:36):
To you, what was the watershed moment of-

JW (01:16:39):
In what period?

SM (01:16:42):
I mean in the period we are talking about here, when the (19)60s began and when it ended. Was there such? Was there a watershed-

JW (01:16:50):
Yeah, it was coming back from Vietnam when I realized. I was in a different culture in a different place and the first thing I realized it was my home. My real home was- At first I thought it was in Vietnam. Well, it was really, and then I thought, well, it is really West Point. And, it was in a way, but that is not really it. My home was those that I fought with and served with. It was those guys issued to me as I was issued to them by Uncle Sam for my environment, in my world on July 2nd, 1962. But, because I had left the military, left the army I was floating alone. I was a stranger in a strange land to use a biblical phrase. And, it was disorienting. My brother had to hold me by the hand and help me figure out how to talk, so to speak. It is not that I was not culturally aware. I mean, I got a good job. I had been to good schools. For me, the watershed was understanding that my country and culture was a ship that had left me and I was not on it. And, people did not want to hear about where I had been or my classmates or know about Tommy Hayes and how he got killed. They did not want to talk about sacrifice and valor and there were three words- There were at least four words that were just heaved out the window. One of them was the idea of healthy manhood, let us throw that out the window. Oh, healthy manhood? No, we are all going to be laid back and have ponytails and that is okay. I am trying, in a poetic sense to say the idea of healthy manhood went out the window. Suddenly the motto of West Point became really old speak. It was okay if it were on [inaudible]. It very disorienting time. One reason when I went to Yale Law School, I was kind of depressed and thank God for the faculty there who fished me out of the water. God bless them.

SM (01:19:49):
What do you think were the, two more, in your opinion, what was the greatest mistake ever made in Vietnam? And, the thing is that, and I preface this by saying that in my opinion as a person who did not serve, but has read a lot. A lot of presidents deserve some sort of blame for our links to Vietnam from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Nixon Johnson and obviously Ford, we left after Ford, but then he was criticized heavily to leave for us leaving. So, in your opinion, what was the greatest mistake ever made in Vietnam?

JW (01:20:34):
Well, we now know that topping the Christmas bombing was stupid. By that I mean in the context of fighting a war to win, I want to be very careful. There are people who say that was not a war worth fighting. So, winning did not make sense. It is going-going to be a very productive conversation to explore anything with a person who says we should not have been there and we should not have been trying to win. Okay, and I understand that. Okay, but here is how I am answering the question. I am saying from the point of view of this being a war, which was to be won and for which my class was decimated in combat. From that point of view, the biggest single mistake was stopping the B52 bombing of Hanoi because we now know from general job that they were close to caving.

SM (01:21:40):
What year was this, the exact year?

JW (01:21:42):
73, 74. We knew 72. That is how close we were. They were close to crumbling. We now know that it was a big mistake. It would have made a huge difference on what they settled for in Paris. A huge blunder. Now, wait a minute. Other people at the table will then go bananas and yell and scream and say "No, the mistake was we should not have ever been there." Well, okay, you can have that conversation. That is a different conversation. You could say it was not worth winning. You could say it was immoral. They could say, oh, you baby killer. You know, you can go nuts. And, Abigail and Dolly would say "The tea is not going to do. You got to get some bourbon. Tom" Jim, Mr. [inaudible], Dolly's husband [inaudible]. Jim [inaudible] go get some bourbon. Tea is not going to do for this crowd, they need a drink. Okay. All I am saying is I want to answer your question as a war fighter. And, as someone who is aware that we had sent soldiers to fight and win from a war fighter's point of view, given we were there, given the lives sacrificed, given the war, the fact of war, given the idea that in war there is no substitute for victory, the biggest single blunder was not pushing Hanoi past that point of caving. And, they were ready to do it, Job has said. We were being pounded toward the table and toward making big major compromises and agreements to get out of this thing. We were just being hammered. That was the biggest blunder. And, the prisoners of war who came back said, we heard the bombs. Some of them could have killed some of us. We wish you had not stopped because they were scurrying around, really scared kitty cats at that moment. This is the word from the POW's. I am really tired. I am sorry man. You have one more question and then maybe you could re-look at the stuff I asked you too. We could tag up with maybe another hour on the phone or something.

SM (01:24:08):
That would be fine. I appreciate this and one last question that is kind of a follow-up. When Ronald Reagan became president, you mentioned our already that it was too controversial to come to the opening of the wall. To me that is inexcusable as President of the United States-

JW (01:24:27):
But, I am not saying that. I am saying I understood. We were just too hot.

SM (01:24:30):
But, the thing is when he became president-

JW (01:24:33):
Because, do not forget, Perot and McCain and Webb were [inaudible] hell at us. And, Webb was close to Reagan. It is okay.

SM (01:24:42):
Well, President Reagan, when he became president made a comment over and over again. We are back, we are back, we are back. And then, President Bush, who was his vice president later in the late (19)80s, early (19)90s, said the Vietnam syndrome is over. That is just my last question. Could you comment on what do you think Ronald Reagan meant by we are back? The perception was that what happened in the (19)60s and the (19)70s where law and order is back. We are not going to have these student protests anymore. We are going to get the military back to the way-

JW (01:25:24):
Okay, let me respond to that question. First of all, God bless Nancy Reagan. I will tell you what about Nancy Reagan, as the first lady of California, she went out to meet planes coming back and coming back at the various airports. There were several places in Vietnam and rather in California, where planes would come back. And, because she was at Sacramento, she could go to Travis Air Force base and meet a lot of planes and there would be guys that would land, it would be early morning and it would be a little bit of rain and they would see a woman with a little detail of California state police with her if she was meeting a plane. And, people can make up stories why they do not like Nancy Reagan and they can do that. Just do not do that around me. Yeah, I love her for that. She was there and it is not like there were a crowd of people meeting any of the planes.

SM (01:26:37):
You knew from publicity. She did it because she cared.

