64 10 1775 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/eb06d5d0466948db219306ea57d679bd.jpg 46d89c2a26cc0f2725c0be1cf84333e6 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/d01827346f95dc834845a6e7228d6a43.mp3 cc19b319a5a4c542b5c05afb97effbe6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-05-01 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Hugo Keesing Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Hugo Keesing is a Dutch-American popular culture historian, an educator and a pop music archivist who has an extensive collection of Vietnam war music. He has degrees from Duke University, George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Behavior Research from Adelphi University.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:6535,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Dr. Hugo Keesing is a Dutch-American popular culture historian, an educator and a pop music archivist who has an extensive collection of Vietnam war music. He has degrees from Duke University, George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Behavior Research from Adelphi University.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 171:38 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Music; Generation gap; Bobby Rydell; Baseball cards; Collectibles; Elvis Presley; Arthur Godfrey; The Beatles; Young Americans for Freedom; Adelphi University; Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; Steve Perry; MacArthur Park.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305}}">Music; Generation gap; Bobby Rydell; Baseball cards; Collectibles; Elvis Presley; Arthur Godfrey; The Beatles; Young Americans for Freedom; Adelphi University; Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; Steve Perry; MacArthur Park.</span> Subject LCSH Popular culture—United States; Historians; Keesing, Hugo--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Hugo Keesing Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 1 May 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): Testing one, two. SM (00:00:06): The first question, and I have to check this occasionally too. I want to, how did you become who you are? You were mentioning a few things, but how did you become who you are in terms of your interest in the (19)60s and interest in Vietnam? What inspired you to be a collector of historic information on records and music from that era, but just to have an interest in that period? HK (00:00:38): There are, I am sure, several factors. As I have mentioned, part of it was what was out of necessity. I arrived here off the boat, if you will, here in the US in October 1951. I was seven years old. My father had just gotten a position with the International Monetary Fund in Washington. So three brothers, I am number three of four. And we arrived, I think my English vocabulary was three or four words. I could say yes, no. For some reason I knew corn flakes, I am not sure why. But we arrived on a Tuesday and on a Thursday I was enrolled in public schools in Washington. So dad wasted no time getting us in school. And it was sort of sink or swim. We had to learn Now we were very fortunate, DC is a very international city, but that particular elementary school had a sixth grader who was Dutch, but who had lived in the US for a bunch of years. So I remember that we had permission to... There were real problem that I could leave my classroom, go to his classroom, bring him back, and he would translate to say what was I saying. The expectation was that we would all come home, family would have dinner together, and mom and dad would ask us, what was going on. And the idea was to learn five to 10 new English words every night. And one brother in particular, the one who was 13 months older, he and I quickly learned that it was through comic books, and baseball cards, and sports that we began interacting even when our English was pretty poor. So that got into the pop culture things. Now, my family, the Keesing family, my dad in particular, I guess if I go into the family tree, it is clear that there are a number of people who have been archivist historians for many, many years. Something called the Keesing Archives was a major source for news in the Netherlands. Now, all of that is online, but you can still find huge books. So for whatever reason, I am not going to argue that this would be genetic. But there was an interest in archiving, and I seem to have picked up on that. In my family for as long as I can remember there was always a tremendous interest in learning. Dad was a professor, mom was a Montessori teacher. My grandfather was a math teacher. So the idea of learning, experiencing, traveling, doing new things has been part of my life since, as long as I can remember. We were in Holland during World War II. It is unfortunate that it was the Brits who dropped a bomb that took out our home. So I am lucky to be here. My dad lost... And I did not know this at the time, but he was a collector of books. Books on economics. And I did not learn that he lost his entire collection in that bombing until the memorial service when he passed away in 1972. And the Dutch Minister of Finance, who had been his boss, said that one of the difficulties, or one of the things that really my dad never talked about was that he lost his collection. So he was a stamp collector, perhaps because my family lost virtually everything they had. Mom was one who was prepared to say things. Fortunately we had homes that had basements or attics and my mother could always come up with a reason why something should not be thrown out because it might have good use some other time. What that meant was she was also tolerant of our collecting simply the Keesings collect, everybody has, each of my brothers had a collection that was sort of unique, but mom, never put pressure on me. But evidently the kind that you got that things had to go, it was, it was good to throw it out. SM (00:05:30): It was not everything but certain things. HK (00:05:32): So I am very fortunate. I have my baseball cards, I have my records, things that I wanted to save, I was able to save. And we never, ever threw out books. And books were what was seen as an investment. You learn from them, you pick them up, you read them again and again. And so all these strands were clear from very early on. And I became a teacher. I taught my first psychology course for George Washington University in 1966. More reasons to acquire scholarly books. But from the very beginning of my teaching, I was interested in using some of these other things that I had found very important in my own learning, the popular culture. So I began trying to introduce maybe a song or something for her, studying some psychological construct. And I said, "Look, if you are wondering what it is, listen to," and I would play a piece of a record. For example, I found that even in the late (19)60s, that students liked this. And so all of these professional strands, my interest in teaching my interest in popular culture, I have been very fortunate being able to weave them all together. It was when I began using them, that also legitimized them as professional tools. So I was in the very fortunate position of being able to buy records and books on music and sheet music things, and have them all supporting my teaching. And therefore, a portion of what I invested in those books was tax-deductible when I was filing income tax. And people said, "Wow, how did your max?" I said, "I do not know whether it is lucky or whether it is good planning, but it is all just really worked out." And so now that I am formally retired, I am informally still using all of this stuff. As I said, whether it is for presentations to seniors, whether it is to work on a book on Vietnam, whether it is to lend stuff, own stuff, it is all still very relevant to me. And it is exciting. SM (00:08:06): What was it about that, you know, moved to the United States? You learned the English language through baseball cards and some of these other items, you learned English, but what was it about 1950s culture? The culture that is oftentimes really attacked when you talk about (19)60s culture, A lot of the (19)60s people were attacking the late (19)40s and (19)50s as being a period of like IBM mentality. Everybody copies everybody else. There is no room for individualism. It is all the corporate mentality. And of course, there are a lot of bad things happening with racism throughout the United States. Things were kind of coated over. And a lot of people that grew up during this period felt kind of good because they did not have any hardships like their parents had had during World War II or prior to World War II, because the question I am asking, what is it about the 1950s culture that turned you on, but turned so many other people off? HK (00:09:09): To me, it is very simple. It was mine. And I was seven when the (19)50s began, and I was 17 when they ended. So that was my youth, if you will. And the fact that it was my culture, I do not think people, my generation were knocking it. It was older people. So what was happening then, and whether it was Ricky Nelson's mind, Annette Funicello, and I met her in 19, late (19)90s. And it was incredible. It is a funny story. If we have got time, I will be happy to tell you that. So I was not aware, for example, that there were congressional committees investigating comic books or that the editor of Mad Magazine was called before Congress for, because MAD and other comics that were considered to be orally objectionable. That did not even enter my mind. I was not listening to people knocking Elvis Presley because his behavior was immodest or, I liked his music. We danced to it. So the objections to (19)50s culture were being made by an older generation. It did not sink in that with regard to music, what I remember more, for example, is getting really excited when I heard and record by the Platters, My Prayer. And I said, "Well, listen to this. This is great." And she smiled. She said, "Yeah, I know that." I said, "What do you mean, you know that?" "Well, it was also popular in my day." And I said, "No-no-no." She said, "Yeah." And eventually I checked and it came out 1933. And I resented that. I was not happy with the fact that my music, I mean, hey, it was not her fault, but I sort of suggested, if there are other songs that I like, please do not tell me that they had a previous life. And whether it was Fats Domino, Blueberry Hill was from the (19)40s. And My dream Book Comes Home was from the (19)30s. There was a lot of music in the (19)50s, which was recycled with a rock and roll or a new beat. But because it was the first version I heard became my music. And so if there was a generation gap or conflict, and my parents were very tolerant, as long as we worked hard and we got good grades in school and did not get into trouble, I was permitted, encouraged to do lots of things. But the fact that things which I regarded as part of my immediate life, I really did not want to know that it- SM (00:12:05): Had a previous. HK (00:12:05): ...might have belonged to somebody else. And of course, many, many years later, in the early (19)70s, I came back from overseas. My wife and I were entertaining some people who met there who had a 10 or 11 year old daughter that they brought with him. And at one point I said, "Can I play some music?" Because I had all these records. She said she wanted to hear Puppy Love. And so I put on Paul Anka and she said, "No-no, that is not the right one." And she wanted to hear Donny Osmond. And I said, "But this is the original one." Well, it was not to her, the Donny Osmond version. It was history repeating itself just as The Platters version of My Prayer was mine. And I did not want to know about the previous one. Dotty Osmond was hers, and she did not want to, did not care to know that Paul Anka had recorded this record and popularized it a decade or so earlier. SM (00:13:01): Well, it is interesting because when you think of (19)50s culture, Pat Boone seems to be more in sync than even Elvis, with the shaking of the hips. HK (00:13:10): Pat Boone was more in sync with parents. Pat was less threatening. Pat Boone used correct grammar, and he went to college. And I do not think that parents of 15-year-old daughters were worried that Pat would have a kind of influence on him, that Elvis might. SM (00:13:28): I wrote something down here because I wanted your thoughts on the music of the period that Boomers have been alive, which is the period from four, from (19)46 to (19)64, and of course the Beatles come in here in 1964, which changed so many things. But prior to that, there was Elvis, there was Chubby Checker, there was, and what I consider, I use this term crush music, girls have a crush, which was, yeah-yeah. Which would be Ricky Nelson, Bobby Darren, Fabian, Bobby D., Paul Anka, Bobby Rydell, the Four Seasons. Then I put some of the females in here, Leslie Gore, Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield, Lulu, Marianne Faithful. HK (00:14:12): Probably even a little later. I would the Heartthrobs, well, Annette, Connie Francis, there were not Connie Stevens. SM (00:14:25): Teresa Brewer. HK (00:14:25): Theresa Brewer was earlier. Theresa Brewer was really from (19)50 to about (19)56. And you had the Theresa Brewers, the Patty Pages, that I call them, the double names. You had Doris Day, double D, Joanie, James, double J, Patty Page, Goki Grant. I do not know whether these were their original names or people were just into alliteration. Rosemary Clooney, Joe Stafford, those are artists that I remember hearing. And in fact, the first record that I asked my parents to buy for me was Rosemary Clooney's, This Ole House in 1954. So I know that in (19)54 I was beginning to listen to the popular music. That is just a year before Rock Around the Clock. I have gone back and I have collected all that music. In retrospect, it sounds rather good. It does not have the same personal connections that beginning with The Platters in late (19)55, I mean (19)55 through (19)60, I can probably tell you where I was, who I was with, what I was doing when I heard most of those records for the first time. If I hear, I mean, okay, so that was Rahova Beach, where this was a junior high school dance. I never had learned to read music. I do not play music. I channeled all of my musical interests into collecting records, learning who sang what was on the flip side. So I really have been a music historian. I was a DJ at Many Points, a music historian. So music has been incredibly important. And if I have a regret, it is that I still have not learned to read music. And my grandsons right now saying, "Opa, it is really easy." When you have got an eight-year-old telling you it is really easy, and here is how you learn to play the piano. So they gave me the strip that I can put on the piano upstairs, which is supposed to help me understand the chords. But I carry got oh, 50,000 songs in my head that I can start singing. SM (00:16:43): Was there, would you say, or would you admit that the Patty Pages, that those types singers in the (19)50s were very symbolic of what the (19)50s were truly all about? That it was when Elvis shook his hips, when Chuck Barry did his thing, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Pumping Gas and Little Richard, that these were the ones that scared people because they were, and Bo Diddly, they were a little bit different. And so they were not very... Were people that thought they were a threat. They were like absolutely beats. They were they, to the beat writers of the period different than some of the writers? Would you compare them? Were they predecessors to this attitude that things were changing when the (19)60s came? HK (00:17:32): By the time the (19)60s came, I think there had been some major changes. As I was writing my dissertation 40 years ago, some of these ideas have been floating around. I was able to formalize, for example, up until the mid (19)50s, there really was not a youth culture. Kids were expected to be sort of miniature versions of their parents. They were expected to dress the same as their parents. They were expected to go into the same jobs or occupations, do the same things, like the same things as their parents. So they were scaled down versions of adults. And therefore, there was not music that was intended for young people, there were not clothing styles that were necessarily keyed on young people. It was not, I think, until the early to mid (19)50s that the war was far enough in the background and that there was sufficient, that economically, middle class parents were at a point where kids could get more than a quarter allowance. And I was getting a nickel and then 10 cents, then a quarter. Well, with a quarter a week I could buy baseball cards and maybe a comic book, but not much else. But beginning in the mid to late (19)50s and kids started getting sufficient money to become consumers, and as kids became consumers, there was a whole world out there ready to take their money and to begin creating commerce aimed at kids’ things specifically aimed at kids. And one way to make it attractive to kids was to make sure that parents did not like it. Parents liked Pat Boone. So teenagers my age we are less inclined. If he is okay with mom and dad, and I am trying to separate myself as an individual and begin to establish my own identity, then I should like somebody my parents do not like. And that could be Elvis. And so a lot of growing up, being a teenager is learning to differentiate yourself from your parents. SM (00:20:03): Was that kind of like, I can remember two specific instances of people that were admired by the Boomer parents. That is Arthur Godfrey, when he fired Julius LaRosa for having an affair with some other person, he was very popular. And the other one was Mitch Miller. When he had an affair with Leslie Uggams, he was unpopular. And he went like... HK (00:20:28): But Arthur Godfrey was, he was in DC and I guess I was aware of him, but certainly as far as an influence on my generation, I do not think so. Not at all. And McGuire Sisters were less interesting than the Shirelles or the Chantels? Right. So if it was associated with adults, then it was intrinsically less interesting than something that my parents did not know about. As an example of my family, there was an artist who had a [inaudible], Nervous Norvus. He had a song Transfusion about cars racing and wrecking and needing blood transfusions. It was the sort of thing that parents thoroughly disliked because it first, musically, it was terrible. And singing and glorifying car wrecks was not what they had. But he also had a song called Ape Call at various points in this record, and I can play it for you, there would be this loud scream. Well, evidently my dad did not like that. And the only time I can remember mom commenting on music is when she told my brother and I, please do not play that when your father's at home, or if you play it, make sure, because what we would love to do is we would play the record and then just before the scream, we turned the volume all the way up. So this really, really loud scream, but evidently Dad did not care for that at all. And so that was the only song we were told should not be played when dad was home, for the rest, as long as the music did not get all that loud, I guess it was a fair game. They were letting us grow up and find stuff that was ours. SM (00:22:31): Would you say that just as in the 1950s, the difference between Pat Boone and Elvis? Elvis was kind of a revolutionary person. The Beatles was the revolutionary group that came (19)64. Really, when you are talking (19)46 to (19)63, and then all of a sudden in (19)64, the Beatles come, everything changes from then on. Is that? HK (00:22:56): I think the reasons for the popularity of Elvis and the Beatles in my mind are quite different. I mean, Elvis clearly was a rejection of the kind of puritanical, uptight values, the traditions. Elvis was a white boy who sang black. Elvis was threatening Elvis sneered, if you had a 15-year-old daughter, you worried about Elvis taking her virginity or something like that. Pat Boone was the antithesis. Pat Boone did not kiss his co-star, Shirley Jones, because he was married. So Pat was good, and Elvis was bad, and Elvis was in the same old as James Dean and Marlon Brando. He represented the counterculture that is in represented the change, the new energy, the new vitality, the rejection of some of the old cultures. We will never know. I do not know if the Beatles would had the impact, if Kennedy had not been assassinated. In November (19)63, there had been Beatle records. There had been a couple of Beatle records available in the US in (19)63. I first heard them in Holland in (19)63 and thought, okay, interesting. But it was not anything spectacular. But Americans needed, especially America's youth, needed something to take their minds off. Dallas, Texas, in November (19)63, the Beatles were the antidote to the sort of, call it almost generational depression, if you will. I was, what, a junior at Duke. I remember where I was when I heard Walter Cronkite announce the shootings, et cetera. That was something I will not forget. I was not initially enamored with the Beatles, I was much more in tune with Phil Specter and the Girl Group sound, The Ronettes and The Crystals. SM (00:25:22): Oh, that was great. HK (00:25:23): I mean, fabulous stuff. My early (19)60s artists who are now all the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were Orison, Del Shannon, and Jean Pitney, because I thought musically, they were ahead of, they sang melodies that you could sing. Those were my favorites. But the Beatles and the British Invasion were a means by which America's youth could turn away from Dallas. I mean, it was not only the music, but again, there was a revolution in styles, whether it was haircuts or whether it was the clothing styles that were personified by Twiggy, and what was her name? Mary Quant, I think it was. But the miniskirts, the whole British European thing became a way to refocus youthful energy, interest, et cetera. So it was not necessarily rejecting the parents' values and the parents' culture, but it was sort of, okay, we need to break out of this depression. This young youthful president is gone, he is dead. We need to find something to reenergize us. And to me, the Beatles were initially seen as clean cut. It was The Rolling Stones who were the antithesis. These were the scruffy guys who got arrested for pissing in public places and stuff like that. But the early British sound is pretty mild. I mean, these are sort of funny little tunes. Hermann's Hermits, [inaudible] The Pacemakers, Peter and Gordon, different from the Kinks, or the Rolling Stones, or the Yardbirds, who were, again, who were blues influenced more of the black rhythm, blues culture, et cetera. So there was that difference as well. SM (00:27:32): Yeah, when you are talking about the change in the culture, obviously when we are talking mid to late (19)60s, we are talking the true counterculture, which is dress, long hair, music, drugs, sexual revolution, living some sort of communal lifestyle was really late (19)60s, (19)70s, particularly after the war ended. But then you had the groups like The Doors and Janice Joplin, Jimmy Hendricks, so many, we can list so many different groups, and were really, students were turning on. That was really a rejection of the (19)50s. It was really, we are going to change the world. We are going to... HK (00:28:19): There were so many things. I was an undergraduate from (19)61 to (19)65. I was dating a young lady who was also in college, and I remember in (19)63, I would think that Gwen's mother gave me a copy of The Feminine Mystique and encouraged me to read it because her daughter was going to grow up to be someone different from, let us say, the role models for the girls who went to college to get their MRS. SM (00:28:56): Yes. HK (00:28:59): In the, let us see. In (19)62, one of the figures on campus that people knew was Peter Clawford. He was a biologist. He worked boots to class, but he was also taking students to Greensboro on sit-ins. And in Durham, there were lots of places where blacks were not welcomed. I do not believe there were any black undergraduates in Duke in (19)61, (19)62, (19)63. On the other hand, when the KKK came marching through Durham and trying to get a permit, I think, to come on campus, most of the Duke students were out there in a counter-protest. So while Duke was still a Southern school, segregated in terms of its politics, it was beginning to catch up when what was happening in the (19)60s. So you had civil rights. I had a roommate in college who was a member of the, what was it? The Young Americans for Freedom. SM (00:30:11): Yeah, that is the conservative right? HK (00:30:13): Yes. And Bill Buckley, who was a Goldwater. I was not campaigning in (19)64, but had I been able to vote, I would have voted for Johnson. And he was voting. He was very, very conservative. And so, one of the things I learned early on that did not interest me was politics. We did not talk politics. We coexisted as roommates, but with the tacit agreement, if you will, that we talked about school, we talked about girlfriends, but I have never been one to get drawn into political debates or arguments. I just do not find it very interesting. But it is clear that things were changing. So the role for women, my girlfriend's mom brought that home, politics were changing. Race relations were changing. We were concerned about a war in Cuba, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs. We had an air raid drill at Duke. I learned where the air raid shelters were located, not because anyone knew about Vietnam, but because of Cuba. Even in (19)65, when I graduated and my draft status was quickly changed from 2S to 1A, I do not think at that point I was all that concerned about the military guy. I had a brother who was in the army. I had another brother who was in law school and who was working very hard to keep his deferment. And I had planned to go either to medical school or going to clinical psychology, and was fairly sure at that point, that was still a deferment category. So the wars or the conflicts were out there, but were not a central part of what I was doing. But I became aware of some of these things through music. Eve of Destruction was Barry McGuire, 1965, the Houston Eastern World is exploding, violent, slur and bullet exploding. SM (00:32:37): I remember when he was on TV for the first time, singing that live. I am not sure if that was Shindig or Hullabaloo or... HK (00:32:43): Those were my shows. SM (00:32:46): I love those shows. HK (00:32:49): And so these were records that I was collecting. I was listening to Where Have All Flowers Gone by The Kingston Trio, not connecting it specifically, but becoming aware that music was not just, as you say about boy meets girl, boy loses girl, et cetera. It was more than love themes that in the early (19)60s, music was beginning to change and beginning to become what I would call in my dissertation, a barometer, an early warning system of things that were in flux. So a song by The Exciters called Tell Him, this is a girl telling another girl. If you like a guy, tell him, do not wait for him. In other words, become more active. Do not be passive that girls can ask boys out or songs about war in a general way. Masters of War, Bob Dylan, Soldier Boy. I would have connected that more with Berlin probably, or, but any rate, I began listening to songs for more than just messages of, I think when I was in junior high school, I found talking to girls relatively difficult. That would not have been unusual, but one way that I could communicate was by selecting records, which by the way, was a great reason for collecting, taking them to parties, because, if you were in charge of the records, you knew what was coming up, and you knew which girl you were going to ask, and you could communicate simply by, "Okay, listen to this next one. That is really the way I feel." So I learned early on that music, in addition to being entertainment could be used in a proactive way. You could exchange information through music. You could take information from music, you could learn from music. HK (00:35:02): Take information from music, you could learn from music. While it had been teen concerns in junior high school and high school, by the time I got to college there were bigger concerns that were showing up in the pop music kit. As I was collecting the popular songs, I became aware that there was this whole new category, I call it "topical pop." And then at some point I began looking for songs with messages, looking for songs with " My daddy is president, what is your daddy?" I thought, "That is pretty huge." This is about Caroline Kennedy. So some of the early ones would have been political, but certainly by the time I was finishing my graduate work, a different aspect of music was coming in for comments in (19)69 and (19)70, as you had both the war and the perceived problem with drugs. If you recall, Vice President Agnew, as the spokesman for the Nixon administration, was frequently quoted as saying that music is one of the causes of the problems that we have right now. Songs glorifying drug use are in fact creating some of the drug problems that we have. And so there was a lot of effort in listing bad songs, like Puff the Magic Dragon is a drug song. My comment, my retort to that was, "Well, if Puff, the Magic Dragon is a drug song then and what about Fly Me to the Moon? Was Frank Sinatra on a drug trip? But what happened, working with a mentor, a professor at Adelfi University who had a clinical practice. George and I played basketball and we would chat. And when he said, "Hugo, I am working with some teenagers who have behavioral problems that include drugs, but I am really finding it difficult to kind of break through and find some common ground to begin therapy. I called him Dr. Stricker until after I got my PhD. So I said, "Dr. Stricker, have you thought about music as sort of a bridge where you might ask your client what does she think of a particular song? You might even play it and try?" And he said, "No." And I said, "Would you like me to put together some music for you such as White Rabbit by the Jefferson Airplane, et cetera?" And George said he would appreciate that. So I put together a little tape of some music that I thought might have the ability to get some reaction. And it was not just drug music. I remember another one that I used was Sky Pilot by the Animals, which (19)68, so that was a war-related song about a chaplain in the Air Force who sends people off to kill and they come back. And how does he reconcile that with, what is it, the seventh commandment, or the sixth, whichever one it is that is "Thou shall not kill." So it had a message that a teenager listening to that music might pick up on, and therefore there might be some basis for getting a conversation started. And that convinced me that there were others who felt that music had gone beyond simply entertaining. If the Vice President is claiming that music about suicides, music about the war, music about drugs, is in fact influencing, impacting, causing certain behaviors. As far as I know, there is no evidence to support that. So to make a long story short, I finished my coursework in 1970. I was a dissertation short of my doctorate, and I had found myself in a very narrow cognitive learning area. This was the dissertation that I took with me overseas. And once I got to Okinawa and then later Vietnam, I realized that there was nothing in this project that in any way held a kind of interest that would sustain me, that would cause me to work on it while I was in Asia. So I thought back to music, which I always carried with me, and which I found in Vietnam had perhaps even greater importance. And I wrote George, Dr. Stricker. I had a couple of questions. I said, "Dr. Stricker, do you think Adelphi University would accept a dissertation focusing on popular music and its impact on youth? And if the answer to that is yes, would you consider being my chair for this?" And while I was in Vietnam, I got a post order letter back and he said yes to both. And suddenly my world changed, because now there was an opportunity. I did not need a library because I was carrying so much of this with me. So it was more sit down and begin putting on paper one of these ideas. That would have been early 1970, and in October or November of 1972, just two years later, I completed what would be one of the earliest dissertations on looking at whether there was in fact any document [inaudible] relationship, especially causal relationship, between what was happening in youth culture and what was happening in popular music. SM (00:41:24): Wow. HK (00:41:25): The answer is no. No causal relationships that I could find, but this is where I came into the notion of an early warning system, that musical trends, something might be happening in California or somewhere else, and music would bring it to the attention of the East Coast. Surfing, California, Hawaii. But the Beach Boys brought an interest to surfing to the East Coast. I remember the early (19)60s being at Rehoboth and seeing a VW with a surfboard on top. There was no surfing ever in Rehoboth because the coastline was not appropriate. But the surfing culture, the straight hair for the girls, the baggies, et cetera, music brought that to the East Coast. All right, that legitimized, that caused me to look even more closely for songs that had messages, or songs that had political overtones, songs that were topical. And from 1970 on, I have really been listening for, collecting, categorizing, listing, putting it all together. This Vietnam project is just the most recent expression of all that. SM (00:42:42): It is unbelievable. I am going to look at this a second. HK (00:42:54): Before [inaudible] I was traveling whenever I could to see more of the world, but whether it was one or two or three hours a day, this was sufficient interest that I was able to write the dissertation in just over a year. SM (00:43:09): How long was the defense? I will not take that. HK (00:43:14): When I went back to Europe, with credentials now, I was not shy about using them. I was assigned to Ramstein in Germany for a couple of terms, and one of the first things I did was to go to the American Forces Radio station in Kaiserslautern, introduced myself and said, "Guys, I just finished a doctorate on pop music. Is there something we can do with this?" And that station had an obligation, I think, as most of the stations in Europe did, to create some provisional programming that could go out on American Forces Europe. So I met a DJ named Scott Trackson and Scott said, "Let us think about how we can do this." So we broke the dissertation up into 12 parts, called it, what was the name of the show? Not Rock Recollections, something like that. But we sat down and then he would interview me about some of the things that I had found out and then play the music. And then he would say, "Okay, Dr. Keesing, how do you think this worked?" It turned out to be 12 one-hour shows. They were aired throughout Europe. I got fan mail. "This is very interesting. How can we get hold of Dr. Keesing and how can we learn more about it?" AFN gave me a little plaque for my contributions. But then I did a short paper for, what was it, the Eastern Psychological Association somewhere in the mid-(19)70s. I was trying to establish credentials as a teacher and going to professional meetings. So I wrote a paper on youth in transition. I gave the paper at. A panel when it was over, the editor of a book came by and said, "I really like what you presented. Can I have it? I am about to publish a book and I would like to use it." I said, "Well, this was a paper." And he said, "No. If it is about this long..." Hold on, I will show you this. A month or two of having presented... Here we go. "The pop message: a trend analysis of the psychological content of two decades of music." All right, it was I presented a paper, a week later sent him a copy, and two months later, I have my first publication in the Book of Readings. SM (00:46:12): My God. HK (00:46:15): So all of this was reinforcement for the notion that music is important. Music and psychology and adolescent behavior and youth culture are a legitimate package. This is about (19)75 when for most traditional academics, pop culture and pop music were sort of throwaway. But I had a dissertation. I had a chapter in a book. I had a radio show. And so I felt as if I had a solid foundation for including music in my teachings and approaching the University of Maryland and suggesting something more formal. How can I build this into a course? First effort was in the honors program. It went over very well. And then again, sort of the fortuitous coming together, the father of popular culture studies in the US, a gentleman name Ray Brown was on a two-year sabbatical at the University of Maryland. He was at Bowling Green State in Ohio, came to Maryland. He was there. I knew Ray from professional meetings and I said, "Dr. Brown, can I get your support for creating a course at the University of Maryland that would really study contemporary American history using music as the main source?" And Ray thought that would be a great idea. And so I created something called American Studies 298a, popular music in American society. It began modestly in 1975 or (19)76 with 17 students in one class and 35 in the other. And in three years I had moved from a classroom to an auditorium that sat 300, where my average enrollment was 280 to 400 students. All of that sort of continued. First of all, it fed the need to stay current. So I began collecting Vietnam music and political music, Watergate, all of those records. Because I now had a formal way to bring them into my class. It meant that the books I used to teach were books on the (19)60s. One of my favorites... Here are my textbooks. Glory and the Dream. SM (00:48:43): Oh yeah, Glory and the Dream. HK (00:48:43): What are some of the others? SM (00:48:49): There is Todd Gitlin's book, I know you have got there. HK (00:48:52): His book is right here. A very interesting book, Year by Year in the [inaudible], which makes the connection between music and all of the events that were going on. And what is even better about this. SM (00:49:17): Wow, there is good. Wow, I never heard of this book. HK (00:49:23): Well, I have used this since then. When I have gone to concerts and I have gotten Everly Brothers. It is probably long, long out of print, but this would tell you news that influenced the rock era. statistics, what people were doing. And it begins exactly at your point where you are interested. SM (00:49:45): Right. HK (00:49:46): So this would definitely be one. SM (00:49:49): You might be able to find this on Amazon. HK (00:49:52): You could probably try it. Yeah. SM (00:49:54): I have this book. HK (00:49:54): But this is also why- SM (00:49:56): I have that one. HK (00:49:57): I tried to use books like this that would encourage students, that would use music as the primary tool, but that had everything about the culture surrounding it. This was, I think, the last text that I used. SM (00:50:14): Do you really believe as a person who studied music for decades, that the music of the (19)60s and say the (19)70s, through the mid (19)70s, more than any other period in our history, had more messages, gave more messages, and had an influence on the young people that were growing up in that era than any other era. I say this because even when you think of the World War II generation, you think of those songs like, oh, the White Cliffs of Dover. HK (00:50:49): Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition. SM (00:50:50): Yeah. Or people are not coming home. There is messages about people who have died and are not coming back home. There were some messages in other music from the (19)40s, I believe, but not like this period. HK (00:51:08): I agree with you, and one of the reasons that I have spent so much time studying war music is because wartime brought more message music than any other time. I mean, there is still the songs of love and separation. But back in that room, I have got 11,000 pieces of sheet music related to World War II. That is my other huge interest. So I have 70 or 80 different monographs that I have put together on themes from World War II sheet Music. And when I began publishing on music and wartime, the first article was World War II and Vietnam. I wanted to see to what extent the messages were the same, were different. And in fact, the Vietnam War music is very different from the World War II-related music. SM (00:52:16): In what way? HK (00:52:17): Specifically, because the wars were so different, the music that is associated with Vietnam from the earliest point, which would be about 1960, (19)61, would be songs that were vaguely pacifist, such as Where Have All The Flowers Gone? I mean, it is not an anti-war tune, but it talks about the futility of war. Soldier Boy is about separation, but it is certainly not like You are a Sap Mr. Jap to Make the Yankee Cranky, or Remember Pearl Harbor. We sort of found we were in Vietnam for a bunch of years before there were any songs that really mentioned Vietnam. The first pop song that mentions Vietnam that I was able to run across is called The Big Draft by the Four Preps. And it is a comedy tune that where this group parodies The Platters in this case, and it says, "Our new records a bomb, they have never heard of us in South Vietnam." So South Vietnam was sort of an incidental point. World War II, you had songs about, I mean, there are hundreds of songs about the Japs, some of them extremely racist. Songs about Hitler. Songs about military units, about battles, about generals, lots of interesting music about the women in the service, the WACs, the WAVES, the SPARs, the Lady Marines who were all new. But I do not think I have in the sheet music of 11,000, more than two or three songs that could be considered critical of war or certainly nothing of World War II. I mean, there may have been, war is not a good thing, but nothing that was critical of US involvement in World War II. It was a righteous war. It was America had been attacked and the entire music industry and more so even the people at home, because maybe 80 percent, 75 or 80 percent of what I have there is music written by your average citizen. It is self-published. It is not by major publishers. It is not by Irving Berlin or Frank Lesser. It is people writing from the heart. Vietnam began with protest music, whether it was Universal Soldier of Buffy Sainte-Marie, whether it was Eve of Destruction by McGuire or PF Sloan. And from (19)65 on, you already had the beginning of a divisiveness, because after Eve of Destruction, you may remember there was an answer record called the Dawn of Correction by the Spokesmen refuting each point that McGuire made. And after Buffy Sainte-Marie's, the Universal Soldier, Jan Barry of Jan and Dean recorded the Universal Coward. SM (00:55:38): I think you mentioned that at your- HK (00:55:40): So you begin getting this tug-of-war music. War music became polarizing from very early on. And there was no polarity in World War II music. It was all strongly supportive of the US and every aspect of its effort. And it was uniformly critical of the Germans and the Italians and Japanese, et cetera. So World War II music, single focus, we are going to win this. We are going to achieve victory over the bad guys. Vietnam, from the onset, it was unclear why were we there? Where were we? Most people did not know where Vietnam was. What are we doing there? What are our objectives? Never clear. And the music that I associate with Vietnam from 1960, for 50 years, the music has been unable to clarify a war that was never clear. The arguments over were we right? Were we wrong? Did we lose? Did we win? They have not been settled. SM (00:56:55): Yeah. In fact, there has been a lot of albums made that are advertised in the Vietnam magazine that you can buy. People you have never heard of. HK (00:57:05): Well, you are going to hear of some of them. SM (00:57:06): Yeah. HK (00:57:13): I saw the ad for John Black in here. SM (00:57:17): Yes, John. Yes. HK (00:57:18): We have got, I think three of Black's cuts are on the box. And I said, "Look, we need to do something similar." And I was told that Vietnam Magazine will in fact, review our- SM (00:57:33): How about the people like the Chris Noel's, some of the singers that were there, or the women that were over there. I think Chris Noel, I am not sure if she did any songs. Oh my God, yeah, I met her. HK (00:57:55): Yep. And we include Forgotten Man. SM (00:57:59): Oh my gosh. I did not even know she did an album. HK (00:58:01): Is one of the ones on the box set. And we also have a 35 or 40 second clip of her date with Chris Show for American Forces Radio. So with Joe's permission or understanding, she is the only woman I think who is included on a disc of all veteran songs, because she was made in honorary Vietnam veterans. SM (00:58:31): Yes-yes. HK (00:58:31): So everything else is by men, but Chris Noel as an honorary vet, as the distinction of being the only woman with a song on one of the last two CDs. SM (00:58:42): How about the Native American, also, musicians? Bill Miller, I think he is a great Native American singer. Do you know Bill Miller? HK (00:58:51): I do not know Bill Miller. I have got one Native American, Jesse Nighthawk with a CD that is entirely Vietnam-oriented. It is a very powerful CD. I have passed along to Bear Family a request that maybe we put 30 seconds of some of the songs on Facebook so that people can listen to and get a sense of what they may be hearing. And for one of the CDs, we are looking at the possibility of one song from each CD. Jesse Nighthawk as the one that I want to feature on, I guess, CD 12, APO San Francisco Visits. It is just an extremely powerful song. SM (00:59:42): Buffy Sainte-Marie has got a new album out. I am trying to interview her. She has agreed to be interviewed, but she has to do it on computer. But she has got an unbelievable new album. HK (00:59:54): We are using her Universal Soldier. I had requested a second song, Moratorium, and for some reason we could not get licensing for that. So she will be included in the set. SM (01:00:10): And talking about the music during the time the Boomers have been alive and they are only hitting about 63 years old. HK (01:00:17): I am collecting Social Security. SM (01:00:26): Yeah, but you are young. HK (01:00:28): I am young. Okay. SM (01:00:28): Yeah. And what I found out in the interview process, that people that were born, Richie Havens was born in (19)40 or (19)41, considers himself a Boomer. He says, "That is my mentality." HK (01:00:41): Psychologically. And the culture, I am certainly [inaudible]. SM (01:00:44): You are right in there. All right. What are your thoughts on, I am talking about the Boomer music now. Let us say we are into the (19)76 period now, disco. I know there is a brand-new book out by a professor at Rutgers University. She has just written a book on the history of disco, and I bought it. Ann Eccles is her name. It is supposed to be a very good book. What are your thoughts on the music from the disco, which seems to be the cutoff point, and then you get into the (19)80s and the (19)90s and today's music. This is all part of the Boomer generation, even though it is geared toward younger people, but disco's certainly part of that Boomer era. HK (01:01:30): Yeah. As an academic, I look for trans patterns. I think one of the important technological changes or events was when FM radio came to prominence in the late (19)50s, early (19)60s. The Payola hearings changed AM radio. I grew up with mobile disc jockeys who played whatever they wanted to. But by the late (19)50s, with Dick Clark, Alan Freed and others, the restrictions on what individual DJs could play were put in place. And you began to get formatted top 40. So beginning in the mid-(19)60s, the sound changed. And then with the advent of FM, you began getting what was then called alternative. So the top 40 were really the music that you heard in the mid-(19)50s until the mid-(19)60s. And then suddenly with FM albums and album-oriented artists and longer cuts could be played on the radio. I mean, The Doors- SM (01:02:51): Light My Fire. HK (01:02:52): Et cetera. Who were much more popular on FM and whose album cuts became better known than some of their singles. And so I was already a little bit beyond, because music was always a tool for me. And by (19)65, I had graduated from college, I was in graduate school, and music's importance to my life was changing. It became more a subject of interest, and sort of the currency the day in terms of where did you go? What did you listen to? What did you bring to parties? So FM music brought in new artists. It also brought in the themes because FM radio had more leeway in terms of what it played than AM. AM was more conservative. It was considered more for kids. The thoughtful late teenagers were now finding their FM stations and getting deep into Jimi Hendrix as opposed to the bubblegum music, for example, because bubblegum was a little bit before. I look at disco as sort of the in-motion bubblegum. Disco, the lyrics were not very heavy, but it was great for dancing. And music, whether it was Chubby Checkers and all of the Twist records in the early (19)60s, disco was simply the continuation of one musical strand, which is, if you ever watched Dick Clark or American Bandstand, the records were rated: "It is got a good beat. You can dance to it. I will give it an 85." So for some listeners, music was primarily about does it have a good beat and can you dance to it? They were less concerned with the lyrics than could they dance to it. And that reminds me of American Forces, AFN, banned Eve of Destruction. And there were some articles on Eve of Destruction that came out in the late (19)60s trying to prove that music like this ought to be banned because it was anti-American and it was bad influence. And one of the studies on Eve of Destruction found that most teens did not have a clue as to what the song was about. They would listen to it and say, "You cannot really dance to it. I do not like it because I cannot dance to it," when asked, "Well, what are the politics? What is the message?" So a lot of kids did not listen for messages in music. It is more a visceral experience. I was one of those who was less interested in the beat and more interested in the learning. SM (01:05:44): Did you see this in your studies, that this was changing as you get into the late (19)60s and say through 1973, because I consider the (19)70, (19)71, (19)72, (19)73, all part of the (19)60s. I listened to the words, I wanted to hear the words. And what upset me is when I could not hear the words. HK (01:06:07): FM music was more attuned to letting you listen to an entire track, or maybe even playing an entire side of an album. And so the ability to go beyond the two and a half minutes of vigorous exercise, i.e. dancing, FM allowed you to do that. People my age began buying albums probably in the early (19)60s. Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary, those were album artists. But the currency, I like to use that term, was still primarily singles. If you were 14, 15, 16, and you did not have 3.98 or 4.98 to buy an album necessarily, besides many albums were simply greatest hits where you got all the singles and flip sides. And so until the Beatles began creating albums for themselves, it was more than just a collection of songs. That is to say that younger kids were still primarily into 45s. And 45s, certainly the pop 45s rarely had much of a message. Now, what I have subsequently learned is that virtually all of the message music from the 60s and early (19)70s is country or folk. Folk, usually on LPs, cuts by Joan Baez, by Tom Paxton, by Phil Oaks, by Buffy Sainte-Marie, and people like that. Or if they are Country and Western, it is singles, obscure labels distributed out of Nashville, stuff that probably never sold. But these were people who felt strongly enough to put their words into song, maybe print a hundred records, and that was the last you ever heard of it. But some of the most interesting Vietnam stuff is from those Country and Western singles that came out between early (19)60s to early (19)70s. SM (01:08:18): Yeah, I tell you that Arlo Guthrie too, his music, Alice's restaurant. HK (01:08:25): That there was an Alice's Restaurant Massacre, which came out as a single, maybe four and a half minutes. But to appreciate that you have to listen to the 16 or 17 minute album cut. You cannot get that. SM (01:08:37): Yeah. And the first time you listened to it, because he performed at my alma mater. I saw him twice. HK (01:08:45): I heard him do it in Forest Hills at the tennis stadium in (19)68 or (19)69, somewhere around there. He was just sitting there and strumming away. SM (01:08:58): As the Boomer generation's getting older, in terms of the late (19)70s and the year of Ronald Reagan and the (19)80s. And the (19)80s had really good music. I liked the music of the (19)80s, but it seemed like there was a return of a lot of solo artists at that time. When I think of the (19)80s, I think of those MTVs, watching them on MTV, which was a great way of watching the music and getting to know the songs. But groups like Air Supply, Police. HK (01:09:29): Journey. SM (01:09:29): Duran Duran. HK (01:09:31): REO Speed wagon. SM (01:09:35): Yeah, but I thought it was great music. Steve Perry. HK (01:09:38): Oh yeah. SM (01:09:38): Oh Sherrie. HK (01:09:39): Oh Sherrie. SM (01:09:40): Yeah. But to me, it seemed like it was almost like a return to the (19)50s. It was not a whole lot of messages, but just really good music. Just a lot of solo artists, African American and white, male and female. HK (01:09:56): But beginning with the first divide between AM and FM, and that is... HK (01:10:02): And FM, and that is mid (19)60s, mid to late (19)60s. I mean, in the (19)50s, I think virtually every teenager was listening to the same body of music. By the mid to late (19)60s, you began to find the purchases between album-oriented listeners and those who were still listening to singles and singles became teen bopper music. Bobby Sherman, and David Cat. And music like that. So album... SM (01:10:41): Mark Wansey was another one. HK (01:10:44): Paul Revere and the Raiders. Albums offered more potential for becoming creative. For, I mean, the Beatles were certainly the ones that helped move that along. And so people began creating niches that black music, soul music, R&B and-and Rock and Roll were, except at least in Washington, were synonymous that DJs had listened to, played Little Richard and played Fat [inaudible], played Chuck Barry, et cetera. Now, if you were in the South, maybe you did not hear them. Maybe segregated, their first segregated radio stations boom and the youth culture of the mid-(19)50s put an end to that because kids, once they found out that Little Richard really sang Long Paul Sally, and that it was much better than Pat Boon's version, simply would not accept a station that would only play the white versions, the cover versions. So teenagers made clear that they wanted their rock and roll in its original form, and by its original artist. By the mid-(19)60s, James Brown is helping to take black music a step further. Motown was music by blacks for a broad audience. And some would argue that Motown was too white, even though the artists were black. But the music represented by James Brown, and then later on Funk, these were very clearly aimed at a black urban audience. And while white kids enjoyed much of that music as well, the specialization of musical styles began. I mean, disco. Disco was not just the twist, but disco became a musical style with a culture that went with it, with the leisure suit and Discos and John Travolta. SM (01:12:43): Some people say it was gay culture. Some people think, well, I read that in Anne Eckle's book. HK (01:12:49): Yeah, yeah. Perhaps it is... SM (01:12:54): Saturday Night Fever, yeah. HK (01:12:56): But you did not have to be gay to enjoy disco. I mean, if disco was embraced by gays, that is one thing. But to say that everybody who listened, enjoyed disco was somehow gay. I think that that, that is turning that thing upside. SM (01:13:09): Bee Gees. That is unbelievable. I love the Bee Gees. HK (01:13:12): Yep. But with disco, you also got an emphasis on what electronics drummers now had electronic drum sets, synthesizers. So there was an emphasis on production. Again, Phil Spector songs, I liked them because the wall of sound. By the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, David Foster, one of the reasons I like Steve Perry and Journey is because there is the big orchestration behind it. And so you and I like that music. Others felt that that was way overblown, and were looking for the stripped down music. I mean, take all of that fancy electronic stuff out. Just give me a guitar. It took a while longer, but artists like Eric Clapton became popular again, but unplugged. In other words, you liked, some people liked him when in the electric versions and others, none of them. I did not like him until I heard him unplugged. This was the reverse, what was it, (19)65? When Dylan went to Newport and folk music went from acoustic to electric. The purists were offended, but we would not have had The Birds and The Turtles and The Lovin' Spoonful if Dylan had not done that. And so what? A decade, decade and a half later, it is all right, let us get back to the basics. So by the late (19)70s, mid (19)70s, to me, music had fractured. There were still Casey Case in the American Top 40, and for many people, that was still the way to know what was what. But there were an awful lot of artists whose records did not make Top 40, who became tremendously influential. I mean Led Zeppelin. But how many records did they have that made Top 40? Stairway to Heaven never made the top 100, and yet I was looking at this for each of my classes, Maryland, I would ask my students, okay, what are your top three rock and roll songs? And I have this information from the (19)70s on. The biggest ones were Stairway to Heaven, a Free Bird, and Amy by Pure Prairie League. There were a couple overs, some Springsteen, Born to Run. Did that make it as a single? SM (01:15:54): No, I do not think the Grateful Dead ever had singles. Did they? No. HK (01:15:57): Touch of Gray. Grateful Dead, Springsteen, Billy Joel's early stuff did not come out of singles. But these were the mid-(19)70s artists. I mean, the popular ones. I call them the ABCDs. You had Aba, you know, B was Red, C was The Carpenters. D was John Denver. A was The Eagles. These were the people who were selling singles. But it was Springsteen, Joel, Grateful Dead, Led Zeppelin, The Who, who were selling huge amounts of music, but not AM top four. SM (01:16:37): When I think of the period from the disco period, because I was working at Ohio University in my very first job, Berry White was so big. HK (01:16:47): Oh, yes. Wonderful. SM (01:16:49): And I do not care, even though I am from the (19)60s from that period and everything, let the music play. Just when I first heard that, I said, let the music play. It just made you feel good. And I thought he was a genius. And then Donna Summer. HK (01:17:05): Donna Summer. SM (01:17:05): Because when she sang that song that they would not play on the radio the full version, Love to Love You Baby, to me... Yeah, Donna Summer and Barry White to me were the stars of that... The epitome. Then there was the one female singer, I forget her name, African American who was sang, had a couple big hits too, but they kind of stood out amongst all the others. HK (01:17:32): I have always appreciated a big voice. I have always appreciated orchestration. I mean Laura Branigan. SM (01:17:42): Oh, she was good. HK (01:17:44): Good? SM (01:17:44): Yes. HK (01:17:44): Yeah, I was delighted when Barry White had his career revived by Ally McBeal, and it was wonderful to hear his music there. But I mean, you and I clearly have overlapping tastes, but we can find people our age, well, maybe not, maybe a couple years younger, who were into punk. Who were listening to the Sex Pistols and The Ramones. SM (01:18:16): Never got into that. HK (01:18:17): Me neither. But those are subsets of our generation, or at least the boomer generation who found their music and whose recollections of the roles music played, et cetera, would be very different from ours. SM (01:18:32): Do you believe, particularly in the (19)90s, we had Chuck D in our campus. I like Chuck D because he was pretty critical of these other rap artists, and he has been, Tupac Shakur and some of the heroes of the (19)90s. Some of them lost their lives, Big Daddy and everything, but that the critics of that music were boomers, a lot of them, who were older. But if they really tried to understand the music a little better, was not a lot of that music about messages too? HK (01:19:03): Yeah. SM (01:19:03): It is just that you could not hear it because there was so much. And of course, today, the way they treat women and all the other things, you can dislike the music, but the messages are there. HK (01:19:15): The messages, to me, it is still a barometer. The barometer right now is for, we indicate as society where, what is the word? It is to my ears, much less civil. It is much more confrontational, in your face. It is loud. And we were, at this point a long time ago, I grew up in a family and in an environment that prize diplomacy, compromise, quiet. I mean, you go about do your business but do not... Rather than 15 minutes and bearing your guts for Oprah or something like that. That is not the way I learned what it was like to become an adult. And so many of the qualities that have been important to me for more than 60 years are not the antithesis, but certainly they are at the other end of the spectrum for what is important now. Now music has, I think, always pulled young people, has pulled listeners from sort of the safe and to a little bit more daring. And whether it was The Flappers and jazz in the thirties, for example, because my mom told me she was born in 1910 and how excited she was when jazz was introduced to Holland and her parents' generation frown on what these young women were doing, wearing lipstick in dances like The Charleston. That is the end of the civilization as we know it. And in the forties, the big bands, there were people who said, "no, we do not want our kids dancing to music sung by some skinny kid named Sinatra." So yeah, I think there is always some tendency for young people to break away from the norms, find something new. It is simply to find something new these days, you have to become more and more extreme. You are pushed more and more to the fringes, as far as I am concerned. SM (01:21:41): In the love of music as a person who grew up around the same time I did. Did you also, not only during those times when the singers that we have been talking about in the late (19)50s or the (19)50s, and then of course the rock musicians of the (19)60s, but there were other songs that had messages that may have been called corny, like MacArthur Park? I thought Richard Harris's version of MacArthur Park, I like the words. "MacArthur Park is mounting in the dark.? There is a message in there. There is a song. HK (01:22:16): There is. SM (01:22:18): And I always think of times when I went with my parents to parks when my parents are gone. HK (01:22:24): But you are also aware that that song has been consistently voted but the worst rock record of all time. SM (01:22:30): I did not know that. HK (01:22:31): Yeah, yeah. And Richard Harris's version, because the Donna Summer version gives it a little bit more life, but "left a cake out in the rain?" I mean, what the hell was he talking about? SM (01:22:41): Yeah but the guy who wrote that was, what is his name? He was actually said... Jim Webb. HK (01:22:45): Jim Webb. SM (01:22:46): Yeah. And I had his album. HK (01:22:48): Who also wrote some very good stuff. SM (01:22:50): Do you have his album of Jim Webb sings Jim Webb? HK (01:22:54): If I did, it is at Maryland. SM (01:22:56): It was an orange cover and it did not sell very much. And all I know is, but a lot of the songs, Simon and Garfunkel's music was just full of messages from Bookends, "Old friends. Old friends sitting on park benches like bookends." And of course, even the movies of that era always had theme songs. I remember Liza Minelli and Wendell Burton in the movie... I forget, but the song was, Come Saturday Morning. HK (01:23:28): One Flew Up the Coop Nest. SM (01:23:31): Yeah, yeah. "It Comes Saturday." HK (01:23:32): No-no, not One Flew up the Coop... SM (01:23:34): No, that is Jack Nicholson. Sterile Cuckoo. HK (01:23:38): Sterile Cuckoo. The cuckoo part I remembered. I just got the wrong... SM (01:23:40): That is real (19)60s because she is off at college falling in love with the Wendell Burton. But that song is "here come Saturday." I always remember that. So there is... HK (01:23:50): One of the qualities of getting older is the willingness to take the time to become more reflective. I mean, Simon and Garfunkel, I listened to them in the (19)60s and (19)70s, but it was not music that you would take to a party. To a frat party, for example. SM (01:24:11): Right. HK (01:24:12): The songs I took to frat parties were Ray Charles, what did I say? Or the Isley Brothers, Shout. Or The Contours, Do You Love Me? Because even in college, I had taken my records with me and I was invited to take them to parties. SM (01:24:25): Well, I know one. I had a very nice record collection at Ohio State when I was there. And I remember one album that some of my friends wanted when they were having a date one night with a girl was Shirley Bassey, I Capricorn. HK (01:24:44): Okay. See that is not something, and there was music you played when you were smoking pot. There was music that you played when you were studying for exams. Certainly the people around me used music. But again, by the mid (19)60s already, there were now so many choices that you could look for, find, adapt music to whatever you wanted to do. In the early (19)50s, we did not have that. We simply had what AM radio was playing and or what you could buy at 45s. I think I got my first LP for Christmas, probably around 19. SM (01:25:35): There was an article that I just recently read, and you may have seen it. And actually, if you go into the computer when you go into your name, you are in that article. HK (01:25:46): That is interesting. SM (01:25:46): But in the article, it says Kent State is part of the culture wars. When people say that Kent State is part of the culture wars, what do you think they are saying? HK (01:26:10): The culture wars in Kent State. Okay. I would go back to initially to a book that James Michener wrote on Kent State in 19... actually it came out (19)71, called "Kent State, What Happened." What was frightening, [inaudible], was the reactions that he got in Kent, Ohio and in the whole state. When his researchers asked people about the events there in May of 1970, there are some things I recall from the book. He talks about protestors at, I think Sandy Shroyer's funeral carrying signs saying "the Kent State four should have studied more" carrying protest signs at funerals. I thought was only that Baptist route out of Oklahoma that did that these days. But this is back in 1970. I used a quote from Michener's book in the set where one of his researchers is now talking to a woman from Kent, Ohio who has three sons who attended the university, who worked as students there. Makes the most sense to [inaudible] about the right place here. But I quoted in the book... All right, so he said, "more than the usual care was taken to get it exactly as deliberate, mother. Anyone who appears in the streets of a city like Kent with long hair, dirty clothes were barefooted deserves to be shot. Researcher, I have your permission to quote that? Yes, you sure do. It would have been better if the guard had shopped a whole lot of them that morning. But you had three sons there. Mother, if they did not do what the guards told them, they should have been mowed down. Professor of psychology listening in saying, is long hair justification for shooting someone? Yes, we have got to clean up this nation and we will start with the long hairs. Professor, would you prevent one of yourselves to be shot simply because he went barefooted. And she says, yes. Where do you get such ideas? And she says, teach at the local high school. Professor Union, you are teaching your students such things. Yes. I teach them the truth. That the lazy, the dirty, the ones you see walking in the streets and doing nothing, ought all to be shot." SM (01:28:33): Wow. HK (01:28:34): Kent, Ohio. 1970. I was following in the Aron Beacon Journal last month, some of the conversations, meetings with the blogs, why does Kent State bother to make this into a big event? I mean, these kids were protesting. Right on. Why are they setting up a special commemorative center, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Those grounds are now what? They have been officially designated a historic site. And there are people who feel very strongly that all of this is wrong. These kids were protesting the war. They were anti-American. So if that fits your definition of a culture war, the differences in opinion that were so evident in that interview in 1970, those differences still exist. And that culture war still exists. It is simply expressed in blogs now. There was somebody in an article that, I do not remember quite how the connection was made, but somebody tried to connect what happened at Kent State in May of 1970 with what happened in New York in September of 2001. And there were people who took loud exception of that. That one was a terrorist attack on the US and the other was a bunch of disgruntled kids. In other words, the politics, the different world viewpoints, et cetera. In that sense, little has changed in 40 years. SM (01:30:31): And I have here that, and I think this is also what is really happening on university campuses today, that controversy can be seen as economically damaging. And Kent State is box office poison. And this was the article I was reading. Because that movie that came out in (19)81 did not succeed, but it was not very well made either on Kent State. But the question I am really asking is if Kent State is symbolic of something that was controversial, like the anti-war movement, what is that saying about, have we learned anything from that period of today? Because if universities are still afraid of controversy, and we know that universities and all colleges are having a tough time now because of the economy we are living in, the world we are living in today, and that if everything is bottom line, the university is a business, but the students of the (19)60s were really challenging the university. That the university is about ideas. It is about preparing students of the world they are going to face. To listening to all points of view that we do not do things for the sake of controversy, but things can be controversial. Had the universities learned anything from what happened in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s and the tragedies that took place on campus? HK (01:32:27): Wow, there certainly is not an easy answer for that. First of all, again, the term universities has to cover so many different institutions and they range from the liberal to extremely conservative. I would not compare the University of Wisconsin to Bob Jones University. SM (01:32:48): Or Hillsdale College. HK (01:32:55): I think that there is... Technology to me makes change that the things that happen on campus are now reported so quickly with a professor says something that is controversial, and it could be a blog within minutes. I mean, somebody could be texting from the classroom. It is picked up and suddenly it is not a difference of opinion between a student and a professor. But it now becomes a point for a talking head on television late in the evening, professor so-and-so said such and such. The next thing you have got a controversy. I think it is much more difficult. I have not been in a college classroom. I was teaching as late as 2006, but when you are teaching for the Department of Defense, you have got a very different environment. I was teaching graduate courses in intelligence analysis. That is a little different than teaching psychology and undergraduate. So in my American studies course, there were times when my presentations of, let us say World War II or Vietnam, were students discrete. I did not see that necessarily as a problem because if they all sit there nodding their heads, you wonder what is happening. And I learned a lot more about what my students were learning when they disagreed or asked questions because then we had to elaborate on our positions. I do not know if faculty today feel more constrained. I think students feel a right to hold faculty accountable. I think that is a (19)70s, post (19)70s phenomenon. As an undergraduate, I would not have questioned a grade that a faculty member gave me unless it was so egregious. But I certainly had a number of students who came and complained about a grade. And in some cases, this would have been in the mid to late (19)80s where parents began to intervene on behalf of their students. That now is a fairly regular phenomenon where you have got the helicopter parents who email a professor and say, how come my kid only got a B or a C? I personally would have trouble dealing with that. I taught one class, I guess this would have been fairly early. It was not, not the entire class was online, but a couple of the sessions. But I have got colleagues who teach online courses where students will complain to a dean if their emails are not answered within an hour. Well, folks, if I were a teacher and I had 300 students and I had computer students who all wanted an answer to a question in the next hour, I would tell them, sorry, this is not going to happen. But these are colleagues who are full-time workers who teach the evenings. And one of the reasons why I do not teach at the University of Maryland anymore is because I said, no, I do not want to work under those kinds of circumstances. Students are welcome to ask questions to interact, disagree, but my concept of the role of a faculty member is based on, my dad was a professor at the University of Amsterdam. Now, when he lectured, he came in academic regalia and his students stood up when he came in. I do not know if they asked questions, but he would present his lecture and he would walk out and they would stand up again. Those days are long gone. Imagine standing in front of a class and for theater, 300 students, and a student comes in behind me, stands in front of me and says, Dr. Keesing, can you tell me what I have missed? The student came in ten minutes late and I simply said, I would suggest that you sit down now. The idea that I am more important than these other 299 students. I want you to deal with my needs first. I simply would not tolerate that and I did not. And so by 80s standards, I was a hard ass. I do not know whether I would survive in the year 2010. SM (01:38:01): The students of the (19)60s certainly challenged a lot of the... They would challenge speakers and sometimes shot them down, which was wrong. I think they had learned that was wrong. HK (01:38:22): Freedom of speech means you say what you want to, but you also let others. In other words it is the notion that it is okay for me, but it is not okay for you. That is misinterpreting the whole notion of academic freedom. I do not recall ever consciously staying away from a topic because I felt it would be controversial. In fact, early on, it would be quite the opposite to that. I think I have mentioned that I was in Vietnam in 1970, teaching psychology for the University of Maryland. I was a young kid. I was what, 26 years old. I had long hair, sideburns. I was fresh off college campus. And six months after Kent State, I was teaching the troops in Vietnam. One of the classes I taught was social psychology, and one of the blocks that I was determined to teach, and I did, was the block on authoritarianism. And what was his name? I was taking a look at his just last night... But the studies on blind obedience where a figure in authority can tell somebody else, you must do this. And then, yeah, why would you do it? Because I was just following orders. I thought, we were in Vietnam. I have got soldiers. And the question that I posed, and I had pilots in class who flew F4 bombing strikes over the north. I said, what you need to do, what I want you to do, is think about what happens if the US were to lose this war, and you were on the wrong side. You were taken prisoner, and you are now brought into a court of inquiry and you were asked to justify why you dropped bombs on Hanoi. Well, those are my orders. And I said, and what happened to the German officers in Nurnberg when they said they were just following orders? This was not the kind of question that my students wanted me to ask, or one that they wanted to think about. This is 1970, there are pilots who have not wanted to really think about that 35 or 40 years later. But to me, that was part of my responsibility as a teacher. That we are not here just to have a good time. I am teaching psychology and this is something that I required them to address at the time in the world. What if we end up being on the wrong side, the losing side, and you have to justify your actions. What are you going to say? How are you going to do it? So to me, that was a requirement of teaching. You challenge. You make students think. If it makes them uncomfortable, then you are more likely to be doing something that is important and useful than if they can just sit back and, oh yeah, this is going to be fun to me that was not teaching. SM (01:41:55): I had professors like that too, and that was good. Can I need your restroom? Just real fast? HK (01:42:04): It is up the stairs... All right, here we go. Music is the soundtrack of my life. So I can give you what was popular in all the reference points. SM (01:42:13): Well, I have a question here which I wanted to ask, which is, in recent years, actors in Hollywood and other entertainers have been really heavily criticized for making political commentaries on whether it be our involvement in the Iraq War, even back in the Gulf War, or things that are happening in certain administrations. I mentioned Susan Saron and Tim Robins are just two of the examples. Jane Fonda, from back in the (19)60s period. And so a lot of people say to these people in the entertainment business, stay in the entertainment business. So thus, I had to ask this question, what about the musicians? And because musicians can write beautiful music, but you might have heard this question before, they should just be entertainers and not be political commentators. HK (01:43:11): The question or that particular view needs to be properly couched and that is that entertainers become the focus of this criticism if the position they take is the opposite of what the people criticizing feel it should be. So was John Wayne ever criticized widely for his stance in Vietnam? I do not think so, because Wayne was pro-America. Do you remember the film, The Green Berets? So was it wrong? Is it wrong for movie stars to become political? Only if the political side that they are espousing happens to be different from the one you feel is important? I do not think that liberal students or common students, I do not know how many boycotted to John Wayne films because of his US involvement in Vietnam stance. Jane Fonda for her 1972 trip to Hanoi is still vilified by a lot of Vietnam vets. If you were in the mall and you saw, not the Park Service Pavilion, but the one that is right there by the Lincoln Memorial Lab, that is run by vets, there are still Jane Fond urinal stickers. That are on sale there. So Fonda was against the war, therefore, she was a politician who was speaking up where she should not have been. Wayne and others were for the war. They were not subject to the same criticism, at least not from those same sources. Again... at least not from those same sources. Again, if there were anti-war students who boycotted Bob Hope or Joey Heatherton, or any of the entertainers who went to Vietnam, for example, as part of USO shows, I am not aware of it. Were they all political? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, Wayne certainly was, it very clear on where he stood. As far as I know, that was never a problem. SM (01:45:31): I know at the very end of his life, he was invited to Harvard for the Pudding- HK (01:45:37): The Hasty Pudding? SM (01:45:38): Yeah, and they were against him. HK (01:45:40): Okay. SM (01:45:40): Yeah and I know that. But he had a good time there, and that showed the Harvard students were a little advanced because they were willing to bring him in, and they had a great time. But they criticized him, but he was who he was, and they were who they were, and they got along fine. HK (01:45:59): That is the point, respect. Expect that there will be differences, and then respect those differences. That not everyone has to think the same way I do, it would be a dreadfully dull world if everyone agreed with you. And it would be difficult to have interesting conversations. But you can respectfully agree to disagree. It does not involve shouting. It does not need to involve confrontation. I disagreed with the war. I remember spending a moratorium day in New York City, listening to Peter, Paul and Mary, walking up Fifth Avenue with Shirley MacLaine, ending our walk at the UN building where the cast of Hair sang "Aquarius, Let the Sunshine In." So that must have been October 1969. But I was prepared to go to Vietnam. It was a war I disagreed with. I had no antipathy toward soldiers. My own thought was, "I can be more effective teaching and getting across my views of war and obedience, et cetera, as in the example I mentioned, in Vietnam, than standing and shouting and being in the US and protesting." So it was a conscious decision. I knew when I signed up at the University of Maryland that a condition of employment was that I would teach at least one turn in Vietnam. And it took getting my head together. But I said, "All right, I will be there to teach, not to proselytize." My hair was long. I found myself in a confrontation the second day I was at the base where I was stationed. I was in the officer's club, I had just had dinner. I was confronted by a pilot who had had too much to drink, and he walked up to me and sort of in my face, said, "What do you think you are doing here, [inaudible 01:48:28]?" And I said, "Sir, I am having dinner." " What is that shit on your face?" And I said, "Oh, I guess you are referring to my sideburns." Tried to deescalate, if you will. And before it could get nasty, I mean, this whole group had gathered around us. And at some point, the group parts and the base commander, bird colonel comes walking over and says, "What is the problem here?" And I said, "No problem, sir." And it broke up very quickly. But the next morning, I was called into the education center, and my boss there, the education advisor said, "People understand you were in a fight last night." And I said, "Oh yeah." "Well, was there trouble at the officer club?" And I said, "I would not characterize it as that, but this is what happened." She says, "Well, I got word from General Clay, head of the Air Force in Saigon, and he has instructed me to tell you that you have got to get your hair cut, shave off your side burns." And I said, "No, ma'am. I cannot believe that that is the case." Said, "Well, I want you to cut your hair." And I said, "Well, let me think about it." So I had not even taught my first class yet. That evening, I walked into my classroom for the first time with my roster, my helmet, and my flak vest, which had been issued at the same time. The first thing that came up was, "Mr. Keesing, do not get your hair cut." What is this all about? Something happened the night before, have not even met these students, but this is a small base and there were not many civilians. The first thing my students said was, "Do not get your hair cut." Because I represented the outside coming in and I guess the antithesis of the authority, and they were on my side. I had not even opened a book yet. So I was conflicted, but I did not, I did not go and get my hair cut short or shave my sideburns off, and I have got plenty of photos to prove that. Again, to make a long story short, four months later, I had taught what I thought were a couple of really good classes. As I am walking from the post office back to my trailer across this open field, there is an officer coming my way and he is wearing eagles. So as we pass, he stops and says, "Are you Mr. Keesing by any chance?" And I said, "Yes, sir." He came over and he reached out and he said, "I just want to tell you, I have heard nothing good things about your teaching." To me that was justification. SM (01:51:27): Wow. HK (01:51:27): In other words, it may have taken four months, but there were a sufficient number of people who had gotten beyond the haircut and the sideburns and who were aware of what was going on in the classroom. So that this colonel, and I very much appreciated him at that point, said, "I have heard nothing but good things about your teaching." Because that is what I was there for, not to be a one-man protest. So that really made- SM (01:51:54): Great story. HK (01:51:55): A huge difference for me. In terms of confidence, and I am doing this the right way. Not being easy, not staying away from subjects, not sort of hiding behind words, but teaching is challenging, confronting, getting people's heads involved. SM (01:52:15): Yeah. HK (01:52:15): It was a great place to have to do that and to get, as it turns out, positive reinforcement. SM (01:52:21): That is a great story. HK (01:52:24): It is certainly one I will remember. SM (01:52:25): Yeah. That is a great learning lesson too. These are just quick responses. What do you think are the greatest anti-war musicians, in your opinion? HK (01:52:38): During the time of the war? SM (01:52:39): Yeah. I am basically referring to the time when boomers were young, which could be any time even in the (19)50s. So I am talking about the (19)50s, (19)60s and (19)70s, basically. HK (01:52:51): The most powerful songs were people like Phil Ochs. SM (01:52:57): Yep. HK (01:52:57): Tom Paxton, Seeger. They were the folkies. They were not the most popular, but when you listened to some of the Phil Ochs songs, for example, the messages are very, very clear. The most powerful voices now are the vets who are writing about the battles that they fought, the buddies who were killed, the problems that they have had. Again, I am quite well-informed about World War II music and I have not run across a single World War II song by a veteran that says anything. I mean, they just do not exist. Vets of World War II did not write music, did not express themselves in music. So this is a completely new phenomenon. Same thing true for Korea. The popular artists who are best remembered are probably Creedence Clearwater, Fortunate Son, Run Through the Jungle, Who Will Stop the Rain. A series of songs by Crosby, Stills and Nash with Young, including Ohio, Teach Your Children, Find the Cost of Freedom. These were a little bit later. These were early (19)70s songs. Who would have a body of music? I mean, as we move up from the early (19)70s to in the (19)80s, people will associate Springsteen with, whether it is "Born in the USA", his remake of "War." Springsteen, has at least a half dozen or so songs which are relevant to the Vietnam generation of boomers. Although Springsteen may be a little bit post war. Joan Baez has a few Vietnam related songs, but she is more closely identified with civil rights. Peter, Paul, and Mary were involved in every social concern of the (19)60s. So they have, again, folk music, folk artists that there were not many pop artists who did not have any significant body of work that relates to John Lennon, obviously. SM (01:55:48): Right. "Imagine." HK (01:55:50): "Give Peace a Chance", "Happy Xmas (War is Over). And some Beatles songs have been associated with Vietnam. But I think that that is a bit tenuous. Was "Revolution" about Vietnam? No. Could you apply it to Vietnam? Maybe. SM (01:56:13): This leads me right into civil rights. HK (01:56:18): Okay. SM (01:56:18): The singers that you felt were the best in this area. You have mentioned Joan Baez. Would Nina Simone being there too? HK (01:56:28): Nina Simone was certain a voice for Blacks. But I do not think Nina Simone had a very high profile, let us see, on college campuses. And a lot of the folk oriented, whether it was Peter, Paul, and Mary, the Limeliters, I mean, folk groups like that sold albums because they were popular on campus. Nina Simone, a powerful voice, but not one that would be quickly associated with. James Brown had some very strong language. "Say out loud, I am black and I am proud." But again, civil rights, I think Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Pete Seeger, these were the people that you saw at demonstrations. These are the people whose voices, whose songs were sung. SM (01:57:32): Mahalia Jackson, would she be in there too? She was at the March on Washington. She was the female singer. HK (01:57:38): She was, and this may be where my perspective is too narrow. I was on campus and I saw civil rights primarily through the lenses of a student on a college campus. And therefore, I not only saw it through those lenses, I heard it primarily through college campuses. And as I said, Duke was at that point, a very traditional southern school. So while people in the room next door were playing Peter, Paul, and Mary, I do not recall ever hearing Mahalia Jackson or Nina Simone being played by anyone in my dorm or my fraternity house. So I have got to be careful to say they were not seminal musical figures within my sphere at that time. SM (01:58:37): I think a group that was very popular, because I know I saw them in 1966, was Little Anthony and the Imperials. And they were singing on white campuses, predominantly white. And back then, of course the lead singer had an unbelievable voice. HK (01:58:50): But Little Anthony, I do not know any songs that he recorded or sang in concerts that would have any civil rights overtones that could be considered in any way political. There was "Tears on My Pillow", "Shimmy Coco Bop." Good songs, but not ones that would- SM (01:59:17): Right. HK (01:59:20): The Limeliters or the Four Preps. I mention them because they sang about Vietnam in a humorous way. So there was a political message, but it was couched in such a way that you could choose to ignore it. You could enjoy the music without being caught up in the politics. SM (01:59:40): How about Diana Ross when she originally split from the- HK (01:59:43): Supremes? SM (01:59:44): Supremes and she "Ain't No Mountain High" enough. I mean, I love the words in that, and I was trying to figure if there was any meaning in the "Ain't no mountain high." Of course, that is the song that everybody identifies with her when she first made the split. And the other group that was very popular in college campus, the Chambers Brothers. And they are the time- HK (02:00:02): "Time has come today." SM (02:00:04): Time. Unbelievable. They were big. HK (02:00:09): That is post my experience. And I come back to the notion that if there is, beginning in the late (19)60s, there was a much greater ability to self-select. In other words, who were you going to listen to? You were not limited to a single one or 2:00 AM stations. College campuses was still a fairly homogeneous group of artists who were being invited because they were selling tickets. But I guess it would depend on what campus you were on. Duke was not a coffee house. So we had the Serendipity Singers, we had a couple of black groups, The Chiffons, but I do not recall any music. I graduated in (19)65, that had political overtones. Now I think that could well have begun changing. That is a difference. Let us say between a Bill Cosby and a Dick Gregory to Black comedians, artists. You would get a very different experience depending on which of those two would appear on your college campus. Duke would have been much more inclined to have a Bill Cosby, I think, than I think Gregory, at least at that point. Now, it was also amazing. My first time back after graduation was 1970. And I went to the maternity house and where five years earlier it had been beer and whatever you bought at the ABC store, it was mostly pot. In five years, the cultural climate had changed tremendously. A year later, the fraternity went off campus. Because the national did not allow them to pledge blacks. It was a fraternity with southern roots. And so that particular group decided that if we cannot invite anyone we want, then we will distribute themselves from the next. So Duke went through some very, very big changes in the late (19)60s. And I left really at that transition point to the transition between relatively apolitical and politicized in (19)65. The war was still often some far off place. And Cuba, as I said, was more the focus that people did not know where Vietnam was. Beer, pot had not yet made its way onto the college campus. So there was a sea change in the mid (19)60s, and I was a graduate student at GW living at home, commuting to my classes. And that is a very different environment within which to sort of keep up with what is going on. I was not into dorms. I had a part-time job. I was working, trying to do graduate birth. And so for those two years in Washington, I was in a very different environment. And those were pretty critical years itself. (19)65 to (19)67, I was in DC. And then in (19)67 I continued my graduate work in New York. And that again was a completely different environment and community. SM (02:03:40): How about the women's movement singers that kind of identified with that? I only mentioned one in particular, Helen Reddy, "Because I am a woman." And that was, we are talking the (19)72 to (19)76 period with that. And another singer at that time was Anne Murray, who was very popular. And Olivia Newton John came out around then too. So they were all three of those then. And those were three very popular female singers at the time with hit after hit after hit. HK (02:04:13): Although I am more inclined to pick out songs and pick out artists because they were very few women who would be seeing, it would be, I guess the (19)80s before you had Holly Ne and Meg Christian. Holly Near was in concert with Ronnie Gilbert, the Weavers. And they did a show which had strong feminist roots and overtones that when I was trying to teach students about some of the issues, I mean politicians like Bella Abzug, writers like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. But I had to pick out individual songs. I mentioned The Exciters, "Tell him." SM (02:05:10): See, I had never heard of them. HK (02:05:12): Well- SM (02:05:12): Oh, I heard that song. HK (02:05:19): "Tell him right now." SM (02:05:20): Yeah. HK (02:05:21): So it is, "You girl, need to take charge of your own life. Do not wait for him to ask you. You ask him." I thought for the most important songs was Loretta Lynn "The Pill." You have, what is it? You something. You have set this chicken your last time. Now that I have got the pill. I mean, Loretta Lynn was pregnant with her first child when she was 50 or 60. And somewhere in the early 70s, her song of her declaration, it ain't going to happen anymore, is "The Pill." And to me, that was a song which pulled it all together. Now, she was criticized by country audiences did not like it, but this was a personal statement on her part. What other songs would I include? Because it is one thing to pick on music where a man has written words that a woman is to sing. How much authenticity was there in Diana Ross's in the Get? Not Diane Ross Love Child, it is Diane or Diana Ross singing about implying that she was one of these and now she does not want to become the mother of another love child who has nothing. But did audiences find that authentic? I think The Pill by Loretta Lynn, they could say, okay, this is first story. This is how she really feels. So music that, how much of the anti, where music was authentic versus commercial. SM (02:07:11): A really good song from that period is The Love Unlimited Orchestra. They sang a song about women. We are the carryon, the generation after generation. I had it right out in my car, in fact. I play that. I Love Unlimited Orchestra. HK (02:07:27): Right. I cannot place it. And that is where I go to one of my references. But yeah, it is. SM (02:07:34): Barry White's love on unlimited orchestra. Yeah. But the women singer and the main singer is Barry's wife, who's one of the lead singers in the center. And it is a very good song. How about the- HK (02:07:48): So I guess I would put in that category of women who were influential and whose pictures I showed, what is her name? Bobby King, the tennis player. SM (02:07:59): Billy Jean King. HK (02:08:00): Billy Jean King. Yeah. And so it was okay, but there was, to my mind, precious little music to support. In other words, I Am Woman Becomes the Anthem. But that is, that is still pretty commercial. And I think that was playing with Billy Jean was carried in for her. Yeah. Tennis match with Bobby Riggs, for example. SM (02:08:22): See, I thought you were starting to say Bobby Gentry where she was a singer. Oh, it is Billy Joe. Yeah, she, yes. Well- HK (02:08:30): I mean, women's lib, there were songs about women's lib. One of the most forceful that went to number one was Harper Valley PTA. SM (02:08:37): Yes-yes-yes. HK (02:08:38): Jane Riley the day my mama socked it too. A bunch of hypocrites, et cetera. But you really have to go search for titles there. Maybe. I did not think there was that much Vietnam until I really began looking at it. SM (02:08:54): How about the environmental movement? Because Earth Day was 1970. And I always think of John Denver when I think of John Denver, Rocky Mountain High. And I think another one I think of is Michael Murphy Wildfire. Those are the two, when I think of the environment, I think of those two. HK (02:09:11): Whose garden was this, which I think is Tom Paxton. SM (02:09:14): Okay. HK (02:09:15): Or neighborhood, big yellow taxi. They took away the trees and put up a parking lot. So again, give me one second. SM (02:09:24): Yeah. And I am take a break here on this thing. HK (02:09:33): Okay, take a look. So this is the syllabus or the outline for my class. So here we have (19)69 through (19)72. I would begin each class with what I call the chart sweep, which is a couple of seconds of each number one. And that is, that has survived me. That will be on the web long after I am gone. All right, so shift in cultural values. Materialism, Mercedes-Benz. SM (02:09:59): Oh, wow. HK (02:10:00): And door number three. SM (02:10:05): Oh yeah. HK (02:10:05): Moon Landing, Woodstock, Vietnam, Kent State, death of a Beatle, interest in religion, radicalization and shift shifter extremes. Helter Skelter. The Beatles song called Free Charlie Manson. The underside where the Fugs, well- SM (02:10:26): That is what is his name. Ed Sanders. HK (02:10:28): Ed Sanders. SM (02:10:29): Yep. HK (02:10:29): Exactly. All right. And then we get new social concerns. Birthday, very commoner. SM (02:10:39): Oh wow. HK (02:10:39): Mercy. Mercy. New the Ecology. SM (02:10:41): Oh yes, that is right. HK (02:10:42): Rachel Carson. John Denver's version of whose Garden Women's Movement. Okay. I am Woman, the pill, unborn child. SM (02:10:51): C as in cross. HK (02:10:52): Anti-abortion. SM (02:10:52): Yes. HK (02:10:53): So Vietnam, winding down, Watergate, Morays in transition, the streak. Sex, drugs, rock and roll. Love to Love You babies on there. Welcome the Wild Side, Lou Reed. So these are my topical songs that I use. Disco sounds called The Decorative Excess and Self-Indulgence. Disco techs. Studio 54 YMCA. SM (02:11:20): Village People. HK (02:11:21): Yeah. SM (02:11:24): Yeah. HK (02:11:24): TV Ford. SM (02:11:27): Very Shaping. HK (02:11:28): Yeah. Sounds the past. This is the oldies guy. SM (02:11:33): Any Native American. I mentioned Bill Miller. Course, he does not have any hits. But he is a real popular Native American singer. And the other one was, I think America, the song America, the Horse With No Name. And then- HK (02:11:54): Yeah, the Group America Where the Horse, yeah. SM (02:11:55): Yeah. HK (02:12:01): Late (19)40s. This begins to get into it. I began with cowboy culture, the qualities of heroes, the cowboy, hoppy Jean and Me, Happy trails. Differences from the Midwest to country music. Wow. Black music, unless it conforms to white standards. So baseball role models television. Right. There is Arthur Godfrey slap her down again, my gosh. Fighting the Red Menace. And then next thing you know, we are in the early (19)50s, and so this is where I began playing portions of every one of the songs. Korea, TV. Here we go, teaching conformity. How do duty time? How do you do these dos and do nots? Ducking cover drills. SM (02:12:55): Dennis the Menace. HK (02:12:55): Good versus bad. Dennis the Menace, open up your heart. Religion and how important- SM (02:13:01): Winkler's house party just passed away. HK (02:13:03): Yup. And their impact on the elections, baseball- SM (02:13:09): Wow. HK (02:13:10): McCarthyism, country music. And then rhythm and blues, sex, drugs, rock and roll. And then here is where we begin to get old role models replaced from Eddie Fisher for Christmas to the Wild Ones and black then Trousers. And so this is how I taught American history and values. And here we get rock and roll and youth culture, juvenile delinquency with all of the stuff in between. So as you can tell, music becomes the- SM (02:13:45): Yeah, I even broke it down here, Latino issues. I think of when I think of that, I think of Jose Feliciano. If there are any- HK (02:13:56): The first Latino artist, rock and roll artist was at least, and if you go by the historians, Richie Balans with La Bamba and Right. That would be the first one. But until you get folks like Ricky Martin, I was never consciously aware of, I mean, what is her name? Selena? SM (02:14:22): Yeah. The one that died? HK (02:14:23): Yeah. Again, it was not music that ever appealed to me. It was not music that I had listened to. So it is one I would call the sub-genres, the niche musics that I am sure was very popular for some artists. But you can only listen to so much. Or I, let me put it this way, I chose to only listen to so much. And I chose things that connected me. I listened to Credence Clearwater, because that was late (19)60s. That sounded like mid (19)50s. And I listen to Bob Seger because that is early (19)80s that reminded me of Rock and Roll and John Mellencamp. Those are the musicians whose music is closest to what I consider my music. So there, there is worlds and worlds out there that I personally cannot relate to that that may have played as important a role in somebody else's life as this music played in life. SM (02:15:24): Well, you mentioned earlier, you already mentioned a lot of these people, but these people all really influence the boomer generation, the folk singers. Unfortunately, Phillips did not live very long, but took his own life. But Phil Ochs, Arlo Guthrie, these are popular on college campuses too. Pete Seeger, Melanie, Richie Havens, Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nero, who is I think unbelievable. Leonard Cohen. Still going strong. HK (02:15:50): Yep. SM (02:15:51): Of course, Joan Baez and I got Holly New here, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Donovan. And I think one of the songs that I really love about Elvis was in the Ghetto in the beginning, because I could listen to that all day long. And he started giving Soso messages and his music in the ghetto. And so these were all had an influence on me. And I am very fortunate to have seen all of these people, except I never saw Peter, Paul, and Mary. But I have seen all the rest of them. But I am very fortunate to have seen them live. These are just some, are some of the general questions I ask everyone now. These can be really fast. Just share your thoughts. HK (02:16:38): I am not used to, well, you can see that I am happy to talk for as much time as you will give me. SM (02:16:40): Well, yeah. Actually my interviews have actually been, all of them have been fairly long, with the exception of, because what has happened is we get into a lot of things and people say, well, we can go on. And I narrow these down though. But describe the following years in your own words, as a person who is affiliated with the boomer generation, I consider you part of it because I would concern anybody after 1940, really pre-boomers. But when you think of the years 1946 to 1960, forget the music. What does that period mean to you overall? HK (02:17:16): My first memories were 1946, my first ride in the car in Holland, that with his work for the government, had occasionally had access to a car. And my parents were looking for a place because our home had been bombed and they were. So I was farmed out to friends. And right before Christmas (19)46, they had evidently found a place and the dad came and picked me up in a car and there was a Christmas tree in the back. And I was three years old. That is the first thing I remember. I was in Holland from (19)46 until (19)51, going to school, learning about socialization, loving sports, loving music. I still have some of my report cards. It was a Montessori education. And my teacher described me as always busy, always with things in my pockets, always interested in things. So I thought, all right. They had me pegged off, pegged fairly early on. And that I am not singing a tremendous change. Going from a seven-year old in Holland and 10 days later, being in a country where I did not speak the language, it made family that much more important. We were a very close family. Meals together, vacations, holidays, weekends. That was true for the next 20 years. So family focused somewhat of an extrovert, and it did not take very long to become what acculturated, as I said, popular culture, bubble down cards, stuff like that was very important. Dad did not feel that TV was in our best interest. So we did not get a first TV until 1960, which is a long time after. SM (02:19:24): So you did not see 1950s TV then. HK (02:19:30): No, not quite. SM (02:19:32): Did not see Howdy Doody? HK (02:19:35): The neighbors crossed the alley, right. But no TV at home. So it was reading. I had always been a reader and still preferred books to publish. So the first couple of years in elementary school here, were adjusting to a different country. I can remember the point. And that would be seventh grade. So- HK (02:20:03): The point, and that would be seventh grade. So four years in, four or five years, in 1956 where I suddenly realized that I was dreaming in English and that I had switched cultures. My parents spoke Dutch to me, I answered them in Dutch, I spoke English with my brothers and with everybody around me. So I grew up bilingual. But in 1957, the dominant language became English and I concluded that from the fact that the soundtrack of my dreams had switched from Dutch to English. Now what is really interesting is I can go back to Holland for a couple of weeks and find myself dreaming in Dutch again. I have been able to maintain- SM (02:20:50): You have not forgotten what the language... HK (02:20:54): In fact, one of the nice things is that when I am in Holland, I get compliments on the fact that after 60 years that my Dutch is still very, very good. SM (02:21:02): Pretty good. HK (02:21:03): Yeah. SM (02:21:04): How about the years 1961 to seven? HK (02:21:07): Well, the most important years would really be from about (19)56 to (19)60. This is junior high school and high school. I look back on those days very positively and I mean, there are people who cringe at junior high and high school, I went to a public school in Washington. It was almost without exception, in fact, I cannot think of, I liked going to school, I liked learning, I did well. Now those are probably connected and I am not sure which causes which. Very active in high school, I ran track in cross country. I captained teams. I was treasury in student council. So, successful high school, had friends, went to parties. Adolescence was pretty easy. I collected records. I was invited to parties, at least it helped, the fact that I brought my carrying case, 45s and I have very pleasant memories. And from (19)56 to (19)60 each summer I can tell you what the most popular songs were. I kept a journal that is illustrated with sheet music and records. So junior high and high school, very positive. I got into the school I wanted to go to in 1961 and I had four very good years at Duke. Learned a great deal, had some excellent professors. As I said, it was still a fairly traditional campus at that point, although, what can I compare it to? But politically, Duke was not all that active. Got out, spent the next five years in graduate school, two years getting a master's at GW, again, a good experience. Three years in New York getting a PhD. Met my future wife and music was there. I took my records with me to school. I played them. I won contests. I established an expertise. So I feel fortunate that I can sit back and if asked, "What would you do differently if you could?" I really cannot think of anything. And there were obviously, I flunked an occasional test, got an F on a paper once. But when I think back, I have been incredibly fortunate. And if that creates difficulty, it is that somehow, I assume that my adolescence, my youth, my experiences are typical and in fact they are probably extremely atypical. Third of four children, upper middle-class family. International, we traveled extensively when I was a kid because my father was entitled to home leave. So every three years we would sail first class on ships like the Queen Mary, go to Holland, visit Europe, come back. I was encouraged to think of these as learning experiences. Dad would encourage us to learn about the currencies, to learn a couple dozen words in each language. When you go to Paris, you try and speak French, you eat French foods, you taste wines. And it took a long time for me to realize that this was not the way most of my classmates were growing up. SM (02:25:30): I am going to give you a test here, right, because a song that was very popular was Debbie Reynolds- HK (02:25:39): Tammy. SM (02:25:40): ...Tammy. What year? HK (02:25:41): The year is 1957. SM (02:25:43): Yeah. HK (02:25:44): Yeah. Shall I pull it out for you? Take me about less than 30 seconds. SM (02:25:48): Yeah, do you want to pull Tammy out. And the other one I have here is Jimmy Rogers and Honeycomb. HK (02:25:53): Honeycomb, right. SM (02:25:56): They were real big hits. HK (02:25:59): (19)71 to (19)74, I was overseas teaching, so (19)70, (19)71 in Asia. But for the next couple of years, my life was very different. I was living for 12 weeks on a military base in a different country. It was have notes, will travel. I had a VW Camper outfitted. I carried a typewriter, I carried a briefcase with notes for my various courses. I had some books with me. And if I taught Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings on Thursday night, I would hop into my car and if I was in Greece for example, I would start going to visiting various places. The car was a camper, so I slept in the car. But for four years I learned a great deal about teaching under an interesting set of circumstances, whether it was in the war or on the air base in Spain, for example, where textbooks did not arrive until the eighth week of a 12-week class that I had to teach a course in abnormal psychology, without a textbook. There were libraries on base, I learned to be self-sufficient. I learned difference between teaching undergraduate students and teaching adults. Saw the world. I learned that I could coexist with the military, which was important because I had military students. I was living on military basis. I disagreed with the war, which was still ongoing. But I tried to make sure that that did not have an impact on how I viewed my students because it would have been too easy to, we can tune them out because we are military and he is anti. SM (02:28:10): But this is a question I have asked everyone. There is two basic questions. Number one, when all the divisions that took place in America during the (19)60s and (19)70s, have we healed as a nation from all of these divisions? Or will most members of the boomer generation be going to their graves not healing like many did in the Civil War? This question came up when we took a group of students to see Senator Edmund Muskie in the mid (19)90s through one of our Leadership on the Road programs. And we thought he was going to talk about 1968 because he was the vice president for running Maine. And he did not even respond in that way. The whole issue of whether, we are talking about 74 million people here in the boomer generation. But do you feel, you, through the music, you have seen it, the music has talked about these divisions and the term, what we call the tremendous divide. Do you expect a nation or a group of so many people to heal? Or is it abort? HK (02:29:20): I do not know. I think the current cultural forces are, again, not to bring together, but to push further apart. That is an emphasis on differences, polarization. And I find that personally distressing because of the way I was raised. The emphasis was on find commonalities. And now we have papered it, any politician who tries to find commonalities is going to be voted out in primaries because Democrats do not, neither side wants to find common ground. Both sides are pushing to differentiate themselves. And to me, this is, now part of it may be Holland, small country, the amount of personal space, far less, always a greater emphasis on what you do needs to be consistent with society, i.e. that the notion of individual liberties are valued less than doing something for the common good. Again, I think that is a trend which is going in the wrong direction, that there may be an overemphasis. I think that we could get a whole lot further if there were more emphasis on common good as opposed to what is in it for me. SM (02:31:02): What did the Vietnam War teach you as a person? HK (02:31:08): It forced me to reconsider. It is very easy to be against the war when you are on campus and you are in a very safe environment, an environment that was very far removed from the realities of war. But, my lessons on war, were learned from my parents because they had lived through the Second World War and they remembered the First World War. Dad was not a pacifist, but he was certainly, he was wary of, I mean, he knew what war was like having lived in an occupied country. He had been jailed by the Germans. We were very lucky that we escaped alive. So there was nothing glorious. There was nothing positive. We see war films that there is nothing heroic about, but war is nasty. And dad would say one of the reasons that many Americans seem to have different attitude is, if the US had ever been invaded, and if the US had ever been occupied, then there might be a far lesser tendency to get involved in wars. That it is easy to support wars at a distance. And one of the big changes of course in the US was when the war in Vietnam, was brought home on television. When Americans began seeing death and destruction and villages being burned and people being shot. Those images to my mind, cannot help but change how you feel about a war. And so there is still people who argue that it was the TV and the media which turned country against war. Well, I do not see how a country could ever be in favor of war. You may support ... World War II was different, but to be in favor of war to me just does not make sense. It means you do not really understand what war is all about. Because having been in one, I do not think you would ever want to be in another one. SM (02:33:41): Coming from another country, but coming by the age of seven, as you even said earlier, you felt like you are America now as opposed to being in Holland. What are your thoughts on the boomer generation? What have been your thoughts throughout your lifetime when you were growing up with them, when you saw them on college campuses, not only those who served in the war, but those who were against the war, and then many of them did not do either, but did you have any perceptions about this generation of 74 million people? What were their strengths? What were their weaknesses? Can you do that? The people that you have known who are boomers? Some people say they cannot talk about 74 million, but they can only talk about the people they have known or seen, and then they are not afraid to talk. Yeah, just your thoughts on them. HK (02:34:37): It requires stepping back. I mean, boomers are