JW (01:26:40):
She did it because she cared. God bless her. Now, it is not like 800 people could come to Travis Air Force base to meet the planes. I am making a point about Nancy Reagan first. Do not ever forget it. That is important. Second, what President Reagan was saying was, at the dean's level, there are things worth dying for still. And, I want to hand a compliment, and I would ask you, when you write as you do or however you put your work together, there is someone who deserves and has earned a really good compliment for the way President Reagan spoke when he came to the time when we conveyed the memorial to the United States in 1984, the statue was done. We were going to build the women's statue. That is okay. But, we conveyed it to the United States and he came, and he spoke wonderfully, and the person who wrote that speech was terrific, and please write down her name and say so. This is a bouquet of roses for her. And, that is Peggy Noonan. Now, she may not be your- I mean, all I am saying is-

SM (01:28:05):
I know all about her. I got a couple of reports.

JW (01:28:09):
I am just saying, it is like Nancy Reagan, you can knock Peggy, do not do it around me.

SM (01:28:12):
I am not going to. I am not going to.

JW (01:28:14):
I am just saying. She wrote that speech and she is terrific.

SM (01:28:19):
And, that is the one Ronald Reagan gave at the-

JW (01:28:22):
When we conveyed the memorial to the United States-

SM (01:28:27):
1984.

JW (01:28:28):
It was Veterans Day in 1984.

SM (01:28:34):
Is there any way you get a copy of that speech or?

JW (01:28:36):
No, you can get it. You will google it or contact Peggy. Call Peggy up and say "God, this guy wants to give you a bouquet of roses. You know that?"

SM (01:28:46):
She lives in California, I think-

JW (01:28:48):
I think she lives in Manhattan. Anyway, that is your homework. Do not tell me your problems. Go do your damn work, man. I do my work. You do your work. You want to be a journalist, go P one. You want to go work mean go get your-

SM (01:29:00):
Well, actually, I am a college administrator [inaudible].

JW (01:29:03):
I do not want to hear you telling me your problems. What I want you a college administrator. When did you get into sadism? I am just kidding. Masochism. Here is what I am saying, just you find Peggy. Tell her about that compliment. It is not-not a compliment. It is like she did it. I want to say one last thing about West Point and soldiers. It is true of the military now because it is a volunteer meal, military. It is always been true of West Point and the five service academies. West Point is just one of five. But, because we have a volunteer military, it is actually true of everybody in the US military. We are trusted by our country to defend our country. It is privilege. Citizens pay for us to be able to do that. They pay for us to develop the skills we have and the gratitude goes first from us whom they trust to the citizens. I am saying thank you. It is a trust. It is not the other way around. I mean, many people say humans do not do well at adjusting to war and its effects. That does not mean that writing on the subject and working on it-it is not a good thing. It just means it is hard. The debates we have now in Congress, in the Council on Foreign Relations of which I am a member. On the current issue, for example, the rules of engagement or on the way the defense department is being run the Pentagon. All echo for me now, just another verse. It is like Dante, almost just another big verse and set of couplets out of, I am afraid it is inferno. It is not the Paradiso from 1968 to 2010. Now, we have Robert Gates who is making many of the same mistakes as McNamara. I know that because I was in the building with McNamara and then Clark Clifford, I worked there. The difference is Gates does not have the depth and breadth of character that Robert McNamara had, and that is a big difference.

SM (01:31:51):
What were the most important influences in your life? I know your dad and your military background, and I interviewed Peter Coyote yesterday, the actor. And, of course he comes from the new left background, totally different from your background, but when I asked him the question, I said "When you look at your life up to this point in 2010, what are the specific events? Can you name three to five personalities, people, events, happenings that made you who you are today?" And, how do you respond to that?

JW (01:32:25):
Well, it has to be my mom who grew up on a ranch in way West Texas. We are not talking just Laredo and West County. We are talking Asherton, Texas, and she is Irish from that part of the state. My dad is an army brat. My grandfather was cavalry from Texas, and so those are formative. My brother was formative. I mean, he died suddenly three years ago. That is a huge loss. Helping me realize the answer to your question, how important my brother was-

JW (01:33:03):
...me realize the answer to your question how important my brother was. Shared memories and a sounding board through life. We were just barely 20 months apart in age. After that, it would be, I would have to say CS Lewis. Increasingly as we age, we realize that people who influence us are not necessarily close friends. They are people whose spirit or presence means a lot. CS Lewis and my uncle John Conley, who received a silver star for conduct in the first low level raid of the B-29 is over Tokyo, March 8 and 9, 1945. They were significant, their memory and what they did, and what they stood for. CS Lewis, because the way he writes and deals with issues of faith works for me, works for my DNA and my background. Although I believe in faith, that I will meet him. I am a little nervous about that because he is a big gruff Irishman, I am not sure how we will get along. He died the same day that... and I actually calculated, the same hour as John Kennedy.

SM (01:34:24):
November 22, (19)63.

JW (01:34:26):
Yeah, the same hour, actually, though. It is interesting when you account for the time change between London and Texas. It was just interesting.

SM (01:34:33):
How old was he when he died?

JW (01:34:34):
He was 63.

SM (01:34:34):
Young.

JW (01:34:34):
He was young. Help me, one other guy died that day. You got to Google it. And they were all Irish, I think that all three were Irish. Anyway, Jack Kennedy and of course Jack Lewis, his nickname was Jack, happened to die that same day. At West Point, the Kennedy assassination was significant. Little did I know that also at that same hour, another Irishman named Jack was taken. And Google and find that other third, there were three significant personalities died that day. That is a good way to answer your question. West Point is significant. It is significant for everybody that goes there in different ways.

SM (01:35:16):
Yeah. I have actually known people who have gone to West Point. We had a couple of our students that went there, and I do not know, they got in after they finished two years of college, but they wanted to go to West Point, so they got in and they graduated. One of them was the mayor of Westchester, Pennsylvania's son, was a West Point graduate. I know he has served in Iraq. But duty, honor, country was something, even when you... in this book where there were differences of opinion about the war even amongst the veterans of the Vietnam War. There was still, no matter what the differences may have been and the frictions that took place over politics, no one ever lost that. The feeling of, there was a sense that that was something so important. How important has that been in your life? Just those three words. Not only from your service in Vietnam, what you have done since Vietnam, but going into West Point and serving there for four years?

JW (01:36:19):
They are as important for me as any other man in my West Point class, or for the women now who go. It is important to note that it was in May of 2005 that the 10000th women graduated from the five federal academies. And do not forget that James Webb and I parted company over that issue. The women going to the academy. That was his article November 1979, Washingtonian, "Women cannot fight". He tells people when he runs for office that, oh, he is outgrown that article. Do not you believe it? Webb does not change much, I know him well, I edited his book A Sense of Honor.

SM (01:37:09):
Yeah. I have the book.

JW (01:37:10):
About West Point. Have you seen it?

SM (01:37:11):
I have not read it.

JW (01:37:12):
Did you look at... do you have the book?

SM (01:37:13):
I have the book. I have read Fields of Fire, but I have not read the right.

JW (01:37:16):
Have you opened up, have you opened the book up?

SM (01:37:18):
No.

JW (01:37:18):
Have you looked at the frontispiece?

SM (01:37:20):
Yes.

JW (01:37:21):
So I am in it. Are you aware of that?

SM (01:37:24):
No, I...

JW (01:37:25):
All right, this is what you are going to do. By the way, it is 2:30 and we are going to have to come to a hard stop, so I want to make sure we go through your questions. Let us answer them crisply. Then you can come back.

SM (01:37:35):
Right-right.

JW (01:37:35):
What I would like you to do, sir, is go to A Sense of Honor, open it up, go to the frontispiece and look at the dedication.

SM (01:37:45):
Okay.

JW (01:37:46):
And I want you to email me back and tell me what the green bench is.

SM (01:37:50):
The green bench?

JW (01:37:51):
Yes, sir. I want you to do that.

SM (01:37:54):
All right.

JW (01:37:55):
You are going to have to work a little bit to find out what the green bench is.

SM (01:37:58):
All right I shall do that. You said in the same article that I just mentioned it briefly –

JW (01:38:02):
Anyway, I edited for Webb, I know the man.

SM (01:38:05):
Yeah. I tried to interview him before he became Senator, but he was busy running for the Senate and then I was never able to interview him. You said in the same article that the events of one generation shaped the attitudes of the next, and you brought up examples in your book about the results of the harshness on Germany in World War I and how it shaped many of the Germans and their attitudes and due to the reparations and the tough stand that was taken against Germany. How did that apply to Vietnam in terms of the effect that maybe what happened in World War II affected the boomer generation?

JW (01:38:47):
Two ways. One is the intellectual and story level, which happens in every culture because of a war. There were so many of us that went into Vietnam. The generation was roughly 30 million women, 30 million men roughly. Roughly 60 million in all. When you count, not just technical baby boomers, but also those born a little before because so many youngsters born (19)44 and (19)43 fought in Vietnam. But you do not count all the baby boomers born late in the (19)50s because they were just nine years old during the Vietnam War. So you use 60 million. Well that is 30 million women, 30 million guys, and so the children grow up knowing that something happened and they pay attention, they listen and they learn, like any youngster does in the family. Regardless of what the parents were doing during that period, it was significant for their parents. That is one way, story, culture, family. But there is something more significant. Everyone who fights in a war goes through trauma. And now in the year 2010, we understand what PTSD is. By the way, my own West Point classmate, Jim Peak, who was Secretary of Veterans Affairs, uses this term post-traumatic stress-normal reaction. He is a doctor, an MD, first MD to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs, my point is, Jim is saying that is what happens in war, and do not forget, Jim was an infantry platoon leader in combat in Vietnam. Then he went to medical school. Then he becomes in many years later, secretary of Veterans Affairs. Post-traumatic stress, normal reaction. My dad had PTSD. By golly, I hope he did. I mean, that would be normal. Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, he was at Remagen when they found the bridge was still standing. He fought all the way to the liberation of the death camp at Nordhausen. It was a hard fight. He would have that small Sherman tank fighting panzers, that was a very risky thing to do. I am saying that that effect on those fathers, there were so few women that fought in the Vietnam War or were even in the military at that time, compared to the number of men. For example, there is only eight women on the wall, there is eight nurses. That had to hurt the children. That hurt the children. It hurts the children in every challenge. Those are the two effects. Let us march on.

SM (01:41:54):
I have a couple of other quotes here from these two books. One of the quotes from you is "I think the challenge that lies before us is not to forget ourselves, set up in some kind of super minority, one more special interest group, but instead to figure out what it is we have to offer." Now, I say that because today in our society we have a lot of people who criticize special interest groups, particularly different minorities. You have heard the whole politics of the era of special interests and everything, but Vietnam veterans, I know when I worked at Ohio University in my very first job, a lot of them could not get jobs, and we had Vietnam veterans affairs officers at Ohio University. Because of getting jobs and the way some of them were being treated upon their return, they were not going to be hired. So they became part of the affirmative action plan. So I just wanted your thoughts on, you made this statement about being a special interest, but in affirmative action. They became a special interest because they were being discriminated against on their return. Just your thoughts on that.

JW (01:43:05):
Well, there is two thoughts. One is there is a sense in which all of us became a nigga for a while. Everyone who came back from Vietnam became for a while, a nigga. That means we became a disenfranchised group. We became someone whose particular story was not, society did not want to hear our story. And we were stereotyped as if we knew what stereotype was. I mean, back in the (19)40s when I was born, who used stereotype man, but we understand what all that means. Or in another sense, we were the (19)50s, the housewife woman sent out for coffee. What I am saying is we were a disenfranchised group. Our fathers and our forefathers, the Civil War, that is the World War II vets, the Teddy Roosevelt era vets, they were esteemed. We were the opposite. We were disesteemed. We spent a while being nigga's. I am using the term to make a point. But what it did was give us great empathy. It gave many of us great empathy actually. We did not know it when we were building a wall, but it became a fulcrum on which our country turned so that our period in that particular silo, in that particular disenfranchised condition ended. We did not know that, we were just kids. That is why that book, Helmore's book, We Were Soldiers Once –

SM (01:44:57):
Ah, great book with Joe Galloway.