simply the people I grew up with and the boomer generation lived at a time when I was alive and they were experiencing the things that I was experiencing. So it is easier for me, especially as an academic, to take a step back and talk about Gen X because that is not me. And I can look at them- SM (02:34:58): Born after (19)65. Yeah. HK (02:35:02): ...And I have spent considerable time looking at generational differences in terms of how they impact, let us say business. I have taught generational differences. I train now, corporations to understand why there may be difficulties when you are working with people whose experiences are so different. SM (02:35:24): Oh yeah. HK (02:35:26): Try working for an intelligence agency when the new people coming in expect to be able to bring in their PDAs and to text and to tell people about what they do, which is the exact opposite of the whole culture of, "No, you have a security clearance and therefore you cannot talk about what you do." So I studied that from a more or less subjective point of view. I supervised for many, many years and had to learn that you need to deal differently. But my expectation by and large was when you come to work for this organization, you have to go more than halfway to adapt to it. I mean, there are certainly new technologies. I was an early adapter of computers and there were people who were in government when I left in 2006 who were still not using computers. But I do not text. My cell phone is a jitterbug. I do not keep it on. Our daughter still does not understand how we do not want to be totally connected to everyone at all times. I am much more private in that. So when I look back on our generation, I think we have had incredible opportunities. The changes in technology, to me, the most important change is when I discovered the internet as a research tool. And I have made full use of that. But are we a great generation? It is not something I thought about. It may be interesting. I am helping plan my high school's 50th reunion next year. We have not met as a class since our 20th, so it will be 30 years- SM (02:37:25): Wow. HK (02:37:25): ...Between contacts with my high school classmates and just getting together with these folks may give me a perspective that I do not have right now. We certainly were more different from our parents than our parents were from their parents. So there were major changes that took place in the mid (19)50s. As I said, youth culture, youth was discovered by advertisers, by record companies, that there was this new market. And once that new market was discovered, who had to be treated differently. But how do I set myself apart? I do not know. SM (02:38:27): Well, one of the things is, I always ask too, a lot of boomers felt they were the most unique generation in history because when they were young, there was this positive feeling that they were going to do the change agents for the betterment of society, that they were going to end the war, sexism, homophobia, they were going to change the world from peace to love. Well, obviously that has not happened. And I have actually had some strong criticism of this generation from many different directions, although, and others really just praising it up and down. HK (02:39:04): I think that that is an expected conceit, that our generation is the best. We are the best. I certainly encountered this and you have been at the classroom long enough that for college-aged students, for many history begins at the point at which they become involved. In other words, do not tell me about the 1940s. I am not interested in anything that happened before I was born. Okay, that is the conceit that what you did is irrelevant and the only relevance is what I am experiencing or doing right now. Maybe you need to hit 60 or 50 at least before you realize that that is a little narrow. You begin to appreciate your parents more when you were raising your own kids and your parents become smarter as you get older. So I think a lot of the criticism is based on who is making it at what point they are in their lives. Yeah. Where did I hear this thing? I think my brother, my baby brother who is 64, sent this to me and a report of a conversation at a football game, a couple of college students giving somebody our age a hard time. We are the ones who have done this, this and this and what have the other done. And I think the answer was, "Well, my generation's the one that invented the computer that has allowed you to do these things right now. And what have you invented that has had a comparable impact?" I mean an iPhone or iTunes, these are nice things, but have any recent inventions changed how we think, how we operate, how we direct more so than the computer? So before you get too critical of the old generation, whether it is the boomers or whatever, what have you really accomplished? SM (02:41:21): Do you like the term boomer? This is a big question because I have mixed feelings on this too. What is great about the boomer generation is they can argue about everything and they do. Oh, but do you like the term boomer? It is like a lot of people that criticize the term boomer do not like the greatest generation for World War II or the Generation X or today's Millennials, or the Silent generation. HK (02:41:49): I look at it as a label. I have never particularly cared for labels. I am who I am. And labels are shorthand and sometimes labels become shorthand for lazy thinking. Somehow you can clump all of these people together. Now, boomers, the only thing that boomers share for certain is that they were born in the same timeframe. But beyond that you have got lots of stories that you can compare. But I think that my upbringing, my background and what I did with it is probably very, very different from somebody who could have been born on November 15th, 1943, just like I was. And so the only thing that we would have in common is we were born on the same day, but we were born in different countries in different families. And our experience from the time of our birth to right now has been very different. And so although we are both boomers, we may have nothing else in common except that birthday. So this is why this kind of in-depth oral history, I think you are going to find that you cannot accurately capture by a label like boomers. SM (02:43:10): I have asked the same people, is there a term they would use. And of course the terms that other people have used, the Vietnam generation, the Woodstock generation, the protest generation, the movement generation, they are all using adjectives to describe the boomers experience. HK (02:43:34): Maybe it is authors like you who have to try and put this together to pull out the commonalities and show where the differences are. That just because somebody was born and grew up in this timeframe, it does not mean that we can accurately predict A, B, C and D. The best instance of that occurred to me very late. I was teaching a course on music in wartime for the University of Maryland sometime in the early (19)80s, I think. And this went, the class required me to go back to the Civil War and just using the term civil war in my class, I got some very strange looks. And it turned out that some of my students had never studied the Civil War. They were familiar with the war between the states. And I said, "Okay, let us make this a teaching moment. Where did you grow up, Indiana? All right, what did you learn? Okay, A,B,C. Where did you grow up, Alabama? What did you learn?" And it was two entirely different histories, two entirely different notions of the same event because one person had been born and raised and taught in Indiana from a certain perspective, a certain textbook, somebody else had learned the same time period in a school in Alabama. Imagine what it is going to be like if you come out of the Texas school system a couple of years from now as opposed to, let us say the Massachusetts school system. These people will have very, very different concepts of some very important ideas, issues, et cetera. Were you taught creationism as opposed to evolution or intelligent design? If that is part of your background, that is part of your family and part of your education. Were you homeschooled? Were you taught public schools, probing schools? Your view of the world will be very much affected by what was there. And so the generation you are part of will end up being less important than, all right, within that generational timeframe, who was influencing you? Were your parents college educated? Did you go to college? But those are the questions that are ultimately more important. SM (02:46:09): The word that comes out here so often is context. And what makes this project I am involved in by interviewing people like you and others, is the in depth, not only the complexity, trying to explain the complexity of the times, but that everybody's experiences is unique and real and truthful and genuine. And by doing this, I am hoping to make these interviews into seven sections where there is learning, these are learning. I want high school students and college students to read this book so that I do not have to hear any more that the Vietnam War was before World War II. And I have heard that from, and these are students that had very high SAT scores. HK (02:46:57): Yes. SM (02:46:58): I actually, I had a student, well, I will tell you later, a person who got the highest score you can get in an SAT. She is the one that told me about the Vietnam War. How did she get through high school? I am just amazed. So just a couple more minutes here. Not much. This is almost done. I am not going to go any further. I am not going to ask you about other things. But is there any one event that had the greatest impact in your life? Just one event, a historic event, whether it be an assassination or is there any one event that had greater impact than any other? HK (02:47:37): Yes. And it would have to be the move from Holland to the US. And it was turning my world upside down, at seven years old, you would have a limited concept, but the idea of leaving your country, your friends, your school, and moving to a place where you know no one accept your own family members and where you do not speak the language. So that in retrospect, that had to be the key thing that had an impact. SM (02:48:19): Why did the Vietnam War end in your viewpoint? HK (02:48:21): Why did it end? Because it could not continue. One can come up with Congress refused to fund it. You could come up with we are losing or we certainly could not win. You could argue that by 1972, public opinion had turned so far against the war that politically it was untenable to continue. Probably some of each of those. And did it end in (19)72 or did it not end until (19)75? I mean, you can argue, when did the Vietnam War- SM (02:49:15): It was 1973 when we were holding out. HK (02:49:19): January (19)73. SM (02:49:20): Yeah. HK (02:49:21): ...Or was it (19)75, the Fall of Saigon? But I think America retired, got fed up. Congress would no longer fund. Public opinion had, not 180, but certainly the public opinion had shifted dramatically against the war. So all of those, I think, when you bring them together, spelled an end for the Vietnam War. SM (02:49:50): I have got a lot of those questions, but I am going to end it with this one. And that is being succinct, I think you only got about a minute and a half here. What do you think the lasting legacy will be of this generation? And when I say 74 to 78 million, we cannot even figure out how many were actually boomers right now, but what will be the lasting legacy once the best history books are written, say 50 years from now or when the last boomers have passed on. HK (02:50:16): Can I say what I hope our legacy will be? That we raised our kids well. In other words, that we raised a generation that respects some things that were not respected before. Equality, whether it is in voting rights, public accommodations, that we raised a generation which is more open-minded, more adventuresome, more willing to go out and explore the world. More global in terms of its thinking. And my regret is that right now I do not see that. So I do not think that what we believe we accomplished in the (19)60s has successfully been passed on and is now being taught by our children to our grandchildren. I think it is some of the same narrowness, some of the same generational differences. The gulfs are still there. So have we improved the country? Is the US better off now than it was in the (19)50s? In some areas, yes. But in some ways my answer's no, I do not think so. SM (02:51:35): All right. Thank you. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Hugo Keesing Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Keesing, Hugo ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Popular culture—United States; Historians; Keesing, Hugo--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Hugo Keesing is a Dutch-American popular culture historian, an educator and a pop music archivist who has an extensive collection of Vietnam war music. He has degrees from Duke University, George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Behavior Research from Adelphi University. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-05-01 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.74a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.74a Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 171:38 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/6b3ce70f63f39ade40bb7933b8dfbcbe.jpeg 861a5a56666b99a4dc9386e13c2901ed https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/111ffdd478bb5debea1b363cc14b212c.mp3 048f8020713e74a3d57c1c88d93b729d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 24 August 2022 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dr. J. Keith Saliba Biographical Text Dr. J. Keith Saliba is an associate professor of journalism at Jacksonville (Florida) University, where he teaches narrative nonfiction and mass communication theory. He has been writing about the Vietnam War and military affairs, first as a reporter and columnist, and later as an academic. He is the author of "Death in the Highlands: The Siege of Special Forces Camp Plei Me," a Military Writers Society of America 2021 gold medal winner in history. Dr. Saliba has a Ph.D. in Mass Communication and International Relations from the University of Florida. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:38:49 Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Digital file Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords Vietnam; War; Veterans; Book; Special forces; South Vietnamese; Camp; Americans; Helicopter; Supplies; Vietnam War Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: J. Keith Saliba Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Lynn Bijou Date of interview: 24 August 2024 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM: 00:00 All right, I think we are going to start. Again, I am interviewing Dr. Jay Keith Saliba, is that the correct pronunciation? JS: 00:11 That is the correct pronunciation. SM: 00:12 Yeah. Well, thank you very much for agreeing to be interviewed today. I would like to start off with a question about your upbringing. Where were you born? Your early experiences in high school and college, so forth in your beginning years. JS: 00:30 Born in Alabama, did not grow up there, though. I went back to visit quite a bit, had a family and so forth, but lived most of my life in Florida. And that is where I live now. Experiences, basically, kind of run a mill, you know, school and so forth. You know, nothing really to write home about it, they say, but you know, I do not know, maybe as it pertains to your book, some of my earliest experiences were, you know, sort of seeing in the 1980s, you know, the first generation, if you will, Vietnam, you know, gotten some separation from it. You know, and so I just, for whatever reason, I think it was a documentary, it was narrated by Richard Bass Heart, and it was called, "Vietnam: The 10,000 Day War," was playing, I do not know, maybe on PBS or something. But I was always a kid who's very interested in this sort of stuff. I know, I read the papers about foreign affairs, you know, at 11 years old, or whatever. And it is something about Vietnam just really struck me as fascinating. And I, of course, at that point, I knew nothing about, you know, all of the conflict and strife that, you know, that did in January in the United States or whatever. I just thought of it as just being a very fascinating subject. And I, I sort of looked at that, that documentary is the thing that introduced me to at a very young age, and I continue to revisit it, over all these years. SM: 02:13 Now, what year was that? Was that in the early (19)80s, that program? JS: 02:18 I want to say, I want to say it was. I do not think that is when it was actually created. But it was probably when I saw it, it was either late (19)70s or early (19)80s. SM: 02:28 What was, what was it about that, just seeing that war? Because obviously, you knew about World War I and World War II and Korea, what was it about Vietnam that, that really perked you up? JS: 02:42 Well, you know, it was, it was probably the tragedy of it, you know, the, even at that young age, I kind of knew that there was something that, that was very hurtful about the whole thing. And, and, you know, I saw all these guys who have gone and done, done what they were asked, what their government asked him to do, and I thought that they were not very well treated. And in some of the news accounts, and some of the popular media, I remember a time it is sort of, it is kind of been a theme that I have seen, you do not see it nearly as much anymore, because, you know, Vietnam sort of faded in the background. But you do see it with, like Afghanistan, Iraqian war, and an Iraq war, but it is the same sort of thing. It is sort of like the crazed, dysfunctional, you know, vet who, you know, you never know what he is going to shoot up or blow up, or you always has all these different problems. But I remember, that is what I saw sort of Vietnam, as being portrayed as in the popular media, movies, you know, that sort of thing. And now, again, you do not see that so much anymore with Vietnam, because it has faded in the rear view, but you see a lot of movies and shows, that depict these really dysfunctional Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, and you know, all of that stuff just sort of rubbed me the wrong way from even, even from an early age. SM: 04:08 Oh yeah. JS: 04:09 But again, we are just kind of talking about Vietnam. No, obviously, at this point. And so yeah, I, I do not know. But it was fascinating too, there is so many facets to this, the story. Some of it was, political, military, you know, protests, all of these different things really, you know, sort of tied into this very, very interesting story that, again, I continue to come back to time and time again. SM: 04:35 What is interesting is when you saw this program, narrated by Richard Bass Heart, that is the era when the Vietnam Memorial was opened, in the early (19)80s, 1982 which was when the wall was opened and all the veterans- JS: 04:50 Steve, Steven you are breaking up here, can you hear me? SM: 04:54 Yes, I can hear you. JS: 04:56 Okay, maybe sometimes, if you call me right back, it might reset because you are really breaking up badly. SM: 05:03 Okay let me, let me call you again. And I will stop this right now. Okay, thanks. Here we go, very good. Yeah, I was just trying to say that, the, at the time you saw that documentary that was the time that the Vietnam Memorial was opened. And the timing was interesting, because that is when Vietnam veterans for the first time felt welcomed home. And, so kind of interesting that you got into it at that particular time. Before I actually start asking you questions about [inaudible], I would like to ask two things that I saw on your biography. You had done your master's thesis on Esquire's coverage of the Vietnam War. What did that, what, what did you learn from that from, from that project? JS: 05:06 Okay. Well, the you know, Esquire, as you may know, was sort of a hotbed of what was once called, "new journalism," or literary journalism, right, where you sort of use the tools of a novelist to tell nonfiction stories. And it is a, you know, it is a genre of writing that I have not only taught, but I have tried to employ some times in my own career and something I really enjoy. And so, I just looked at this unique partnership between Harold Hayes, who was the editor of Esquire at the time, and two, sort of gifted writers, John Sack and Michael Herb. And you are probably more familiar with Michael Herb, his work with dispatches- -and his, you know, screenwriting work with-with films like, "Apocalypse Now," and, and, and "Full Metal Jacket," right. You know, but John Sack was, you know, sort of a celebrated literary journalist who covered war, pretty exclusively, he did other topics, but he was always the type of guy who was drawn back to conflict, so. And so, they had a very unique partnership, and they really, you know, sort of gave some, a unique perspective to journalistic coverage of Vietnam, and, you know, sort of Esquire and Harold Hayes and his support, allowed them to go and just kind of roam around the country and, you know, absorb different stories and different perspectives, maybe you were not seeing as much in, you know, mainstream coverage. So that was what the thesis was about, was just sort of, you know, exploring that technique. And, you know, what those guys found out, you know, the, you know, with dispatches her, you know, it was really more of, even though it was kind of a nonfiction take, right of his, his experiences there. There were also some fictional elements in it. Whereas John Sack M, right, where he followed that empty infantry company through basic training all the way through their first action, Vietnam, that was, you know, much more factually accurate. And he did not take as many sort of literary licenses as her did. Both of them had their unique approach, and they were both supported by, you know, both financially, and, and, you know, journalistically by Harold Hayes and Esquire so they, they-they gave us a, you know, a unique way of looking at the Vietnam War that maybe in that mid (19)60s area that was not really coming out yet. SM: 06:31 Oh, yes. Yeah, you mentioned those movies. I used to bring quite a few veterans back to the universities I used to work at. And they had a lot of problems with a lot of the Vietnam movies that were made. Because they do not think, they did not think they were real. There were two that, there was the one that really bothered them the most believe it or not, was "Platoon". And I do not know, I do not know what you thought of the movie. But it was, I had three distinguished Vietnam veterans from Philadelphia and they disliked the film, they talked about it, but they thought it was Hollywood. And, and so, if there was one film and I am going to get back to what we are talking about here, what is the number one film that you have seen on the Vietnam War that you like? JS: 09:19 What did I like? SM: 09:21 Yeah, that is real. JS: 09:23 I like a lot of them. And of course, I am not being there, not even really being born for most of it. I do not know what it was actually like, but certainly what I have heard from some Vietnam vets when asked that same question, they sort of say that "Full Metal Jacket," to them represented a more accurate military life but of action in Vietnam. "Platoon," what, sure, Hollywood right, Oliver Stone, it was well done from a Hollywood perspective, but you could definitely see why vets would not like it. They were not portrayed very well in that film. And, you know, everyone, anyone is perfect in the first place. I always liked "Apocalypse Now," too, I even have the four-hour version of it. I liked " We Were Soldiers." You know, I got to meet and talk to Joe Galloway on several occasions, including through my book. And that was, you know, exciting. And, and to be able to kind of, you know, meet the guy that was, that wrote that and participated in that was, was great to me. So it is hard for me, Steven, to narrow it down to just one. SM: 10:38 Right. JS: 10:39 Those are certainly some of the ones that I liked the best. SM: 10:41 I know Jan Scruggs liked "Coming Home," because that was his inspiration to create the wall. JS: 10:47 Yes, yeah, you are right, that going back a little ways to that, but that I remember that one now, too. Yeah, another great one. SM: 10:54 And the other item before we get into the main reason I am talking to you is, you also had an experience recently talking about the psychological effects of the Tet Offensive. And I have done a lot of reading on that subject matter of 19, early 1968. But, could you just briefly describe what you were saying, when you gave that presentation in Texas? JS: 11:18 And I sort of combined two things. It is weird, because that Texas conference is really mainly historian that I came at it from a, you know, more of a mass communication researcher perspective, right? We have framing theory and-and, and confirmation bias, were the two perspectives that I linked to sort of look at the coverage of that. And so, my contention was that, by that time in the war, the journalists who were there had pretty much decided on what it was all about. And they you know, one thing about confirmation bias is it says that we humans, and that means all of us, not just you know, not just the-the unwashed masses, but everybody, including the most learned people in the world tend to see things through a certain prism, once we have decided that we have, we have just know what is going on, right, we start to see information only that confirms what we already believe. And so my contention was, as a journalist, at that time, were sort of immediately framing and putting into certain categories, what they were seeing, and they could not see anything else. And so, one point that I made was, is that that is why the narrative quickly changed from the Vietcong are winning on the battlefield, right. And I believe they pushed that to be at the beginning, but then they sort of changed it, even though the Vietcong were being devastated, actually, and really, they never really recovered as an effective fighting force after that. Both, either politically, or militarily, they had to really be, you know, their numbers had to be stocked with people from the north-north-north Vietnam. They, they then sort of morphed into this narrative of how it was a psychological victory. It was a, the Tet Offensive, was a moral victory. You know, because they, you know, just simply because they could do it, and all the rest of it. And so the journalist would push back on that, they would say, Well, this was in reaction to all the rosy proclamations that the, you know, the five o'clock follies, and all the rest of them would put forth, you know, every day. And so, you know, that is why maybe we have swing the, in exactly the opposite direction that we went from, well, they were telling us that we were winning and then this, they were able to launch this big, you know, attack. Right, so then it became, the narrative became that it was, okay, well, we will admit that it was a military defeat, and it devastated that political infrastructure, the Vietcong infrastructure, as well. But we were going to say, we were going to let everybody know that it was a psychological victory, it was a moral victory. And in the end, that is all accounts is that they were able to pull this off. So, that was really what I was kind of contending there that, you know, we all have blind spots. And when we, when we decide how things are, we tend to only see information that supports our preconceived notions. And my, my ideas were that by that time in the war, journalistic presence in Vietnam had been well established, and they had kind of, they all kind of decided this is how things are going, this is how it is. And, and even though they were looking at really a massive defeat for the Vietcong, they just could not, I do not know, allow themselves to-to put it that way or even just to, even see it for themselves. They had to almost invent a new, you know, a new outcome and a new standard for victory. This was not winning on the battlefield, but winning psychologically. SM: 15:06 Right? Well, I, I can tell you from all my reading and studies, I think it certainly surprised L.B.J. And, and I love that surprise of the Tet Offensive as being the beginning of many dots leading up to his surprise of withdrawing from running for president. I think there is two direct links there. I am going to get into the main portion, now of what I want to talk about, but I want to say it because of your book, I look at cities and locations as linking different eras in the (19)60s and early (19)70s. Certainly, these cities are part of that (19)60s, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham, Chicago, Kent, Ohio, New York City, Berkeley, Saigon, Hanoi, the [inaudible] valley, [inaudible], Miami and San Francisco. Cause, the major happenings happened during those, that era in those locations. And now, because of your book and learning more about Plei Me, I put Plei Me right in there. I just want to say that. My first question is, you know, I also read Joe's book on the [inaudible] valley, and I saw the movie. And he was very vociferous, when he always talked, I brought him to Westchester to speak, that the [inaudible] valley was the first major war of the Vietnam and during that period. And then of course, when I read the back of your book, he praised you, and what happened. I guess the question, the main, the main reason I am asking is why Plei Mei?. Because you know, you-you do so brilliantly your book, all the other locations, the small villages, this, different locations, and I know about Plei Mei's location near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. But why Plei Mei, just your thoughts? JS: 17:06 When you say why-why did the North Vietnamese choose it, or? SM: 17:10 Why, Why did they, they were doing things out in the highlands, they were doing a lot of things, but why Plei Mei? JS: 17:18 Well, I mean, as you mentioned, it was, its proximity to home Chi Minh Trail complex was-was, you know, an ideal ingress point for them, right. I mean, they were able to stash a lot of supplies, a lot of men and material, across the border, but I will say that they tried to do something similar at Duco, a few months earlier. And, but they had two, they separate from two main drawbacks, from the Vietnamese, North Vietnamese perspective, and that was that, Duco, they did not have enough combat power to overcome what was, what was able, what the allies were able to bring against them. And two, and that, and this sort of correlates with that, was Duco's location was on a major highway. And even though it was right on the Cambodian border, you know, the South Vietnamese and their American allies could get supplies and things into Duco a lot easier even though it was surrounded, and Plei Mei was much more isolated. So, that is really what happened was, is they had been trying to do this sort of stuff for years. You know, this sort of, this lure and ambush where, you bring a remote outpost under, you know, siege and then not only crush the outpost, if you can, but you know, destroy the, the responding force, right, they just want to take these big chunks out of the South Vietnamese army whenever possible. And so, they tried it at Duco. But they did not have enough combat power, they did not have enough troops committed. And it was also in an auspicious location even though it was close to their base areas in Cambodia. They, it was, you know, you could get to it pretty easily you know, you could bring armor in there to Duco, pretty easily. And so, Plei Mei was much more isolated, it was a little farther away from the border. But you know, there was just that provincial route five, which linked it with highway 14, and you know, you would have to, that is a single lane dirt track, and it was a perfect spot for an ambush. So they could you know, they could secret all of these, these regular army forces around Plei Mei, and make them think that they were about to be overrun, right, make them, bring them under enough attack to where the south Saigon would have to send, or at least [inaudible] who would have to send in, you know, rescue force and then, then you could, you could isolate that rescue force on that little spin dirt track that was heavy foliage on both sides of the road, and then just destroy it. That is what they dreamed of, is destroying a large Arvin formation and then once that happened, once all those defenses were wiped out, they could pretty much roll through what you know, [inaudible] and [inaudible] because there would not really be anything else, you know, to stop them, I think [inaudible] even, they stripped down to where they really only had maybe a battalion in reserve to defend what was pretty, a pretty large town at that time. And so they had to bring in, you know, the-the first cab to, you know, that was part of the whole thing, right introducing the first cab- SM: 20:30 Right. JS: 20:30 -and kind of, sort of guaranteeing the provincial capital-capital safety so that Arvin could then go and rescue this besieged camp. SM: 20:40 One of the, one of the things that is very important too, is that the, we are talking about the early stages of the Vietnam War, and the Gulf of Tonkin was in (19)64. So, everything starts going forward there, even though we are there from (19)59 on, in support and somewhat. With McNamara, and certainly with Westmoreland being the general there at the time, they were all about numbers, it was bringing in the numbers, kill, the kill ratios. And we all learned about that, I, that we were all growing up with that. I, we all experienced it as young people as members of the boomer generation that reports every day about how many were killed on T.V., and so forth. So, it was all a numbers game, in the beginning, the feeling that America could just keep killing, and killing, and killing, and the Vietnamese would finally submit. And then, then some of the critics of the war, the very early critics would say, "Well, wait a minute, you do not really know about the history of Vietnam, and what the battles, they fought for centuries were against their enemies, their most recent being the French and now the United States." Your thoughts about, the numbers game that was being played at that particular time, right, before Plei Mei, and the American strategy up to that point that it was a numbers game? JS: 22:01 Yeah, and I think that directly stems from Westmoreland's, you know, restrictions. And the restrictions that were placed on him by, you know, the higher ups, L.B.J., number one. He did not want a wider war, he did not want American forces in Cambodia, or Laos. And, you know, when you allow an enemy to have that kind of freedom of movement and sanctuaries, just across the border of not one, but two countries, with really rugged terrain, with mountainous terrain, areas, you know, canopy jungles where you can, you can hide entire regiments without being seen from the air. And indeed, in the [inaudible] massive complex, that is exactly what they did. They had supplies, secreted in there. And they have would place it, the North Vietnamese could go and rest and recuperate and build up, you know, supplies and all of which can be completely covered from any aerial observation. So, so I guess, if I mean, looking back, in hindsight, you look at it, and you think, that does not seem like a smart way to go, it is just trying to, you know, you know, because if you are, if you are going to go by body count, you are going to go by, so this war of attrition, then it automatically incentivizes field commanders, who are, you know, looking for, at the very least some sort of success, you know, to maybe inflate what they see, or inflate what, with the counselor, right. So in hindsight, you look at it, you say, "Well, that does not seem like a very smart way to fight a war," is just, you know, trying to out kill the other, without destroying base, sanctuaries, and cutting off access, and all the rest. And there were various plans that were in the works to do that, invading Laos, and you know, completely cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail and, leaving that whole area occupied by strong forces, you know, none of that ever came to fruition. So I, to me, it just seems like, you know, that is what Westmoreland was dealing with. You know, in the book, "The Best and the Brightest," you saw sort of the calculated mentality, of a lot of the, president's advisors, and top military men at the time, it was all statistics and all, you know, analytics, and this is how you win is by you know, x number of this versus x number of that, all the, all the rest of it. And, and I do not know that it just seems like that belies, like thousands of years of human history that, that is not really, you know, that is not really how wars fought or won, certainly. SM: 24:40 You brilliantly talk about some of the leaders of South Vietnam, DM and, and his, his lack of leadership, I believe, because he has enemies himself. But, you talk also about the importance of morale. And what, and-and Plei Mei was really about morale as well. Because if it went down, that would look terrible to the people in South Vietnam who, and certainly the United States who were supporting the Vietnamese. And we lost this very important thing, because we knew that morale was also important to the North Vietnamese, because that is why they trying to do these surprise attacks, which ended up being the main goal of Plei Mei, by killing as many people as possible. Your thoughts on, the both sides trying to win this morale battle, so that whoever wins this or that, that will get rid of the government of South Vietnam or make the leaders of the North Vietnamese look bad? JS: 25:45 Yeah that and that was, that is part of the other aspect of it is, you know, Plei Mei was not just sort of this isolated thing, right. The real goal was to destroy large Arvin formations whenever possible- SM: 26:00 Right. JS: 26:00 -but what was [inaudible], you know, so a secretary of North Vietnam, what his, his ultimate goal was, was not to inspire an uprising among the South Vietnamese, right. And so, they figured that if they could make the quote, puppet, in Saigon look bad enough, that they could destroy enough of this forces, and winning up victories on the battlefield, it would make the people say, "Look, this is, you know, at the very least, this is inevitable, we need to rise up and get with on the winning side," at the very least, right, and you are right, that is about crushing the morale and inspiring this general uprising, he had hoped for the general uprising all the way through the 72 Easter offensive again, and it did not materialize again. Even though the North Vietnamese through, you know, upwards of 200,000 troops in a holy conventional invasion of the south in (19)72, it still did not inspire, it inspired a lot of panic, it inspired a lot of people fleeing, but it did not inspire this, this sort of general uprising that he, long hoped for, right. So that is, that side of things. And yeah, I mean, even though there were only a handful of Americans at Plei Mei you know, your-your prestige, becomes- SM: 26:00 Right. JS: 27:17 -entwined with holding on, that maybe even though these camps were, you know, part of the CG program, and offensively under the South Vietnamese special forces, it was really the Americans who were running it. And, you know, to lose something like that, and to have these guys overrun, and more importantly, to lose a very important, you know, government outpost like that would be, would be terrible. And I think that is why, you know, one reason anyway, right, why the first cab was introduced to kind of come in- SM: 27:55 Right. JS: 27:56 -and, and, and help save the day. But it was also this idea that, you know, we need to get the Americans in there, we need to test this new air mobile division, and we need to show what we can do. We need to, you know, it is time for us to take over, and it is time for us to actually win this war, because the South Vietnamese are not capable of doing it, you know. SM: 28:15 Right. JS: 28:16 And I think that was, there was a lot of, that was part of it too, this eagerness to get the first cab in there. SM: 28:24 Yeah, I think, at the very beginning of your book, you talk about President Kennedy and the fact that he liked Special Forces and, and he was he liked it because they were more flexible than, during Eisenhower's reign as president, where he still used the nuclear deterrent as a, as a force, a threat, to prevent conflict. And then, of course, we lost President Kennedy, he was assassinated. And of course, it is interesting, that within three weeks, Diem, and [inaudible] both, were both assassinated or killed in a coup. So, a lot was changing there. And also all these other leaders that came in, in the South before [inaudible] and [inaudible]. They, I do not, were there any decent ones that, that the people supported, before [inaudible] and [inaudible]? JS: 29:19 You know, it was, it was, it was a rough time, was not it? I mean, that is what coups do is that is they, they-they destabilize. And you know, Diem was, you know, even though, yeah, he was, he had his corruption problems, that is for sure. And he, you know, was not well loved and he cracked down on the Buddhist. I mean, they had their problems as well. I mean, these armed factions, some of them infiltrated by communist agents. I mean, there is all of these different facets, right, that is going on. So, I mean, he was dealing with a, a rough situation, and he was also paranoid, but he was also an ardent nationalist, and he was an ardent anti-communist. SM: 29:59 Right. JS: 30:00 So you know, and he, there was a certain level of stability with him in power, and, regardless, right, and so with his loss, then you were ushering in, you know, almost like, you can go back to Roman history, like this time at the barracks emperors, where there is just- SM: 30:16 Right, yeah. JS: 30:16 -one after an uprising, you know, and then being, you know, as either assassinated or, you know, at least put out of power. And then you finally get to, as you say, to event two, and, you know, things stabilized there, but also probably because the war had stabilized a lot more by the time, you know, [inaudible]'s presidency sort of matured. But, you know, good ones. I mean, I do not know [laughs]. You are right, yes. I mean, it is, it is just, you know, it, you are just wondering, you think back what, all the intrigue that was going on, and the different factions and, you know, not knowing who was who, and who you could trust and, and, and Diem was, was, you know, often vilified for, you know, putting people in power that he could trust rather than who were necessarily the most effective. SM: 31:11 Yeah. JS: 31:12 But then when you, you know, this is also the guy who gets overthrown in a coup and executed. So, I mean, there was probably some reason, right, some good reason for that paranoia. SM: 31:23 Yeah, he was also paranoid about the people that were helping the Special Forces, the Hmong, and the mana guards. I would like you to talk about, first off the twelve-man units. I, I learned a lot in your book, I learned an awful lot. And I have got to underline all of it, because I have learned so much. And could you talk about, when you talk about the special forces, these twelve-man units, what were they, and who were, what were the characteristics and qualities that was necessary, they were Americans now, but to be successful? JS: 32:00 Yeah. So as you rightly point out, President Kennedy saw a lot of value in so called coin, you know, counterinsurgency, and he thought it well, I do not know how much thought he gave it, but certainly some in, in the echelons of the military and political establishment thought that, you know, some of the lessons of the counterinsurgency, lessons from World War II had been lost, had been forgotten. And it was time, if you were going to take this flexible response approach, it was time to sort of reinvigorate them again, and Special Forces was, was a vehicle through which that could happen, at least from the Kennedy perspective. Where they, they were twelve-man alpha detachment, and they usually had two officers, a captain and a first lieutenant, First Lieutenant serving as executive officer. And then ten, ten enlisted, and enlisted usually were, you know, senior enlisted, at least, to the level of sergeants, and so forth. But you know, you would sometimes you would have other specialists in there as well, but, you know, especially some of these early guys, and some of the offshoots like, Delta, the Delta project, which I have mentioned in the book as well, I go over the book, you know, these are some grizzled characters. These are some hard-nosed fighters from Korea, and World War II paratroopers, and this is what you know, the type of guy that was drawn to Special Forces, who were the independent minded. They, they, they were very well trained, trained in weapons, and communications and demolition, and, and medical, you know, medical treatments and so forth, right. And they were often cross trained. So that you get, if one guy goes down with that specialty, someone else has training that can step up. But, there is a whole idea of really between, about these, alpha detachments was that they needed to be able to operate alone, they needed to be back in the back country, working with indigenous forces to organize them to, you know, talk [inaudible], whatever enemy they were fighting against. And again, this was not just in south, southeast Asia, but we were talking about even in Europe, they had units like this in place to try to, in case the Soviets actually did invade, then you would be able to operate behind enemy lines and organize you know, European citizens to put up a guerrilla resistance, and all this right. This is all tracking back to those old-World War II units. And so, the reviving this kind of stuff. And so what was the average Special Forces Trooper like he was, you know, he was not really young, he almost surely had conventional military experience. And, it was an air airborne billets. So, you know, they all had their jump wings. And they, but they were also sort of Mavericks, you know, kind of independent. SM: 35:09 Yep. JS: 35:10 And, you know, the conventional army looked askance at them, they thought, you know, you know, what are these guys doing, they were off on their own and these camps, so they were kind of running their own show, and, you know, they grow their beards, and they got their hairs- -into [inaudible], and, you know, all the rest. SM: 35:23 [laughs]. JS: 35:26 Uniforms and rags, and all the rest and, and, and, you know, but when it came down to it, and you are in the middle of nowhere, and you are in this little bunker, and all you got, besides you as a few other Americans and some [inaudible], who probably do not speak very much of their language. And then the beast out there in the darkness waiting beyond the wire, you know, these are the type of guys you want out there, and do not need nearly as much support and can think on the own, and can act on the own. And, you know, so, I guess in a way, that is what it is what it was, he was talking about Special Forces and these-these teams, you know, they were, they were unique and, and I again, a lot of them told me that this some of them were assigned there, they did not volunteer, some of them were assigned to it to fill out the ranks. And they said, it was not exactly career enhancing in those days, we, we sort of think of Special Forces now is like the greatest thing, you know, the average person thinks of him as like, you know, on a pedestal. But in those days, the regular army despised them, and, and even the guys who were, who were put into Special Forces, they knew, I mean, in a big, Cold War environment, the best way to advancement in the military was commanding of infantry battalion, or commanding an armored squadron or something like that, or even our artillery battery, you know, those were the names because they were expecting the big, the big set piece battles of the Cold War. And to be in Special Forces, some of them as one of my sources call them you know, "Those weirdos over on Smoke Bomb Hill," you know, they were always out there, eating snakes or whatever. SM: 35:26 Yep. [chuckles]. JS: 36:25 But now, I mean, we look at him as like, you know, we are, we do it, we think, the highest the highest about Special Forces operators these days. SM: 37:20 Well, I tell you, when the when the reinforcements had to come in to save, Plei Mei, getting Charlie Beckwith was very important. And I think, could you talk about, this is just one man we are talking about here. I think you had also said that he had, had not been in combat or something like that. You gave him a really great description of his whole background before he was given the, in charge of Delta Force. But, how he picked his men and what they had to possess to be, to pass by him so that he would be okay, you know, fighting by their, by his side, just talk about Charlie Beckwith, who he was and how he picked them, and what kind of men he wanted by his side? 38:10 He was, he was an irascible fellow, from all accounts, I mean, he had died before this book came out, so I was never able to talk to him. But just from talking to people that knew him, looking at, archival documents and so forth. He just was a, he was a character. And he, and, you know, he had his-his way of that he, he wanted things done, he wanted sort of an American version of the SAS the British, the Special Air Service of the British, right? He wanted those independent, tough operators who could do all kinds of things behind enemy lines. And, and, you know, he finally ended up getting the chance to do that when he was given Project Delta, which eventually, as you noted earlier, morphed into the current incarnation of what we call Delta Force. JS: 39:02 Right as operational, Operation Detachment Delta. So, we colloquially call it Delta Force. And so you know, that is what he wanted. He, one of my sources the late, great Yule White, who was at Plei Mei and recently passed. He passed maybe, within the last year. He said that Beckwith had, had an idea about the two types of men, there were two types of men in the world to Beckwith, they were either piss cutters, or dipshits. SM: 39:02 Right. [chuckles] JS: 39:35 And you really did not want to be in the latter category with Beckwith, right? SM: 39:38 Right. JS: 39:39 If he liked you, you were a piss cutter. And that meant, you know, you were a hard charger, you were someone who could get the job done. You were someone who, you could, someone you could depend on, especially in a fight. And if you were a dipshit, you better just stay away from them, you know, and get out of the unit if you can, and get away from them. And so, Yule White was, Beckwith referred to him as a piss cutter. But even then, years later, White told me I do not think I put this in the book. He told me, he said, he met Beckwith later on, and Beck tried to get him involved in some other thing, years later that he was doing and, and, Yule wanted to no part of it, he said he had [laughter] enough of that in Southeast Asia in those crazy times in Plei Mei, of course, he was wounded pretty grievously. SM: 40:26 I think, I think Beckwith, he wanted these people to be volunteers in Vietnam for six months, they must have earned a Combat Infantry Badge, and, and it be at least a sergeant. Now, I think there is one person that he ended up wanting, who did not qualify for hardly any of those. [chuckles] Because he considered him the first category. JS: 40:57 Yeah, that was Yule White. SM: 40:59 That was Yule White. [chuckles] JS: 41:00 Yeah, he had airborne and all the rest of it, but and he told me and again, he corroborated this, where I found elsewhere. But, you know, Beck would sent out these flyers, as soon as he took over Project Delta. And he said, "I can promise you a metal, a body bag, or both." And he stuffed them in every outgoing mail bag that was going to go out to Special Forces, eight camps around Vietnam, and he dumped a bunch of those fliers in there. And he says, the response was overwhelming. There was a bunch of guys who wanted to go, they were already out there on the fringes, already out there. You know, in these, in these camps, pretty much doing whatever they wanted, there was very little oversight, you know, so they were just they were on their own. And, they wanted even more they wanted to, they wanted to take it up another notch, and do some Long-Range Reconnaissance and all the rest of, is what, you know, Beck would get started with Project Delta. SM: 42:00 Did not he-he- he promised them they either get a medical badge, or body bag or both? JS: 42:10 Yeah, well. Medal [inaudible] SM: 42:12 [chuckles] Yeah. JS: 42:15 That is, that is a heck of a sales pitch, whatever group that worked. And so you know, and as I said, when he got to, you know, he had been clamoring for such a command for years, and nobody wanted to be part of Beckwith right in the upper but he had a few friends. And they finally said, Look, we were giving you this project, Delta, you know, go to go to Vietnam. Mm-hmm. And he showed up in in, I believe, was NhaTrang. And tried to, you know, see what his guys were up to, they were all nowhere to be found. They were all party and downtown, and you know, with the bar girls and all the rest. And he just, you know, he went ballistic and fired nearly all of them. And that is when he put that call out. He says, if these guys do not want to do what I want them to do, then they were going to go- and then I am going to find my kind of guys. And that is that is how we did it by reaching out with those flyers and saying, look, I can promise you a metal of body bag or both. And you got to be these certain things and come on, but he liked [inaudible] even though he was not he did not have the CIB. At that point. He liked White. And he thought he was a peace guard. And he was older, you know, 31 I mean, that is, that is what Beckles was looking for, you know, they one of the sources said, These guys made you feel good, because they were older. You know, they had they had their brizzle they that white and their beards and-and you know, they had been through some shit and Korea and World War Two, and you just felt safer and better when those guys arrived on the scene? SM: 43:03 Yep. Yeah, when I visit the Vietnam Memorial on Memorial Day, Veterans Day, I always see people who are a few of the Montagnard who are there. And they make reference to it sometimes in some of the guest speakers, but I do not think there has been enough written about them and-and their importance in the Vietnam War, especially being our fighting side by side with Americans. Because in reality, I believe you state pretty emphatically that they did not like the Vietnamese that well, because they were treated as less than human almost by them. And could you talk a little bit about the role that the Hmong and the Montagnard have played in the Vietnam War? Now you describe it in the very early part of the war and in 1965, and 64. But they were they were there throughout the war. So who are they? Where did they live? And-and how important were they in the war for America? JS: 44:54 Well, um, the and I will hasten to say this, I do not know about the Hmongs but I do know about the mind yards that not all of them were on our side. There were minors who sympathize with the Vietcong. And were, you know, be a con agents. So there was always that danger, right. And several special forces camps were sort of attacked from within. Because the Montagnards that were in there were actually Vietcong agents, even though they were ethnically Montagnards. You know, so I think that sort of disdain, you know, went, you know, kind of both ways, right, I oftentimes think of the way the Montagnards were looked upon by the Vietnamese is the way that like the Americans of the Old West looked upon the Indians, right? The Native American tribes, it has been there a long time, but they just did not, they did not like them. And they did not treat them well. And they were different. And they were primitive by their standards, and all the rest of this sort of, and of course, that empathy was returned heartily by, you know, tribes to the Apache and Comanche and so forth. Right. Same thing with the-the Montagnards. So they were not uniformly on the American side, but they were there, enough of them were, especially when they could be with Americans. And they could see sort of, like the broader advantages of being with Westerners, right, with new technology and education and improved agriculture, and things like that, they can kind of see their own their own self-interest. And plus the, you know, largely the Americans that they dealt with did not, you know, they were not, they were not conscripting them, like the Vietcong were and so forth, it was more of a, a little bit more of a partnership rather than kind of conscripting you into the service of the infrastructure. So they were they were very valuable. And, you know, the, the civilian regular Defense Group. CG, right was something that was valuable early on, because it helped secure, otherwise endangered villages from being taken over by the Vietcong in the back country. It sort of taught though, in law, these were mountain art villages, right. And so it taught them to defend themselves. And, and it is sort of spread, if not total allegiance to Saigon at least resistance to being taken over by the Vietcong. Right, so this is something they were happy with. But when one the program began to morph into an offensive instrument, rather than self-defense, but actually organizing the Montagnards and into strike forces, and saying them out and putting them on ambushes, and, and really even more so uprooting them from their, you know, their ancestral lands and moving them into these heavily fortified camps, it is sort of, you know, you got some manpower, and at least for the most part, this manpower was not being used against you. But it was not quite that organic, you know, self-defense, vibe that was going on early on the program. And a lot of the reason for that is, you know, because it was the control that was devolved from CIA and Special-Special Forces to, you know, MACV. And so they wanted, they wanted to, they had all these guys on their