JW (01:44:59):
But the last part of the title, it is not in the movie title that is, "We Were Young. The wall would never have been built if we were not so young and we could take a lick and keep on ticking, so to speak when we were young. But it gives great empathy to the guys who served in Vietnam. There is no anger, and by the way, there is no big sense of entitlement. Bobby Mueller is a minority among Vietnam veterans. Most Vietnam veterans have a great sense of personality himself. They actually know where they were and what they did. That is not all. They know that, and they know two other things. They also know who their fathers were and their grandfathers and that they kept faith with them. And that gives you a pretty deep keel. They know something else. It is kind of like the funnies or the cartoons because every once in a while someone pops up and says, "I was in Vietnam when they were not". Well, why do they do that? I am going to tell you why. Have you read the book Vanity Fair? That is okay.

SM (01:46:23):
No, I have not read it.

JW (01:46:23):
Do you know anyone who has read it? Do you know somebody who has read it? What is your- do think of the really best English teacher. Probably a really good woman at Ohio. Professor at Ohio. Anyway, there is a line in Vanity Fair was written by William Makepeace Thackeray, "Bravery never goes out of fashion."

SM (01:46:50):
Now, the one thing that I think upsets me more than anything else that I have seen in the last, is the imposters. The people who say that they were in Vietnam. It is a really interesting, and this is still part of the interview, because there was a book that was written about this and there was a professor up at Harvard-

JW (01:47:12):
Sterling Valen.

SM (01:47:13):
Yeah-yeah. Sterling Valen.

JW (01:47:14):
[inaudible].

SM (01:47:17):
Yeah, and there was others that had actually, when it was not popular to be a Vietnam veteran, and then when it becomes popular then they come out and say that they are one. Many of them made money off it. To me it is a crime. It is a crime. They will have to face you know who above.

JW (01:47:42):
Do not get excited about it. Okay.

SM (01:47:44):
And they are-

JW (01:47:45):
Just dogs chasing the bus. It is okay.

SM (01:47:47):
Remember the professor at Harvard that did it, and I forget his name, The Long Gray Line is a great book. I read that quite a long time ago. I have not reread it, it was probably 15 years ago. 806 people were in your class and how important were Kennedy's words "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country, as well as pay any price, bear any burden". How did that affect the 806?

JW (01:48:25):
There are two big effects at West Point. One of them is ideals expressed by our fathers or by our spiritual fathers, so to speak, like Kennedy. I want to give you one concrete example of a guy for whom that quote meant a great deal, and that is Frank Rybicki, RYBICKI. He is in the book, the Long Green Line, you can look Frank up. He was one of the first in our class, killed in the Rung Sat Special Zone in 1967 [inaudible]. That quote meant specifically a great deal to him. So he is in the example of how that imprinted on some of us. That is not what forms you at West Point. Far more important is the second thing. On July 2nd, 1962 from my West Point class, we all reported in and Uncle Sam issued us to each other.

SM (01:49:38):
Some of the statistics here, which you will know, you were part of the first class of West Point that took the full impact of the Vietnam War. What I gather, the information I have here is that 30 of your classmates died in Vietnam. I never got the-

JW (01:49:53):
They did not die. There is this great line in mash, it is where haw guy's talk, and someone says, "Oh sir, they died, and it is Alan Alda". He said "They did not die, old people in hospitals die, these men were killed."

SM (01:50:12):
Very important, that is a magic moment in this interview for me. I never thought of it in those terms. Do you know how many of your classmates were wounded that survived? Because I have never seen that statistic.

JW (01:50:26):
Here is what I can tell you. My West Point class, the class of 1966 was decimated. One in ten either lost his life or a part of his body. I went through the entire register of my class and for every Purple Heart that meant they were either killed or wounded. I did not count all the wounded, I counted those who were wounded in a manner that significantly altered their life. So one in ten, which means the number is 83 or 87 were killed or lost a part of their body. Which if you convert that back to the legions, and what the effect of those wounds would have been in Roman times, or my class was literally decimated. Decimation was levied on the legions as a form of punishment. My class was not punished, but it was literally decimation. That is what I know about that.

SM (01:51:36):
You were involved obviously in building something, I did not even know this, that you were involved in building a memorial to Southeast Asia at West Point.

JW (01:51:47):
Yes.

SM (01:51:48):
And that was one of the main reasons why you were picked to be the leader of raising funds or building the Vietnam Memorial-

JW (01:51:57):
I was Chairman of the board for the Memorial Fund.

SM (01:51:59):
Could you tell me, we know about the wall, but I do not know anything about what happened at West Point. Could you tell me a little bit more about that?

JW (01:52:07):
It was an idea I had in, it was my idea. It was just on the eve of our 10th reunion, 1976. And I said, "Why do not we build a memorial at West Point for everyone killed?" And the reason I did it is because we were disenfranchised and our country did not know about us. What we would do for our fellows, we and their next of kin and widows and kids we had to do for ourselves. With that thought in mind, I went to West Clark, Jeff Rogers, This is in the book of Long Gray Line, and Matt Harrison. And we met right here in town at Matt Harrison's house just down the street, West Clark. And Matt and I met, Jeff was up at West Point. We called Jeff at our reunion. We all together presented the idea to build a Memorial at West Point. It would take money; some money and we would have to get permission to use land. We worked together to get the land from West Point. That was a good drill for getting land in Washington. We were all very young, and in order to have some money, my solution was to unite the 10 classes of the (19)60s. That is how it kept up.

SM (01:53:32):
Unbelievable. And then, correct me if I am wrong, but then many members of the class 66 were involved in working on the Vietnam Memorial as well. And how did you meet Jan Scruggs and I think Bob Dubak and those guys?

JW (01:53:49):
Again, that is in the Long Gray Line, the details.

SM (01:53:49):
Right.