arms, they want to put them out there and do interdiction and, and, you know, ambush and offensive operations against the Vietcong. But they were they, you know, it just like we were seeing, you know, just like you see all the PTSD that people in Iraq, who helped us, you see the people in Afghanistan, who helped us the interpreters and all the other people who put their faith in the United States, you know, in the end, they get abandoned. And that is what happened with the Montagnards. SM: 49:03 Yep. JS: 49:05 And they have got, you know, and you know, some of them really had some pretty terrible experiences, and so-called reeducation camps and all the rest after the war, and, you know, horrific injuries, and, you know, all the promises that were made for pensions and, and health care, and all of these things that, you know, they were promised earlier on in the war, obviously, they cannot be fulfilled, that there is no longer a South Vietnamese government in the United States long gone. And so they were left just left out to dry and, you know, it is just, it is tragic. And it is, it is, it is infuriating. And, and I guess it is just, you know, the way we do things, you know, because you see it repeated in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to this day. SM: 49:53 When you look at the-the early part of the war in 64 and 65. I looked at the leaders that were leading at the time in South Vietnam and in America, and all of them were under a lot of pressure, they felt that- Johnson did not have it in the beginning because he had a lot of support for the war and everything. But the one person that stands out as a leader is Ho Chi Minh. I remember reading a book that said the in before he died, that he was Vietnam. There was no question even the people in the north and the south, he was admired by a lot of people because of who he was and experience and he had one- is the one that wanted to support the Geneva Accords. And-and of course, the United States and South Vietnam would not have anything to do with it. But that because they probably knew that, you know, he would be the one that they would be elected or whatever. But that just I do not know if you have ever thought of that. But they-they revered him. So people have been off for the on their side revered Ho Chi Minh. JS: 51:07 Yeah, one thing that I would- that I learned over the course of all this is that by the time all these figures died in 69, and so by the time a lot of this stuff was transpiring, even the early part of the war, he had already become something of a figurehead. SM: 51:21 Right. JS: 51:21 And, but he was still a symbol, right? SM: 51:24 Mm-hmm. Yes. JS: 51:26 -Calling many shots anymore, even-even into the even into the early and mid (19)60s. He just getting old, you know, but SM: 51:33 Right. JS: 51:33 -he had been around a long time. And he had to gather gravitons. He has had the chops. And you know, and I think to do from a strictly real politic perspective, he was willing to do or say whatever it took to get, you know, what he wanted? And that was the independence of Vietnam under whatever government. SM: 51:51 Mm-hmm. JS: 51:53 You know, so, but you are out and you are right. I think the average person in Vietnam would look at him and say, you know, that is, you know, that is Uncle Ho, that is the leader. SM: 52:03 Yeah. JS: 52:03 That is the That is the guy. Right? Who's, who's been at this for decades? SM: 52:09 Yes, yes. JS: 52:11 Yeah. And that another reason why Giáp was so revered too, because he had, you know- -not only was he effective military commander, but he-he paid his dues. He been in there for so long. And of course, you know, all when you start getting into political machinations of what was going on in Hanoi, you know, Lai [inaudible]. And, you know, he had usurped you know, they were on two opposite sides of things. SM: 52:17 Yep. JS: 52:19 Mm-hmm. -And, and, and he had you serve both-both Ho Chi Minh and Giáp and, you know, marginalize them, but still recognizing that, you know, they, they had their people who revered them. So, it is interesting to see the different, you know, leadership qualities, but they were always [inaudible] Giáp and his, his, his supporters were always going for the big, dramatic win, and Ho and Giáp we are all about, you know, let us take it slow. What is going -on mental it is going to happen, you know, let us not you know, and, and believe me, the Vietnamese are South Vietnamese, South Vietnamese communists, were, you know, quite skeptical of Lai's wild strategy, because they knew they were going to be the ones who took the [inaudible]. And they did in (19)68, when they rose up in Tet, they took horrific beating. And they destroyed all these carefully built, you know, cadre and infrastructure over the years and not to mention, you know, just plain old main force units just wiped out. And they took a huge hit for My Lai’s desire, this dramatic victory in this this win-win now mentality. Right. Right. Right. SM: 53:49 Early on, when he early on in your book, you talk about the first group that was taken care of Plei Me and then the tragedy were four, four were killed in a helicopter crash. And I think it is important that people read your book, because not only do you describe this important whole event itself, and it is linkage to early part of the history of the Vietnam War. But the fact is, it shows that Americans are dying little by little by little by little. If you look between (19)59 and (19)65, how many really died, you go to the Vietnam War and you see that there is, you know, how it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. We are, we are, we do not talk about the Americans who are dying now in (19)64 and (19)65 advisors. And so you really do a great job of that, you know, itis sad to hear about number six died here for died here, but those add up JS: 54:54 Mm-Hmm. SM: 54:54 -and they are Americans. And I almost cried when you when you talked about the helicopter that crashed and the four young men, the four men who died their age, whether they were married, you know where they came from. And you-you did a great job. And in some in sections of the book about their backgrounds where they came from how they ended up in Vietnam, I mean, a tremendous job, just but could you talk about those four their pictures or in the book two of those four that were in that helicopter? JS: 55:30 Yeah, that was, that was the-the helicopter gunship that was trying to get- they had been running. They have been running close air support all through the night, up until that point, and because, you know, the Air Force could not get there soon enough. So they were really the kind of the first responders if you will, and they, you know, they had run story after story. They had gone back. refueled rearm that on how many times and then they were tasked with putting in Captain Lanny Hunter who was the-the C two surgeon, and they felt like if they could get him into the ground on Plei Me , then they would- he would be able to do things not only you know, care for the wound and everything but also it was something that he called the physicians mystique, it would make the-the guys who were there kind of look and say, you know, the doctors here the real doc, not a medic, but a real surgeon, a real who knew a lot of the guys who was well respected. And they said it can it can it not only it can, he can do things and help save lives that an average medic could not do but he could also inspire he could also be you know, a real morale boost. And so he agreed to do that he talked it over with his-his commanding officer and they said what you are doing at first light and this was the very first morning of the of the Plei Me siege. And so but the you cannot just fly a medivac chopper in by itself, you got to have some kind of gunship support. And so these two crocodiles, which is what the-the 119th called, they were, they were gunships. They were, they were alligators and crocodiles, right the alligators with slicks, they were the ones who killed the troops and, and supplies and so forth. And the gunships were the ones who were just the bristling helicopters with weapons. And so they say you got to fly in. And that is what happened is they flew in, and they were going to, they needed to get Lanny Hunter into the camp. But they also needed to get some wounded out, they needed to drop off some supplies. So you tried to get make the most out of every helicopter run into this into the teeth of all this anti-aircraft fire. And, you know, what happened was they- you know, they went in the metabank, that love Lanny Hunter was on came in, and sort of when he went into his flare, he came in too fast, maybe and caused them to be a little too high. And so he was a sitting duck. And so what happens is the gunships have to go and draw fire away from them. And they did that. But they unfortunately went right into the teeth on the southern portion of the camp of where most of the North Vietnamese anti-aircraft fire was concentrated. Got shot down. And you know, and the real tragedy for the whole unit 119 was they-they could not go get those guys, the area was just too hot. And they just, you know, they died like that in there. They crashed SM: 58:47 Mm-Hmm. JS: 58:47 -molting bolt in flames, and they all burned. And they were just young, you know, young guys, SM: 58:53 Right. JS: 58:53 -wives and kids on the way and everything like that. But they could not go get them until the siege was over, because it was just too much fire too much, too much any enemy activity. So they just stayed out there for days and days and days. And finally, you know, as you know, for the book, I was able to talk to one of the guys who went on the mission to get them. And it was just a really, really horrific event and heartbreaking to say the least. SM: 59:18 And you lost another one there and Mr. Bailey. JS: 59:22 Yes. Joe Bailey. Yep. Yep. And he was he was on the ground, right, one of the one of the Special Forces troopers occupying or, you know, garrisoning the camp SM: 59:36 Mm-Hmm. JS: 59:36 and then to go out and try to rescue these guys who had been shot down and the way they were man, the way they described it was this, you know, because I asked them all the same question. I said, "Why would you risk yourself to go and get someone you did not know" or "Why would you risk yourself to help some guy on the ground that you did not know?" And they all said the same thing "It was because they do it for us, you know." So it is like reciprocal agreement, that even though we may not know each other, we were all we were on the same team, and we were going to try our best to save you under any circumstances. So the guys that were in that helicopter that got shot down, we were trying to help the guys on the ground, and they had been helping them all night running gun runs, you know, to try to suppress the NBA attacks. And, and on the flip side of that, the guys on the ground saw that helicopter go down, and they said, We got to go get them. SM: 1:00:36 Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:00:37 It does not look good. But we got to go try. And they went out onto the wire, and they got ambushed, and they got, you know, Joe Bailey lost his life that day trying to help guys who he did not even know, but who would have to help him. SM: 1:00:52 Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:00:52 And that is that free to call that thing that is in the military that that so many of them say they miss that you just you cannot you know, just some average civilian or something who did not know who you can trust. You know, meanwhile, this guy, they do not know each other, but they were, it is just part of the ethos. They tried to help me so I am going to go try to help them and I made and lose my life in the process. SM: 1:01:13 We need that in America today. JS: 1:01:17 Well, the [inaudible] right- SM: 1:01:18 -[inaudible] about everybody. JS: 1:01:22 That is what a lot of these guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan have said in the past is like, you know, how do you know who to trust? -You do not have that camaraderie. You do not have that, that that brotherhood, that sisterhood that you had, while you were downrange. And, you know, Sebastian, younger, I do not know how what you know about him. But you know, if you are interested in such things, he has written, you know, very, very passionately and persuasively about, you know, young men in combat and what they miss, about being in combat- SM: 1:01:55 Hmm. JS: 1:01:56 -and about being military and so forth. SM: 1:01:58 Hmm. JS: 1:01:58 And, you know, he is a guy, you know, he is one of those, those long form journalists, as literary journalist who goes and does the thing. You know, he is with the guys. Right. And that is one thing that is, that is always impressed me is the, you know, he spent [inaudible] spent months in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan with his group, and he did a 3-3-3 documentary films and- SM: 1:02:23 Wow. JS: 1:02:24 -at least one book on it. So I do not know, Steve, if you are interested in things like that. I just throw his name out there. SM: 1:02:29 Well, I am very interested in and of course, I knew Wallace Terry, who wrote Bloods. And he was with the African American soldiers by their side during the war. JS: 1:02:39 Yeah. SM: 1:02:39 -yeah. So that is something and of course, Joe Galloway. Oh, can say about Joe, my goodness, one of a kind. Could you give us- for people who are studying this down the road? Plei Me, you know, it had been there a while but as you start your book with that first group, and then you have got the back with group coming in and three reinforcements with Delta Force, and then the [inaudible] comes in, right to the very end of your book, you talk about the reason why Plei Me, the soldiers and Plei Me survive. Could you talk about the thanks that you gave to the groups that came in that dropped the food that dropped bombs around the sort of camp? Could you talk about those people who risked their lives to say these to save Plei Me. JS: 1:03:33 Yeah, I mean, I heard it described by many sources that it was just a wall of anti-aircraft fire every time you would approach that camp like you would like, like if you were out in the woods, and you have got a stick and you actually hit a hornet's nest and they will just come buzzing out I mean, every time that they would fly their helicopter or fixed wing aircraft near that camp, this round would just light up with an aircraft fire just trying to just shoot down as many aircraft as possible kill as many people as possible SM: 1:04:03 Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:04:04 and of course you know all that ratchets up the pressure right on we got to get this relief force there and of course their ideas they want to ambush the release force too. Yeah, I mean, think about that for a second. I mean, all of those guys and those helicopters and in those-those a One Sky Raiders which was like a, an old-World War Two prop plane that they use for close air support and Vietnam. And you know, coming in and laying down Napalm and you know, cluster munitions and 20-millimeter cannon fire, all of this to constantly try to beat back the NBA assaults on the wire to try to, you know, to bomb them at least enough to keep them far enough away from the camp even so that they could not just constantly rain down fire SM: 1:04:56 Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:04:57 benders and you know, and then you get the resupply, right, coming in, on-on-on-on these big transports for both the Air Force and the Army. And, you know, these are lumbering aircraft compared to, you know, a Canberra, you know fighter bomber or SM: 1:05:21 Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:05:21 even a helicopter and maneuver around these things are pretty much flying in a straight line, and they would make up these pallets of supplies. So that they would, they would drop even faster because the area that they could drop the supplies in was very, very limited Plei Me was not that big to begin with. And then they had this sort of inactive defense that went far out away from the act of the active line of defense where there were man gun trenches and all that they had sort of like a no man's land that was outside of the camp with barbed wire and claymore mines and things like that. But if supplies landed in there you would be you take you take your life in your own hands trying to even get to it because it was constantly under fire, SM: 1:05:38 Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:06:07 -And so the just the skill of the pilot, and the Air Force, or I am sorry, these special forces, riggers, right the ones who rigged the pallets up in the first place, specifically, so that they would drop quickly. And so the planes would come over, they only have a second or two to release the load. And they wanted it to drop right into the camp. So they not only the guys who get it, but so that the NBA could not get it SM: 1:06:07 Right. JS: 1:06:32 -It is the level of skill. And meanwhile, you have got the board air controller, sort of like I would like it him as like the conductor of an orchestra. And he was up there in a little O-1 bird dog observation plane. It is like a Cessna. And you know, he was marking things down with a grease pencil on his plexiglass of his of his of his of his plane, you know, all the different flights that he has got stacked up and he was in ease and again, he was orchestrating all of this and calling in okay, you know, flight 2 you can go now SM: 1:06:32 Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:07:06 -going to run, okay, we have got a supply run coming in, imagine the pressure, SM: 1:07:11 Yeah. JS: 1:07:11 -of that skill that is involved in that, all of that to keep these guys on the ground alive. SM: 1:07:18 Yep. JS: 1:07:19 -And, again, not knowing any of them. Really, I mean, you might, you might have met a guy here, there. But for the most part, there is guys on the ground that need help. And in to do all that and to bring in all of that heavy-duty ordinance so close to the base, but not kill anybody. was amazing. They wanted some, including the camp commander Harold Moore took some shrapnel from close air support, they came in too close. And a couple of Montagnards were crushed to death when a supply pallet came right down on top of their gun trench. SM: 1:07:54 Wow. JS: 1:07:54 So it was not it was not without hazard. SM: 1:07:57 Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:07:57 But most part in a hot complex situation. These guys really, the skill and determination they exhibited over that week was just amazing. SM: 1:08:09 Could you give um if someone wants to know more about Plei Me, what would be the date, the date the month and the days in 65. JS: 1:08:20 Mm-Hmm. So that is going to be October 19th through October 25th is the official length of the siege 1965 There are things that happened before it there was leading up to it and there were some things that happen after it. SM: 1:08:37 Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:08:38 Both are talked about in the book, but that siege itself ran from October 19 to which was a Tuesday I believe all the way through the 25th is when the seed was officially lifted when that South Vietnamese armored Task Force finally arrived. SM: 1:08:55 Yeah, and-and then the La Drang Valley was only about three days later. JS: 1:09:01 Well, well- SM: 1:09:02 -that means remember, like, JS: 1:09:05 The pursuit started almost immediately. But you are right. When you think about the, you know, Colonel Hal Moore -and most of the seventh and what we think of as the beginning of the La Drang on November 14. SM: 1:09:13 Yep. Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:09:19 That would be that was after a really frantic pursuit of the forces that had to besiege Plei [inaudible] and Plei Me that was always the big complaint from American commanders at that time. Was that the Viet Cong and again, they thought these were the Viet Cong up until maybe halfway through the siege and they started to realize oh, this is actually the PAVN right People's Army of Vietnam as the NBA. And so that one complaint they always made was that they were always allowed to attack and then just drift away and to pick and choose their time. They were going to attack and the first cab was like, we were not going to do that we were not going to allow them just to attack and run away and regroup, we were going to pursue that. We were going to we were going to kill them however we possibly can. And so it was a frenetic frantic pursuit over those weeks until how more landed has the first of his battalion in at the, at the base of the Tupac massive in on November 14. And it was marked by some success. But mainly, it was, it was, it was pretty frustrating for SM: 1:10:32 Right. JS: 1:10:32 first [inaudible]. SM: 1:10:33 Yep. JS: 1:10:34 You know, they-they could pin him down sometimes, but the you know, they-they burned a lot of fuel. And they had a lot of mechanical problems because they kept running the helicopters so hard. You know, they get an A for effort. They were trying to make it happen. But they got a quick introduction to how difficult it was to deal with that terrain and with an enemy that can, you know, can hide and disperse. And but they both sides finally got their battle on November 14th. And we know what happened after that. SM: 1:11:06 Yep. Joe Galloway was lucky to get that, or unlucky. But I think he would say lucky to get that helicopter ride into the area. 1:11:16 And he came into Plei Me to you know, he sort of BS his way on and had a buddy and all the rest of it. That got him into to Plei Me and he told me that story for the book. So he kind of got that first. You got his debit there and then left with the first [inaudible] and then ended up, you know, of course, going in a couple of weeks later. On that first. SM: 1:11:41 You-you talk about also toward the end of your book, The you break down the losses from Plei Me how many Americans died? And how many of the enemy you think died? Could you break that down a little bit more? 1:11:56 Yeah, well, we had seven Americans who were killed. 11 if you count the four guys that were on the recon, that really re-catch up, it was a gun, gunship escort for when Beckwith was looking for a proper LZ for his insertion. So those that have a mechanical player, but they still died and they died in service to their country. And when the rotor came away from their helicopter, technically, you could say that they also perished in the siege because they were directly participating. Then you had you know, scores of South Vietnamese and Montagnard were killed. And the NVA regiments that were there were they fared pretty poorly. The counts on the 33rd regiment, which was the one that actually laid siege to Plei Me are much more accurate. Whereas the 32nd, the one that was tasked with ambush in the relief column, they- body counts are not nearly as reliable. But the 33rd definitely took a horrific beating. And one of the reasons was and ironically, it may have been because their seeds went on so long, that they just were they were subjected to relentless and brutal air bombardment SM: 1:13:23 Yes Right. JS: 1:13:23 -and attacks from the camp itself for seven days, you know, nearly you know, and, and doing the-the South Vietnamese relief force was so slow in getting there, it just, it just drove the siege out day after day after day. And these guys just were pummeled. So I do not remember the exact figures off the top of my head, but I know that several, several, several companies pretty much cease to exist. In the 33rd I know that several battalions they lost all I think all of their battalion commanders was killed, or maybe two or three, they lost a lot of a lot of their equipment, which at that time was in really short supply for the North Vietnamese, you know, there was any aircraft guns and, and, and recoilless rifles and all that stuff was-was gold to them, especially in those early days and they lost a lot of that, but also lost a lot of manpower. -32nd even though it had taken a beating out there on Route five, again, body counts are not as reliable. Most sources seem to think conservatively they lost a couple of 100 guys, which is still a chunk, you know, that is a lot that is a that is a lot of people to lose, and but they were able to escape and make their way out and I do not think that they saw any more action for quite some time but the 33rd was harassed and chased the whole way from Plei Me by the first cab until they actually got to the base areas in the Ia Drang. And I think if memory serves now we are getting into Joe Galloway's territory here. But I think that the 33rd did participate somewhat in the Ia Drang battles, it was mainly the 66 NBA regiment, but I think the 33rd did in that course they lost more guys. SM: 1:15:18 Right. JS: 1:15:19 So, by the time it was all said and done, they and they abandoned South Vietnam and started across the border to Cambodia, SM: 1:15:28 Right. JS: 1:15:29 Both of those regiments, the 33rd. And the 32nd that besieged Plei Me were pretty badly mauled. But they could then take-take refuge in Cambodia, and get replacements and rest and recuperate and get more supplies. And then when they were ready, they could go back into the fight, which is what those sanctuaries allow them to do. SM: 1:15:54 I have a couple of questions now that are just general questions on Vietnam, and I just like your thoughts. A lot of the books and a lot of historians have stated that America was not prepared for this war. They did not understand the culture of Vietnam, they did not, they were not prepared for a guerrilla war. I think Special Forces though, were pretty good at countering them. But they did not understand the language. They should bet-bet-better understood the history. And when Robert McNamara wrote his book, In retrospect, several years ago, he admitted that he, he knew we were not going to win the war. But he still left in 1967. And the war was still going on. And I know Senator McCarthy never forgave him for that. Because I interviewed Senator McCarthy and said that, In retrospect, was a bunch of garbage in his view, because he should have done that way before 67. Your thought about America? What has America prepared for this war? JS: 1:16:54 Prepared? That is right. What are we talking about? Are we talking culturally, politically, militarily? All of the above- SM: 1:17:01 -all of the above? Because, you know, because did they understand guerrilla warfare? Do they understand the history of Vietnam? You know, all you had to do was listen to Ho Chi Minh, he could have told you everything. So just your thoughts? JS: 1:17:17 Yeah, I mean, I think right, culturally, I think that, that they did not, they did not even a lot of Americans did not even know where it was right. And they did not, they did not really see public fans are the nuances of, you know, Cold War geopolitics, it was pretty much like, where our president says, we need to be there. Those are the commies we need to do. And that is probably the deepest it was ever thought of by, you know, just on the average American, those who are even aware of it. Then you get the guys who are charged with prosecuting the war. You are right. I mean, ever since 1945, in the end of World War Two, America had been preparing for a large set piece, geopolitical struggle against the Soviet Union, and to a somewhat lesser degree, China, right. SM: 1:18:22 Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:18:22 And so the emphasis was on, you know, big weapons, big units, air power, all the rest to defeat a foe that could pose an existential threat to your country. And-and, of course, you know, Vietnam was not that, you know, it was. So I agree, I think today, they were taking somewhat by surprise, I think that they thought that kind of like the incremental. The incremental approach gradiated pressure that McNamara approach with LBJ is at least acquiescence, right? SM: 1:19:01 Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:19:03 To keep the pressure up, and, you know, keep trying to get concessions and keep trying to get them to come to the bargaining table. I mean, they did not I do not think they knew what they were dealing with. And you would think that you could look and just see from the-the perspective of the French. But again, I think that the Americans thought at the time, and they were justified in thinking that we had more capabilities than the French SM: 1:19:29 Right. JS: 1:19:29 -we had, we had better weapons, and we had better tactics. And we were- the French had just gotten beaten in World War Two and works for some of the reasons we supported them in Vietnam was to try to get them back on their feet because we saw it as a way to do as an anticommunist block to have a strong France again. Probably a lot of Americans leadership did not they did not want to see colonies anymore. They did not want to see they knew the third world was changing. You are right. I think a lot of these things it took them by surprise and-and just like inch by inch, step by step, they got deeper into something. And I think by the time they realized and adjusted strategy, and then we are talking getting into (19)72, which kind of comes to my, my second book that will be coming out here in a few months, is that, you know, by that time, all of the goodwill and all of the political capital, everything had been expended. SM: 1:19:47 Mm-Hmm. Mm.-Hmm. JS: 1:20:12 And that by that time, Congress wanted no more part of it, and neither did the American people. And so, you know, that is the Nixon felt, felt a heavy pressure, he had to get out, and he had to get out. And, you know, the election of 72 was-was the-the new Congress coming in the new was going to be sworn in, in early 73, 93rd Congress, and he knew it was going to be hostile to Vietnam, especially it had been growing more so. And so I think that by the time they figured it out, they figured out how to fight the war, what the priorities should be, and all the rest of it. That coupled with the defeat of the Viet Cong in 68 Tet all of those things came too late. And I think that by the time they figured out what they should do, and then Watergate happened in Nixon lost all of whatever little capital he had, and then finally resigned. And at that point, we just pretty much washed our hands of the whole thing and, and left South Vietnam on its own. In the process- SM: 1:21:44 Yep. Arthur Schlesinger, the historian who was a special assistant to President Kennedy, said, said that Kennedy picked the best and the brightest for his administration. And of course, administration stayed on with LBJ, a lot of them after Kennedy was assassinated, set for Bobby who took off within a year. Look at what they did under Kennedy and Johnson. And when we are talking best and brightest, he is referring, I think, and mostly to Robert McNamara, and McGeorge Bundy. JS: 1:22:23 Mm-Hmm. SM: 1:22:23 And can you throw Dean Rusk in there as well? I get that. Yeah, they might. is bright, always smart. That is the question I want to ask. And, and I do not think they were very smart. If they could not see what was happening, and particularly and I have different views. I have interviewed Robert McNamara's son. He has got a new book out too, on his father. And I have a little more and even Bobby Mueller grew to like Robert McNamara in overtime because he debated him. However, what Eugene McCarthy told me after In Retrospect came out is that his book was a bunch of garbage is what a lot of people felt because it was a little too late. JS: 1:23:11 Mm-Hmm. SM: 1:23:12 If he knew this before, he should have been in the office with LBJ and said stop. I- you know, so, you know, just when you say you know, the best and the brightest, it always goes to Arthur Schlesinger because he was in that group from Harvard, but maybe they were not the best in the brightest, after all. Any thoughts on that? Oh Yeah- yeah, Halberstam wrote that. But you know, Fletcher's always saying it [inaudible] JS: 1:23:33 Yeah, I mean, that is the that is the book right? It is, we-we look at that and and-and we see it was Halberstam right? Who wrote the book- -Yeah, yeah. And it is true. I just I think that, you know, there is this adage that you fight, you are always trying to fight the last war. And I do not know, I think that they were trying to blame a-a-a-a- the American way of war. I think you are trying to bring it and make the war fit the way we wanted to fight it rather than the realities of what was going on. And again, slash injure or Eugene McCarthy's take on McNamara, you know, it was a little too late. And I would add to that, I would say that, you know, in a different sort of little too late, it was like, they finally figured it out. And we were having real success, but it was too late because they had already they had already burned all the bridges and SM: 1:23:50 Yep. JS: 1:23:53 bended all the little and no one believed him anymore and, and then, at that point, they just the people just wanted out in Congress, you know, was going to make that happen one way or another and I just I would look at it, Stephen, I just look at it. It is such a such a tragedy, right? SM: 1:25:04 I agree. Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:25:05 But if you get if you do it, right, if you do it, then the very least you can do is to is to be successful and to be and to win the thing. And this is what we come back to our beginning of our conversation, the thing that struck me as a young kid starting to watch this stuff starting to study, it is like, it just seems like such a waste. -and one of these guys lost, and then countless others who were named and, and who do you know, even though I said, I did not like the caricature of the Vietnam vets, it is in popular media, I mean, a lot of them did have a lot of problems. And a lot of them came overcame those problems, a lot of them went on to live a very happy and successful lives and still do. In fact, the great majority of them do. But the thing is, is you make that if you make that commitment, and you tell these young men to go do something, at least have the decency to be successful, and make their sacrifice worth something. And to me, that is, that is the tragedy too. And the tragedy is the is the millions of Vietnamese who were who lost their lives. And we were- SM: 1:26:15 Yes. JS: 1:26:16 -we were just split. And-and so, you know, what was all that for, you know, to-to, again, I hate this keep coming back when we spent 20 years in Afghanistan, and yet the scales of the enormity of what went on were not, were paled in comparison to-to Vietnam. Still, what was it all for? I mean, what was all those guys who were killed and lost legs? And what was it all for? If you are just going to wash your hands and-and bug out in an embarrassing display at the-the Kabul airport or in Saigon in 75? You know- SM: 1:26:29 Yes, It is like, it is like in your book use you talk about when all the bombardment is happening around the outskirts of pre-May in how parts of bodies around the wires? I mean, you know, after the all the bombing and taking place, these are these are human beings to from North Vietnam or the Viet Cong. I mean, they were they were babies, ones that have parents that love them and had families and they end up on body parts on a on a, you know, on a wire around a camp it is tragic. And I think the one thing you said at the very end of your book, because that person who saw that soldier, and it was actually thought that the soldier was just in the one I am talking about with a maggots. JS: 1:27:46 Yes, yeah. SM: 1:27:47 Could you talk about that, too? Because this is what the tra- this is what tragedy war is all about? JS: 1:27:53 Yeah. No, it was I think I called it one of wars, little atrocities. I mean, it was just, you know, somehow this, this North Vietnamese soldier had escaped the bulldozers that would have pushed all the bodies into the trenches that they dug themselves and then covered him over and he was propped up against them some foliage. And he would have he had died and compound fracture of his leg probably bled out at that moment, but he had the maggots had gone to work on his face instead of the leg wound. And, you know, the guy I told you about the helicopter pilot, who was walking around kind of looking to see, what he could see was just guessed. You know, he could not he could not believe his eyes. And it is you put it so well, I mean, he hears these guys, and they will they suffered, they suffered on their way down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, they starved and they were sick. And you know, these are things that, you know, we do not really think about, but just the hardship of just that, of just war itself, not even being shot or anything else, just the physical toil that it takes on your body, even as the young man and then at the end of that whole long, arduous, starving sick trip and they get to their their reward is to storm into this camp, and get bombarded by Napalm and become body parts in the wire. And a tragic thing that I found out in my research was is that the the NBA commanders knew that those that they were sending these guys into this mall have-have heard horrific fire. But they had no intention of taking the camp at that point. They just wanted to make the defenders think they were about to be overrun. SM: 1:29:40 Unbelievable. JS: 1:29:41 And in these guys against the wire and getting them slaughtered, knowing that really the whole point was is to first destroy that ambush or ambush that relief column and then overrun and destroy the camp. That was all part of the plan. And they knew it. I do not know if the I do not know if the company commanders knew it, but certainly the regimental commanders must have known it. That that was part of the plan. SM: 1:30:07 Yeah. -wars, not only hell, it is insanity. And then that you just proved it there. And Jan Scruggs wrote a book called Heal a Nation. I do not know if you saw that book. And it was about the importance of the wall and healing America, and certainly healing the families and the loved ones of the Vietnam soldiers who lost their lives in the war. Did that, as Jan said, heal a nation, does a wall heal the nation. JS: 1:30:07 So but- 1:30:39 I think that it certainly had a powerful effect. And I you know, I have been to it several times. And I have, I have, I seen the reverence with which the people approach it. And not all the guys are, you know, 70s, you know, in Vietnam age, you know, I mean, a lot of young people too, and, and people from different walks of life, and mean, something. And, you know, another thing I think, that helped heal the nation was-was Operation Homecoming, which was, as you know, once the Paris Peace Accords, were finally signed, there was the agreement to get the Viet W's out. And, and the reception that those guys got, everywhere they went, and the POW bracelets and the people the way they were treated, and the way that the-the citizens came up around the country to greet the planes and all of that. I mean, it was really inspiring. And that is what I asked again, that is, that is part of the second book that I am publishing this this winter, is I asked him, what was that? Was that a healing effect on the nation? And I really think that it was I think, law and things like that. helped me get a little better in the end. SM: 1:32:09 Did you talk to Jan Scruggs at all? If not, he is a good man to talk to. JS: 1:32:17 Steven I, I will, if I had the chance, I will reach out. But I do have to say this, but I have to go because I got to take my son to eye, to his eye appointment. SM: 1:32:28 Very good. JS: 1:32:29 So- is there any kind of last thing you wanted to ask me or? SM: 1:32:33 Yeah- I was going to say if there is one word that stands out in the 60s and 70s, what is that one word? JS: 1:32:44 60s and 70s. alike, all the way to the end of the 70s. SM: 1:32:47 What is there is one word that comes to mind when you think of the (19)60s and the (19)70s? What is that word? JS: 1:32:56 Chaotic. SM: 1:32:58 Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, my mind was Vietnam. Yeah. And the last thing I want to ask is, and this is just-just your thoughts? Why did we lose the Vietnam War? And who was the most responsible for this loss? 1:33:14 Why we lost it, I think the strategy, my view was ultimately the strategy. I think that the American- whenever would have lost the American people if we were if we were actively winning, rather than just holding off rather than trying to hold territory or rather than just trying to accumulate body count. But then that opens up an entire other hand, does not it? What how would the Chinese have reacted? If we invaded Laos? I was a Chinese or how would the Soviets have acted if we invaded Cambodia, or at least, you know, create a buffer zones- SM: 1:33:58 Right. JS: 1:33:59 -that help prevent those supplies? And, you know, that is the that is the thing is that it is- we do not know. I mean, you got hindsight, we can both look back, and we see the mistakes now. And maybe we do not even see it, maybe we still do not see it. But it is just at the time, you know, Korea loom large and that experience and having all those Chinese forces come in. And I know that America's leadership did not want to do it. They also wanted to, in some ways for NSA, we were not even fighting a war. And if you are going to do it, you got to, you got to go to the American people and say, here is what we have got. SM: 1:34:43 Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:34:44 What we need to do, can you support us and lay it on the line and say, this is what we really think is happening. ' SM: 1:34:53 Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:34:53 This is what we need to do. And I do not think that the leadership did that. And I think that the Because of that, it constrain the strategy to one of attrition and holding, you know, trying to hold on to South Vietnam territory, and really fighting it sort of a defensive that. SM: 1:35:15 My last question is this real fascinating go. I have been asking the last 25 people I have interviewed, what word of advice would you give to the people who are listening to this interview? Who are not even born yet? These tapes are going to be at our center, and people that are born 50 years from now are going to be probably looking at your book listening to this tape. What words of advice would you give to them? JS: 1:35:46 I would say this, sometimes nation states have to go to war. Just make sure that you get your government to fully explain why you are going to war and-and why it is necessary and what they intend to do to win it. SM: 1:36:06 Mm-Hmm. JS: 1:36:09 If they cannot answer those questions satisfactorily, then you have got to not support what is going to happen. And, again, war are sometimes necessary for any sovereign nation, but you do not do it. You do not engage in it. Unless you fully believe and intend to win, and the secure objectives. And if you cannot do that, and your government cannot explain that to you, as a citizen, then you need to be mighty skeptical of it. SM: 1:36:41 Well, thank you very much, Dr. Saliba. I am going to turn this off now. And I just want to thank you for doing for doing the interview with me and I wish you the best on your new book. Are you still they still-still there? JS: 1:37:00 [inaudible]. When the book comes out [inaudible]- SM: 1:37:07 Oh, I would be looking forward to it- JS: 1:37:17 [inaudible] SM: 1:37:22 -well, all that-all the people in Binghamton they are-are going to know so that is all you know, we got Dr. Nieman Dr. Nieman in the History department. So you know, you are going to be known that this book, I just want to say that this book that you just written is so important. So important. And I learned an awful lot that I did not know. And I thank you for this and the people anybody connected with Plei Me. I mean, they are American heroes. They are American heroes. That is all I have to say. And what will happen is we will be sending you a copy of this tape digital copy to your email address from Binghamton and then you can listen to it and if you if everything's fine and Okay, so we can place an onsite loan with your picture and a brief biography. JS: 1:38:15 [inaudible] SM: 1:38:15 And I tell it to your university that you work at is very lucky to have you that is all I had to say. JS: 1:38:20 [inaudible] I like that- SM: 1:38:26 [chuckles] Yes, you are lucky you are You take care. You be safe now. Bye now. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. J. Keith Saliba https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/1b0ef99ddb7a7e56b70f1074434cecf0.jpg 536c14a8456bb5ce32012c41c14be12d https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/5111a50ae3c22fbcf16b15f4621d181c.mp3 6929a256181a5f65964b01dcd873782c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2002-07-29 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed James J. Kirschke Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;James J. Kirschke is currently an English professor at Villanova University. Kirschke earned his Bachelor's degree from LaSalle College, and his Master's degree and Ph.D. in English at Temple University. He served in Vietnam until was medically retired in 1968. He recounted his experiences in an autobiography entitled Not Going Home Alone. He is also the author of Henry James and Impressionism, Willa Cather and Six Writers from the Great War, and Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816): Author, Statesman, and Man of the World.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15105,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">James J. Kirschke is currently an English professor at Villanova University. Kirschke earned his Bachelor's degree from LaSalle College, and his Master's degree and Ph.D. in English at Temple University. He served in Vietnam until he was medically retired in 1968. He recounted his experiences in an autobiography entitled <em>Not Going Home Alone</em>. He is also the author of <em>Henry James and Impressionism</em>, <em>Willa Cather and Six Writers from the Great War</em>, and <em>Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816): Author, Statesman, and Man of the World</em>.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;John F Kennedy's Election; Nineteen sixties; Ron Castillo; Grace Slick; Baby boom generation; Nineteen sixties government distrust; Bobby Mueller; Disabled veterans; La Salle University in nineteen-sixties.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305}}">John F Kennedy's Election; Nineteen sixties; Ron Castillo; Grace Slick; Baby boom generation; Nineteen sixties government distrust; Bobby Mueller; Disabled veterans; La Salle University in nineteen-sixties.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 91:45 Subject LCSH College teachers; Villanova University; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Kirschke, James J.--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. James J. Kirschke Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kirschke, James J. ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource College teachers; Villanova University; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Kirschke, James J.--Interviews Description An account of the resource James J. Kirschke is currently an English professor at Villanova University. Kirschke earned his Bachelor's degree from LaSalle College, and his Master's degree and Ph.D. in English at Temple University. He served in Vietnam until he was medically retired in 1968. He recounted his experiences in an autobiography entitled <em>Not Going Home Alone</em>. He is also the author of <em>Henry James and Impressionism</em>, <em>Willa Cather and Six Writers from the Great War</em>, and <em>Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816): Author, Statesman, and Man of the World</em>. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002-07-29 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.76 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 91:45 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/5b90fd76eda81b7eac0a698a93680c1c.jpg 12aa9e73391a5079e05a24ea5a71948d https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b3bafa5660c345ff6f313b2d4c679e78.mp3 8c8abdf2bc7f131670d3ba5d6352d252 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-08-02 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed James Quay Language English Biographical Text <p>Dr. James Quay grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania.&nbsp; He earned a BA in English from Lafayette College and then performed two years of alternative service in central Harlem as a conscientious objector. He and his wife moved to California where he earned an MA and Ph.D. in English Literature from UC Berkeley. He was a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and an associate producer with California Public Radio where he co-produced a six-part radio documentary, <em>Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War</em>. He served as executive director of the California Council for the Humanities from 1983 to 2008. Since his retirement, he has been a facilitator for the Center for Courage and Renewal.</p> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 159:49 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;College campus; Activism; Volunteerism; Wounded Knee; Black Panther; Stonewall; Quaker; Kent State; Jackson State; Chicago.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:16370588},&quot;12&quot;:0}">College campus; Activism; Volunteerism; Wounded Knee; Black Panther; Stonewall; Quaker; Kent State; Jackson State; Chicago.</span> Subject LCSH Radio producers and directors; California Council for the Humanities; Quay, James--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: James Quay Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 2 August 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): And again, any questions will be all over the place. They are not going to be in the order that I sent them to you, but I will start out with the first question, which is, in the early years when you were young, what were the greatest influences in your life, your experiences growing up, your high school years prior to going to college, and then of course your college years as well. I think you were at Lafayette College and I know that quite well. And then your experiences at Berkeley. So tell me a little bit about those early years. JQ (00:00:35): Well, I grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which is city of about 100,000, maybe 70 miles north of Philadelphia. And it was literally an all-American city. Got that designation, I think, twice, actually. So naturally, the biggest influence for me early on where my parents. My father managed the shoe store and had never gone to college. My mother was a nurse, not working at the time, but she started working to put my brother and I through college, to help with college. And it was a very big tranquil, safe childhood. Remember walking a mile and a half to elementary school without any adult supervision. Nobody worried about it. So I would say my parents early on were strong influences. In high school, a classmate named Earl Lampson was the first... I was a pretty much of a straight arrow, and he was the first person to really go off into some intellectual deep places. He knew about the Beats. He knew about blues and jazz and folk music beyond the standard repertoire. So he was a very strong influence for getting me to see other ways of seeing the world than just the standard, conventional way that I saw. Though I must say, I was not one of those who rebelled against my conventional upbringing. I just saw that there was another way. And in college, my professors were really influential, especially one English professor named James Lusardi. SM (00:02:48): How do you spell that? JQ (00:02:51): L-U-S-A-R-D-I. He died about six years ago. He was influential not only as a model, I decided what I wanted to be was an English professor, but also he had, there is a kind of easy, sophomoric cynicism that college students can have, or certainly I did at that time. I think it was a leftover from the Cool Beat (19)50s era, and he challenged that. That is really cowardice, and it is really, you are just being a punk. It is just a posture. You are actually trying to protect yourself from... There is something fearful about that posture. And all this was happening about the time that protest against the war was heating up. So we started getting involved more with challenging the [inaudible] administration rules on conduct as well as protesting against the war. So I guess those were the major influences for me, the ones I personally had, anyway. SM (00:04:11): Now before we even get into it really in depth, on the Vietnam Memorial website, they have your description of when you first went to the Vietnam Memorial for the first time. JQ (00:04:23): I did not even know that. SM (00:04:26): Yeah. Well, that is where I first really found out about you. It is on the website, and it is as a conscientious objector from the Vietnam War area. And then of course, it has listed that you were the executive director of the California Council of the Humanities. But go back to those days again when you were young in college. At what juncture did you become a conscientious objector? Was it at Lafayette College, or was it at Berkeley? JQ (00:04:55): Oh, no, it was at Lafayette. I did not get to Berkeley until 1970, and I must say by the time I got to Berkeley... SM (00:05:05): Can you hold on a second? Someone is trying to reach me. Hold on a second. I am on my cell. Hello? This is him speaking. Good. No-no-no-no. I retired in February of 2009, and I have not worked since. Yep. You bet, bud. Sorry about that. JQ (00:05:55): That is all right. SM (00:05:57): That was Social Security. I am going to be able to get social security for the first time. They do not believe I am retired. Well, anyway, where were we? Sorry about that. That will be the last interruption. JQ (00:06:14): Yeah, it was at Lafayette and not Berkeley that I made that decision. And I think about the evolution. I remember when I turned 18 in September of (19)64, I forgot to go to the draft board to register. I did not go for weeks. And in 1964, that was no big deal. If that had happened, I am guessing, two or three years later, it probably would have been a big deal. And I started paying attention to the war, I would say, in 1966 and (19)67, which would have been my junior year. I had a student deferment, of course, and so I was not thinking about the draft that way, but I was starting to read people like Camus and Thoreau, and think about what my stance was going to be when I graduated. And I toyed for a little while. I knew I did not want to participate in the war. And I toyed a little while about the 1-A-O status, which is conscientious objector, but in the military, usually work as a corpsman or something like that. Decided against that, and I guess it was sometime around Christmas or January that I decided to file as a CO. I remember telling my father, and I do not remember him having any strong objections. He had gone quite willingly to World War II. In fact, I think he volunteered. And it was more that this was a different situation, something he had not encountered. He could tell me how to follow my government's instructions, but he could not tell me how to resist them. So there I turned to by some of my professors and also the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, which was then based Philadelphia, I think still is, and started to think about what my claim would be. And I was lucky because it was a Supreme Court. Mine was not a religious objection. I was raised Lutheran, and the Lutheran Church did not have a passive stance the way that the Quakers do. But there had been a Supreme Court decision, (19)65 or (19)66, a secret decision, I think, in which the justices said it was not necessary for someone to be a member of a peace church, but that the conviction that you had against war had to occupy the same place in your life as it would in that of a belief. Very important. It is funny, a lot of the theologians that were cited in that decision, I then read later freshman required religion course that I took. [inaudible]. SM (00:09:42): Oh, yes. JQ (00:09:56): So basically, my position was that we create our gods out of our own values, and the values that I most agreed with were love and justice. And I do not know if you are familiar with the CO form, but the first question is, "Do you believe in a Supreme Being?" And there are two boxes: yes, no. It is not a particularly sophisticated theological docket. Then the second question is, "What is the nature of your relationship to that between being," I am going to forget the exact wording, "That makes it impossible for you to participate in war?" It says something about your relationship is higher than any human relationship. And I said that since human beings were the carriers of love and justice and all these important values, to kill other human beings would be to more or less kill God, because human beings, in a sense, are the divinity. And that was the basis of my claim. I remember giving it really a lot of thought, and it was accepted in June of (19)68. So I filed it on the first day of spring in 1968, and then it was accepted into... SM (00:11:51): Did you have any choice about what you were going to do for alternative service, or were you just assigned? JQ (00:11:56): That is a funny story. What you do is you send three options to the draft board, all of which has to be outside, I think, at least 90 miles away from your home. And the three that I sent to my draft board were the New York City Department of Social Services, the Judson Memorial Church was a church in Greenwich Village that had a reputation as peace church, and the United Nations. And I actually started working for the Department of Social Services because I had heard that other draft boards had accepted that as alternative service. Not all, but some. And then my draft board sent back a letter saying, no to the United Nations note, to the New York City Department of Social Services, and what is the Judson Memorial Church? So I sent an appeal back. I realized that they knew that the name of the social service had been the Department of Welfare, they had just came to me. And that welfare to somebody living in Allentown, Pennsylvania did not mean, clearly, what I was experiencing in Harlem. So I sent them a letter, I think, detailing what I did in the course of the week, hoping that would persuade them that what I was doing was truly both in the national interest, and true social service. And it took two tries. I got another letter back saying, "We voted. The vote was two to two with one person absent. We will let you know next month." And then they finally did accept that. I should probably also say that I waived my physical, because I did not want to be exempted because of any physical injuries. So I volunteered for alternative service. SM (00:14:21): Yeah, that experience, you were there two years? JQ (00:14:23): Two years. SM (00:14:23): And it is my understanding that most positions that, or people that serve in conscientious objector positions, it was not meant to be easy. JQ (00:14:35): Yeah, that is right. SM (00:14:37): And so... JQ (00:14:38): His life was to be... I think the idea basically was fairness. Your life was disrupted the way someone who had to go into the military's life would be disrupted. SM (00:14:51): From that two-year experience, what did you learn, not only about people and about yourself, but about this country? JQ (00:15:02): That is a big question. I would say that first of all, I had never seen poverty at the scale that I saw it in Harlem. Never. And at the same time, I saw people and got to know people who were not the face of the poor anymore. They were individuals. I remember one fellow who was, I think he was a little mentally disabled, but he was a very gifted sculptor. Who would have thought? And I discovered that a lot of the misery in Harlem was caused by absentee landlords who lived far away and did not care about the condition of their building. I learned that if I walked down the streets of Harlem, I was afraid of the same people that the people living in Harlem were afraid of. That is, a deranged drug addict, and that they really were human beings just struggling to make do with very few resources, et cetera, et cetera. And it was really eye-opening for me. It also made me realize that doing social service work, especially in a big bureaucracy, was just crushing work. That it was not for me. That I was going to take my constitution some other way. SM (00:16:55): Would you say that, because you were in a very prestigious position for 25 years in California, in the humanities, were doing documentaries and programs, and would you say that the experiences you had as a young man serving in a conscientious objector status for people, a lot of people had nothing, that you were able to use that experience and use it in a position like your director position in terms of doing quality work with less money? JQ (00:17:36): Well, I do not know if it enabled me to do quality work with less money, but I would say that it informed what I hope is a very powerful populous stem to the way I see the world. That when I was with the Council, what gradually evolved was a program that centered on strengthening community as much as possible. Bringing people together, whether it is across racial lines, class lines, as much as possible. It is very difficult work to do, as you probably know, but that the idea of including everyone and that everyone's story is an important story. That derived, in part, I think, from my experience in Harlem, it is hard to say, it is a chicken/egg thing. Did I see what I saw in Harlem because I already had that value, did it just reinforce that? I do not know. But certainly there is a consistency there. SM (00:18:52): There might be some sort of direct link with that and your first position after you got your PhD, where you did that documentary on the Vietnam War. JQ (00:19:01): Well, yeah. What really happened there, I remember listening to National Public Radio and their coverage of the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. And they had a short clip where they were reading the names, and I was just absolutely transfixed by that. It just really, really struck you. Now, this is in (19)82, and there had not been very much discussion of or talk of the war after the US left. And especially after 1975, it was just like the whole country went completely silent and was mourning, I believe, but mourning quietly, silently. No one was talking to Vietnam veterans at all, it was as if they had disappeared off the face of the Earth. So this was the first public reawakening of the war back into consciousness. And very shortly after, maybe two or three weeks later, a man named Walter Capps I interviewed, he had just written a book called The Unfinished War, 1982, and he was a professor of religious studies at Santa Barbara, and he had begun in 1979. This could be a long story, but I will keep it brief. He had started a course, very first in America, and so he did lecture of this, and in the three years since he had started the course, I think the first one was in (19)79, at first, it was a course that had 30 students. By 1982 or three, they had to put it in the largest auditorium on the campus, 900 deep. That is what interest there was in the war. And I had gotten a little hint of that when I was teaching writing at the UC Santa Cruz from 1977 to (19)79. I actually taught a course on the (19)60s, a research course. I was a writing instructor. And to supplement the course, I had a little film series that would show films every Monday night. And, oh, I always forget the name of it, a very powerful film about the Vietnam War. SM (00:22:00): Coming Home? JQ (00:22:06): No-no. It was more of a documentary film. I just cannot think of it right now. But I rented the film and showed it, and 500 people showed up to see this film. And that was the moment I realized that the war was not over. The war was still psychologically going on. So let us see, that was in (19)79, (19)82. Walter talked about, well, you can tell from the title of the book, the Unfinished War, that he, too, felt that this was happening in the American psyche, and that Americans really had not dealt with or healed from the war. And I think it was around that time that I decided to apply for $1000 satellite grant, which we got. And we went down and we recorded the first conference to talk about the Vietnam War, called Vietnam Reconsidered, at the University of Southern California. And there were some really outstanding people. Francis Fitzgerald was there, I do not think Westmoreland spoke, but people of that caliber, Arthur Miller spoke. SM (00:23:36): Wow. JQ (00:23:39): Robert Stone spoke. But by far the most powerful session, and it was just one of many sessions, was the one where the veterans spoke. And again, I was just by myself, just completely transfixed by what I was hearing, and mostly the pain that I was hearing. And we decided to take all the hours of tape that we had, package them into six one-hours, put a binder, put some information, and send them, sell them, actually, for cost, to public radio stations all over the country. And we did that for several years. And the response to that was just overwhelming. It was very gratifying. But I knew that we were just scratching the surface. It was largely through Walter's course... Walter, now, this was February of (19)83. Walter, it turned out, became the chairman of the California Council for the Humanities. SM (00:25:01): Oh, my gosh. JQ (00:25:02): And was part of the group that hired me four months later to become the executive director. SM (00:25:08): Oh, my gosh. JQ (00:25:10): Oh, it gets even wilder than that. I had my final interview. There were two finalists. My final interview was in July, on July 20th of 1983. Three days, before we found out that California public radio had been blue penciled out of the California budget due to the governor. Governor Deukmejian. Suddenly, there was no more California public radio. And on the final day, I had my interview. Went back, we taped the final showing of the 15-minute news program that we did, California Edition. And three minutes after that final show, I got the call that I got the job as the PCH Executive Director. SM (00:26:06): Now was Walter a professor there, too, in California at that time? JQ (00:26:11): And later became a congressman in 1996, and then died tragically a year later of a heart attack. But he became my mentor in the sense that the power of stories, and the power of telling one's story, and being able to have one's story heard, the veterans were in some way healed by the fact that they had an audience that was listening to their story, and not judging their story. And the course is still being taught. It is being thought by a professor named Richard Peck to this day. And Walter told me before he died that he felt that the course had gone through three phases. The first one was welcoming the veterans home, and bringing them out of the shadows onto the stage, telling their story. SM (00:27:16): And that was (19)79. JQ (00:27:17): That was (19)79 through about (19)83 or four, I am going to say. SM (00:27:20): Okay. JQ (00:27:22): But this is pretty imprecise. From (19)84 or five to (19)91. It was healing the nation, that the veterans, by telling their stories, were inviting the rest of the country to deal with what it had not dealt with before. Because there was a lot of grief in this country, the loss of ideals, the loss of the view of your country that you may have once had, that I certainly had, that was destroyed by our participation in Vietnam. And then after (19)91, after the Gulf War, the Gulf War ended that morning moment, because suddenly war was triumphal again. Look at that big victory we just had, and the concentration then was he was getting lots of students in the class who were the sons and daughters of that. SM (00:28:21): Oh, yes. JQ (00:28:22): And so there was, how does information get transferred generation to generation? It may be even a different phase now, but that one was the one that was going on when I was there. SM (00:28:34): So let me turn- JQ (00:28:36): He invited me in 1985. I asked him during the interview back in (19)82 if he had ever had a protestor or a conscientious objector speak, and he never had. And he said, "That might be a good idea." So finally in (19)85, he actually did invite me, and it was the first time I told my story, How I Came to Be a Conscientious Objector. And he later included it in a book on the Vietnam, A reader on the Vietnam War that he created. SM (00:29:09): Let me change the side here. We just finished 30 minutes, so let me just change this tape here. Very good. We are back. That is quite a story. JQ (00:29:20): Well, I am saving my big story for... SM (00:29:22): Okay. JQ (00:29:22): [inaudible] story is probably the big story. SM (00:29:28): I am going to get near there in a couple of minutes. But I also wanted your thoughts as a CO. You have been very descriptive as to why you became a CO, and you have talked about the experience and what it meant to you. What did you think about the conscientious objectors who went to Canada, the people that left the country and refused to even do alternative service? Because we know that Jimmy Carter, in (19)79, pardoned anybody. Amnesty was given. That was very controversial. But a lot of people never came back to the United States. They stayed up in Canada. And some people say some of the top leaders up there are former Vietnam vets to even today that have gone on, become very successful businessmen, and they are in government and everything else. Your thoughts on those who went to Canada and did not really, they paid a price by separating themselves from their families and not being able to come back to home. And secondly, something when I interviewed James Fowles, who is an unbelievable person, veterans admire him because he admitted that he was basically a chicken during the Vietnam War, that he evaded the draft, and he was very specific about this. He says there is a big difference between those who went out and protested the draft, and those who evaded the draft. And he evaded the draft like a lot of his friends at Harvard, and he feels guilty. He has gotten over it, but he has been very honest. So my question is basically- JQ (00:31:02): What did you do in the class war? Daddy, I think. SM (00:31:09): Yeah. So basically, I am asking what do you think of those people who went to Canada and never did any kind of alternative service? And secondly, what do you think of those people who evaded the draft without any sense of, "I am not going to protest against the war, I am just going to get out of the draft." JQ (00:31:27): Yeah. Well, my only experience with anybody who went to Canada was a friend who was working at the same welfare center as I was. His draft board was in St. Louis. He worked at the same work I did for four years, twice as long, but his grant board refused to accept it. So he lives in Toronto today. So I guess what that has told me is I... JQ (00:32:03): What it has told me is, I cannot judge people as a class, I would have to hear each individual story. I just cannot make that judgment. I know it is true and this is one of the things I learned from the Glendon Waters story, was that, when I was going to college, existentialist literature was very big to Moon and Sartre. And the notion that your life is what you do, you are what do, you find yourself by the actions that you take. And of course, since this is happening for me between the ages of 18 and 21, it is also part of my identity formation. So this is a very rich stew. So I saw, becoming a conscientious objector, as making a choice, making a statement about my life, embedding the things that I believed in and acting on them and that was very important. But what I learned later was, that that was a very privileged position to be in. I got to read Kabul and Thoreau. I got to be on a college campus, where I had the leisure to do that without having to earn a living or et cetera, et cetera. And there were people who did not have those privileges and did not have that opportunity. Now I would like to think that I made the right choice, given what was given to me, to know about those things. But I do believe that it was not given to everybody to know about those things. Glendon Waters grew up in Dallas, Texas. It probably was not a peace church within 150 miles of Dallas, Texas. Whereas, I grew up 70 miles North of Philadelphia in an area that had peace churches and dissenting churches everywhere. And even if you were not a member of them, that atmosphere, Quaker presence. So that took me in directions and made choices available to me that were not available to others. I would guess, that there may be a lot of, be it conscience on the part of the school to who did that, what you are calling, draft evasion. But I guess what I feel is, that the choices that we make sometimes as very young men and women, we cannot possibly know what the consequences are going to be later in life. You just make this wager. And if get that wrong, you do suffer consequences later. And that the most serious are the ones, the judgements you make of yourself, the way Fallows did. SM (00:35:27): Right. JQ (00:35:27): And not the judgments that others may have. I did find that veterans treated me with respect because I had done the alternative service and had taken a stand, and they did tend to have a lot of contempt for those who simply abated the draft. But I just think moral decisions are, well, sometimes they do not even present themselves as moral decisions. So I tend not to make a blanket judgment of that. SM (00:36:07): I know that in the oral history book, The Wounded Generation, that came out around 1980, I have interviewed like Phil Caputo and Bobby Mueller and John Wheeler. I have interviewed a couple of people linked to that book. And James Webb who is now our Senator from Virginia, he made a comment back at the time of a symposium, that was interesting. We talk about the generation gap being the battle between parents and their children, over ideas and lifestyle and all other things and that was obviously happening in the (19)60s and (19)70s. Webb said that he felt, or at least in the conversation between these gentlemen, "That the real battle was within the generations, not necessarily between generations. Between those who went to war and served in Vietnam or were Vietnam era veterans who served in this country or around the world. So you have to include them too and those who did not serve." And so his commentary was in the end, that we always think of the (19)60s generation as a service-oriented generation, one that went into the Peace Corps, went into Vista. They followed the ideas of John Kennedy, either by going into the military, like a lot of the guys at West Point did and Annapolis. So they used the military as service, where others went to Peace Corps, the other ways. But in reality, as Mr. Webb said, and then the conversation was very good, if you look at the book that, "This was not a generation of service." And I thought that was interesting because we think just the opposite, the service really began then with the idea of the Peace Corps and John Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for us, what you can do for your country." What are your thoughts about those comments that came out of that discussion in the book, The Wounded Generation? I know that Mr. Webb said some of those words, but it was a conversation in response to his words. JQ (00:38:17): Well, I know that that conflict has reared itself at different times, especially in the (19)90s, I remember the way President Clinton was viewed, et cetera, et cetera. It may still be true. Again, I like to avoid generalizing because first of all, the generation is so large, and as you pointed out in one of your questions, only 15 percent, I think protested in any way. So we tend to lump everybody together and it is really not accurate to do that. SM (00:39:08): Yeah. In fact, some people say that 15 is, you are way overboard, Steve. It is really about 5 percent. JQ (00:39:13): Is that right? SM (00:39:15): Yeah, it depends on who you talk to. There is no real answer to the total numbers but it was minor. JQ (00:39:26): Yeah. SM (00:39:26): Yeah. JQ (00:39:27): Well, I can understand that. I mean, I remember the first time I carried a protest sign, I felt very self-conscious. It was walking out on stage without your clothes or something. I mean, I got more and more used to it, but the first time certainly, it just seemed very strange. SM (00:39:51): What was that first time? JQ (00:39:52): Pardon me? When was it? SM (00:39:53): Yeah, do you remember the exact moment you said, "Geez." I think that is the question I have is, there comes a moment when you have to speak up against injustice or you see something you do not like and you know that when you do, you are vulnerable. That is what being an activist is. You got to be vulnerable. JQ (00:40:08): Yeah. So I do remember actually, because I think somebody from the South Vietnamese Embassy came to speak on my campus and about 10 or 12 of people I knew protested outside. That is by protested I mean, they were holding signs saying, "Stop the bombing." SM (00:40:36): This is at Lafayette? JQ (00:40:38): This is at Lafayette and this is in the spring of (19)67. And I was not one of those people. One of my roommates was, but I did not go. And for an hour or two, they were surrounded by a mob of many members and water was thrown, bricks was thrown, foul language was thrown, and the campus police were nowhere to be found, for some strange reason and that galvanized me. So my first demonstration was in favor of the First Amendment. We spoke of that the next day, walked around the campus with signs, I do not know, maybe 30 of us, 40 of us, still not very many, but more than a dozen. And we pressured the administration about, where were the campus police, why suddenly, there was no protection for these people. So in a sense, that broke the ice for me. There was no doubt in my mind, I mean, the First Amendment, is there anything more American than the First Amendment? SM (00:42:05): Right. JQ (00:42:06): And so that protesting, you could protest in favor of something American and you were not protesting against America somehow. So it took patriotism and it began to sometimes, I mean, you see this going against your government, is the more patriotic active space, so that was the beginning. And then I think the first protest, I took part in against the war, was in early July, in the summer, where we just handed out leaflets at our church and then went inside and attended the service. And I heard the minister denounce, "Those outside, as tools of the Moscow line." And I certainly knew we were vulnerable because we had started to do a silent protest Saturday morning from 11 to 12 in downtown Easton. And some of the people who passed by were not particularly happy. SM (00:43:21): That still happens in Westchester. Yeah. JQ (00:43:26): But I was never physically threatened but you knew that taking the steps meant you were crossing a certain kind of line. SM (00:43:36): Yeah. Before we get into this, talking about the March of Death in (19)69, I have a couple questions. But did you feel that after that first time that you carried that sign or you spoke up, was there kind of a, "I feel good." I mean, there is always the threat, the fear the first time, doing something you have never done, you take the chance. But it is like what Teddy Roosevelt always said, "That if you are going to be a change agent for the betterment of society, you have got to get out into the arena of life." Because the arena life means that yes, you become vulnerable. People are going to maybe criticize you and attack you and not like you, but no one who sits in the corner and hides is ever going to be able to do anything for anybody. JQ (00:44:26): Right. SM (00:44:26): And so I always look at what I call, the Teddy Roosevelt moments. And obviously, you had one, in just what you described. JQ (00:44:36): Yeah. Also, a part of that good feeling was, that though we were few in numbers, we felt connected to people we admired who would come before us, like Martin Luther King, like Perot, like the Founding Fathers, so that matters. SM (00:45:07): Continuity. JQ (00:45:11): Yeah. So it was not me who was betraying the country, it was my government that was betraying the country. And that was a total reversal, I could not possibly have had that mindset, when I was growing up in the (19)50s. SM (00:45:35): I have had different people comment about the boomer generation. Do you like being labeled, being a part of the boomer generation? I have had a lot of different comments from people saying, they do not like it because many of the people born between 1940 and (19)45 were some of the leaders of the anti-war movement, but they just were not born in this timeframe? JQ (00:45:59): Yeah, I guess I do not think it is a very helpful or useful label because I mean, the only way in which it is descriptive is, that I suppose that from (19)46 to (19)64, there was this population gain, which is why we are called boomers. But it does not tell you very much about that entire group thing to me. Those of us born between (19)46 and let us say, (19)55- SM (00:46:29): Yep. JQ (00:46:30): ...Vietnam is very, very important to us because we had to make life and death decisions about how we were going to participate or not participate in that. But after (19)55 to (19)64, you were not subject to either the draft or the lottery, so the war might be less important in forming you, than Watergate, let us say. SM (00:46:55): Right. JQ (00:47:04): So I certainly do not like it when it is used as a dismissive term, as it often is. SM (00:47:10): Right. JQ (00:47:13): But I do think it is possible because we were the rat moving through the python. I mean, the fact that there were so many of us coming onto the scene, simply because of an accident of birth, that it does have an impact on the country and on other generations. What I certainly hope is, that they do not look back at this large generation of people and say, "Well, they used up all the resources. They ate the seaport and left us with nothing." That would be a terrible legacy. It is just because of sheer numbers. I do not know that it is- SM (00:47:55): Yeah, I have been really sensing, in the last one third of my interviews, that the people born between 1940 and (19)55 are really united in so many ways. And those that were born after (19)56, (19)57 to (19)64, they were like 10 years old when some of these things were happening and they were still in elementary schools. I am not quite sure, although we know that the (19)50s when we were young, really had an influence on us in many ways. I got one question before we head into this section on the March of Death- JQ (00:48:33): ...sure. SM (00:48:33): ...and that is this area. I have been trying to get people, in their own words, to describe what these periods mean, in terms of, this is the period that boomers have been alive, from 1946 to 2010. So just in your own words, what did that period, 1946 to 1960 mean to you? JQ (00:48:57): Well, for me, I was born in (19)46. So for me is, growing up in relative security, in a lower-middle class, Republican household, being a little aware of the world, but not very much aware of the world, everything's pretty local. So I remember being proud to be American. I remember looking at maps of the world, as the different colonial colonies became independent and thinking, "Oh, they are just like us, they are getting their independence from France or from Britain." Or from whoever it happens to be and I was certainly aware of communism. I was certainly aware of Duck and Cover, and that was part of my consciousness. But the single moment that ended that stage, I think it was May of 1960, was the U-2 influence. SM (00:49:56): Oh, yeah. Gary Powers. JQ (00:50:10): Because Eisenhower was a revered figure in my house. And if the communist said, "It was a spy plane." And Eisenhower said, "It was a weather plane." It was no concept in my mind, it was definitely the weather plan. And when it turned out the be a spy plane, it was like, "What? An American president did not tell the truth and the communist did?" Now, it did not split me, but a little split just opened up in my consciousness, at that time and then that widened in the (19)60s, the next decade. SM (00:51:00): Yeah. The next decade is from (19)61 to (19)70. JQ (00:51:03): Yeah. Well, first of all, it is coming of age for me. I am 14 to 24, so I am really forming a strong identity. I am falling in love. I am finding out what it is I want to do in the world and the Vietnam War. Well, first of all, early on, Civil Rights was very inspiring, Martin Luther King and others, and all the African-Americans protesting and struggling for their freedom, that was enormously inspiring to me. What else? It is almost the beginning of becoming aware of other kinds of consciousness. But at the end of that era I expect to read, since then, Buddhism and Alan Watts, experimenting with drugs myself. The (19)50s for me, because of my age, represented a kind of unitary homogenous world, now the world is becoming much more worse and fragmented, which is both sad, you do not feel as secure, but it is also exciting. You are learning things about the way the world really is. SM (00:52:44): How about (19)71 to 1980? JQ (00:52:47): I think of that as a period of mostly grief and mourning in the country. Certainly for many people, Watergate was, I just disliked Nixon for many, many years. It was a fall of innocence for many Americans who trusted their government and all of a sudden, they learned what we had learned during the Vietnam period. We were much more attentive to Johnson's lies, that Nixon had been lying. So I think in some ways, the country is still rebounding from that, both to its self-confidence and to its belief in and trust in government. We lost the war in Vietnam. That was the first time that had ever happened because I think there was just a deep mourning and grief in many ways, unacknowledged. But I think the country elected Carter, probably because of his kind of religious, we need to atone. And then in 1979 with the hostage crisis, people were done atoning. Okay, they were ready to hear Ronald Reagan say, "We have nothing to be sorry about. This is a Vietnam syndrome in America. Let us move on." SM (00:54:33): That is (19)81 to (19)90? JQ (00:54:36): That is right. That is right. I think that is a period of reaction, if you like, so the reaction almost began in the (19)70s with the Moral Majority, et cetera, et cetera. But it really got underway, I think in the (19)80s. Plus all the financial shenanigans on Wall Street came at that time, kind of a false prosperity thing and we are back in the world. And that was passed by the Gulf War, which absolutely put an end to any kind of mourning about Vietnam. SM (00:55:18): That gets us to- JQ (00:55:21): We can win a war with very little cost in American lives. SM (00:55:24): ...right. JQ (00:55:25): Right. We are back. SM (00:55:30): Yeah. It was George Bush was the first, who said, "The Vietnam syndrome was over." JQ (00:55:33): Yeah. SM (00:55:34): Yeah, that was (19)91. And then we had the ending of his short reign, and then we had Bill Clinton. So that (19)91 to 2000, what does that symbolize in your eyes? JQ (00:55:43): Yeah, that is harder because you still have the Republican and the conservative backlash, full force. And now liberal rules have become moderate and they are kind of fighting a rear-guard act. I heard a very interesting panel about eight years ago, in about the (19)60s, and I had forgotten they had Peter Coyote, who had been one of the original figures. SM (00:56:26): Yeah, I interviewed him last week. JQ (00:56:26): Oh, no kidding? SM (00:56:26): Yeah. JQ (00:56:32): I bet that was interesting. And then a fellow named, Frank Bardacke, I think he helped organize the Stop Grass in 1965, he had been working with workers in Watsonville. So this is somebody who really dedicated his life to working people. And they resurrected a division that I had forgotten about, which I remember was real. And that is between people who were politically active and people who were culturally active. And Coyote was one of the people who was culturally active. He thought changing people's consciousness, that was the way to affect real change but politics and voting, that was not so essential. SM (00:57:21): Let me change the tape here again, that we have done one hour now. JQ (00:57:24): Okay. SM (00:57:24): Okay, here we go. All right. All right. Go right ahead. JQ (00:57:32): Okay. And what Bardacke said, "For him, the 30 years since the (19)60s ended, had been an unmitigated disaster, whereas in the (19)60s, there was still an ideological alternative to capitalism." Which in fact, most people thought was eventually going to win in some form, including Henry Kissinger. Kissinger said, "On the short-term, I am very optimistic, long-term I am pessimistic." In a sense, capitalism was on the way out. So to find himself 30 years later in the heart of the political reaction, was just a prediction in the (19)60s. Now, on the cultural front, what Coyote said was, "That is true, but look at the way we talk about gay people, the environment, food, just about anything you can imagine, it is race. It is completely different than the way we talked about it in the (19)60s." So that there has been a real change. And it bothered me as I was listening to those two speak, that they are connected. That the reason for the political reaction is because those people who are leading the reaction, feel that everything else is changing out from underneath them, the environmental movement, the women's movement, all of that. And they are profoundly uncomfortable with that and that is the reason for the political reaction. I mean, I am not the first person to say, you just look at the history of somebody like Norman Podhoretz and all the neocons, the more anarchic elements of the (19)60s scared the country. We might have thought that Abby Hoffman was amusing, but he was deeply scary and terrifying to many people. I think that is what formed the political reaction that we saw really, brought to fruition in the (19)80s and then into the (19)90s with the Cambridge Revolution. SM (01:00:09): Of course, she had Bill Clinton. Any thoughts on Clinton's time? JQ (01:00:13): And Clinton he was fighting a rearguard action for the most part. He was just trying to hold on shards of the new deal, that is still out-standing. SM (01:00:23): How about this last decade, 2001 to 2010? JQ (01:00:28): Well, yeah, I do believe that is pretty well defined by 9-11. SM (01:00:34): Right. JQ (01:00:35): And unfortunately, the country's leaders did not have enough confidence and were themselves, so terrified by what happened, that the only response that could be, was a response of force. And so we give a forceful response, military response, that elicits the continuing growth of Al-Qaeda and reaction to it and it is the usual tit for tat. And one can only wonder what would have happened if we had let those feelings in those first three or four weeks when the rest of the world was identifying with America, if we had taken another path, we had been strong enough and confident enough to not take the military option at that time. I mean, I do not know. SM (01:01:36): What is interesting now with President Obama, is that he tries to distance himself from the (19)60s. People say, "Oh, I am not the (19)60s." Yet, his critics say, "He is the reincarnation of the (19)60s." So here is a president who is trying to separate himself from that era and then his critics are saying, "He is just the reincarnation of that era." Your thoughts on that? JQ (01:01:59): Well, I think it is true that Obama, he is post boomer. He is not Clinton. So he is a bit more moderate in his views and in his values. Again, it is hard to say what the views of the military, that are identified with people with (19)60s and race, particularly. But I think his critics, when they see him espousing things that they identify with, they will tag him. But I do think, I am actually glad to see that he does not carry that bag. The whole notion is, the next generation should not have to fight battles that we fought. We may think that they are skipping out on battles, I do not believe that. But I think for example, that the next generation great battle is one that is only beginning for us and that is the environment. That is true. SM (01:03:18): Yeah. JQ (01:03:18): That is going to be the defining thing for my kids, kids. SM (01:03:24): And of course, that was 1970 when Earth Day happened, and I had interviewed quite a few people. I interviewed Gaylord Nelson's daughter, Tia Nelson, and I interviewed Gaylord Nelson because as you remember, this project started, it in the late (19)90s when I was a full-time administrator. And I have interviewed several other environmental leaders, as well. Let us get right into the March of Death in (19)69. Could you tell us about that experience, about carrying the name of Glendon Waters and going to the March of Death? I believe in (19)69, he had died in (19)67, and that whole experience of marching in front... 1967, and that whole experience of marching in front of the White House and reading the names, and then linking it years later with going to the wall back in 1984. JQ (01:04:14): Well, my wife and I, and a couple friends got to Washington because of Coastal Service Employees Union. And that was part of, because I was then a case worker at the [inaudible] welfare center. Just had lots of buses going down for the big march on Washington. I cannot remember whether it was the Moratorium March, but the vote before the big march was this march against death, 40,000 of us participated in. We were each given the name of an American soldier who had died in Vietnam, people could carry, if they knew someone, people could carry the name of that person. I did not know someone, so I was simply given a name at random. And all I knew is that that Glendon Waters, Texas. That is all I knew about him. And we started, I believe at the Arlington Bridge. It was very cold that night, 20 something, and we had a candle and we had the placard hung around our neck. And we walked from the Arlington Bridge to the White House where there was a very small platform, creeping by. And as you stepped onto the platform, you turned towards the White House and yelled, shouted, cried the name that you were carrying and then went on. And it is interesting, there is an echo. You see the echo in the Vietnam wall, having the names, but somehow shouting the name made the person individual and real in some way, which I think is also the purpose of the meaning from the wall. These were people, these were real people, not aggregates of casualties, something like that. Individual people. The idea was to feel the loss more. Then we walked to the Capitol, where the placards were deposited in casket that were then carried the next day in the big march. For the big march, I think that is 4,000 or 5,000 people, it was overwhelming. So I did not think any more about that march or about Glendon Waters until 1986. So this is 17 years later, when through Walter Cap, the photographers at the Smithsonian who were doing the book Reflections on the Wall, asked me to write one of the three or four prefaces. And as I was sitting in my living room, I remember this moment very clearly, thinking about my first visit to the wall. And the name that I had for called was Glendon Waters, I realized I had to find out more about Glendon Waters. I knew nothing about them, except what I had learned from the catalog that they have at the wall. So that I learned that he was from Texas. I learned my surprise that he had been born in 1928. So that he was, when he died in (19)67, was a great deal older than most Vietnam casualties, who were between the ages of 18 and 21, mostly. So I did a little research about when I found out the date of his death, which was in July, I think July 8th of (19)67. That is about exactly the day I took part in that first protest at the church. It is ironic. But I did a little research about what battle was taking place that day, etc., etc. But I could not find out a whole lot. But I did decide to send a letter to the Department of the Navy, through them, to the next of kin of Glendon Waters saying that I wanted to send them a copy of the book. I had no idea whether there still were any family members or kin. But I guess about six weeks later, after I had more or less forgotten about having sent the letter, this letter arrived in my house. It looked like it was written by say, one of my aunts. I did not recognize the handwriting, and I opened it up, and I will never forget this moment as long as I live. And I have the letter. It says "Dear Mr. Quay, thank you for writing to me. It took time to get to me. I am the widow of Glendon Lee Waters. We were married 22 and a half years and had two children. He was a very dedicated Marine and we were very proud of him. He gave his life so we could have a free country. Your words were re a tribute to Glendon and I really appreciate them. I would love to have a copy of the book, and would pray for having it. If you would care to talk to me, you may call. Yours truly, Anna Carver." Well, I got goosebumps. SM (01:10:33): Wow. JQ (01:10:33): All over my body. I gave the letter to my wife, she burst into tears. And I did not know what river I had just stepped into, but I knew it was deep water. Long story short, I called Anna, I asked if I could visit. She said yes, and in January I flew to West Fork, Arkansas to interview her, and her son and daughter, and husband. And a funny thing that happened was that the idea was I was supposed to fly in, get my car, go to the motel and then call her. And instead as I am walking across this tiny, tiny air terminal in Fayetteville, Arkansas, I hear a voice say, "Jim?" And I turned and I saw this person who had to be Anna. And I said, "Anna, what are you doing here?" And she said, "Well, I had an advantage. I knew what you looked like, but you did not know what I looked like." And I laughed and I said, "Ah, Anna, so what if I had been a creep?" And she said, "I would have not answered. I would have gone home and not answered my phone the evening." So she knew what I looked like because I had sent her a videotape of my presentation to Walter's class to see, because I wanted her to know who she was dealing with. It was very generous to invite this guy from California into her home. And she said, "But there was a second reason that I came." Kenneth, which is her husband, is also a 20-year Marine. And she said, "He is a man of very few words. But after he saw the video, he simply said, I could tell that young man is singing truth, and I just want you to know that his bark is worse than his bite." So she was alerting me to Kenneth. Well, what happened in the course of that weekend is I was doing these interviews. When I was finished, I asked if I could interview Kenneth. So I had done a lot of research by then and I knew where Glendon had been, how he had died, etc., etc. And so I knew a lot about what Kenneth had experienced also. And he had never, of course, this was very true then. He had never told and talked to anyone about this experience. And when I left after that weekend, he gave me a handshake and he said, "You are welcome here anytime." SM (01:13:31): That is nice. JQ (01:13:32): So it told me the power of, again, telling one story to someone who is not judging you, and the power of that experience to begin a healing between people, and between positions that I still very much believe in it. SM (01:13:54): Could you also share when you went to the Vietnam Memorial for the first time after, I think that was in (19)84 when you wanted to look up his name? JQ (01:14:03): Yeah. Well I would say the preface I wrote really says everything. What I remember is I was walking towards it and I kept thinking, "Where is it? Where is it?" And suddenly there it was. And as you walk down the pathway towards the apex, I felt powerfully that I was walking into an open grave. That is what it felt. And when I got to the bottom, I just stood there. I was completely overwhelmed. I did not burst into tears, but just emotionally, I could not speak. I could not do anything. Excuse me. I just stood there for, I do not know how long it was. And then you walked back out to one of those catalogs and looked up Glendon's name what, hand off his name to [inaudible], and walked back down and saw his name. I made a bronze rubbing of it that I am looking at it right now, it is hanging to my office today. So it was a powerful, powerful experience for me. And I know Walter used to take a group of students back to the memorial at the end of each class, and I know it was powerful for them. One of my favorite stories about that was Ed Bradley, the CBS correspondent. SM (01:15:54): Yes? JQ (01:16:03): He had been a correspondent in Vietnam. And Walter invited him to come to the class, and he was doing a special on the class for 60 Minutes, I think 60 Minutes did two special on Walter's class, actually. And the first one, Bradley had never been the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, and he could not. He did not want to go up to it for whatever reason. He just stood in the trees near, you know the area in front of the Memorial? SM (01:16:51): Yeah. JQ (01:16:51): And then the trees where the statue is. And that is where he was with the cameraman. And he had been to Walter's class, and so he knew some of the students. And he saw that there was a woman, the daughter of a man who had been killed, and his name was on the wall and she could not reach his name. So he walked across the field, got the bronze and everything, and did it for her. SM (01:17:16): Oh my God. JQ (01:17:17): But when the cameraman moved in to get a shot of this, Bradley blocked the camera with his back. This was a different moment. It was not a moment for broadcast. SM (01:17:33): Right. JQ (01:17:40): A different kind of moment. So the Memorial Palace was a symbol and there was a place to go. And there is a fellow named Wilson Hubble who is associated with the course at UC Santa Barbara. He too, is a veteran. And he goes back with the class each year that they go. SM (01:18:03): Wow. JQ (01:18:03): And his take on the sculpture of the three soldiers is that they represent all veterans, and that the sculpture is their guarding and standing watch over the memorial and will be there after he is gone, and all Vietnam veterans are gone. The guys who guard the memorial, which I think is a lovely way to think about this. SM (01:18:29): Yeah. Now they have a woman's memorial on the other end. So, same thing for the women. I want to read these, because this is something that I have on a sheet that you send. And this is very important, because I think it is one of the most beautiful descriptions I have ever heard of anybody describing the experience of visiting the wall, and the impact it has on people. So I am putting this for the record, and this is on quote. "The names of the dead wait here for the living to come close and touch them. But as the wall gives them to us, it also takes them away again, for touching the names only makes us feel how far away they are. They must remain there, united by their shared catastrophe, while we, the living must leave united by our shared grief." And I also like the fact that you talked about the Lincoln Memorial, and the importance of the wording inside the memorial with malice toward none and charity for all. You felt that your pilgrimage was complete when you saw that. JQ (01:19:36): Yes. SM (01:19:36): The grief of Lincoln who is always, he is there and he is not only grieving about the Civil War, he is always looking over the Vietnam Memorial, too. JQ (01:19:43): Yes. SM (01:19:44): And then I want to quote this, too. "I am profoundly grateful to the dedicated men and women who built the memorial, for they have given all who were hurt by the Vietnam War, the shrine we need if we are ever to be healed. Like the war it recalls, a memorial has been denounced and defended. But like this book, it brings together the conscientious objector and the general, the protestor and the warrior. Important differences between us may remain, but the memorial has given us something still more important, the common ground of grief. So long as such grief is heartfelt, shared and remembered, always there is hope for peace, and so for us all." And then your conclusion is unbelievable, and I think this should be required reading in a course on the (19)60s and the Vietnam War, "The generations wounded by the war will come to the wall, bringing our scars and our memories with us, looking for healing. But to truly heal ourselves, we must ensure that when future generations look upon the memorial, they will not have lost what we have lost. To feel the absolute silent sorrow embodied by the black walls, the American names that are on them, and the Vietnamese names that are not." I think that is just, you hit it right on the button. JQ (01:21:06): Yeah. Thanks. SM (01:21:11): So, thanks for telling that story, too. What an experience. Do you stay in touch with her? JQ (01:21:21): I do. We came to [inaudible] every year. And Kenneth, I thought of him recently when the movie, I think it is called The Messenger came out. It is about the men who have the detail of going to tell families that their sons or daughters have been killed, that he had that duty in his Marine career. And we did not talk about it a lot. We talked about a little in our interview, but... SM (01:21:53): I guess the one question I have here, because one of the major questions I have asked in all of my interviews is a question of healing. Did the Vietnam Memorial heal the nation? Jan Scruggs wrote the book, To Heal a Nation. Not only did he want to heal the veterans themselves and their families, and Vietnam veterans, but he hoped that the wall would heal the nation. I have had a lot of different responses to that question. What are your thoughts? JQ (01:22:16): I think as a public symbol, it began the process of healing. I do not think it itself could, but it began it because it was something tangible, something maybe argued about, but it was something tangible that there was not any pro or con. It just depicted the loss, the absolute loss that war was. So I thought it was an amazing beginning, and I thought that the [inaudible] Memorial was miraculous, quite frankly. SM (01:23:04): I know that there were a lot of veterans that did not like it in the beginning, and some still do not. Some them said to me once, "Well, the divisions over the design of the memorial was like the divisions in the (19)60s. It was equal." JQ (01:23:18): Someone called it the black gash of shame. I do not remember. I do not feel that way. I know there are many veterans who do not feel that way. But right now, there is a project that is just underway that is creating civilian veterans dialogue. And I am sure some of them are Vietnam era, but I believe there were also, and I hope through so far Iraqi War and Afghani War because that gulf between the warrior and the civilian is a dangerous one. And it is one that is exacerbated now by the fact that we have an all-volunteer Army. So we have a group of people who are putting themselves in harm's way, and then another group of people who may or may not want those people to do this, but who are certainly served in some way by the fact that they are willing to do that. And when those warriors come back home, they often feel seriously estranged from civilian life. I know Vietnam, I talked to Vietnam veterans who felt this way, that what they experienced in combat or in the combat zone, that is real reality. And this domestic life over here is just, it is not real. It is something artificial about it. And that they felt alive in a certain way, and it was hard for them to recapture that in civilian life. But older cultures than ours had ways of reincorporating warriors back into ordinary life. And I think we do not do that as a country, and we need to do that. I think we have a moral ethical obligation to do it, as well as psychological need to. It was really exacerbated in Vietnam, because they were so shunned for so long, I do not believe that happened for Gulf War vets or Afghani vets, but I think the scope is still there, and still [inaudible]. SM (01:25:55): Very good point. I took a group of students when I was a college administrator to Washington to meet Senator Edmund Muskie, to one of my questions. And I had developed a relationship with the Senator Gaylord Nelson. We had a leadership on the road programs where we met US senators. And so, we met nine of them that were friends of his over the years. And when he got the Senator Muskie's office, he was not feeling well. He had just been in the hospital and he apologized, but he still gave us [inaudible]. I am going to let it keep ringing. Excuse me a second. I will let it ring. Cell phone. I got to learn to turn this, I got a new cell phone and I cannot figure out how to turn it off yet. Hold on. There. Okay, sorry about that. Pretty loud. When we left, the students came up with this question that we asked the senator. And the question was this. Due to all of the divisions in America at the time... Still there? JQ (01:27:03): Yeah. SM (01:27:04): Due to all the divisions of America at the time, between Black and white, between male and female, between gay and straight, between those who supported the troops, those who were against the troops, those who supported the war, those who were against the war. Do you feel that the Boomer generation will go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? And that was the question we asked Senator Muskie, because he was the vice-presidential running mate in 1968, that terrible year with cops and students hitting each other in the streets. And the two... Whoops, got to change the tape here. The two assassinations that took place, the two assassinations that took place during that year, and the president resigning, and Tet, and you name it. It was an unbelievable year. And the question is, do you think that the Boomer generation has a problem with healing? JQ (01:28:04): Again, I have wanted to avoid generalization, but I will give you one anyway. I would say no. And the reason is that I know Muskie said we have not healed since the Civil War, and we certainly had divisions in the (19)60s. No doubt about it. But we were not shooting at each other for the most part. Kent State was traumatic, Jackson State was traumatic, but Americans were not killing Americans. So you do not have that kind of bitter blood going on, and I would point to the reaction. SM (01:28:51): Can you hold on one second? Bear with me. Hello? Jeff, I am on a long-distance call. I am doing an interview. Okay, I will call you back. About an hour. All right. Still there? JQ (01:29:13): I am. SM (01:29:15): One of my former students just got a job at Georgia Tech. Well, he has been in higher ed for a while, but there was some things. He took the job, but then he was having second thoughts. I said, "Be happy you got a job." JQ (01:29:29): Oh, really? SM (01:29:29): Yeah, because he was unhappy in his current job elsewhere. So, go right ahead. JQ (01:29:35): Well, what I would point to was how I believe most of us in the country felt after 9/11. I am just speaking for myself, if evoked in me feelings of love of country that I did not know I still had, and I believe that was true of others, as well. So the word healing, if the healing means the split between the citizen and his or her country, I believe that is healed. And it is only unhealed when the country acts in a way that we do not admire. And that has certainly happened since 9/11 in some instances, but I do not believe it was a lasting legacy of the (19)60s to feel, as the Right often says about the Left, "Well, they just hate America." I do not believe that is true. I believe that the Right tends to equate any criticism of the American government as hatred for America. And I just think that is nonsense and absurd. SM (01:31:05): Senator Muskie, when he responded, he kind of was similar to that scene up in New England where it was snowing, and someone had attacked his wife and he had showed some tears and that really, he was not manly enough to be present or something like that, but it kind of looked like he had a tear in his eye. We actually had this on videotape. We videotaped it, and he did not give an answer right away. And then he looked up like a great senator that he was and said, "We have not healed since the Civil War because we still have an issue, the issue of race has not been solved." And he went on to talk about it, and he talked about the loss of 430,000 men, almost an entire generation in the South. So the deaths that took place, and it really affected him because he had just seen the Ken Burns series when he was in the hospital. So he did not even answer according to the (19)60s and what the students wanted, he just talked about the Civil War, that the issues that we still have go way back even then. And so anyways, that is kind of the way he responded. Another question I ask is, the issue of trust. Seems like you cannot say 74 million boomers do not trust, but a label that has been put on them is they are not a very trusting generation. And that is pretty obvious when you already mentioned the Eisenhower lie back in the late (19)50s. For those that were cognizant enough of that lie early on, and then we see President Johnson with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. And I think that was a lie. Then we had Watergate with Nixon. And of course, even if you were up-to-date on history, the questions you even have about why Diem was killed during the Kennedy administration in November, well actually in the fall of 1963. Questions come up. JQ (01:32:54): Before Kennedy was killed. SM (01:32:57): Well, yeah. Just before Kennedy was killed, there was questions about why Diem was killed in Vietnam. And he had given the okay for the overthrow, but I do not think he wanted him killed. He thought that they were going to be shipped off to France or something. So the question is this, is the Boomer generation a nation or group that cannot trust, and is that a positive quality within a group? And they pass this feeling on to their kids and their grandkids. Is that healthy? JQ (01:33:29): Okay, again, I am going to break it down a little bit because it is such a big question. Trust is certainly an important and precious commodity. And I do believe it is true people with the Boomers' historical experience, that they are now skeptical that as they do not take on face value, things that their government said. I happen to think that that is a healthy attitude to have. I think it can become unhealthy if you simply dismiss everything that a public official says as a lie. We used to say that there were conformists, there were anti-conformists, and there were nonconformists. Anti-conformists are just conformists to do the opposite of what conformists do, but they are still conformists. It is better to be a nonconformist and make some judgments on this. So I trust, I know Lois Capps very well. She is Walter's widow, and she is now serving in the Congress. And when I hear someone make some easy, cynical remark about those politicians and how crooked they are, and they are just in it for the money, I think to myself, "You do not know any politicians." You do not know the sacrifices that these people make in their personal lives in order to serve. You only see the big stories that occasionally blow up about a Charlie Rangel or somebody else. And you do not see the government people, the bureaucratic people who very quietly, day after day, do trustworthy work, and that is what holds the country together. If everybody was government and bureaucracy was completely corrupt, we could not function. We would not be functional. Paying bribes like crazy. I mean, you would be a third world where there is no trust. We actually, I think, have a great deal of trust still in this country. JQ (01:36:02): I think have a great deal of trust still in this sense. But it is trust to still have to be earned. It is not the word. You do not just give it and then, okay, I am not going to ask any questions about it anymore. I am just going to trust you. That is dangerous in a democracy, right. SM (01:36:28): Well one of the things you learn if you are a political science history major like I was, you learn early on that not having trust in your government is a healthy thing because it shows the descent is alive and well in America and it shows that different points of view are accepted and actually desired. So if you do not trust your government, that is