JW (01:53:50):
So you could look it up there. I met Scruggs because I, it is actually a chapter that begins in the book Long Gray Line, but I read an article, so look it up there. Yeah, saves time here. But I went and I read an article that he raised, whatever it was, 200 and some dollars. The exact sum is actually Rick [inaudible] that is the exact sum. And people were kind of making fun of him on national television. But we were on the cusp of finishing the Memorial at West Point. And so this is the summer of 1979. And I made a point to call him up when I got back to Washington. He came over to my home, it was a day like this, it was kind of a hot day, summer day. I listened to what he said and I said, "I got a Rolodex. You can do this. So you can do this". And then he paid me a compliment, which is what a soldier can do. And he is a soldier. He said he trusted me. And there were all these reasons not to trust me, went to West Point, that is a good reason, if you have been a trooper in the one 99th, you were that these officers with good ideas can get you hurt no matter how good their idea is. You, it may be brilliant. You can still, just like Afghanistan. General portrays, we have a great idea, but someone is going to get hurt. I am only half kidding. I am saying that he learns to be wary. He trusted me and I went, even when I went to West Point, he trusted me. Even though I was an officer and I had been to these Ivy League schools, that was really, I mean what sense does that make? So he asked me to be chairman. That is how it happened. The greatest compliment, that the field soldier will ever give you, is to trust you, period.

SM (01:55:55):
And [inaudible], it is important because Jan's done a great job in [inaudible]. And under a lot of criticism too, from God knows how many people.

JW (01:56:08):
They were not there during the fight and it was a fight.

SM (01:56:12):
Right. Talk about your work with the wall and your beliefs with respect to helping the healing process. One of the questions I have asked everyone from Senator McCarthy when I first started this back in (19)96 part-time to my full-time work the last year and a half, is that the students that I worked with at the university, when we used to go on these Leadership On The Road trips, we always talked about healing. And we took a group to see Senator Muskie in 1995, 6 months before he died. And the question we asked, the students came up with is, due to the divisions that were so intense in the Vietnam generation or the boomer generation. Divisions between those who served and those who did not. The divisions between those who supported the troops and did not. The divisions between black and white, male and female, gay and straight, the burnings within the cities, the riot and so forth. And certainly what happened in 1968 with the assassination. Is this generation, the Vietnam generation, going to its grave like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? I have a quote I am going to read from this book that you wrote, but what is your thought on the healing process and the role? And the second part of the question is the role that the wall has played, not just for veterans and their families and the people who lost loved ones, but the nation.

JW (01:57:43):
You got to read the quote first, what did I say?

SM (01:57:48):
There is a quote in here. Where is it? Here? It is on page seven and it is bottom paragraph, " Bonded by the heritage of World War II and the electronic media and profoundly shaped and divided the freedom rights, the Peace Core, the women's movement, and the Vietnam War. The 60 million Americans who came of age in the (19)60s are healing their divisions to remembrance and dialogue. This work is vital, since we will be the leaders of our national institutions in the year 2000, we are the century generation". So you were talking, back when you wrote this book, about the healing process and you were very confident that just your thoughts now in the year 2010.

JW (01:58:44):
Well, there is three things about that. Three things to answer your question. First, it is in the nature of life, like a large tree to take a wound in the trunk or a whack, but still grow and the bark heels around it, it could still be a pretty sturdy tree. So that is natural. That is just natural for a human drive. The effect of the wall was some healing. It was worth the effort, not just for its main purpose, to remember those who were killed or for the deeper remembrance, which was for the next of kin, particularly the mothers. Sometimes I thought there were a number of years where I thought we really did it for the moms as I thought about it. But there was also healing. And by striving for healing and using the word and putting the thought into consciousness, it added materially to what might have been a slower process by nature. In particular, it accelerated the process of freeing the Vietnam veteran from disenfranchisement and being almost taboo. Because we were a walking remembrance of things that were taboo. One of the biggest taboos is healthy manhood, that the idea of healthy manhood has 10,000 volts in it. Actually, it always does. That does not change in human culture. It probably will not change for another couple of thousand years. 800,000. I mean that is in our genes not going to change much. The idea of healthy manhood, it has to do with Sterling Valen. Of course, it is a badge of healthy manhood to go out as a war fighter. But the third process goes back to CS Lewis. It is grace, I am at a point in life now where I can say not just asserting it, but affirming as CS Lewis did when he was in his (19)50s and near his own death. And that is the wall got built by grace. And there has been healing by grace and our country-

SM (02:01:50):
Yeah. I tell you, when I go to that wall and I have been honored to be at over 30 on Memorial Day and Veteran's Day offense now, it just touches me every time I am there and I am not a veteran. And I sit usually after the ceremonies and I just sit there and reflect on, I knew a lot of Vietnam vet, I know two people on the wall. And to me it is one of the greatest things that is ever been done in my life.

JW (02:02:19):
Well, it was built by grace. It was not built by, I tell you this, it was not built by a bunch of rag keg soldiers. I mean, which is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, our team. Let me tell you something, John Warner said, and you can still ask him, God bless him. He actually might even be in the club, we were at the Metropolitan Club so he could be here right now, he comes here often. And I will tell you what he said. He said, "I know how that wall got built..." and he was talking to all of us. We were young men. And then this was decades later, so we were not so young. But he said, "You were in God's hands". He actually did not say that. He said, "You were in God's hand" as John Warner, "You were in God's hand". Go ask him.

SM (02:03:22):
I would love to, I know he is retired.

JW (02:03:25):
He said it.

SM (02:03:26):
Unbelievable. The wall that heals, as a follow-up to that question is Jan, when he wrote the book To Heal A Nation, I think you have already said it, but where does the nation stand with respect to healing from all the divisions in our society? I have not had a chance to even interview Jan. I sent him a letter once and he did not respond. So maybe he does not want to be interviewed. But how does he feel, do you think, with respect to the nation part? I know he-

JW (02:03:56):
Jan has to speak for himself. I will say that if you read with care all the references to Jan Scruggs and-

JW (02:04:02):
Read with Care, all the references to [Jans Drugs] in this book, 'Touched With Fire', 'The Long Gray Line', and in the books he has written. Go to the website for vvmf.org and read his stuff. You will get a take on his attitude. It is a solid and faithful soldiers had to. It is all one could ask of the American soldier.