a healthy thing. JQ (01:36:50): Well it is interesting, I just finished a very good book by a man named Tony Judt, J-U-D-T, called Ill Fares The Land, and he is talking about what is left of social democracy ideal, the kind that you still see functioning in Europe and do not see functioning so much here in the United States. And he made a very interesting historical point, and it might be of interest for you, because he is talking about the boomer generation. But the generation before them, experienced the pressure in World War II and those were common experiences in which the government took steps to counter a very pernicious enemy of poverty in the case of expression and fascism in the case of World War II. And so people had, the country had this experience of coming together behind their government to do something. And that persisted on both political parties well through the (19)50s and into the (19)60s. For the (19)60s generations, our major value was individual expression. In other words, we did not want government telling us what to do. We were experiencing it as the draft for the most part, but the right of an individual to express themselves. Sexually, politically, racially, environmentally, was really important for us and still is. That dark side of that is you do not experience your government as something that you get behind, you experience it as an adversary. And the light has taken this up now, so the government is the enemy. So I thought that was a very interesting common point and a way I had not looked at the history before. We have a largely inexperience of distrust and suspicion of government and so how would you expect a country that feels that way and has not had the historical experience that the World War II generation has? How would you ever convince them if government could do anything good at all? SM (01:39:34): One of the qualities that many boomers thought when they were young, particularly college age students, that they were the most unique generation in history. That they were going to end racism, sexism, war homophobia, all the bad things, and they were going to create a better world. And obviously we see the world today and a lot of positive things came out of that period. But still, we have war, we have racism, we have sexism in some respects. We have come a long way but we have got a long way to go. What are your thoughts about that attitude that many had and maybe some even older boomers have, but they still were the most unique generation in American history, both before and since. And secondly, I know you cannot generalize about a whole generation of 74 million and when we are talking about boomer generation now, I am not talking about white men and women, I am talking about African Americans, Latinas, Asian Americans, Native Americans. And so what do you think some of the positive and negative qualities might be based on the people that within that generation? JQ (01:40:52): Well, the aspirations that you named at the beginning of the first question, I think are worthy aspirations to have. And I would hope that every generation would happen. And it is sometimes only possible to happen before you have experienced a lot of the world. Experiencing the world, I think tends to humble you a great deal. There were times we could be a very self-righteous group of people. I certainly was. Partly because that was the only authority we had, we did not have the authority of experience, we only had the authority of our values. That could make us very self-righteous and not particularly humble. I know I remember thinking when I was at Woodstock that wow, not that we could change the world, but that there were enough of us to make a difference. I think that is still true and in many ways just because we are such a large generation, I think it is still true. We are the most unique, actually [inaudible]. You cannot be more unique, if you are unique, you are unique. So there is a way that every generation is unique. It is shaped by historical forces that it did not necessarily create and so you cannot take credit for the fact that... Well, it makes the difference that the country was so prosperous. Most of us never thought, oh my god, what am I going to do to make a living? It is just, there is going to be a job and the idea is to get a job that really counts and that his authentic good work. Well, if we have been born into the depression, we might have responded completely differently. So we were a very privileged generation in ways we are just now, I think beginning to appreciate because we are seeing other people who do not have those privileges that we have. We did not earn them, we did not create them, they were given to us. And so I think it moves us to think what gifts could we possibly give given our experience to others? And as we get older, that is the question I think that a little bit of our self-infatuation begins to go away and we begin to think, how can I contribute? And hopefully there are enough examples around, and certainly true in my life of people who have done amazing things is that you can feel some pride as well as some shame in things that the generation has accomplished. SM (01:44:01): Those people that criticize that era of the (19)60s and (19)70s as the time when a lot of the problems in American society began and continued through today, I know new people like New Gingrich and Governor Huckabee on his TV show and some of those shows on Fox, obviously some of those people say it as well as George Will and some of his commentaries throughout the year, they like taking these shots at the (19)60s, generation and (19)70s, particularly in areas related drugs, the drug culture, the sexual morays or lack thereof, the breakup of the American family divorce rate. A lot of the things that the welfare state, even some say, the creation of special interest groups that have become a very big problem in their views. When you hear that, what do you think? JQ (01:45:01): Well, I think that to some extent it is certainly true what they are saying. Many things that were not being questioned in the (19)50s unravel during the (19)60s and authority of almost every time came into question. I mean, I had the bumper sticker "Question authority." On the back of my bar for years and decades, but it was not as though we got together in some big meeting and decided to do this to the country. It turned out that authority was not serving us very well. There was something about the norms and the conventions that were in fact unreal. And so they could not stand the pressure of questioning and in some cases, mass disobedience. We did not know the pill was going to come along and that revolutionized sexual behavior completely. So I think in a sense you can be saddened by what some of the effects of drug use and the loss of authority have been. And I share that with them, but I do not share their charge or blame that a generation that in fact anybody is responsible for this as if it is just that the authority that they worship, we do not worship. And when that authority is gone, it has to be rebuilt on a new basis. It cannot be just reinstated at the end of a band net or by a sermon. It has to feel that it is authentic and real in their lives. It is almost as, and marriage is, the divorce rate went to 50 percent, but my understanding is that it also has not continued to zero or to a hundred percent it leveled off. So not the decay has just linearly continued. SM (01:47:33): Some people think that is why so many people revere Ronald Reagan is that when he said, "We are back." a couple of people said, well, they never heard him say that in the speech, but it was a perception that was out there when he said, "We are back." He went, "We are we are going to build the military back up again because the military had totally disintegrated during the Vietnam War." Because a lot of the problems that we were facing in society from say (19)67 to (19)71 with the drug culture, the divisions between black and white were seen right in the military. And it was part of the demise of the military and I actually talked to people who at the 25th anniversary of the Vietnam Memorial was down in Washington, they had a concert going there. And some of the guys said the only reason why they went into a second tour of duty was that they could get cheap drugs. I could not believe it. JQ (01:48:26): Well, I know they refused that the American, the US Army was just coming an apart of the scene. SM (01:48:31): Right. JQ (01:48:32): But that is what happens when you lie to people. I mean, that gets broken. The discipline in a free accord, vanish, morale goes down. So it is like, do they expect that you could lie to people or pretend that a certain reality is not so, and your authority is not going to be eroded? Only a fool would. SM (01:48:55): Yeah, some might say they want to go back to the (19)50s, mean of course the (19)50s parents were very good to their kids, so there were good things in the (19)50s too. One of the questions I want to ask is, when did the (19)60s begin and end in your opinion? And what do you think was the watershed moment? JQ (01:49:11): Oh, boy. Well, let me start with ending first. I would say it was the concert at Altamont. The fact that it is December of (19)69 just happened to be an accident. But if you saw the bright side of the counterculture at Woodstock in August of (19)69, you saw the shadow side at Altamont. Idea of having the Hell Angels access believe. I mean, it was just childish. It was process. So that kind of insofar as it was a make love, not war innocent about us, that ended at Altamont. And again, we are talking about a half of 1 percent of the generation even being conscious of this, something I am not sure. When it began it was a lot harder for me anyway, because it is like asking somebody what they believe in God? You have to tell me what God do I either believe in or not believe in? So when you say the (19)60s, is it the spirit of exploration and openness to new things? Well, I think the beat sort of started that in a certain way. SM (01:50:57): And that was in the (19)50s. JQ (01:50:58): Yeah. SM (01:50:59): And so I remember seeing Allen Ginsburg when I was in high school and he seemed peculiar to me, but also attractive in a certain way. The things he was talking about, he was really a gentle soul in many ways and he just seemed like a latter-day Walt Whitman. So I did not see him as threatening or alien, in some ways I saw him as the embodiment of what America does. He keeps reaching out, bringing in new things from immigration and ideas and et cetera, et cetera. So when did that, I am not sure, I guess the reading at the Sixth Gallery of Powell, but that was in the (19)60s I think, yeah. I do not know. Was there a watershed moment or some event you think that really was shocking or were there any other? JQ (01:52:02): Well, shocking. Certainly. SM (01:52:02): A lot of them. JQ (01:52:07): Yeah. Well, the two I think of are the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of President Kennedy. SM (01:52:14): And where were you when President Kennedy was assassinated? Do you remember the exact moment when you heard? JQ (01:52:18): Oh, sure. Yeah. So I was a senior in high school. I had just come out of a chemistry class, which was in a separate building from the rest of the high school. I saw a gym teacher standing on the street just saying, yelling, "Did they catch the guy yet?" Not knowing quite what that meant. By the time I got into the building, I had heard that the president had been shot. And I had a meeting in the principal's office three o'clock that day. And by the time I got there he announced that the president dead. It was quite different feeling than that he had been shot, shocking enough that he had been shot. But to hear he was dead and remember sitting there with people in the [inaudible], I felt sick in my stomach. He did not feel good either. We just sat there and silence. SM (01:53:11): Wow. Yeah. JQ (01:53:15): Watershed moments are hard. SM (01:53:19): Yeah, I got just a couple more and then we will be done. I am not going to ask you all those names because you have really responded in a really good... Because remember, I have a question I was going to ask your response to. JQ (01:53:29): Yeah, that would take another year. SM (01:53:29): Yeah, that would take a year. Forget that. I want your thoughts again on... Or just your thoughts on the movements because the late (19)60s, early (19)70s was really when all these movies came about. And actually a lot of people leave the (19)60s really went to (19)73 because a lot of things are happening from say, from the time the President Kennedy was assassinated till the fall of (19)73, it was still in the (19)60s. So there is quite a few people have fought the early (19)70s and then there was a line of demarcation around (19)75 when the plane went off the roof in Saigon. But your thoughts on the movements, the civil rights movement was actually a role model for, and the anti-war movement were the role models for the other movements that evolved. And history has shown that a lot of the women left those two movements because there was rampant sexism, thus the formation of the women's movement. But there was the Chicano movement, the Native American movement, which was the American Indian movement. We had Earth Day in 1970 and we had Stonewall, which was the gay and lesbian revolution in 1969. And so all these movements were trying to coming together and there seemed to be a uniqueness and there was a unity amongst all of these groups that anti-war protests or events. I do not see that today. I see these groups have become so special interest all of them, that you and the civil rights people, you do not see the other groups together and the women's, they are all separate. I mean, your thoughts, it seems like what became collaboration and working together has now become integration or segregation again within the movements. JQ (01:55:08): Well, I would say it is specialization, segregation. At the beginning you share newness with other organizations, you are facing some of the same problems, you are borrowing technique from one another, et cetera, et cetera. And then I think it is just a kind of majority process. You have to be careful not to become so professionalized that you lose track of what it is you are trying to do. I would say it is a drive for professionalization that that is just as innate. It is not anything that anybody has discovered or created on purpose, but it is part of the life process of every organization and movement. I do think it made me think about what the (19)60s had. It in one way, it may have been at Kennedy's inaugural in the sense of this notion of new possibility, a new generation taking charge that was not our generation, but it was a new generation, something fresh. And as the Civil Rights book who been, and again describes towards individual expression. I have the right to express my sexuality, my race, I do not need to hide this any longer. The environmental movement is a little bit different. But there is that common thread going through. Plus I want to say one of the more important publications of the (19)60s was the Whole Earth Catalog. SM (01:57:02): Oh yes. JQ (01:57:05): Sort of a LLE catalog of how to live an alternative lifestyle. And I believe it was to what true what they said, the fact that we, for the first time were able to see of picture of the full earth from the moon, really made it impossible to ignore the fact that we lived on this beautiful, precious, and increasingly fragile planet together and had to find a way. I really think it was very cautious of expanding somehow. So if the root was all these movements, they have certainly changed the mindset of American today and I can talk around the world and continue. SM (01:57:59): Let me change this tape. I have only got two more questions and then we are done. JQ (01:58:11): Okay. SM (01:58:11): Let me get my tape here, bear with me. JQ (01:58:11): I am warning you, you got me talking, right? SM (01:58:11): Well, it is great. I mean, I can probably do another hour with you, but then I do not want to take away from your time and I appreciate this. Okay, hold on a second. Let me get this, get on tape here then. Okay. You were involved obviously all these years for 25 years in the humanities in California. And cannot not ask you a question on the arts before letting you go because when you think of the boomer generation, you got to think of the music, you got to think of the art, you got to think of theater. I think of Gorilla Theater a lot because it was such an important role and Peter Coyote told me about that because he was involved in a lot with the diggers. Your thoughts on the importance of the arts in those three areas, theater, art and music in the (19)60s, and the influence it had on the generation and shaping it, not only personally, but dealing with the politics of the time because most of it was all linked to politics. JQ (01:59:18): Well, it was a time of great experimentation in an area. I could remember there used to be, I think there still is something called the Publications of the Modern Language Association, and it was the journal in English and American literature and comparative literature. And it would arrive in this olive green bumper with tiny prints and the most obscure kinds of articles in it that you could possibly imagine. And I remember the May 1970 issue arriving. The cover was bold white and blue-black, I opened it to the first article was in entitled, "Something is Happening Here, but You Do not Know What it is, do you Mr. Jones." By a Berkeley professor named Henry Nash Smith. A second Berkeley professor read through, his article was, "Do literary studies have an ideology? Something had changed." something had changed. That was really exciting. So the academy felt that certainly in music before, the music industry corralled the raw energy coming out of rock and roll. Every generation, the music from the time you are maybe 15 until you are married let us say, or working or have a family, is really important to you because it is the soundtrack of your life. So for me, the Beatles were important, the Stones less so but still important. And we remember the Beatles Stones split, which one is more revolutionary? That was the culture of politics split. Street finding man versus relaxing slow downstream. The Doors were important. The folk movement had been important because of its authenticity. That was a big word for us, for me back then. Authentic. Something had to be authentic in the Pony somehow. Theater tried to get more real, I cannot remember the name of the married couple, the Living In Theater I think it was, and nudity on stage, hair. SM (02:02:04): Yes. JQ (02:02:07): It was trying to take old forms and bust them open and build them with new contents And that is something I think that that happens perhaps the less explosive and revolutionary waves than it ways that it happened in the (19)60s. But it is the way a culture grows and remains true to itself. We were not very reverent about the containers of the culture and I am now much more aware of how important they are to help transmit values and content. But they do have to keep reshaped and sometimes destroyed every once in a while or they cut off the real flow that is constantly going on of change and absence. And so I think our just a particularly yeasty period because the authority of the old forms was broken. And so we were making things up and sometimes we did a bad job. And sometimes things have lasted. I mean if you, we have traveled it to Utah just recently in the Northern California and I am curious to other areas, and you still see, and especially in the rural areas, vestiges, hippy culture, the way bread is made, the kinds of fabrics and fashions that there are. Those things are still persisting. For some people, all that was just artificial trapping. But subsequent generations have found enough that was real in that to keep certain of those forms alive. And I just think that is part of the history of culture and the way things evolved and changed. But a generation says what is real? What is real about this? And sometimes we were lucky because we were not particularly fearful. Maybe we should have been. Economically, we were not fearful and enabled us to experiment in ways that a more soft generation might not be able to do right away. SM (02:04:25): Yeah, it is amazing. When I think of art, I always think of two people, Andy Warhol and Peter Max because Peter Max was the poster guy of the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. And that poster I had on my wall., I wish someone said, if I had it now, it would be worth a couple hundred bucks. And it was a poster that said, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together. It will be beautiful." Which is a kind of a hippie kind of a thinking. You were involved obviously all these years for 25 years in the humanities in California and I cannot not ask you a question on the arts without before letting you go. Because when you think of the boomer generation, you got to think of the music, you got to think of the art, you got to think of theater. I think of Gorilla Theater a lot because it was such an important role in Peter Coyote told me about that because he was involved in a lot with the diggers. Your thoughts on the importance of the arts in those three areas, theater, art and music in the (19)60s and the influence it had on the generation and shaping it not only personally, but dealing with the politics of the time, because most of it was all linked to politics. JQ (02:05:59): Well, it was a time of great experimentation in those areas. I could remember there used to be, I think there still is, there was something called the Publications of the Modern Language Association. And it was the journal in English and American literature and comparative literature. And it would arrive in this olive green cover with tiny print and the most obscure kinds of article in it that you could possibly imagine. And I remember the May 1970 issue arriving, the cover was bold, white and blue-black. I opened the first article was entitled, "Something is happening here, but you do not know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" By a Berkeley professor named Henry Nash Smith, a second Berkeley professor, Fred Cruz. His article was, literary Studies have an ideology. "Something had changed." something had changed. That was really exciting. So the academy felt that certainly in music. Before, the music industry kind of corralled the raw energy coming out of rock and roll. Every generation, the music from the time you are maybe 15 until you are married, let us say, or working or have a family, is really important to you. JQ (02:08:03): Working or have a family is really important to you because it is sort of the soundtrack of your life. So for me, the Beatles were important. The stones less so, but still important. And, we remember the Beatles Stones split. Which one is more revolutionary? That was the culture and politics split. Street Fighting Man versus Relax and Slow Downstream. The Doors were important. The folk movement had been important because of its authenticity. That was a big word for us, for me back then was authentic. Something had to be authentic and not phony, somehow. Theater tried to get more real. I cannot remember the name of the married couple, the living theater I think it was, and nudity on stage, Hair. SM (02:09:00): Yes. JQ (02:09:04): It was trying to take old form and bust them open and fill them with new content. And, that is something I think that that happens perhaps the less explosive and revolutionary waves than it the ways that it happened in the (19)60s. But, it is the way a culture grows, and remains true to itself. We were not very reverent about the container of the culture and I am now much more aware of how important they are to help transmit values and content. But, they do have to be reshaped and sometimes destroy every once in a while where they cut off the real blow that is constantly going on of change and [inaudible]. So, I think ours was just a particularly yeasty period because the authority of the old forms was broken. And, so we were making things up and sometimes we did a very bad job and sometimes things have lasted. I mean, we traveled to Utah just recently in the Northern California and I am sure to another area, and you still see, especially in the rural areas, vestiges of hippy culture. The way bread is made. The kinds of fabrics and fashions that there are. Those things are still persisting. For some people, all that was just artificial trapping. But, subsequent generations have found enough that was real in that to keep certain of those forms alive. And, I just think that is part of the history of culture and the way things evolve and change. But, a generation says "What is real? What is real about this?" And, sometimes we were lucky because we were not particularly fearful. Maybe we should have been. Economically, we were not fearful and enabled us to experiment in ways that a more strapped generation might not be able to do right away. SM (02:11:31): Yeah, it is amazing. When I think of art, I always think of two people, Andy Warhol and Peter Max. Because, Peter Max was the poster guy of the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. And, on that poster I had in my, well, I wish someone said, if I had it now, it would be worth a couple hundred bucks. And, it was a poster that said, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together. It will be beautiful." Which is a kind of a hippie kind of a thinking. And, then of course we cannot forget Motown and the creation of Motown because what they did. JQ (02:12:08): Just the contribution of what had been in the (19)50s, a pretty separated black culture. The way it informed popular culture and white culture. But, now we do not say black and white culture. SM (02:12:27): Right. JQ (02:12:29): It is incalculable. SM (02:12:33): I keep saying we are down to our last three questions, these are the final two. The free speech movement was very important. You went to Berkeley and got your PhD there. But, for anybody like me, whose life has been about higher education and understanding the history of higher ed, those events at Berkeley in (19)64-(19)65 are historic. Not just because it is a protest, but because Mario Savio and his peers did something about the importance of free speech on university campuses. And it is interesting, all came about by chance because the whole history, they were told that they could not hand handout literature. And, one thing you do not know to student populations, whether there is differences in their politics is you do not tell students what they can and cannot do and that united the campus from all angles. JQ (02:13:22): But, I think an important question to ask, why did it erupt then? In other words, did not students care before then? And, I think one of the reasons is, you had on the Berkeley campus a significant number of people who had been in Mississippi the summer before. And, I think that motivated them about their own rights in ways that, again, it is experience. You do not know what an experience, what consequences are going to be. They had that experience trying to register a black folks vote, they come back to their campus and they cannot hand out literature? So, suddenly there was that experience that a year earlier, the very same student had not had who were on the campus. So, the history and our response, but. SM (02:14:26): Well, Mario Savio said, "The university is about ideas, not about corporate corporations running the universities." And, what is interesting, we are still having the same battles today in the universities because I interviewed Arthur Chickering the great educator, because he wrote Education and Identity, the book that we all used in higher ed and our degree programs at Ohio State. And I said, "Do you have any closing remarks?" At the end of the interview and he said, "Yes, I have one disappointment in higher education today. The corporations have taken over again." And this is from a conservative, he is a conservative. And, because what you are seeing today in universities is that everything is based on scholarship monies and fundraising. Everything has to be linked to raising funds for this. You name a building, it is a fundraising effort. You bring a speaker in, it has got to be linked to a fundraising event, it is like controls again. And, it is kind of upsets me as a person who was in higher education for two or three years to see that what happened at Berkeley in (19)64 and (19)65 is being forgotten in some respects. And, I would like your thoughts on the whole issue of activism on the university campus. Volunteerism is very strong all over the country. I mean, 95 percent of students are doing volunteer work and it is great and it is part of all the service programs. But, a lot of it is required if you join an organization. And, I think there is a big difference between the term volunteerism and activism. And, it is my perception that universities today had been for quite some time afraid of activism because it brings back memories of the (19)60s and (19)70s and fear that it could happen again. Where students such threatened the university's power in many ways by questioning too much, demanding to be on too many organizations. Do you sense that there is a fear of activism? JQ (02:16:37): I do not know because I am not on campuses enough. Well, I teach a little bit, but here is what I would say about activism. There may be a fear about it, but activism is very difficult to sustain as a light. That is, some people can, because they are in groups or they have a salary from an organization. And, the specialization we were talking about before where you have large organizations that do employ people, but for the basic person, once you are out of school and you are having to work, so-called activism becomes a part-time at best occupation. And, so I would say that activism may be feared because it tends to happen in concentrated form on campuses, people with time be active. And, that volunteerism is a bit more sustainable because you can tuck it in the activities of a normal life in a way that activism demands almost a total commitment. So, I guess I would not want to privilege activism over volunteerism because I am thinking again, of the average person who has to get a job, has to raise a family, et cetera, et cetera. And, does not have that total 24 hours a day unless something comes along so outrageous that, "Okay, we have to stop this, et cetera, et cetera." I mean, I had a very dear friend, Oakland fireman, we would talk about this and I coined this term or he thought I coined it, "Sustainable Activist." And, he responded so much to that because he was a very active guy, but it can eat your life up. And, I think we all have met professional activists who somehow it has taken hold of them in a way and become an obsession in a way that does not look particularly healthy and can turn you into a self-righteous person who thinks everyone in the world could be doing their particular cause. A hundred percent, 24/7. SM (02:19:27): Good response. That is an excellent. JQ (02:19:33): The way the world works. SM (02:19:33): Why did the Vietnam War end, in your opinion? JQ (02:19:41): Because, the truth, the reality on the ground overwhelmed the reality that American commanders were telling themselves. The Vietnamese lived there. They were not going to go away. We are going to find the same thing as true in Afghanistan, I believe. And, so their commitment was just more tenacious than ours was. I remember Colonel Harry Summers. SM (02:20:24): Oh yes, I know. Yeah, actually I talked to him before he died. JQ (02:20:28): Well, yeah, he remembers going to the Paris Peace Talks and saying to a Vietnamese general, I think it was, "You know, you never defeated us in any battle." And, the Vietnamese general said, "That is true. It is also irrelevant." SM (02:20:48): Yeah. JQ (02:20:49): It blew Summers mind as it should have. But, we did not win because we could not. SM (02:20:59): Well, the best history books are written, which is normally long after a particular period, 50 years. JQ (02:21:06): Oh yes. SM (02:21:06): Yeah, for World War II books. But, the question I am asking, when the last Boomer has passed away, the last member of the Civil War who fought, if you go to Gettysburg's Battlefield, you see a statue there in 1924, the last participant in the Civil War soldier died, and they have his name and a statue for him. When the last Boomer of the 74 million has passed, what do you think the historians and the sociologists and the commentators will say about the generation that grew up after World War II and their impact on the society and the world? JQ (02:21:47): Boy, the real answer is, I do not have the slightest idea. But, I will of course take the crack at it anyway. I think it will be that it was just as we have forgotten many of the details about the Civil War, but its legacy remains in the country. I think the legacy that will remain is the very variegated desire for liberation of all kinds that for whatever reason, got unleashed during this particular time. Political, sexual, racial. In some ways we can talk about environmental liberation. I think those processes will still be going on for 50 years from now or a hundred years from now. And, it is not even that they necessarily started in the (19)60s, though some of them did. But, they got a rather explosive propulsion during this time. And, like the Big Bang, it will still be expanding during that time, for better or for worse. I mean, in a sense, the brain of certain morality and ethical standards is also, it maybe the darker side of the liberation movement, but there it is. SM (02:23:44): Do you think that the- JQ (02:23:44): The light of the dark. SM (02:23:46): Do you think that what became very popular in the early (19)60s of nonviolent protests that Dr. King talked about in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, the trend toward violence, students for Democratic society always had a lot of respect. But, then when it became the weatherman, it went down like a sunken ship. And, even the American Indian movement that started at Alcatraz in (19)69 ended up at Wounded Knee violence in (19)73. You had the Black Panthers that some people say were or were not violent, and the young Lords who kind of fit them in the Puerto Rican community that kind of followed the Black Panthers as well in their movements. You could even say even at Stonewall, they to fought, it was a reckoning, but they ended up fighting the police. Do you think that violence gets you anywhere? And, that the violence is why people are so upset oftentimes with the generations as opposed to all the other things? JQ (02:24:48): It may be. I think violence may have a dramatic effect short term, but it is long term effects I think are always pernicious because it invites a violent crime. And, it requires patience and a long view of history to stick to a non-violent approach. But, I believe in the long term, it is the one that is going to succeed because it does not invite that kind of reaction. Rather, it tries to include and incorporate. And, if I could tell a quick story that Parker Palmer, who's the inspiration to the center that I am part of now tells about, I am forgetting his first name now, Wollman a Quaker who in the 18th century felt that he had received a kind of visitation or understanding from God that slavery was wrong. And, the Quakers at that time were slave owners who were prospering quite well, thank you very much, as slave owners. And, so when he went to his own meeting and to others and tried to convince people that slavery is wrong, they did not be [inaudible]. But, what they did do was they said that they would support Wollman, W-O-L-L-M-A-N, and I just cannot remember his first name. They would support him as he went from place to place, from meeting to meeting, trying to convince people that what he had received was in fact the truth. This was of course how the Quakers were. And, so for 20 years he did that. He refused to serve by a slave. If he received anything made by a slave, he paid that slave. And, as a result of his going from place to place, I think it was in 1783, where at some time near then, Quakers became the first religious organization to condemn and [inaudible] flavor, 70 years before this. SM (02:27:47): Wow. JQ (02:27:47): So yes, it may seem like it is going to take a long time, but here is someone who managed to convince others in a non-violent fashion and in a way that led those others to participate in the anti-slavery movement and did not invite the reaction that it had, had he been John Brown or [inaudible], he would have. Violence is always a sign of impatience. Sometimes it is necessary or deemed necessary because the enemy is at the door. So, what are you going to do? But, it is always impatient and for that reason, I think it affects the short term, and they invite the very opposite of what you were in fact, trying to do. SM (02:28:43): And, as an add-on and I know we are saying we are done, but as an add-on to what you just said, why do you think Chicago's convention in the summer of (19)68 and the killings at Kent State and Jackson State had on the psyche of this generation? And, I am not only talking about those who may have been the five to 15 percent of them are activists, but the entire 74 million, you cannot help but forget those two major events because they both were violent. And, to have deaths on two university campuses. Whereas Mario Savio said in 1964-(19)65, "Freedom of speech was guaranteed." And, then of course the Chicago convention was sad for everybody and that is the last question. JQ (02:29:33): Well, when you mentioned those events, I will tell you what comes to mind. One was, I was working at the welfare center at that time in the Dykeman Welfare Center in New York. And, the day after Kent State, I wore a black arm band and everybody knew why, there was no question. There were a lot of... And, it was very shocking and many people were already paranoid, but it really made people even more paranoid. Two weeks later, when Jackson State happened, I came in the next day to the workplace and I had a black armband on and I remember a black case worker, welfare worker asked me, he said, "What is that for?" And I said, "I am mourning the students at Jackson State." And, his eyes filled with fear. I mean, he knew damn well what had happened. But, the fact that a white guy. SM (02:30:46): Yes. JQ (02:30:47): Would say that he was mourning the black students at Jackson State as opposed to, well, that happened in another place in another time, really affected him. And his response, of course, affected me because what was happening was, Chicago just showed the divisions within the country and how ugly they were. I think my brother and my father watched the same TV footage I did, and they were probably rooting for the police. And, so just before I left for California with my wife, I remember saying to my father, it was a cruel question to ask. And, I was not estranged at all from my parents. A lot of people were in this, I was not. But, when I think about it now, I said to him, "Dad, if you were to find out that I had been killed at a demonstration on a campus, what would you say?" And, it was as if I take it a two by four and hit the man in the chest. The question, just the notion, the idea of imagining that the event hit him so hard and he said, "Oh my God, I do not know what I would say." And, I felt so polarized at that time that I thought he might say, "Well, I would say, well, he deserved it. He should not have done it." And, that was not true at all. That was not the emotional... That was some kind of media imagination that I had. Had nothing to do with flesh and blood actual response. And, so it has always made me wary of big responses to far away events as opposed to the real flesh and blood. How normal human beings respond to one another when they have the, you know? SM (02:32:57): Are there any questions I did not ask that you thought I was going to? JQ (02:33:02): Boy, after almost two hours now, I cannot think of any. I cannot think of any. SM (02:33:09): Well, that is it then. Thank you very much. I will keep you- JQ (02:33:14): Oh yeah. SM (02:33:15): I will keep you updated on the project and certainly you will see the transcript eventually. And, I will need a couple pictures. JQ (02:33:23): Okay. SM (02:33:23): And, I will get the tape to you, may not be right away. JQ (02:33:28): Oh, that is all right. SM (02:33:28): But, you will get it. I am going to be transcribing all these myself. And, so you said Walter Capps' wife is in Congress? JQ (02:33:34): Yes. Lois Capps, she represents the Santa Barbara area. SM (02:33:40): Golly, I think I have that book by Walter Capps. JQ (02:33:45): Oh, "The Unfinished Floor." SM (02:33:45): Yes. JQ (02:33:46): Yeah. SM (02:33:48): I wonder if she would be willing to talk. JQ (02:33:50): I will bet she would. I will bet she would. SM (02:33:53): So- JQ (02:33:56): I mean, I met John Wheeler through Walter. I think he had just written his book. SM (02:34:03): Yeah. Well, I interviewed him a week ago in Washington. JQ (02:34:06): Oh, no kidding? SM (02:34:06): In fact, I will send you a picture of him. I got a great shot. If you do not mind, I will send a picture I took of him. JQ (02:34:13): Sure. SM (02:34:13): He was very tired, and I guess there is a story with him. His sister, excuse me, his wife's sister was murdered in Memphis by drug people. JQ (02:34:24): Oh dear. SM (02:34:25): Yeah, about a year or so ago, so they were going to jail. The trial's going to be happening and his wife has to go. So, he is going through a lot of. JQ (02:34:37): Oh, I am sorry to- SM (02:34:38): Yeah. And, of course he was at the Commonwealth Club in Washington where I interviewed him one. And, I still have another hour to interview with him, but I will send you his picture. JQ (02:34:49): Well, give him my regards when you see him next. SM (02:34:51): Oh, I will. JQ (02:34:52): I remember I very much meeting him. We were of course very different politically, but I thought Touched with Fire was a very important book. SM (02:35:00): Oh, it is a great book and he signed it for me. JQ (02:35:01): It began really with retreats for public school teachers in that, Parker Palmer's wrote a book called The Courage to Teach, in which what he was saying was, people go into service professions like teaching not to make money. They go in because there is something in their heart that makes them want to do this. SM (02:35:27): That is why we go into higher ed. JQ (02:35:29): That is right. And, in fact, he has just written the book on higher education called The Heart of Higher Education. Book just came out three weeks ago, actually. But, what happens is people then get into institutions whose behavior is almost the opposite of its mission statement. And, teachers get burned out very badly and they get twisted and it is really difficult. And, what these retreats do, is they do not have a particular content or ideology, but they using poetry and silent and conversation in small groups, they give people a chance. SM (02:36:14): Wow. JQ (02:36:21): And, usually the response after the first retreat is, "Oh my God, this is so wonderful. I realize how poisonous the environment I am in right now, I am out of here." But, after the second retreat, what people are saying is, "I will be damned if I am going to be driven out of this profession, which I love." SM (02:36:42): Wow. JQ (02:36:42): "I am going to change things." SM (02:36:44): So you- JQ (02:36:48): But, now there are retreats for clergy. There are retreats for health professionals because there are a lot of service professions where people are suffering the same way. So, it is great work. I really love it. SM (02:37:00): And, what do you moderate or? JQ (02:37:02): I help facilitate retreats and I am now, I am on the board. SM (02:37:07): Well, my gosh. JQ (02:37:07): Administrative [inaudible]. SM (02:37:11): Well, let me tell you this, when I am done working on this book I was in higher education for 30 years. I did over 500 programs on forums, debates, conferences. JQ (02:37:21): Oh, no kidding? SM (02:37:21): Yeah. It is my whole life. So, if there has ever an openings there, I would be curious to... Because, I love that because higher ed has been my career and students are my life. And, we did five major conferences that I organized at Westchester. One was a major conference on Byard Rustin. We did one on Jackie Robinson, National tribute to him. We did the Wall That Heals, which was a four day conference where we brought the traveling wall and Jan Scruggs. And, we had a whole series of speakers in the fall to educate our students about the war. And, we had over 6,000 people in the community that came. We did a conference on Islam, which was very controversial in my last month, where we packed a 500-seat auditorium for 10 straight sessions. We packed nine of them. Totally. And, they were out the wall outside the hall trying to get in. So, we have just done a lot of speakers. It is just amazing how many that I have done. So, just what you are talking about, about trying to bring people together and to keep people in teaching, because teaching to me is the greatest profession anyone can ever be in because you are shaping the future of America and the future of the world. JQ (02:38:44): Yeah. SM (02:38:44): So, we do not want to lose good teachers. JQ (02:38:46): That is right. Well, one thing I might invite you to do is go to the website, which is www. [inaudible]renewal.org. And, they give these retreats. They are not done in a systematic way, but they are all over the country and you might want to just experience one. SM (02:39:08): Yeah. Super. Well, what an honor to talk to you. JQ (02:39:15): Well, I thank you for your questions and for your interest and your passion. SM (02:39:17): Yeah, well I do. And, I wish I had known you when you first went on board out there in California where I lived. But, you are a deep thinker and you have a lot of passion for what you do. And, boy, that must have been a big loss to leave that profession well, that position. But, you are in something else that you love, and that is important. JQ (02:39:41): It is true. SM (02:39:41): Okay. Well, you have a great day. JQ (02:39:41): Well, you too. And, good luck with your project, Steve. SM (02:39:42): Thanks. Bye now. JQ (02:39:42): Bye-bye. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. James Quay Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Quay, James ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Radio producers and directors; California Council for the Humanities; Quay, James--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. James Quay grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania.&nbsp; He earned a BA in English from Lafayette College and then performed two years of alternative service in central Harlem as a conscientious objector. He and his wife moved to California where he earned an MA and Ph.D. in English Literature from UC Berkeley. He was a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and an associate producer with California Public Radio where he co-produced a six-part radio documentary, <em>Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War</em>. He served as executive director of the California Council for the Humanities from 1983 to 2008. Since his retirement, he has been a facilitator for the Center for Courage and Renewal. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-08-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.95a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.95b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 159:49 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/224373b701eafe101745b3af2ab1f633.mp3 877e5b79914363ff4cea8024ec22a1eb https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/881c7eeeaaa83d369c667aa26d8e89f6.mp3 b7ff858c65c2996ce4df1b4c80e76612 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. <br /><br />In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed.<br /><br />See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information.<br /><br /><strong>Acknowledgment of sensitive content</strong><br />Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. <span>Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community.</span> However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright&nbsp; Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Smith, Jean Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Wood, Wanda Date of Interview 1978-05-02 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 33:40 Minutes ; 18:44 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE56022">Interview with Dr. Jean Smith</a> Subject LCSH Smith, Jean -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Chenango Bridge (N.Y.); Women physicians -- Interviews; Syracuse University; World War, 1939-1945; Vaccination; Chenango Valley Central Schools; Chenango Valley Medical Group; State University of New York at Binghamton Clinical Campus; Polio Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Broome County Oral History Project</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Interview with: Dr. Jean Smith</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Interviewed by: Wanda Wood</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Date of interview: 2 May 1978</span></p> <br /> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: This is Wanda Wood interviewing Dr. Jean Smith of Highover Rd. in Chenango Bridge. The date is the second of May, 1978. Doctor Jean, you've recently retired as a family physician after twenty-some years in—a our community and we're interested in your life experiences in—a this Broome County area. A—would you begin by telling us where you were born?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Well, I was born and raised in Syracuse, but both of my parents came from Broome County and they were born and raised in Windsor, New York, where my grandfather was a dentist. My mother and father both went to Syracuse to—to—a college and—a they later settled there. And I spent my summers in this area, so that I was always interested in coming back here. And when I finished my training I came to Chenango Bridge and started practicing in family practice with my brother, who was already here in family practice. Ah—I wanted to be a doctor as long as I could remember. I do remember when I was in—a high school, we had to write a paper on—a “My Vocation” and I wrote about nursing, but I looked into nursing schools and decided that I wouldn't be an ordinary nurse, I would be the very </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">best</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">, so I told my brother I was going to Yale and get a Master of Nursing and—a so he said, "Well how long will </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">that</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> take?" (Laughing) I said "Six years." And he said, ''Well in seven years you could go on to medical school, you—" and so that </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">clinched</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> it. I knew that's really what I preferred. But I went to school at Syracuse in—a during—it was during the war years. And there were four girls in the class and about forty-five fellows and they were all in the service, except one. And—a so they were on the gravy train. They had their tuition paid and their books and their microscopes and—a a nice fat check which they used for gambling! (chuckles) We told them that if they used that money they could pay our way through too, but they didn't like that idea too well. But we </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">did</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> have a good class and we had lots of fun and—a people ask me today if I had trouble—being a woman in medical school or in medicine. I guess I was just too naïve to know that if there was trouble I didn't find it. But I hear the women libbers today and realize that I wa—probably was discriminated against in many </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">small</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> ways, but I just ignored it and it was no problem at the </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">time</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">, but I am sympathetic with the girls who are trying to get real equality today and opportunities.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Well, when you came to—to this area, how many women physicians were in practice?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr.Jean: There were five or six here at the time and I can think of six of us now who are retired and—a I'm not aware of more than two or three in the area that are practicing now. There's a real—I think there's a real need for women physicians in the area now. But surprisingly enough there were about five or six at that time.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Dr. Mary Ross was one of them, wasn't she?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Yeah—Dr. Mary Ross was a—family physician for a lot of people in the area; Dr. Myrtle Wilcox who just recently retired; and—a Dr. Florence Warner who retired a few years ago, but she's still doing the Well Baby Clinics; and Dr.Connie Vitanza came just after I did in pedia—pediatrics—she retired last year; and there was an allergist, Dr. Vencko I think her name was. She's still around but I don't know if she's doing allergy or not. Her husband's a surgeon.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: So when you—when </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">you</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> came here your brother who was known as Dr. Bob, and you are known as Dr. Jean—</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: That's right.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: —a—he was, he had already—a—been in practice for a couple of years, wasn't it?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Yes. He graduated from med school about six years before I did, but he was in the service for a while. He'd started practicing in Chenango Bridge—was only here about a year, when Pearl Harbor occurred and he went in the Navy and then came back to Chenango Bridge after the war. So he'd only been back about a year—or maybe two—when I finished and joined him. But we both liked the area a </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">lot</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. I think one of the reasons was—a it was a mixed practice of rural and suburban. We had the feeling that we (were) really needed in the country—the farmers and the country people—and—and yet we had the stimulation of suburban people. And—a—a—we both enjoyed our work with the school because we made friends and a good percentage of the administrators and the teachers were our patients and friends and that was very stimulating, and has been over the years. I've enjoyed that.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Now you speak almost casually about this rural practice, but (laughs) I seem to remember a lot of your calls were done in the back hills, so to speak.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Well, we made a lot of house calls in those days and—a we got to know the families—a real well—traveled in a lot of snow and a lot of mud. I remember it was always a challenge and fun to drive up in the country in all kinds of weather but I did have to rely on friends every now and then in the middle of the night to help out. I used to call on Bruce Russell or Ron Brown or somebody to drive with me on some bad nights. I think they enjoyed it, too. Sometimes we had to call the ambulance and the ambulance drivers would complain and say what a terrible time they had getting up there, and they'd suddenly realize that we were there too, and had </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">been</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> there (laughs) for a while. But it was—it was an exciting time. It was just the beginning of antibiotics then, too. I remember going up into the country and giving some of the first shots of penicillin in the area. Nowadays they give about a million units of penicillin a day and we used to—a have little tablets of ten thousand-unit penicillin and we'd dissolve 'em and put ‘em in the syringe and (laughs) we used to get good </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">results</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. We'd cure pneumonia with just a little bit of penicillin. It was terrib—pretty expensive at that time, too, so we didn't use much. It was hard to get. In fact it was <span style="text-decoration: underline;">so close</span> to the beginning of antibiotic—era—1947 was when I came to Chenango Bridge—penicillin had not been out long. I think it was about 1940 or 1942 it was </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">first</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> used. And—a in the thirties was the first that they had sulfa even. Before that I remember neighbors that died of pneumonia and infections and a lot of the kids I knew had big mastoid operation scars because they didn't have any other real way to </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">cure</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> their infections. And—a in fact my brother's wife died when he was a medical student from—a infection that today would be considered just a—a—</span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">a nuisance</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">, post-operatively, and a shot of penicillin or a few antibiotics would take care of the situation. And—a so when you think that all—all of this—a advance in medicine that has come in, not only in my </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">lifetime</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> but in the few years that I practiced—it's pretty amazing. And—a—</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: How about—a polio? Was that—at the time you started practice there was no—a </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">nothing</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that could be done actually to prevent it, was there?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: No—every summer we used to dread—a summer coming on when the kids first started to have symptoms of headache and vomiting and th—it was always a big worry as to which ones were going to develop polio—and there were always a few </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">every</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> summer. Some summers there were </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">more</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> than a few and I think it was about 1954 that—a we had our first—a program for polio vaccine and the kids were called polio pioneers 'cause only half of them got the real McCoy and half of them got a placebo-type of shot, and they were just doing—a their </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">first big</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> public health studies in—to the value of polio vaccine and it was so successful that—a I </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">think</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> it was 1955 that we—a had another project where we were giving the real McCoy and—a to just as many youngsters as we could reach. I remember—a we had—a </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">large</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> clinics at the schools through Broome County. It seems to me with the </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">shots</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> it was all done through the schools then later when we had the oral vaccine, it was—had big polio Sundays where the entire population could come. But that first year it was just available for a certain age group, um, kids that were most susceptible and—a it was just done through the schools, it was </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">not</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> available for adults in that year.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Now at that time—a you were probably—had been appointed the school physician for Chenango Valley, hadn't you?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Um-hmm, yeah I was Chenango Valley School Physician—most of those years. That was the same year that I got polio myself in—a, I think it was—a September or October. I—a was treating a little five months old baby at home and—a about—a few days later I came down with polio and I was laid up for a few months and went back part-time on—with—a crutches and braces, but kept at it—a my physiotherapy and got along real well and now I have practically nothing—to show for it.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Nothing to show for it ... (both chuckle) that's the way to do things... Is there anything else you'd like to say about—a the school—um health programs?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr.Jean: Well one of the—a—a most satisfying parts of my work in the school was working with the school nurse—teachers who were—a all very well trained and very dedicated people and our school administrator—a Mr.Galloway, was very interested in school health and we had a—</span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">good</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> program where we really tried to identify youngsters who needed special attention and special services and see that they got them. And the nurses were given the time and the help to work with the families and see that they followed </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">through </span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">with any recommendations that we made. I really enjoyed that part of my work.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: You've—a—probably the—the larger part of your practice has been with a—obstetrics and pediatrics, hasn't it? You've always enjoyed working with babies and I think that's what you're remembered for mostly around here—is your excellent care—</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Well, I've probably delivered well over a thousand babies or maybe fifteen hundred babies in that—a length of time, and—a took care of most of them and—a yes—I took care of the whole family and I enjoyed knowing the whole family and—a I—a I like to think that I—that I </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">am</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> a family physician, and I'm really proud that I've always belonged to the Academy of General Practice, which is now the Academy of Family Practice. And it was one of the first groups that required post-graduate—a—a courses to maintain your membership. Right from the beginning I've always taken a lot of—a courses. We've had to have a hundred and fifty hours, at least, every three years and that—a—I'd combine that with travel. I'd go to different medical centers throughout the country and get acquainted with them and keep up to date on things and—a in 1971 I took the two-day board examination to become a </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">specialist</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in Family Practice. That's the most recent specialty in the United States as far as having—a a specialty board and special certification, and happily many of the younger physicians today are beginning to go into that specialty, since it's taken on—a little more respectability. And many other specialities in some states now are requiring—a approved post-graduate hours and—a followed our leadership in that. I've been active over the years, too in the American Women's Medical Association and on their scholarship committees. It's interesting going over the scholarship applications today. The budgets of the girls in medical school are—it costs ten or twelve thousand dollars a </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">year</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> now, to go to medical school. And I used to beg, borrow or steal—two hundred dollars four times a year to pay my tuition (laughs) and I lived at home, so that wasn't any problem. But—a it's amazing that—a these youngsters are not </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">discouraged</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. They go right ahead and do the same thing—beg, borrow or steal, I guess. There are ma—many of them, their parents aren't supporting them anymore in graduate school and they're going in debt for 20 or 30,000 dollars in—a—with government loans and scholarships and they're just thinking nothing </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">of</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> it.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Would you—a </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">advise</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> young people to go into this—general practice rather than a specialization these days?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Well I think it depends a lot on the—a the individual and where their interests lie. I would say it would be one of the most </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">rewarding</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—a—a specialties certainly because—a you're dealing more in the—in the—</span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">breadth</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> of problems—the family problems, the medical problems rather than the—than going </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">deeply</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> into one area, but it involves the, the emotional health and the social well-being of the family as well as their medical problems and it's—it's really fascinating and very, very rewarding to get to work with the family as a whole. And—a I—it's a whole new ball game in medicine today, however. There's so many new special </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">areas</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—a that one </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">needs</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to be familiar with and a lot of social changes that—a necessitate changes in the way one practices, and it—a—</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: So the Family Physician is—</span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">is</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> a specialty in this age?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Yes. It really is, yeah. A family physician has a lot of special </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">knowledge</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> about the </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">family</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—about the individual problems of families and various ages and various kinds of problems that families have that a specialist—a wouldn't be </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">expected</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to know. So a family physician has a lot to offer now—a that a specialist in—a, for instance surgery or neurology or something else—a—a would really be out of his bailiwick.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Do you want to tell us something about the development of the Chenango Bridge Medical Group? A—first there were you and your brother—Dr. Jean and Dr. Bob—and—a practicing in his </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">home</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Um-hmm. That's right. Then—a we had—a, Dr.Howard came and joined us, and there were </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">three</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> of us practicing from—a Bob's home. Then Bob went back to take his specialty training in surgery and—a Dr.Peterson, I think, was the next one to join us. Anyway, over the years we've gradually </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">enlarged</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> the group, but we've tried to keep it—a, basically a family or primary care—a group and just added specialists as we felt there was a need for them.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: When you first—a went into the building on Chenango Bridge Road—when was that built?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: (laughs) Gee, I don't remember, I should have checked on some of the dates—</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Well, it was shortly after the two of you had taken on another doctor in the group, wasn't it?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Yeah. I think there were four of us when we built—a the original building and we've added on to that twice and—a now with the most recent addition there are facilities for twelve physicians. We've never had that many.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Plus the X-ray and the medical lab.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: X-ray, lab, physiotherapy and—a with room for expansion—a. As I say, we could take probably—a two or three more physicians, as far as the space is concerned. But the offices—a—the </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">business</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> office takes up quite a little space now, too, with all the </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">paperwork</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> involved in the practice of medicine. We need a secretary for various special areas. We have one who does almost all Workmen's Compensation and on that does mostly—a Welfare and Medicare and Medicaid, and there's all kinds of billing machines and things that our professors never told us about when </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">we</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> were in medical school!</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: That's </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">another</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> specialization, isn't it?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Yes. Yeah it </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">is</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. We have a full time business manager and he's in charge of—I don't know </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">how</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> many employees—eight or ten, anyway.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Well this—a group has—a filled a great need in this community because—a when Dr. Bob first came here, of course there was no physician in this particular area of the Town of Chenango and—a with the post-war </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">growth</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> of housing around here and the consequent </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">baby boom</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">—a your services were greatly appreciated in this community, I remember.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Well, we've enjoyed trying to </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">provide</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that service and enlarging the Group as we needed to. I was thinking about the </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">switchboard</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> at the office. It has—a, of course, many extensions and—a we have to have—a a girl at our switchboard all the time and I remember when we first </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">started</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Remember the old town switchboard and Lilian Pierson was the operator? And we'd—I'd go on a house call up around Chenango Forks, a—ten o'clock at night and before I'd left there the phone would ring and the switchboard—I mean the—a </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">telephone</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> operator down in Chenango Bridge—where was it, over the old railroad station or post-office? Somewhere down there—</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: —anyway, she—she'd follow me around the </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">country</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and tell me the next—a, next—a house call to make, 'cause somebody'd call in and she'd know right where I was, I didn't have to tell her. And—a that </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">was</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> kinda fun to keep in touch that way. And of course we didn't have anybody at night—other than the doctor's wife usually, that answered the phone.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: How about emergency services? When—when you started and—and compared with what they are today with our present set-up in the Town of Chenango?&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Well, when there were two of us we alternated nights and weekends, all year round there was always one of us on—a—</span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">hopefully</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> available. We tried to be available. And—a with the Group, we have rotated the various specialities. There's always been a surgeon and a medical person on call in addition to the general physician on call, but—a in recent years the—a ambulance service and the hospital emergency rooms have been </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">very</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> well staffed with medical people and paramedical people. And so I'm sure the service is very much better than it was at that time—a, but they have a lot of sophisticated equipment to work with, which—a of course we didn't have, we did the best we could.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: It was simple but it was good.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Some of the new sophisticated equipment is—a raising some ethical questions that are going to be very difficult to deal with and—a I can see that we're going to need a lot of help from other fields—a beside medicine, in solving the ethical problems that are arising. A—for instance, I myself carry a card—a which states that I </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">don't</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> want to be kept alive by all of our fancy equipment </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">if</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> there’s no reasonable hope of recover—recovery physically or mentally. And—a this is not a legal document but—a—it—it lets my family and my physicians know how I feel about it and—a—a—I'm very much concerned about some of the so-called advances in medicine which are </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">miraculous</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> and </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">really great</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> where they're—where they </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">should</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> be applied, but the question is when and where should they be applied?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: (Would that) be in any particular case, such as older patients who are—have lived their useful years and are </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">ready</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to go?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Right. We used to say pneumonia is the friend of the aged, and—a I can think of a number of elderly people who—a died fairly quickly, quickly and easily at home with pneumonia, after various other problems, but today we're almost </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">forced</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to use antibiotics if someone has pneumonia because it's something we </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">can cure</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. But—a I'm—it's very difficult to make decisions as to a—when to—a limit your treatment in an older person or a terminal person. These are some of the things that the younger physicians—a are having to face and—a are—a… These kinds of things are beginning to be incorporated in the medical curriculum to realize that—a physicians </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">aren't</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> gods and—a we don't have the answers and we need </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">help</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in making decisions. One—a thing that I am quite pleased about recently—it seems to me that people in general are beginning to take more responsibility for their own health care, both preventative medicine and in deciding what they—how far they want to go in treating their illnesses, and I think that's as it </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">should</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> be. Physicians should present—a the available resources and—a the family and the patient and the doctor together should decide what they want to do with the things that are available.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: How about this—a modern craze, it seems, on—a health foods and natural—a nutrition. What do you think about that? Do you have any thoughts about it?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Yes. It's a—there are two sides of it that—a, it seems to me, that the young people today—a who are interested in taking care of their bodies and eating properly and exercising and—a taking some responsibility for themselves—a that, that's very </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">good</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">, but I'm really alarmed at some of the </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">information</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that they are getting from faddists and—a—a all the books that are being written for profit, and—a where it's very difficult for—a people to make up their minds as to what is legitimate and what is 'quacky.' And—a I think we have to rely a lot on the—a whole scientific community and their—a the dietetic associations and people that have really </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">studied</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> nutrition over the years, instead of just picking up the first book on the newsstand and thinking it sounds like it's gonna be the answer to everybody's prayers.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Can you remember any instances—a during your practice when you—a had problems with people who were trying to cure themselves?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: No, not too much, I think they probably didn't—a—a—confide in me what they were doing if they—if they did. I remember running into a few·mushroom poisonings, where people would go out and get a beautiful batch of mushrooms and get a couple—a </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">bad</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> ones. That always—a was rather alarming, but I've noticed today there's a lot of courses in mushroom identification, so maybe people know more about it than they did.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Well now that—a you are retired, what are your…what are your activities going to be in the next—a few years?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: Well I retired—a not because I </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">planned</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> to, but for health reasons and—a I had many interests and hobbies in photography and traveling, and taken up some new ones—sculpture, and been going to some—a workshops in counseling and—a personal growth and so I've got a lot of interests. I had </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">thought</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that I might do some volunteer work in medicine, but I have discovered that there are a </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">lot</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> of other areas in this world that I never even <span style="text-decoration: underline;">heard</span> about before, that are </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">well worth looking into and—a I'm really enjoying </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">exploring</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> new areas. Never had time for it </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">before</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;">. So I—some of the&nbsp; volunteer things in the medical field are—are having to wait at the moment; I don't know whether I'll get back into that or not.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: You are involved with the—the new medical program at SUNY?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: I have been on—a the curriculum committee for the new clinical campus. The clinical campus at SUNY is a—a new development and they’ve appointed—a—faculty already. We have a Dean, Assistant Dean, and some educators that are planning a program. What it actually is, is half of the junior and senior medical school classes from Syracuse will be coming to the Binghamton area for their clinical training and—a they're not coming until, I believe 1980. There will be twenty students. We already have some Fifth Pathway students that are working in the hospitals here. These are students who have had—a their medical education overseas and are fulfilling some special clinical work here. And we're developing the faculty and—a hopefully we'll have some training in </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">teaching</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> for our local people. Um—these programs are being set up now, well ahead of the time the </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">students</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> are going to arrive. And it's been a </span><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="font-weight: 400;">real</span></span><span style="font-weight: 400;"> stimulation to the medical community here and I'm sure it'll continue to be now. Um—the emphasis, I think, is going to be on primary care, although all the specialties will be involved and—a I…it seems to me that it's getting off to a very good start. There's some good people involved in the program.<br /></span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Well, is there anything else that you'd like to have put on this tape while we're at it?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: I think we've covered quite a little ground here already. Maybe another day we'll come up with some special topics.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wanda: Well if you have anything to add later on we can still—a do that, however I want to thank you for the time you've taken this morning and for your service to this community.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Jean: It's been fun.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /><br /></span></p> Rights Statement This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Jean Smith Subject The topic of the resource Smith, Jean -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Chenango Bridge (N.Y.); Women physicians -- Interviews; Syracuse University; World War, 1939-1945; Vaccination; Chenango Valley Central Schools; Chenango Valley Medical Group; State University of New York at Binghamton Clinical Campus; Polio Description An account of the resource Dr. Jean Smith speaks about her motivations for becoming a physician and why she settled in Chenango Bridge, NY. &nbsp;She received her education at <a href="http://www.syr.edu/">Syracuse University</a>&nbsp;during World War II and went into practice with her brother, Dr. Robert Smith. &nbsp;She discusses several aspect of her career, including house calls and early use of penicillin and antibiotics. She also discusses working with <a href="http://www.cvcsd.stier.org/">Chenango Valley Central Schools</a>&nbsp;as a school physician and in the field of family practice, the development of the Chenango Bridge Medical Group, and emerging ethical questions in regard to modern medicine. She describes her interest in current medical practice and natural food, some of her post-retirement interests, as well as the beginning of the clinical campus program at the State University of New York at Binghamton. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 55A ; Recording 55B Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smith, Jean ; Wood, Wanda Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-05-02 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-03-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Broome County Oral History Project Extent The size or duration of the resource. 33:40 Minutes ; 18:44 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/d51080ba635afac48cc084b4d99954e0.jpg 14082c53d3626dedeacdac8d72c8f034 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/ac4e39dc523df40910ab7600cb0650a6.mp3 8efa2d6c0a1176632b0865a73e75ea51 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-07-30 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Jerry Lembcke, 1943- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Jerry Lembcke is an associate professor emeritus of Sociology at Holy Cross University. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Oregon. He is the author of The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam, and The Legacy of Vietnam and Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:7043,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Dr. Jerry Lembcke is an associate professor emeritus of Sociology at Holy Cross University. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Oregon. He is the author of <em>The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam</em>&nbsp;and <em>Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal</em>.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; Service; VISTA; Peace Corps; Army draft; Larry Siegfried; Anti-War; Barack Obama; George McGovern; Birth control pill; Beats; City Lights Booksellers and Publishers; Terrorism \n &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:4993,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;10&quot;:0,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; Service; VISTA; Peace Corps; Army draft; Larry Siegfried; Anti-War; Barack Obama; George McGovern; Birth control pill; Beat generation; City Lights Booksellers and Publishers; Terrorism<br /><br /></span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 144:35 Subject LCSH College teachers; Sociologists; Lembcke, Jerry, 1943--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Jerry Lembcke Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 30 July 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) JL (00:00:05): Jeremy. Excuse me. Jerry Lembcke. SM (00:00:14): I might be taking some quotes here too for your reaction to that. You write in your book, Hanoi Jane, that many of the attacks on her are oftentimes based on the need to explain our defeat in Vietnam through betrayal on the home front. Then you also add, "the emasculation of the national will to war." Can you explain what you mean by that in more detail? JL (00:00:41): Well, I think that the United States went into Vietnam, slid into Vietnam, with no idea that it would ever maybe be fighting a major war to begin with, and much less that it would lose its first war on foreign soil. The defeat in Vietnam was a very hard pill to swallow for a lot of Americans. Still is, I think. We were almost, I think, universally self-imagined to be the most powerful nation on earth. Our trajectory in the early (19)60s was even upward from those expectations. Indeed, materially speaking, we were far superior, should have been far superior to the Vietnamese. We had more gunpowder, gun power, better-trained, formally-trained troops and so forth. And yet we lost the war. I think that the country turned inward for explanations for why we lost the war. The short form on that is a scapegoat or scapegoats, alibis, excuses for why we lost the war, and looking for reasons internally. We were too weak. We were not manly enough. That is the emasculation part of it. Vietnam was an emasculating event, I think, culturally speaking for a lot of people, for a lot of people. Looking for reasons for that, looking for scapegoats for that kind of loss, I think you look toward the feminine side of the culture. You look to women perhaps, and Fonda, for reasons we might go into, Fonda fit the bill pretty well. SM (00:02:50): Bobby Muller, who you are aware of- JL (00:02:52): Sure. SM (00:02:52): He was one of the most vocal anti-war vets, once he came out of, after overcoming those terrible tragedy, losing access to his legs and everything. But he said he went into that war knowing that America was a good nation. We were a good nation. We did not do anything wrong. And he came out of that war feeling that we were the bad guy. If you talk to some other Vietnam vets, who also had similar experiences, though some of them will say, "Oh, Bobby. Bobby does not have the attitudes that a lot of other vets had. He just continues to think the way he did and a little bit more critical than he should be." But he has not changed much. Is that part of it too, that even we can use scapegoats with Jane Fonda, we can use scapegoats to the anti-war movement as prolonging the war. That could be a myth too. But really, United States was now seen as not a very good guy in world affairs. JL (00:04:08): Well, I came home from Vietnam having re-thought things that way. Maybe I was not quite as conscious of America as Bobby Muller was going in, a vague... I grew up in an apolitical environment, so I probably did not think about those kinds of those things very much. But to the extent that I did, certainly... I had uncles that fought in World War II. That was part of my sense that in World War II, there is still no doubt in my mind that we were on the right side- SM (00:04:41): Oh, I agree. JL (00:04:42): Of those conflicts. And so sure, going into Vietnam, I thought, "Well, the country goes to war. All the wars I have ever heard of the United States going into, we were on the right side. Why would not Vietnam be the same way?" But in the course of being in Vietnam, and for me, part of coming to that Bobby Muller kind of consciousness was I, being a chaplain's assistant and working for about half the time I was there for a chaplain who was opposed to the war. So if we are talking about religious righteousness, in a religious sense of righteousness, here is the priest, a Catholic priest, and he had worked in the mission’s field in South Asia before the war and had volunteered to come in as a chaplain, which "to do his stint" as he said. But he did not support the war. He was one of the first people from whom I heard, "We are going to lose this war." SM (00:05:54): And what year did you hear that? JL (00:05:56): 1969. SM (00:05:57): That is right in that (19)67 to (19)71 period, which is the real crazy time there. JL (00:06:02): Yeah. Here is the chaplain telling me, "We are going to win." And I suppose I said, "Why? Would you say that?" Or excuse me. He said, "We are going to lose. We are not going to win." His explanation for that was that these people do not want us here. That was his explanation for it. I felt like he knew what he was talking about because he had been in the mission’s field in South Asia. That was a key moment for me in... "Okay, we are on the wrong side of this war. And there might be a righteous side to this war, but we are not on it." As I was going along through this, my questioning became, I think, more sophisticated, more nuanced, to the point where even today I am not a pacifist principally. I think that in the case of Vietnam, I think there was a righteous side to that war. I think the Vietnamese cause was a supportable cause. But we were on the other side. We were on the other side of that. SM (00:07:19): What year were you there? JL (00:07:21): (19)69. I got to Vietnam, I think, New Year's Day, 1969. And I left about the 1st of February (19)70. SM (00:07:34): Were you drafted, or was it volunteer? JL (00:07:36): I was drafted. I was drafted. I was a junior high school math teacher in Fort Dodge, Iowa- SM (00:07:44): Oh, wow. JL (00:07:45): In 1968 and got snared by the Johnson administration's post-Tet call-up of more people. I had been deferred, of course, for college. And then I had been deferred for two years for teaching. SM (00:08:08): Your deferments are running out. JL (00:08:10): I was about to turn 25, and my friendly draft board in Le Mars, Iowa, which is Plymouth County, Iowa, they kept telling me with a smile, "But you are going to have to go eventually. Yes, we will defer you for one more year. But eventually you are going to have to go." SM (00:08:29): Had you been involved in any anti-war activity while you were in college? JL (00:08:30): No, not a lick. SM (00:08:32): Of course, as a teacher, you probably could not because you could lose your job. JL (00:08:35): Well, yeah. But no, I was not. I was political. I was not political right up into induction. I tried to stay out of... I tried to still stay out on the grounds that I was a teacher and that I was of better service to my country as a math teacher than I would be in the army. SM (00:09:04): Yeah, because that whole era was about service. And I got questioned about the different opinions about service, pro and con, later in the interview. JL (00:09:14): Sure. SM (00:09:14): Another charge is that protests at home prolonged the war. I mentioned that as previously. College students on college campuses are [inaudible] that helped lose the war for Americans took place within America so that the North Vietnamese only had to wait it out. Le Duc Tho, I think, was the one in his biography who states that, "We knew America was not going to stick." There was protests going on back in the United States and that they were not going to stay the long course like they were. And of course, they had always stayed the long course in their history, no matter what. JL (00:09:49): Sure. SM (00:09:51): But do you consider this also another one of these myths that we constantly hear, particularly amongst the people that are against the anti- war movement, the New Left and that group, that they prolonged the war by their protest? JL (00:10:06): Yeah, I do not think that that is true. I think that if anything, the protests shortened, shortened the war. I think we lost the war because we were beaten by the Vietnamese. We were not beaten by the anti-war movement. There is a chemistry there between the resourcefulness and the resilience of the Vietnamese people and what is going on back home, on the home front. There is no doubt that the anti-war movement initially, that some people in the anti-war movement saw the Vietnamese cause as a righteous cause and protest the war because of that. And you have got pacifists at home who are protesting the war because it is a war, who are not going to support any war. As time went on, I think, more and more Americans came to the anti-war movement, simply because of the length of the war itself. The war went on and on, and people could see no light at the end of the tunnel, and so begin to be won over to the anti-war cause, if not the pro-Vietnamese cause, but simply because this war is not going anywhere. People came to see it as being divisive, a drain on economic resources. But if the Vietnamese had not been doing well enough to at least fight the US to a stalemate, to a standstill, then a lot of this other stuff would not have been going on at home. So I think that, to the extent that the anti-war movement becomes a factor in the outcome of the war, that in turn is attributable to the Vietnamese themselves. So it is really back to the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese won the war, and they won the hearts and minds of a lot of American people. SM (00:12:20): There is no question that we could have physically won that war with all of our military capability and of course, that mentality of the - I forget the generals - and those bomb to the Stone Age, that that kind of mentality, "Yeah, we could have ended the war there just like we did in Japan, with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." But the key question is, they won psychologically, I believe. JL (00:12:45): Sure. SM (00:12:46): They won the psychological game. And it is because they knew who they were, and they knew their history, they knew their culture, and they knew that they were not going to be defeated, no matter what. JL (00:12:56): Right. SM (00:12:57): Whether it be the French, whether it be the Chinese, the Japanese, or any other, back in their history. JL (00:13:03): We are fighting, we are fighting on their terrain. The commonplace interpretation is that, "Well, then they know the hills and the valleys and then the jungles." That might have been true too. But I think it is more psychological. It is the emotional. They are fighting for their homeland, and we are not. So they are going to be more committed to that. They are going to stay the course for a long period of time. SM (00:13:37): You said you learned from the chaplain that this war was not going to be, that we were not going to win this war. But from the time you arrived on the airplane in Vietnam to the time you left, can you specifically state when you personally felt an experience, not necessarily with a chaplain, that said, "This is ridiculous. We are not going to win this thing. Or that something is wrong here, the strategy's wrong," and whether you were saying this to your peers? That maybe you were not saying it, but other soldiers were saying it. Was there a specific instance where... JL (00:14:13): There are two that come to mind right away. Maybe as we talk more, there might be maybe. But two things that come to mind. Very early on, I saw the remnants of the French presence there. And I had no clue whatsoever. I do not know that... I graduated from college in 1966, Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I was a math major. I had had one American history class. I am not sure I had ever heard the words "colonialism" or "imperialism". When I saw the first... I still have the photograph; occasionally I run across the photograph of a bridge. I traveled around my little Instamatic. It was a bridge that had a French word on it, probably the French construction company that built the bridge and a date on it. I think it was 1941. I asked the Chaplin about that. Probably I did not even know that word was French. But I asked, "What is this?" I began to learn. I began to learn about the French colonization of Indo-China. That was hugely enlightening for me. That was just a big light pole that went off. That was one thing. The other thing that does not quite fit into your question, but I think it belongs here anyway, was seeing the permanency of what the US was putting in place there. For the first six months I was there, I was near, I was in a small Army camp near Phu Cat Airbase, which was just west of Qui Nhon. Most Americans, still to this day, have never heard of Phu Cat airbase. But to get to our little Army camp, we had to drive through Phu Cat, had to come through the main gate and then go out on the other side, so we were in and out of Phu Cat all the time. I remember vividly the cement roads, the cement - not asphalt - cement roads, cement curb, curb and gutter. "Holy cow, this is built to stay." This is not like my little Army camp that is half tents and sandbag bunkers and stuff like that. This airbase permanence, its permanence. "What is going on? What is going on with this?" Again, a light bulb, began to ask, began, "Why would we be building, why would we be building this thing here?" And I suppose at some point even, not consciously, that French bridge, the permanency of that, and the permanency of this air base began to come together. And then seeing on the air base, seeing the swimming pools, the bowling alleys, a library, football pools 10 years from now, the Sioux Bowl. Now, when I hear about Iraq, I hear the same things. SM (00:17:41): And Afghanistan. JL (00:17:42): People who have been there - and maybe Afghanistan too - say the US is building these big bases. SM (00:17:48): This gets right into my next expression here, which is Ronald Reagan, I interviewed Jack Wheeler. I do not know if you know Jack. He was a fundraiser for the Vietnam Memorial, and he was in Vietnam. He had done a Triple Heart. Ronald Reagan, he said, "Listen to Ronald Reagan's speech in (19)84," because Ronald Reagan did not come to the Vietnam Memorial when it opened in (19)82, because it was politically feasible to be there or was not the right thing. But in (19)84, he came to the Wall, and Peggy Noonan had written a great speech for him. But he said, Ronald Reagan's famous 1984 speech at the Vietnam War Memorial, he said, "We will never enter a war again without making sure that we are going to win it. We are going to give the military everything they need." And basically, he was blaming it on the leaders of the time, plus we must be... When you figure this also out, if he had been president, he probably would have been tougher, even though Nixon was pretty tough. He blamed it on the leaders. And then he also believed that we must be tougher on the dissent. Like his years as governor, where he came to power fighting students in (19)64 and (19)65 in the Free Speech Movement and (19)69 at People's Park. Reagan came to power based on two things. Number one, his law and order mentality against the students at university campuses in (19)64, (19)65, and in (19)69, when Meese was with him. And secondly, on ending the welfare state. That was the mentality. So my question is, what are your thoughts on that speech? And is this a myth? Because you have already brought the fact that we lost the war, but he is saying that if we had put everything into it, like Jim Webb and others have said, we would have won that thing. But we just did not have the will. We did not have the strategy. We did not have the desire to, whatever. Is that a myth? Is what Ronald Reagan is saying, that if we put everything into it, we would have won? JL (00:20:07): I think, no. I do not think we would have won. I think we could have prolonged the war. We might have been able to occupy Vietnam in a reasonably peaceful manner for a while. But the Vietnamese would have eventually thrown us out. SM (00:20:32): You think, even if they had done, "God, this never would have happened." I think, was it Hershey that... Who was the guy that had the mentality of dropping bombs and putting them back to the Stone Age? Was that General Hershey? JL (00:20:46): Oh, no, that was... SM (00:20:49): Oh, what is his name? Come on, Steve. I see him. There is a biography out on him right now. But anyways, we would never do that. But if by some chance we had ever dropped one bomb on Hanoi, do you think they would have continued? JL (00:21:04): Yeah, I think so. I do not know. That is the thing. SM (00:21:15): See, there is only one major city. They did not have any other major cities like that. JL (00:21:19): Yeah. But again, it maybe depends on at what point that bomb was dropping. By the end of the war, Hanoi was pretty much evacuated anyway. The Christmas bombings in 1972- SM (00:21:31): Yeah, they really did not hit much. They were bad though. JL (00:21:34): They were bad. But everything was out of the city. They had moved manufacturing out of the city, decentralized it. They had moved schools and art institutes and this stuff. It was spread out all over. It became, by the end of the war, Americans, I think, widely recognized that a country that is not very industrial is not very susceptible to bombing, because there is nothing to bomb. In 1969, as a chaplain's assistant, I was out and about all the time, on the roads, either on the roads or in helicopters. I was in an artillery unit. I was assigned to an artillery unit. These artillery units get broken up into these little gun pods that are on hilltops and checkpoints just all over the place. The chaplain and I, on a weekly basis, we made our rounds to all of these gun placement sites. The ones that we could reach by road, we drove to. The other ones, then we would helicopter to. But my point here is that I do not think there was a bridge that was still standing in the central highlands where I traveled. All the bridges had been bombed out. We had come up to the river or the creek and down into it. Maybe there had been some gravel down there, so the water was not too deep, if there was water at all. But the bridge itself was gone. SM (00:23:18): Wow. JL (00:23:21): So what are you going to... I do not know, I do not know. SM (00:23:25): When you were with the chaplain, did you give Last Rites to many? Was that part of his role? JL (00:23:31): Yes. Yes. A few. Oh, Last Rites as opposed to memorial, not a memorial service. SM (00:23:36): A combination either memorials of those who had died, and then of course, Last Rites right at the spot. JL (00:23:43): Well, not right at the spot, no. At the hospital, the chaplain would follow up after a fight. We were never on the scene of a ground attack on an LZ or a fire base. We would come in afterwards. In fact, there was a few times when we stayed in a helicopter in the air until things were cleared out. People in combat roles do not want you around if you are not part of it. They really do not. SM (00:24:29): So then in combat- JL (00:24:31): Combat's work. It is a form of work. I came to see what these guys are doing like looking at a construction site. When people are working on a construction site, they do not want you wandering around looking at things, because you are in the way. You might get hurt. SM (00:24:52): So those Joe Galloway stories, I know journalists were allowed to go with these troops. But the Joe Galloway story's a rare one. JL (00:25:01): You know what though? You better follow up on a lot of these stories about journalists going out? A lot of that stuff is baloney, because you... Closer to the truth is that they could not, they could not, they were not allowed to. There are good exceptions. SM (00:25:20): So that is another myth. JL (00:25:23): I think that is a big myth. And it has grown bigger over the years. SM (00:25:26): Well, the Joe Galloway was the big one, because we were soldiers once and brave, and he was there. And I know the story about catching the last helicopter, and he was there. And he had to take a gun up. And that is true. But that might have been a rare case then. JL (00:25:43): One of my best friends, the artillery unit where I was assigned, was the press officer. Well, he was not an officer. He was a Spec/5, but he was the press liaison person for the artillery. You have batteries. That is different, a different terminology. The artillery also have group. Those are the 41st Artillery Group. He was the press liaison officer. And I asked him, I said, "What do you do?" I said, "I never see you doing anything." This is what he said. He said, "My job is to see that any journalists who make it out here to Group Headquarters do not get any further." SM (00:26:30): Oh, wow. JL (00:26:32): He said, "I give them a story and send them back to Saigon." SM (00:26:37): Does that include the TV people? Because Walter Cronkite and Morley Safer and Dan Rather, and the African American person from 60 Minutes, Bradley, they supposedly were out there with the troops. JL (00:26:53): In 13 months I was there and out and about all the time, never saw a journalist of any kind. And more importantly, never heard of one being there. And these are places where, if there had have been a journalist at LZ Uplift, they had have been talking about that for six months. SM (00:27:11): How about the photographers like Larry Burrows and I forget the guy. There is several. Kenley, James Kenley, I forget his name was. Let me get into this from here. You wrote the great book, titled Spitting Image. First, what was your main inspiration in writing it? And second, when it was shown that this myth had little visible facts, how did Vietnam vets respond overall? Let me finish my other comments here. "The image of the vets being spit upon is still out there because I know. I have heard from people that I thought would be a little more educated about this issue. Some vets continue to use it as an example of how they were treated when they came home. The image of vets was based due to My Lai and other atrocities. Many vets were upset that they were placed in situations that made no sense and cost lives, upset with the strategy. People were upset with the leaders, and the military leaders and political leaders and the anti-war protest protestors were really not against the troops." There was a lot here, but what has been the reaction of your book Spitting Image in the Vietnam veteran community? JL (00:28:31): Almost 50-50 from what I hear. That was the pattern to begin with, and it continues to be the pattern. About half the guys I hear from say, "Right on, this never happened. It is about time somebody wrote this book," even though I wrote it, now, 12 years ago. And just as often, I hear from people who are just outraged, just beyond themselves. SM (00:29:00): But the ones that are outraged though, are they people that say... SM (00:29:03): The ones that are outraged though, are they people that say, it happened to me? Or are they going from hearsay? JL (00:29:10): It is a bit of both, but quite often it happened to me. That is what I hear. And the stories seem to get wilder all the time. By that I mean less believable, less plausible, loaded up with more exaggeration. And the guys who are locked into that are really locked into it. And I think the exaggeration reflects a kind of desperation on their part to be believed. And they keep loading in more stuff. SM (00:29:48): Is this another one of those reasons why some, we lost the war, this is our way of blaming others for the situation we were a part of? It is not like the anti-war people protesting and prolonging the war or Jane Fonda should be sent to jail for crimes that she committed against the nation? JL (00:30:18): I think it is a victimization identity. A victim identity or almost an ideology is what they are hooked on. It is a twist in the culture. It is not rational. You cannot really make sense of it. But it is that to be a victim is a credentialing. In the same sense that having a Purple Heart is a kind of credential. It is a way of saying, I am the real deal. Because I have a Purple Heart. The spat upon story. I have to step back on that one. The Purple Heart, if you are wounded, in a sense you are a victim. You have suffered, you have taken a loss. SM (00:31:11): Right. JL (00:31:13): You extend that a little bit, give it a little bit of a twist. Being spat on is also victimization. And if you believe that the real war all along was at home, not in Vietnam, if you got a Purple Heart in Vietnam, that was one front of the war. SM (00:31:32): Let us change this, this the 30 minute. This is the 40. All right, bear with me. Okay. JL (00:31:43): Vietnam was one front of that war. You got your Purple Heart there. Many people would say the real war was at home and I got my Purple Heart at home when I was spat on. You see what I am getting at. It is identity construction and they are really locked into that. SM (00:32:13): I have also wondered if people are not, they were not actually spit upon physically, but they used the term I was spit upon. It is a term they used if I was treated like crap. I am wondering if people interpret it differently? JL (00:32:33): It might be that their own thinking started that way, but then that they congealed it, or what is the word I want? It became more graphic to them even that they really were spat on. And then they start telling the story that way. SM (00:32:54): Well, I have two examples. This is your interview, but I want to bring this in here. And that is, I have been at the Vietnam Memorial now since 94, both for Memorial Day and Veteran's Day. I sit down amongst a lot of people and let them know I am not a veteran right away. And I am proud, I am very close to a lot of the Vietnam vets and I care about them. And I sat next to a mother when John McDermott was there, the singer who was singing a song and she had tears in her eyes and she said "right above John McDermott's shoulder is where my son's name is." She could see it from a distance and you know something, "the anti-war movement, when my son was buried near Penn State," that is where they lived. "The anti-war protestors were screaming and yelling and calling all kinds of names, baby killers. When my son was being buried, it was a protest. And it probably was not against the person who had died, but it was against the military as a whole." And so she said, that is an experience she will never forget. And the second person I sat next to many years later, it was raining at the Vietnam Memorial, and she said to me, there was an experience. "My son was buried at Arlington and that was a fresh grave. And there had been a major protest in Washington." And she went out to Arlington to visit the spot where her son had just been buried with the dirt put over. And it was raining and they had put canvas covers over the spots. She went out there and she noticed that somebody was moving around underneath the spot. There was an anti-war protestor underneath that little tarp to protect themselves from the rain and laying right on her son's grave. And she was so upset with him saying that, "how dare you lay on my son's grave" and "I am just protecting myself from the rain." And she said, "You are a protestor?" "Yeah, I was a protestor." "Do you really care about the war?" "No, I was paid to come here to protest." He did not care about the war at all. It was just an experience I wanted to share there. One powerful Vietnam vet said, "that the real generation gap was within the generation itself, not between parents and children." I think we know that there was a generation gap between the World War II generation and their kids. That is a well-known fact. But I had never thought of it in terms of the generation gap within. I want your comments on these, those who served and those who evaded the draft. And we are not talking about people who protested the war. We are talking about people who evaded the draft. This same person thought that the boomer generation saw service is a good thing. Because Kennedy, when he gave that speech, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." I have interviewed several people that were inspired by that. And that service could be serving in the military, serving your country in the military or in the Peace Corps or VISTA or whatever. But the reason that same person says that he defines the boomer generation as a generation that was weak in service because they did not understand that when your nation calls, you go to war. The Peace Corps and VISTA is not enough here, if you are talking about defining generation. Being a service-oriented generation is that when you are called to serve, you do. And I will mention who this person was in a minute. This is based on the Lost Generation book and the symposium that took place with James Webb and Bounty Mueller and several others, Phil Caputo and everything. Basically it was James Webb who said, who was not even a United States senator, that said that "I do not consider the boomer generation, that generation that was raised after World War II as a service-oriented generation that we look of them as because of the fact that they evaded the draft, that there were many that evaded the draft just to save their own skin." And even James Fallows has written about the fact that he felt guilty that he