SM (02:04:25):
Yeah, well, we brought them to Westchester for our wall that heals. I did not mention we brought the Traveling Wall. We had over 6,000 people who came and quite a few veterans after midnight. The Women's Memorial, obviously Diane Carlson Evans has played a very important role. I have gotten to know her too. I interviewed her for the book. But, a lot of the movements from the (19)60s, whether it be the Civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, women were put in secondary roles. Were women thought of when the original Vietnam Memorial was built? Because it is my understanding, Diane had to really battle to get that in the beginning before Congress to even get them to think about building the Women's Memorial.

JW (02:05:11):
In the book, 'Touched with Fire', you will find the first part answers that. Several women have written and you can Google this idea. Out of the anti-war movement came the women's movement. The idea of standing up as women came out of the anti-war movement. That is point one. That is actually grace from Vietnam. There is a sense in which women came to the front of the bus and the war fighters were put in the back of the bus for that to happen in a great and poetic cultural sense. That is great. That is okay. We are fine. I mean, you take the war fighters and say, "Go back to the back of the bus." We were disenfranchised. They were treating us like niggas, but we were still back there remembering how great it was in Vietnam and what were they going to do, send us to Vietnam. The bus was still air-conditioned. I am making a joke. But in a sense, we went to the back of the bus while they got to the front. That is what the women were doing. In large it was a good thing. Second, it was, women were absolutely key in getting the Vietnam veteran memorial belt. And the women will tell you they were not in the back of any bus. We were out there in the slop wrestling with Webb. But the real efficient, practical work was done by the gals. Sandy Oriole is one. She could tell you about the other women on the Memorial fund, but she was our lead fundraiser. I mean, the gals were, and do not forget it was a woman who won the design kind. All the productive work.

SM (02:06:48):
Yeah, Linda Goodacre.

JW (02:06:50):
The women, no, not Linda Goodacre.

SM (02:06:52):
Glen.

JW (02:06:53):
The Women's Memorial was Linda Goodacre, but Maya Lynn designed the Vietnam one. I am just saying if you look at it, the guys were out there. We were like pigs in slops doing whatever with inefficient things there to, we were just basically keeping the barbarians at base so the women actually did the productive, effective work of fundraising and designing it. Did anybody notice that the creative and sustained work? I am just saying this, if you unfold the memorial story, by the way, they gave as God as they go. I mean, the people, when Sandy Foreoll was speaking at meetings about what Webb and Parole was doing, we had to restrain her man, and she was all set to go hurt him. So I am just saying, if you want women's liberation, it was happening right there. It is a good part of the story. Absolutely. However, on to his great credit, and everybody should be proud of this, the minute the women came, [Janus Greg] said, "We will help you." I did too. Then a lot of people wanted to burn us at the stake, beat us over our head and shoulders. But we did not notice any difference because we already were already being burned at the stake and beat around the head and shoulders because they did not like the design to begin with. So the fact that we were helping the women with the statue, we could not tell the pain threshold was beyond noticing the difference. I am just making a Walter's joke. To his credit he supported it. So did I.

SM (02:08:21):
What is amazing is that...

JW (02:08:22):
We testified, you could go hear, we went and testified together.

SM (02:08:27):
From knowing Lewis in that timeframe when Bill Clinton came to the wall with the bringing Kim folk to the wall, and all the speakers that have been brought in, the entertainers that have been there, to me, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and the people that were involved in the wall have been the greatest advocates for healing in this entire nation. I have witnessed it as a non-veteran who sits there and watches it and I had conversations with Lewis about it. Even again, he was really pushing for Bill Clinton to come because he felt it was important. He was also reaching out to Vietnam and helping the warriors in Vietnam.

JW (02:09:06):
Is there a question here?

SM (02:09:07):
The question is, to me, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund seems to be one of the leaders in the healing within the nation, period.

JW (02:09:17):
It is not the fund or the wall. It is grace. That is the better door to go in, I think. Because we are just human beings, but it is grace. From a scientific point of view, that is an anthropological point of view, the wall is a liminal place. L I M I N A L. It is a liminal place. It is a phenomenon that happens in human tribes. It is a way of saying it is a sacred place. I will give you an example. At the dedication. Jan and I were alone after the speeches. We were alone. By the way, president Reagan did not come to the dedication. It was too controversial. He came two years later when we dedicated the statute, but he did not come to the dedication of the wall. We were alone in a sense. So what? We were alone in Vietnam too. You know what I mean? We were soldiers and young, so to speak. And what Jay and I both noticed was even though there were maybe 112 or 150,000 people around us, we were walking along the top of the wall so we could look over to our right. It was almost as silent as the room that we were in 150,000 people. Then Jan turned to me and said, when we die, there is going to be a heck of a party. My wife saw it on TV. She saw everybody going to the cathedral to read names. John Walker, the Bishop of Washington, gave us permission to do that. It is in the book 'The Long Gray Line'. My wife was in Washington. She is an Episcopal priest. My wife at the time, not my current wife. This is my wife Lisa. There was a divorce because the wounds in the family that went with my daughter's birth defect and my selfish dedication to the wall. I took myself away from my family, ended the marriage. I did not have a family meeting saying, I am going to do this. I did not give them a vote. That was selfish. But when we were married, she looked at the names being read at the cathedral and she said, just was just out of the blue. I was not even paying attention because I was so tired. Matter of fact, I was so tired that week I could finally de-stress from a hard three years. And I did not know that I had seven more years of fight to go because Jim Webb and Ross Perot and John McCain were going to spend the next three congresses trying to sneak through changes of the design. Yes, they did. But the manager here made me a sandwich. The club with clothes.

SM (02:12:59):
You can eat it.

JW (02:13:00):
No-no. I will get it. But I am just saying it was the same thing. He went himself and personally made it because the whole town was filled with veterans. And I just came here to be alone, just like we are now. God bless him to that manager. I lost my train of thought. I was talking about my wife. I was so tired.

SM (02:13:32):
We are good through at four. What time is it now?

JW (02:13:40):
Yeah, 10 till 10 past three. My wife turned to me and I could not go to sleep. You know when sometimes you are so tired, you cannot go to sleep. I was just zoned out. She was watching the reading of the names, which was very moving. I was grateful for it and the president finally just, the president grabbed the first lady and they went to the cathedral. I was so grateful to John Walker and God bless him. He died too young. So what I am saying is that in this mood, just out of the blue, she says that you are going to heaven, Jackie.

SM (02:14:28):
You are going. No, just you are. I know personally the effect that it had on Vietnam veterans in my community, two in particular, who until we brought the traveling wall, when Jan came, they had never had the courage to even go to Washington. They told me point-blank, they were not going to even walk over. But the day that Jan was there, we had our greatest crowds in the evening because of classes. But we had the ceremony outside with the president of the university and the mayor and we had Vietnam veterans and their kids speaking and Jan spoke. We had country Joe. But over in the corner along the wall by the science building, I saw both of them. They were emphatic that they were not ready yet. That is as close as they came. They did not walk up to the wall but, that is another thing. `When I left the university, one of them thanked me for the wall. Jan Scruggs and what you have done is just, to me, the most important thing within the boomer generation. To me, it is the most important thing that is ever happened within the boomer generation. You cannot define, in my opinion, the boomer generation without talking about Vietnam. As Paul [Creshlow] says, it was the watershed moment in everyone's life. So Paul said to me, he said, I felt I wanted to be part of the most important happening in my lifetime, that watershed moment. That is why he served in Vietnam. Even the anti-war people and all the other things. The war is the center court. So I do not ever have a chance to say thanks to Jan Scruggs and all the people that were involved like you. But to me, in my life as a non-veteran who deeply cares about Vietnam veterans, it is the most important thing that ever happened in my life. I am not even a veteran. I come to the wall and I bring students to the wall because I know how important it is. When you see those names, it is just unbelievable. I read books and every time there is a Vietnam veteran whose name is mentioned, who passed away in this book or that book or that book, I go to the wall and look the name up. There must be a couple hundred names that I do not even know who they are except the fact they were in books. One of the conversations that I think this book is tremendous, I wish they would reprint this book. In fact, I mentioned to James Fallows when I interviewed him, I said, what would be greatest to bring all these people back together again that are in the symposium? And he said, and James Fallows said, I would be willing to do it. I know Bobby Mueller real well and I know actually Phil Caputo, he is out in Arizona right now. What I am getting at here is I would like your responses to some of their commentaries back when this was written, this came out in (19)81. You make a comment, you make a statement to a quote here that I think is very important because you praised James Fallows. There are too many guys in our generation who do not understand how the war shaped them. Unlike Jim Fallows, and I said this to Mr. Fallows when I interviewed him, and you praise him and others that he admitted he was wrong. He admitted that he was a coward to evade the draft the way they did it, and not protest against them. It is not like protesting against the war. It was evading the draft. He feels guilty about it and he does not. I am not saying he feels guilty now, but he was [inaudible]

JW (02:18:46):
There was an article, what did you do in the [class war draft]? But he did. He stood up to it right manfully.

SM (02:18:53):
Your thoughts on that? Did you think that many within the generation did that or was he still a rarity?

JW (02:18:58):
Jim? Jim is exceptional and a rarity.

SM (02:19:02):
Too many did not.

JW (02:19:03):
He is one that the Rhode Scholar people got, sometimes they miss before they got it right when he became a Rhode Scholar. He makes that program look good. You know what, you can knock Jim Fallows. Just do not knock him around me.

SM (02:19:19):
He respects you. I am telling you and he actually respects Jim Webb too. He mentioned that and, I have a comment from Jim Webb.

JW (02:19:26):
Well, that is right. You better respect Jim Webb and you better watch out for his right hook.

SM (02:19:32):
He mentioned something when we were talking about that this, when you look at the Vietnam generation, it is a generation of service. It was a generation that went into the Peace Corps. It was a generation of Vietnam veterans who went to serve the nation. It is a generation that went in volunteers in service to America. It is a generation and then he said, hold it. Hold it. I think one of the weaknesses of the boomer generation is that they are not a generation of service because they avoided the war. He brings up the reasons why in his own-own way. So when you talk about the (19)60s generation as a generation of service, yet Jim Webb challenges that idea. What do you think of Jim Webb's thoughts?

JW (02:20:33):
Could you restate the question?

SM (02:20:37):
I think what Senator Webb was saying at the time is that we all look at the (19)60s and the (19)70s, and the gen and boomer generation that grew up after World War II as a generation that was really involved in service. It is one of the characteristics, the qualities, whether it be service by serving in Vietnam or serving in the Peace Corps, or volunteers in service to America or alternative service. Or at least for those who were consciousness objectors, doing alternative service for two years in a very hard way like a couple of my friends did in Newfoundland that would have qualified. But he says, too many avoided the war through avoiding the draft. So the generation has such large numbers avoiding service and they should have fought in the war. Cause what he is really saying. Thoughts on that?

JW (02:21:46):
First, Jim is right. He has still got one shot for his right hook. It is a combative statement, but he is right. That is the first thing. Second, he is touching on something fundamental. People who have lost the most from not going into service, as Jim said, were those who have made that choice themselves. Those good things they could have done, the people they helped did not benefit from their service, but they themselves suffered most. That is why I use this quote and why this is called 'Touched with Fire.'

SM (02:22:44):
Pull it right there in the front.

SM (02:22:45):
Yes.

JW (02:22:48):
You do not have to read it. I am just pointing to this quote. You either enter the action of your time or there is a sense of which you have not lived. So the real loss was for those who made that choice. By the way, not all of them made some kind of selfish choice. Many had no choice to me, many were drafted. That was not choice and yet they stood too and served with their fellows, a lot of them are on the wall. There were many women who were treated like women in the (19)50s where they did not have much choice. That is cruel. Our society in ways was cruel to women in the (19)50s. Thank God for Catherine McKinnon and the women who did lead and still lead the women's movement. Many people did not have a choice. We were so fortunate, those of us who could go to West Point or Annapolis to be able to choose. Then there is something deeper, and I will tell you who taught me this, it was Elliot Richardson, God bless him.

SM (02:23:57):
Died about a year ago.

JW (02:23:59):
Yes. You must read the essay, the Moral Equivalent of War. Google it and read it.

SM (02:24:10):
He wrote it?

JW (02:24:10):
No, it is a classic. It is not a Holmes but embarrassed. It is a classic. You read it, the Moral Equivalent of War. Google it, it turned the century. Elliot pointed me to it because war evokes the deepest signatures of grace actually, and of sacrifice and of those things we are not just dying for, but living for of any human experience. Maybe even more than birth, maybe more than birth, because war's death. You must read it. Think about what Elliot was saying, just like I think about it. You will figure out what he was saying, he was saying you read that chapter. I put his name on the back of the wall. You know there is names on the back of the wall.

SM (02:25:09):
No, I did not know that.

JW (02:25:14):
Well, if you look in 'The Long Gray Line', there is a set of names. I thanked everybody that was significant in getting the wall bill. I called Jake carter Brown and said, I want to do this. But I said, if I have to ask permission, it will never happen. It will become complex. He said, this is Jake Carter of Brown, God bless you, Jake Carter of Brown on the telephone, chairman of the Fine Arts Commission, the Commission of Fine Arts. He says, "Oh I think it is like putting the builders in one of the cornerstones of the building? Do not you think, Jack?" And I said, "Well, sir, yes." And he said, " I think it would be perfectly routine." I was chairman of the board at that point. I said, "Yes, sir." I was on the phone and I said, "So there would not be a need for a hearing." "I would not think so, would you?" And I said, "No, sir." I make things up. I am not making that up.

SM (02:26:32):
Elliott Richardson, we all know him in history because he was resigned cause of...

JW (02:26:36):
Got that, got that. You go, you go do that work. How are we doing? It is 3:20.

SM (02:26:36):
I got a few more questions and you can eat your sandwich while we are here. Bobby Mueller, in that same discussion, talked about how disappointed he was in America, that the leaders had let us down, that he went into service. I wonder how many people who served at that time felt like Bobby with respect to, upon the return to America. There was a thinking that when you went to Vietnam, that America was always the good guy, but now that America's the bad guy.

JW (02:27:26):
Bobby was overreacting, but we were young. We were all overreacting. That is the way Bobby, God bless him, overreacted. It was a little too much. There was some truth in what he said. A sense of alienation was understandable because we were alienated. I mean like a good marine, since we were alienated, he figured out that he was alienated. But you overreact. It is a little bit much to ask a guy who was 25 years old or 31 years old at the time, to have a sense of growth, maturity and history. Especially when you have had the wounds he had. So he was putting his finger on some real truth. It is just that there was surrounding truth. Bobby. Bobby sees it, I think, in a larger context now. Was he right? Yes. Was it a little overstated? Maybe.

SM (02:28:26):
Yeah.

JW (02:28:26):
God bless Bobby.

SM (02:28:27):
Bobby was at my retirement party. I invited him and he came and it was an honor to have him there. We actually met him a couple times. What is interesting, I will never forget Phil Pipudo telling him at this session that you were at, he says, Bobby, you have a temper. If you remember that. He said, Bobby, you have a temper. It seems like today that there are efforts by the right conservatives to divide our nation by making references to the (19)60s and (19)70s for creating all the problems in our society today. With respect to the counterculture, the new left, the activists of many movements for creating the following, the drug culture, the divorce rate, the breakup of the family, the irresponsible behavior, the welfare state dependence on government of dissent mentality, which actually what Mr. Webb talks about in the book. Special interests, controlling ideas, and universities where various studies programs are being taken over by the troublemakers of the (19)60s. Phyllis Schley and David Horowitz said, but then the two talking about that universities today are run by the troublemakers of the (19)60s because they run all the studies programs from women's studies to gay lesbian studies, environmental studies, Native American studies, Black studies. Your thoughts on actually the people that made these comments, some of them were like, people like New Gingrich and Governor Huckabee and George Will and some of his writings and others.

JW (02:30:14):
It is all as American as Apple pie. If Ben Franklin and Abigail Adam, I would rather talk with Abigail before I talk with John. John Adams. I just think I would rather spend the afternoon having tea with the Abigail more than that.

SM (02:30:31):
Couple biographies out on her recently too.

JW (02:30:33):
She is pretty good. Yeah. Abigail was pretty good. And John, he could come along. My point is, if the Adams' were here and Ben Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, they had listened to everything you just said. The question you just said, and they said, well, it is working out. What do you think Tom? And Tom said, well, it is working out. It is working out. Of course, they are all sitting there knowing that Tom has got this thing going with Sally Hemings. But they are not going to mention that. I mean, I am just saying they are all human. We are all human. And they would say, well, it looks like it is working with the Republic. It looks like it is working out. What do you think? And they would say, yeah, Dolly Madison, I would love to talk with Dolly Madison as well as James Madison. I am saying they would look at everything and say, this is Americans apple pie. Chris, who knew what apple pie was and what America was? But I mean, that is how they look at it. Everything you have just said can be transformed by a mathematical formula so that it is the right sand. Well, they are beating us up from the left, and it is all working out. It is all just motor wrestling. And it goes with the system that was set up. Here is the biggest thing to remember about the very healthy condition that you defined. I see it as healthy. They just slinging and mud at each other. What the founding people did, some of the guys being well advised by their wives, and I am talking about Dolly and Abigail, just to start with. Betsy Ross, too, God bless her making the flag. Molly Pitcher, God bless them. Seriously, the whole generation that fought the revolution, the condition of controversy is just built into our republic, and it tends to work out okay. What they did in order to keep an envelope around everything, like a rocket ship has a steel shell or a metal shell, do not pierce that. The oxygen will leak out in the space and we will all die. I mean, we are a big rocket ship actually, as Buckminster Fuller says, we all are on a spaceship. It is called Earth. Be careful. Do not leak the oxygen out of our planet. There is some truth in that, but I...

(End of Interview)

2010-07-23

Stephen McKiernan

John Wheeler, 1944-2010

153:04

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

Audio

Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Lawyers; Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund; Wheeler, John, 1944-2010--Interviews

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