had evaded the draft and he had not protested against the draft. And he has felt a big difference. And he has come to terms with that and has admitted his wrongs in front of vets. He has gained the respect to vets. I would just like your thoughts on that concept that the generation gap is as strong between parents and children as it is between young people within the generation, those who served Vietnam and those who evaded the draft. JL (00:38:13): A lot of people who evaded the draft went on to serve, if not this country, serve humankind in wonderful ways. My learning for this, there is a book called Northern Passage. SM (00:38:33): Yeah, I have it. JL (00:38:36): You have it? Okay. I reviewed that book for a Canadian... SM (00:38:39): Kind of a conscientious objectors. JL (00:38:40): Yeah, both all the people who went to Canada and what an enormous talent drain that was from the United States. Some of these people have become some of Canada's most creatively productive citizens. People working in the arts, people working in politics, people working in education. People in my view, the way I view service with a huge commitment to serve and to put your talent to good use. And I know a few people who evaded the draft and who did alternative service and things like that. And there is not a slacker among any of those people. And I go back to what I was about to say at the beginning here was that I think a lot of people tried to stay out of the draft. I tried to stay out of the draft because I thought being a teacher, being a math teacher in a junior high school was a much better way for me to serve the country. And I think that motivated a lot of those people. I do not think it was to save their own hides. I do not think those people were afraid in the usual sense of the term. Some of them were philosophically or morally opposed to the war. But again, they were not trying to stay out of hard work or something like that or to stay out of service because they did service. They did service in some other way. SM (00:40:28): When I was a senior Binghamton, I remember playing basketball in the gym, my junior and senior year on athletics. And I can remember all the conversations of the draft, the lottery numbers were coming up. I was actually 72. And students were saying, oh, I do not have anything to worry about because I am going to get an alternative service as a teacher. And I remember some of the students saying, why are you going to be a teacher? I do not really want to be a teacher. It just gets me out of the draft. And the question I asked Leon Botstein, I did not interview him for my book, but I interviewed him when he came to our Westchester University campus. And I asked him, do you think there is any link between the quality of education that went down after the boomer generation in terms of quality based on the quality of the teachers? And he did not really come up with an answer. He said, nothing has ever been written about it. But I knew that those people that were becoming teachers were going to quit as soon as they could get another job as soon as the war was over. This is not about you now, this is about, do you think there is any link between the poor quality of teaching that took place after the (19)60s, we are talking late, mid (19)70s and beyond, because the teachers were not dedicated enough to being good teachers and they were only there to get out of the draft, particularly male teachers, and then they quit once the draft ended? JL (00:42:01): I have never thought about that, because I have never heard anything like that. People get out of teaching because the pay is not very good and the conditions are pretty hard. I still say today it is the hardest job I ever had teaching junior high school math. That was a tough job. That was a hard job. And I think that is why maybe, I would have to think about the political economy of education for a minute, but it might have been in the (19)70s that funding for various education programs were cut, things like that. I do not know. SM (00:42:46): I think he was making reference. I think somebody needs to do a study of this because you may be onto something. Because there was a period that students were not as well prepared, not in elementary education. Elementary education has been sound from the get-go, something happens when they reach seventh grade. JL (00:43:03): People do not stay in teaching long now. I teach at Holy Cross College and we have quite a few students who go out of college that go into teaching but they do not stay. It is a gateway or a stepping stone, a holding pattern, just something else. There are not many who go into it and stick with it. SM (00:43:22): You are teaching in a great school though. JL (00:43:24): Oh, thank you. SM (00:43:25): I know all about Holy Cross and long before Bob Cousy. Because I read about that. JL (00:43:31): That goes back a long way. SM (00:43:32): Yeah. I was a kid and I saw Bob Cousy play at the Syracuse War Memorial when the Celtics came in and played the Syracuse Nationals and they were on an 18 game winning. We lived in Binghamton and my dad drove me up. It was a winter storm there and I will never forget. The Celtics were on an 18 game winning streak. And the Nationals beat them and I will never forget Tommy Heinsohn putting his fist up with his flat top as they were booing. And then of course Jim Loscutoff got a big fight. JL (00:44:01): Geez, I have not heard these names. SM (00:44:03): And Larry Siegfried called me... JL (00:44:04): Oh my god. SM (00:44:05): Larry Siegfried was an Ohio State guy. JL (00:44:07): Ohio State guy. Yeah. SM (00:44:09): My dad and I went up to him for an autograph and he said, get out of here you little runt. Yeah, Larry Siegfried, he was as mean in person as he was on the court. He got in a lot of fights with the Sixers. Larry Siegfried and the Sixers, and of course Loscutoff was their hatchet man. Have you had any thoughts about other myths linked to the Vietnam War? I would like to list two myths that I think are here. you have already talked about the spitting image myth and the image of Jane Fonda. We are going to get in and talk about Jane in a couple minutes. But these are two myths that I came up with. Nixon's Peace with Honor. Peace with Honor was what he said in his speech in 1973. Peace and honor. What we did to Vietnam by killing 3 million people and destroying the land and agent orange and generations and so forth. Honor? I think that is a myth. And secondly, the people of South Vietnam supported their leaders and made every effort to defeat the north. We had advisors there since (19)63. I remember when I interviewed the professor at Harvard, Hue-Tam, I cannot pronounce her full name, she teaches Vietnamese history at Harvard. And when I mentioned the fact that Thieu Ky Diem regime knew, that particular group, that they were puppets. She really got upset that I said that. And she went from being a friend, and I am not going to put this on the tape, but she got very upset. She said they were elected. Let me tell you that Diem, Thieu Ky were elected, whether you like it or not, the people voted them in. Well, I thought they were puppets, but it is her interview. JL (00:45:58): Yeah, sure. SM (00:45:59): And then she said, by the way, Diem put my father in jail. It is not like she liked him. What other myths do you see in Vietnam or anything linked in Vietnam? JL (00:46:15): I wish I had some time to think about that. It was only a few days ago or a couple weeks ago that I had one really good thing in mind, but I cannot remember now what it was. You are catching me by surprise. SM (00:46:30): You can email me. JL (00:46:31): Maybe it will come back to me, but something quite big, quite broad that I did not think anybody had taken a look at. There are smaller pieces that I think need to be looked at. The journalism one, the idea that journalists could go everywhere in Vietnam. SM (00:47:00): My batteries are going in pretty good. Yeah, I am fine. JL (00:47:11): The one that I get-get asked about occasionally is the stories of throwing prisoners out of helicopters. That the US took captive VC and took them up in helicopters and we would throw one out in order to make the others talk. And probably a couple of times a year I get an email from somebody saying they have heard this story, is this story true? And I doubt if it is, but it is certainly out there. But now the question about that for a scholar like me is not the story in itself. Maybe it did happen once. I think things like that could have happened. But how does that play in then to the American imagination? That is the myth. A small story that is really a building block for something that is quite larger. It is like the spitting stories. The spitting stories are really about the myth that we lost the war on the home from. That is the myth. Where does this prisoners out of helicopters? SM (00:48:28): I have read it in books. I have read it in history books on Vietnam. Very top-quality books where there is a scene in one where there is three prisoners taken up in the helicopter. And the guys knew in the beginning that they were only going to have one coming back no matter what. Speak up. Tell me the truth. You got to tell me the truth. Are you going to tell me the truth? You got to tell me the truth. I am going to throw this guy out here if you do not tell me the truth. You do not believe I am going to tell you the truth. That kind of stuff. JL (00:49:03): The story goes also that I have heard it half a dozen times, that you never counted prisoners when you put them on the helicopter because the number might not square with how many you had when you got off the helicopter. SM (00:49:19): Is not there another one here that Americans turned over their capture to the South Vietnamese army and they basically killed them all? I remember we had Country Joe McDonald on our campus during then and Country Joe brought up something, James [inaudible] was in the room and he did not say anything, but he made a reference. [inaudible] they know why there were no prisoners of war on our side. We got POWs, but there were none on our side. And then of course, nobody ever said anything more than we just went back to the conversation about other things. But I think he was making a reference where do we ever hear about POWs on the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese forces were there? And we did hand them over to the South Vietnamese army. Did they kill them? JL (00:50:13): I do not know that I have ever heard that they did. We tried to convert them, get them to turn over, turn around course. We did that. There were the tiger cages on Con Son Island, the South Vietnamese did imprison some people there. There was the Phoenix program that was an assassination program that we operated. SM (00:50:46): I think Senator Kerry was in that too. Was not he the one, the president of the new school? Was not he a Phoenix programmer? I think. JL (00:50:54): I believe so. I believe the story that he tells that he was a Navy Seal. He tells one of the stories. Yeah. I do not know. That is a good question there, actually. SM (00:51:06): These are stories to get down to the truth of things. It is always the context. From the truth to the reality or some of these personal experiences may be just a onetime experience and it may not be across the board. And we cannot get caught up in, what do you call it, stereotyping and generalizing reality. A personal experience may be true, but a general experience may be ridiculous. JL (00:51:30): Yeah-yeah. SM (00:51:31): You bring up in your book Hanoi Jane, the destruction of characters as a key to opponents of when the neocons or the people on the right, they try to destroy character. I mentioned just some names here and I would like you to respond because you talk about Jane Fonda. But certainly Daniel Ellsberg with what happened to him and Nixon trying to find his psychiatric files or whatever to try to destroy his character. Obviously Bill Clinton went through a lot with what he did many of it on his own behalf. John Kerry in 2004, saying that he lied about his military record trying to find the Achilles heel. And nobody's perfect to that, trying to destroy character. Could you talk a little bit more about that and particularly with respect to Jane Fonda? JL (00:52:30): What seems to bug some people on the right is what they consider unstable character. The character flaw that they see is instability, inconsistency. And I think the sources of that are religious or religious ideology. What comes out of the Old Testament and the New Testament is, stories of deception, stories of betrayal, that evil masquerades as good, the good people are tricked by, are fooled, are misled into following false gods, false saviors. People need to be aware of that. People need to be able to trust what they see and what they hear. Instability becomes a clue maybe that there is something that does not meet the eye going on here. She does not seem to be stable. She herself seems to be susceptible to other characters. She is easily wooed by this or that. Again, in the religious terms, somebody who follows one image of goodness for a while, but then changes and follows a different image of goodness for another while then becomes part of the problem. They are easily deceived by Satan, easily deceived by the devil. In political terms, then that person becomes a liability, a political liability, because the enemy can use that person as an inroad. And I think they might not articulate it that way. They might not even think about it that way, but you are asking me why they, the political right in America today is very infused with Christian conservatism. And those notions are fundamental. That is those ideas, those fears of betrayal, deception, that book of revelation Christianity is fundamental. SM (00:55:32): Is another way of saying it, when people are unpredictable. When you work someplace, you would like to have people around you and you can predict how they are going to act or react in a certain situation. But when a person is unpredictable, that sends all kinds of waves up. The person may not go with the flow, may not agree with us, may be against us, may just be at the center or whatever. And it seems like we need more of those kinds of people unpredictable than we need predictable because they make us better because they challenge us more. Challenge our ways of thinking. That is when I look at Jane Fonda and I think of Daniel Ellsberg and I think of John Kerry and I think of all the other people, I consider them unpredictable people who have a conscience and will speak their minds but not necessarily agree with the mainstream. JL (00:56:27): Well, Howard Zinn notably said that the problem is not dissent from authority. The problem is complicity with authority. We got the Holocaust because people were too obedient. People were unwilling or unable to resist authority. And I think that that is true, not universally true, but I think certainly in the last half of the 20th century, I think that that was true. And I think it continues to be true today. Another thing that factors into this with the Hanoi Jane, John Kerry, had all kinds of characters and the attack on their character is the difference between people whose worldview is based on belief as opposed to evidence. People who live in an evidence-based epistemology or live with an evidence-based epistemology or worldview way of knowing the world are going to change based on new information. New information changes your view of how things are. And that is a part of what makes the... JL (00:58:02): That is a part of what makes the educated people, the intellectuals, that is what makes them intellectuals. But it is also what makes them suspect by people on the fundamentalist, religious right wing. They are suspicious of people who know quote unquote. Who know as opposed to who believe. SM (00:58:30): Beautiful. Yeah. JL (00:58:31): Knowledge is one thing. Belief is something else. And that goes clear back to the suspicions about the French Revolution, the role of intellectuals in the enlightenment period of European history. And the religious based people were always, well, the Christian, religious based people were always kind of suspicious of people who thought they... SM (00:58:56): That explains intellectuals being killed throughout the decades. JL (00:59:02): And so that is why I think, I tried to make that point in the book. SM (00:59:05): You do a good job of it. JL (00:59:07): Oh, thank you. Because she is, people would not usually think of Jane fond as an intellectual, but she works in that world of ideas. SM (00:59:17): Yes, she does. JL (00:59:18): The world of ideas and images, and a world that affects how people view the world, how people feel about the world. And so, in the way I use the term intellectual, she is an intellectual. She does intellectual work. She is a part of intellectual America. And I think that adds to her... SM (00:59:47): Yesterday when I interviewed Dr. Baxandall, I brought this up about the 1950s. Because we are talking about boomers now, people raised after 1946. But I am going to preface this by saying that I believe people born between (19)40 and (19)46, (19)45 are in this group as well. Because most of the leaders of the anti-war movement were born before 1946. And probably about one third of the people I have interviewed cannot stand the term boomer to begin with. It is about a group of people, it is about an idea, it is about a period, and they have a problem with even the younger boomers. JL (01:00:20): It might be about a marketing demographic. SM (01:00:22): Yeah, marketing demographic. But I bring up the (19)50s, because I think the 1950s are a very important part of the psyche of just about all boomers, whether they were activists or not. And I said this yesterday, and I will say it again today for your response that in the 1950s it seemed like there were three things that stood out in my mind above anything else, there was a concept of fear. There were a lot of good times for young people in the (19)50s because the parents were home. But there was a concept of fear because the Cold War was happening, the threat of nuclear war may have been in the backs of people's minds. And of course, the McCarthy hearings that anybody of the early boomers saw on television, seeing these voices saying that, "Are you or are you not a communist?" And lives being destroyed, careers being destroyed, people committing suicide because they could not get a job. Those kinds of things. So a concept of fear. Second is that the concept of being very quiet. People were quiet, they did not speak up very much. Security meant everything to people seemed like in those times. And thirdly, I felt that we were naive. And I think as boomers have evolved, the naivete was hit real hard in the 1960s, because you started seeing that black and white television, there were no black people on black and white television, you saw what was happening in the south, issues with the women and African Americans, and certainly Native Americans, the black and white cowboy and Indian culture. So what I am getting at here is the kind of a do not speak until you are spoken to mentality, which was what the (19)50s was about. Then you get in the 1960s where fear is replaced by being assertive, quiet becomes outspoken and naive becomes, you see the injustices and you want to speak. You want to speak when you have something to say, kind of a different mentality. So I would like your thoughts on that. That the (19)50s was really the very important in shaping everything that followed. JL (01:02:40): The one thing that I would add to that, and I think you are onto something, there might be an intra generational thing here. The people who are a little older and maybe... People who are a little older... JL (01:02:59): What is this? Is this... SM (01:03:01): Not that one. Hold on. Actually, this does a better job. I got to get my 45 into this one. Okay, this cannot be used again. There we go. [inaudible] JL (01:03:23): People who are a little older and who maybe came to political consciousness in the late (19)30s maybe, or during the World War II years themselves, and were more politically conscious at a younger age, might have had that sense of the 1950s. SM (01:03:50): Right. JL (01:03:52): People Who are a little younger may have experienced the 1950s as years of economic security, of hope and promise. The idea that you would ever be unemployed, growing up in the 1950s at least where I grew up, unthinkable. That was the (19)30s. I grew up hearing about the old days. That was the 1930s. My parents were working class, by the way. My father went to seventh grade country school. SM (01:04:47): I heard all about the hobos and all the stories from my parents, my mom and dad. My mom's family did not have any hard time. My dad did because he was a son of a minister. JL (01:05:01): But what I am getting at here is that maybe the masses, so to speak, of the (19)60s generation come out of the (19)50s with a lot of audacity, a lot of strength right there. A lot of resilience. A lot of that might have been false, but they were, what is the term? Possibilists? SM (01:05:32): Possibility thinkers? JL (01:05:33): Possibility thinkers, yeah. So you put those two things together. People who have a little more political consciousness, the older people, with a large bunch of people who really are not afraid of anything. I was not afraid. I did not go to college for job security. I went to college because my parents thought I could have a better life if I went to college. It was not out of necessity so much as it was taking advantage of an opportunity. SM (01:06:15): Right. And that is what the GI Bill was all about, was taking advantage after World War II, of getting a degree and education. That is another quality too, that the (19)50s was the beginning of the importance of higher education. It was always there, but the (19)50s and the (19)60s to me are at the time when the higher education really blew. JL (01:06:36): Really took off. SM (01:06:36): Particularly in the (19)60s. JL (01:06:38): Really grew. SM (01:06:38): Yeah. Really big community college movement and everything else. I am going to get back to Jane Fonda here, because I think she is fascinating in so many ways. Fonda, I am going to read this. It is page 154. I know some people do not like me to read their stuff. I have got to get my glasses again. 154. So when something strikes me, I have to put it in the interview. And I have done it, with Dr. Lifton, I had so many things. Okay here it is. Actually, sometimes I ought to ask the author to read it, you want to read it? JL (01:07:24): I am willing to. SM (01:07:25): Yes. Some people are not. JL (01:07:27): Now I need to get my glasses out. SM (01:07:28): Yeah. To me, this paragraph on 154, I want you to respond to it because I think this is very important because when I interviewed Dr. Baxandall yesterday, a lot of things she said about her life and a lot of females were comparable to what you say about Jane Fonda in this paragraph, and about speaking up for the first time. So if you could just read this paragraph from there to there, and I will have it on record. And I think it is a beautifully written paragraph. JL (01:07:55): "In an April 1974 Playboy interview with her and Tom Hayden, for example, Fonda speculated that the rising hostility to her was due to her having violated feminine norms by speaking her mind in public places. Punctuating the point by saying she would quote, 'No longer accept the image of a mindless Barbarella floating through space.' Unquote. Intending to strike a pose of mindfulness through those words, she inadvertently and unnecessarily in the light of later interpretations of Barbarella, fed the perception of discontinuity in her career that critics would soon throw back at her. 10 years later, she was still putting distance between herself and the galactic warrior woman, telling Erica Young for a Lady's Home Journal interview, that the film and her role as an activist were contradictory." SM (01:08:49): Yeah, I think that is beautiful. And it is like speaking up. Dr. Baxandall yesterday told me that she was in meetings with men and she had all the ideas, and they took her ideas during the anti-war movement. She was the one that came up with the ideas, but they did not want her to speak. Do not speak until you are spoken to, but we will take every idea that you had, and we will take the idea and say that we thought it up. JL (01:09:15): Yep. SM (01:09:16): So it is like, this is a recognition too. This is obviously, when you talk about an intellectual, she is getting it. She is getting these things here, the stereotypes about women. Do you have anything else to add on that paragraph? JL (01:09:38): One of the things, it is the galactic warrior woman thing there. I think that is the most troublesome image of Fonda for a lot of people. And I think that has gone unrecognized, and I think it is unspoken. That is what bothers a lot of people about Fonda, is this outspokenness, but it is also the combativeness for gender and sexual roles in the roles that she plays in her films. There is a real continuity in her film career, certainly from Barbarella on. SM (01:10:27): Oh, yeah. Coming home was just like, whoa. Of course Klute, we all know Klute. I remember going to see all these movies, and Coming Home was, all I can say is, wow. And there is another one, it was... There were two movies. JL (01:10:48): Well, Julia is on my mind because I read in the course of working on the book, I do not know if I wrote it in here. Do you know the film Julia? Late (19)70s, she played the Lilian Hellman. SM (01:11:00): Yes. JL (01:11:01): And in there, one of the reviewers, or one of the critics said, "It is the first romantic kiss between two women in a major Hollywood film." Now that is pretty breakthrough, breakout kind of stuff. SM (01:11:18): And oh On Golden Pond too, which was (19)81, which is the conflict with her dad, and coming together. I remember going to see that movie and all the press. It was 1981. And of course her father was an interesting person as well. You bring it up here that he was really a liberal. JL (01:11:34): Quiet. SM (01:11:34): Yeah. So his influence on her way of thinking, that is... What you do in this book is, and I think it is very important with college students, is do not believe everything you read. The gossip columns, there is context to everything. Even though I do not like Newt Gingrich personally as a politician, I do not dislike him as a human being. And I can remember (19)94, and I am a liberal, and the Women's Center had put a sign up on the door, Women's Center I hate Newt Gingrich. I said, that is inappropriate. That is inappropriate. And of course, I had to do it with the administrator on the side because I did not want to embarrass the administrator in front of the students. But I did confront the students. The students thought I was... What are you, a conservative [inaudible] guy? So I just think, you do not know Newt Gingrich. You do not know him. I do not like his politics, but do not judge him. They said "Oh, he is just some southern [inaudible]." And I said, "Did you know that he was born in Pennsylvania? He lived the first 12 years in his life in Pennsylvania near Harrisburg." JL (01:12:38): Yeah. SM (01:12:39): He has also a PhD. You may not like his politics, but anyways. This is the question you may have already answered. How did you become the person you are? Who were your greatest influences in your life, and who were your role models? Who were the role models that you most admired in the (19)50s through the (19)80s? Basically, when you were very young who were the people you looked up to that kind of inspired you? You have already talked about the chaplain you served in Vietnam, but of all the personalities and figures of that period, when boomers were young in the (19)50s, (19)60s, (19)70s, and early (19)80s, who did you admire? JL (01:13:22): I think it was people in my family. Because as I have said already, I was not politically conscious at all. My parents were not political people. I did not have much of a sense of culture or popular culture in those years. So were I to think of a film star or a political figure or something like that, there would be nobody. So it would be my Uncle Clay, who was a medic in World War II, and was sort of the, I guess, family war hero. Although he was, I guess the kind of classic reticent war veteran who would not say anything unless you have asked him. And then it was all medical stories, no combat stories. And then as I began to come to political consciousness, then political figures became more important to me. And then it was mostly labor people. And I have a former life as a labor historian. SM (01:14:46): Probably know about Bayard Rustin then, do not you? JL (01:14:48): Oh, yes, Bayard Rustin. SM (01:14:52): We did a national tribute at Bayard in Westchester, and we brought in Norman Hill and Rochelle Horowitz and that group. JL (01:14:56): Yeah. And so I became, oh gosh, there were so many labor sort of labor people from the 1930s. My dissertation was a study of a CIO union... SM (01:15:09): Oh wow. JL (01:15:10): In the lumber and wood products' industry. So those were my... I was a little bit older then. It was after Vietnam when I was in graduate school in, I moved away from math and into sociology and history. But it was union organizers, the people who organized the auto industry and the steel industry, and of course, the lumber and wood products industry that... SM (01:15:40): So you were probably a Woody Guthrie fan then too. Was there a... JL (01:15:46): Yeah-yeah-yeah. Woody Guthrie. SM (01:15:49): And Pete Seeger and their music. And I think it was John L. Lewis, was that the guy that... JL (01:15:52): He was the head of the CIO. SM (01:15:54): He was a big, big guy. JL (01:15:56): Yeah. Really important. SM (01:16:03): What kind of feedback you have gotten so far from this book in terms of, did you hear from Jane Fonda at all? JL (01:16:10): Oh, she blogged about the book before... I saw the cover of the book for the first time on Jane Fonda's blog. SM (01:16:20): Oh, wow. JL (01:16:20): Her January 13th blog. And she liked it. And then she was on the Larry King show probably two months ago, and she mentioned the book on the Larry King show. SM (01:16:38): Oh, wow. Very good. JL (01:16:39): So yes, she has weighed in, and she is very... SM (01:16:44): Did you talk to her at all? JL (01:16:45): Not since the book came out? I did... SM (01:16:48): Interview her for the book? JL (01:16:49): Well, I did not interview her. This is preface. SM (01:16:54): I tried to get her to interview for my book, that is when she was with Ted Turner, so I have been doing this for... JL (01:17:00): Well, you should try again. SM (01:17:01): Yeah, some people think I should try again, because some of the feminists that I have interviewed are friends of hers. JL (01:17:07): This is the first sentence of the preface. "'Oh, So it is not about me?' Jane Fonda asked, when I told her I was working on a book about Hanoi Jane. Right, I replied, it is the biography of Hanoi Jane. A phrase laden with myth and legend that plays into people's memories of the war in Vietnam." SM (01:17:28): Yeah. JL (01:17:29): We were in Harvard Square. She wanted to talk to me. It was when she was working on her memoir. SM (01:17:37): Oh yeah, that is right. I have that book too. JL (01:17:38): And she wanted to talk to me about The Spitting Image and the film chapter in The Spitting Image where I wrote about Coming Home, the 1978 film Coming Home, because I had gotten into the film archives in Los Angeles for Coming Home. And she was interested in some of the things I wrote. So she, through her research assistant called me into the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square to talk to me about that. And then in the course of that, I said, "You might be interested in the new book that I am working on." And she said, "What is that?" And I said, "It is about Hanoi Jane." SM (01:18:22): Oh my gosh. JL (01:18:24): And that comment came out, and after about a two and a half hour sit down together, which was just wonderful, there was a knock at the door, maybe a phone rang first. And she said, "Yes, I am almost finished. Come on up." And Howard Zinn walked in. SM (01:18:49): Oh my gosh. JL (01:18:52): Yeah. SM (01:18:53): So he was there the whole time you were there? JL (01:18:55): No, he just came in just as I was finishing, just as Jane and I were. SM (01:18:58): Oh, okay. And you were with her for two hours? JL (01:18:59): Yeah-yeah. A little more than two hours, yeah. SM (01:19:02): Did you tape it? JL (01:19:07): No. The terms of it was that it was not to be an interview. That was the terms of it, that I was not to be interviewing Jane, because we were talking about the Spitting Image. If anything, she was kind of interviewing me to find out... SM (01:19:23): Oh, okay, JL (01:19:25): So where did you get this? SM (01:19:29): Oh my gosh. JL (01:19:33): Because I did not like that Coming Home scene in the film, when Bob gets off the, Sally's husband, Bob gets off the airplane. And he gets off the plane and he says, where are the protestors? They told us on the plane that there would be protestors here to greet us. And then as they drive away from the airport they are greeted by protestors, and Bob flips them the bird as they drive away. And so I wrote in the book, I said, "That scene, that is fictional. That never happened. That is not the historical truth." I have met her one more time actually, when the film No Sir came out, and I saw her again at that point, and she turned to somebody, it might have been Cora Weiss actually, who was... Did you interview Cora Weiss? SM (01:20:34): No, I do not even know who Cora Weiss. Is- JL (01:20:37): Carol Weiss was the woman who, she was one of the founders of Women Strike for Peace, but she founded the Underground Mail Service between the US and Hanoi. SM (01:20:58): Where does she live, New York? JL (01:20:59): New York City, yeah. SM (01:21:02): She retired now? JL (01:21:02): Oh yeah. SM (01:21:04): Oh, wow. JL (01:21:06): But anyway, Jane Fonda turned to her, and then pointed at me and said "He is the one who said, that we got the Coming Home scene all wrong in the film." So apparently she had been talking to... Because Fonda and I were both in that film, Sir! No Sir! You probably know that, right, or not? SM (01:21:29): No, you are in the film itself? JL (01:21:32): Yeah. Because of the book, The Spitting Image. SM (01:21:37): I got to go... JL (01:21:38): Yeah, you got to see that film. SM (01:21:39): No, what is it? JL (01:21:42): Sir! No Sir! SM (01:21:43): I think I saw it. JL (01:21:44): I would think probably you have. SM (01:21:47): I go to the Ritz Theater in Philly, may have been shown there. Well, that is interesting. I might try. Although one of her best friends, I am not sure if it was Holly Near or Torie Osborn, who I interviewed, they said she does not like to talk about Vietnam at all. JL (01:22:06): Fonda? SM (01:22:07): Yeah. JL (01:22:08): I would not be surprised. In my case, that is why we were talking, but I did detect some reluctance. SM (01:22:20): In a nation that professes that free speech and the right to protest is part of the definition of liberty. Why has our government been so rough on the people who challenge the system. And I use these examples of historic events through the time that boomers have been alive. We all know about the McCarthy hearings in the early (19)50s, the HUAC hearings in the late (19)40s, the stories about the Hollywood Ten, several movies have been out on that recently. The stories of COINTELPRO that are terrible. I have had several revelations of what happened to some people, and what they did to destroy lives and the infiltration, and they did not care. We just got to go get them because they are against us. I do not care what happens to them. No sense of humanity at all. This is a United States of America, and we have a constitution and we can disagree, but they are the enemy. And of course, in a simpler way, the enemies list. A lot of people seem to be very happy that they were on it, including the late Daniel Shore who just passed away. And of course Watergate, we all know about that. Why is it that the most articulate seemed to be the greatest threat? Yes, we do not murder activists like they do in other countries, but we tend to subtly destroy them through the issue that you talked about, the destruction of their character. And you are not one of us, you are a troublemaker, all kinds of labels to put out people. We are supposed to be in a democracy where people agree to disagree. JL (01:24:14): I am not sure I can make this compelling. When I am in the classroom I am more prepared for this. But the answer is, it is precisely because this is a democracy. It is precisely because the people are sovereign, that notion of popular sovereignty. SM (01:24:35): Give you this, especially on my 45. JL (01:24:39): In the context where the economy is privately held, there is no democracy in the economy. And so the two of these together produces a kind of passive-aggressive political culture. I do not know, if I just start talking, it probably becomes less clear. But it is that trying to reconcile those two, that makes criticism of that incompatibility so dangerous. And so criticism has to be shut down. Because the people are empowered for the ballot, then the people have to be dumbed down. The people have to be kept uninformed. SM (01:25:59): The term liberty means a lot to me, and I think it is a term we do not use enough of. We talk about other terms, but liberty, it is freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to be who you are, freedom. And then we hear these kinds of things happening in the United States, and even leaders that we admire will destroy a person who disagrees. I heard stories about Al Gore, if someone went against him he would really destroy their careers. I do not know if that is true, but I heard about it. Just because they disagree with them, or said bad things about them or whatever. You got to have thick skin to be in politics. And it amazes me that democracy is a really good system, that we have a constitution that protects these things and that liberty is something we aspire to and we are proud of, and we do not kill people, but we can destroy them in other ways. That is what bothers me... SM (01:27:03): Them in other ways. And that is what bother me about that. And certainly the Vietnam War is that whole period. And the whole period the Boomers have been alive and they have seen these things throughout their lives. But it may be is part of the whole human experience throughout time too. It has probably been forever. And it may be for... It is just it confounds me and we go on, so to speak. But the breakup of the American society is due to the activities in the (19)60s and (19)70s. Now I bring up the breakup... Make sure I got my glasses here. The breakup of the American society due to the activities in the (19)60s and (19)70s. Newt Gingrich, when he came to power in 94, Mike Huckabee on his TV show. Glenn Beck all the time does this on his show. Hannity, Rush Limbaugh. I do not want always say conservatives. There are some liberals that do it as well, but they blamed a lot of the problems that we have in our society today in America on those times back in the (19)60s and the (19)70s. They say that the loss of family values, that fewer people are going to church. The divorce rate is skyrocketing, there was rampant sex. There was no commitment to the "love the one you are with" mentality. There was a drug culture. There was a lack of respect for authority. And we need to get all those values back because that is what the (19)50s were about. And that is what America's about. It is about... And just your thoughts on that because George Will, oftentimes in his books, make commentaries on this. And other people have written about it that they like to go back and whip that period, constantly whip it. And even Barney Frank, when he wrote his book, "Speaking Frankly", which was a very good book, he said that the Democratic party is going to survive and has to say goodbye to all those people that supported Montgomery. The anti-war movement and all the... He writes about it, and that was in the (19)90s when he wrote this book that the Democratic party is going to survive. It has to say goodbye to the anti-war people. So then that is a diehard, a liberal thing. JL (01:29:20): Well, Barack Obama was quoted in some way that is very close to that too, that the words there that you used goodbye to the anti-war movement. There is an internet site called Open Left. And they picked up on a conference paper that I wrote out of this. And it is in there that whoever edited that piece had a quote from Barack Obama that distances him. He is distancing himself from the anti-war movement. So that is interesting. Me putting those two together, the Barney Frank with Barack Obama, I think that maybe there is something there to pursue. SM (01:30:12): See, the book "Speaking", it is a little thin book, a great book that came out. And there is a biography on Barney Frank right now, but this is at the time he was younger. We are talking 15 years ago. It is a very good book. And I got it underlined and it is basically talking about the survival of the Democratic party. JL (01:30:27): Yeah. SM (01:30:28): And that McGovern, if you were linked to McGovern, you just simply kind of disassociated yourself with those kinds of... JL (01:30:36): I think the key word here on the view of the (19)60s that you are referring to here, I think the key word is permissiveness. That is what really bothered them. And some of that has to do with religious values. And again, things are already talked about, the instability unpredictability. I mean, those are almost antonyms or predictability antonym for permissiveness. You can kind of see those things. But there is a gender component too, to this permissiveness part of it that I think is important. The idea that maleness, that masculinity is about discipline, whereas the female side of the culture is more permissive. It is more fluid. It is more free ranging. And that we lost the war in Vietnam and America is losing its way because we have lost our focus. We have lost our discipline. And it is the quote unquote "feminine" in the culture that has percolated to the surface and did so big time during the war in Vietnam. And so what really cost us was culture. And of course that the culture was- SM (01:32:15): We all know what the pill did. And women had brought that up, this pill. It is crucial for women. And to deny that what was happening in the (19)60s was not happening in the (19)50s and the forties... Not the people that I knew. (01:32:37): Want to take a break here, Chris? (01:32:37): Where are we going on this one? This looks like... SM (01:32:37): Here we go. SM (01:32:53): This next question deals with the healing. I took a group of students to Washington DC in 1995 to see Senator Edmond Musky and the students and I came up with this question that they wanted to ask him based on the divisions that they saw on video. They were not alive in 1968 of the police and the students hitting each other. And they knew about the assassinations that year, Bobby and Martin Luther King. They knew that the president had resigned and they saw the burnings in the cities and so forth. So the question they wanted to ask is, do you feel that the boomer generation or that generation that was reared after World War II and was shaped by those first 20 to 30 years of the life and the divisions between those who supported the war and those who were against the war, those who supported the troops and were against the troop, blacks against whites, gays against straights, men against women, and all the other isms that we saw at that time. Do you think that because of all the tremendous divide that was happening in the Stratton atmosphere on every side that the boomer generation is going to go to its grave, like the civil War generation not healing? And I will tell you what must be said after I get your response. This is a whole issue of healing. And this is a lot of what I was going to talk to Dr. Lifton about, because he has written about healing with respect as the survivor concept and the whole concept of guilt and things like that. JL (01:34:44): Well, I think the notion of healing is kind of mythical because it is an idea that American society was- SM (01:34:55): No, that is that side. Oh, here we go. Wait a minute... Now that is the other side. It is an hour and a half, I am going to do this. I only started using two tapes in the last six interviews because somebody said if something happened to one, so... Go right ahead. JL (01:35:17): The notion of healing presumes that the society was, that there was a oneness or unity to the society. SM (01:35:28): Hold on one second, let us see which one. There is a... I guess that is... It has got to be here because I put the tape in here. SM (01:35:42): Very good. All right. Sorry. JL (01:35:48): The notion of healing presumes that there was a oneness or a unity to the society to begin with. And I think that the nine... Maybe some people coming out of the 1950s, maybe growing up in the 1950s, and I say it was only maybe, right, might have had that kind of illusion or an illusionary sense of America that was not already divided racially speaking or class wise. A lot of people of my age would remember Michael Harrington's book, "The Other America", is that what it was called? SM (01:36:39): Yes. That was the one Kennedy was in for... JL (01:36:42): A re-discovery, right, of poverty in America that had been there all along, but which a lot of things in the 1950s had sort of masked the presence of. People did not see it. So I guess what I am getting at here is that the notion of healing or the Boomer generation or (19)60s generation needing to heal has never been part of my thinking at all. Not at all. So will we heal or will we not heal? I guess I would be inclined to say that that is a wrong question. I mean, heading down that road probably is not going to produce anything that is very useful. SM (01:37:27): Somebody said that it might have been a better question by saying, simply put, those who served in the war and those who protested the war, whether they were going to be able to come to be, because certainly the wall was built to try to heal the Vietnam generation that served in Vietnam. And Jan Scruggs wrote "To Heal a Nation", that was his book. It was not only to heal the veterans and their families in a non-political way, but as he hoped would help heal the nation over this war that seemed to divide us so much. JL (01:38:05): Well, I have never felt like that there was a big divide between those who fought the war and those who opposed the war. I think that by the late (19)60s that there was a lot of mutuality between those two groups and large numbers of Vietnam veterans were coming home opposed to the war themselves. Some of them joined the anti-war movement. So I think the reality is one of more solidarity and unity than there is a wound between the two that needs to be healed. I do not think there is a lot of healing that needs to be done. Now on the margins, certainly there are people who came home from Vietnam, still very pro-war and very hostile to the anti-war movement. Chris Appy in his book "Working Class War" writes about that. More hostility that way than from the anti-war movement towards Vietnam veterans. Although again, on the margin, right, on the outer margin, I have heard some expressions from people who say that they were part of the anti-war movement and bad feelings towards people who fought the war. There was some of that. I do not know how much of that surfaced during the war years itself. I am not aware that it did. But in retrospect, there is some of that. But I think that is pretty marginal. SM (01:39:55): Musky did not even respond to 1968. I thought students thought he was going to talk about what was happening in the streets of Chicago and the divisions. He did not even mention it. His comment was, and he kind of gave a melodramatic pause, looked like he had a tear in his eye too, and he said, "We have not healed since the Civil War over the issue of race." And then he just simply commented that, and he had just seen the Civil War series with Ken Burns and it had touched him because 430 bows of people had died in that war. Almost an entire generation of men. So that is what he was referring to. The Boomer generation. Do you like the term or is... Do you like the term the Boomer generation? JL (01:40:40): No. As a sociologist, no. I think it is kind of meaningless. I think it is too broad. I mean, even the arguments go on about how to date it, right? SM (01:40:53): Yeah. It is supposed to be (19)46 to (19)64, but some people do not like Boomers also do not like the Greatest Generation. They do not like Generation X. Millennials... JL (01:41:06): I am a sociologist. And one of my favorite sociologists is Karl Mannheim, who wrote a book called "The Problem of Generations." And he wrote that generations are in some sense about chronology and time, but they are also about politics and ideology and culture. And so people born at very different times can be part of the same generation, culturally speaking. And I find that to be a very powerful insight. So young people who were active against the war in the late 1960s had a lot in common with people much older than them who were part of the anti-fascist movement of the 1930s and the 1940s, or who were union organizers in the 1930s. And likewise today as a college professor, occasionally I meet students who are very young. They are in their twenties today, but they strike me as people who would have fit in comfortably with people of my own age. Or we could go out and have dinner tonight, and it would not be as though they are 22 and they are with a bunch of people who are 65. Right? It would be a very free flowing conversation there. So those are some of my thoughts on generations. SM (01:42:44): It is interesting that some of the people within the Boomer generation, and I know I do not like, I am starting to not like the term either, but is that they thought they were the most unique generation of history because they felt, and I know this from talking when I was in college, we were going to change the world. We are going to make it better. We are going to end racism, sexism, homophobia, and bring peace. Nothing will ever be the same. That was kind of an attitude. Maybe it was kind of naive, hopeful, what is the term I want to use? But not realistic. So when you hear people within the generation say, we were the most unique, how do you respond to that as a sociologist? JL (01:43:25): I do not hear people say that very often. SM (01:43:27): I mean, when they were young, did you ever hear anybody? JL (01:43:30): No. SM (01:43:31): No? JL (01:43:31): Not that I remember. No-no-no-no. SM (01:43:35): Well, there was that... I went to Bingham tonight, a few students that you were saying about that. What the thing here too is something that Phyllis Schlafly said to me while I interviewed her, and David Horowitz has written about in his books, and that is the troublemakers of the (19)60s, probably making reference to the new left, run today's universities and are in charge of the curriculum. They run the women's studies, the gay studies, the Holocaust studies, the Native American studies, Latin American studies, black Studies, environmental Studies, and Asian American studies. Basically, they run it all. And it is not the way people thought back because they are not conservatives in any way. So just your thoughts on that the troublemakers of the (19)60s run today's universities? JL (01:44:24): He might be right that they run all of those programs, but they do not run the universities. I mean that is sort of the whole and part kind of thing. The whole is larger than the sum of the parts. You know what I mean? You got people running all these specific programs. But in some... I mean, again, as a sociologist speaking of this, it might be the very fact that liberals run these programs that insulates the people at the top who really run. There is a compartmentalizing that goes on, a divide and conquer. I think in some ways when it comes down to budgeting and those kinds of things- SM (01:45:16): I worked at Westchester and there is only two faculty members that are willing to admit they are conservative, and one of them is very big. JL (01:45:24): Well, liberal is different than left too. SM (01:45:27): Yes. JL (01:45:27): That is another thing. I quite commonly say to students when it comes up in classes that the colleges are run by centris, right? SM (01:45:38): A la Bill Clinton. JL (01:45:40): And it is not. People on the right and people on the left are a minority in the college and university system, and we are tolerated. Both the right and the left are tolerated. The center is quite large, quite powerful. And most administrators, in my view, come out of the center. They are pretty tolerant, which I think is a characteristic of centris, but that is different than left. SM (01:46:14): Yeah. Although left could run these programs though. JL (01:46:18): Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Absolutely. SM (01:46:20): In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end? JL (01:46:26): I do not know if I have anything unique to say about that. Anything that... SM (01:46:36): A year, an event that you think started the (19)60s or... And when did it end? Was there a specific event and what was the watershed moment? JL (01:46:46): When did it end? On that, the one thing I would say on that is, I do not know. I think it just bled away. I do not know. Those years I lived through self- consciously, quite self-consciously. And I do not know, I would be very reluctant even to try to think about- SM (01:47:11): Beginnings and ends? JL (01:47:12): Beginnings and ends. SM (01:47:13): How about the watershed moment? Is there something that "This is a (19)60s..." Or actually, "This is when Boomers were young." And... JL (01:47:23): Yeah... SM (01:47:26): Same thing? JL (01:47:27): Same thing. And I think that has to do with my biography. I think the way I lived that period of time, I think makes me not a good... I know you are not looking for a source on that, that is not the point. But I did not have the consciousness coming through those periods to think in those kinds of terms. SM (01:47:53): How important were The Beats in shaping the attitudes of the (19)60s? Because they were in the (19)50s and they were the group that oftentimes was looked at as the beginning of non-conformity- JL (01:48:04): Conformists and the hippies. SM (01:48:06): And intellectuals who are not going to be part of the status quo. JL (01:48:12): Well, somehow or other they did. The Beats influenced me as a kind of nonconformist intellect. I think my own coming to self-consciousness as an intellectual was influenced. Some of the first poetry I ever read period was Ginsberg, and that is The Beats. And so that is important. SM (01:48:45): His poem Howl was banned in 1955 from schools. JL (01:48:51): Yeah. SM (01:48:51): [inaudible] JL (01:48:53): Yeah. And going to City Lights Bookstore and the old Midnight Special Books when it was in Venice. SM (01:49:06): I was in the Bay Area for a while and I never went to City Lights. I do not know where the heck I was, but... JL (01:49:09): Those were important. Those were kind of pilgrimages for me. Well, when I was in graduate school in Oregon and just kind of beginning to find myself, to me those were "wow" moments. SM (01:49:23): Yeah. Ferlinghetti still runs the City Lights Bookstore. It is amazing. He is 92. JL (01:49:29): I would like to go there with Hanoi Jane. SM (01:49:32): I bet you-you can get there. JL (01:49:33): It could be... SM (01:49:34): Just, I think all you have to do is contact, because I know that Paul Krassner has been there many times. Do you know Paul? JL (01:49:44): I know who he is. I have never met him. SM (01:49:44): Yeah, he has led me on to some good interviews. We are getting close to the end here, but this is an important one too. In your own words, describe the America that you see during the times that Boomers have been alive. Now I know, let us just forget the term Boomer, but the generation that grew up after World War II. And as Boomers age, and Boomers are now 64 years old, the oldest ones and 48, the youngest ones. So there is no spring chickens any more within the Boomer generation. And also, they now realize the concept of mortality that they are not going to live forever. But I am just going to mention these years and just give me a few thoughts. Nothing in light, just immediate reaction. 1946 to 1960, what does that mean to you? JL (01:50:35): Post-World War II America, riding the wave of victories in World War II and global respect, supremacy, domination, to use kind of pejorative terms, but riding the wave of success and victory. SM (01:51:05): 1961, this is the period when Kennedy started, to 1970? JL (01:51:20): Second wave, new Deal. The New Deal comes into its own. SM (01:51:33): 1971 to 1980, the (19)70s? JL (01:51:40): A retreat, the beginning of the downside. SM (01:51:48): Do you also believe that when you define the (19)60s, you really, the first three to four years of the (19)70s are the (19)60s too? Because (19)70, (19)71, and (19)72 and half of (19)73 were still the (19)60s. So just like you cannot put generations, sometimes you cannot put decades. JL (01:52:07): Right. No, I would agree with-with that. Although as the war and the anti-war movement began to fade in or decline in importance during those years, the counterculture begins really to come into its own, begins to gain dominance, gain influence. SM (01:52:38): How about 1981 to 1990? JL (01:52:43): Oh, the retrenchment, pessimism, loss of optimism, reaction. SM (01:53:01): Conservatives might say, we are back. That is what Ronald Reagan used to say. JL (01:53:07): Yeah. SM (01:53:08): And President Bush said the Vietnam syndrome is over. I do not think it was, but when you look at 1991 to 2000, the year of Bush and Clinton, what do you think of in that decade? JL (01:53:26): The beginning of a new Cold War against the Arab world, the Islamist world, or some... Yeah, a new war period. SM (01:53:42): And then that 2001 to 2010 with George Bush II and now President Obama, that decade? JL (01:53:54): The decade of fear. SM (01:53:54): Terrorism. JL (01:53:56): Terrorism, fear. Yeah. SM (01:54:00): Now, terrorism was also part of the (19)80s with taking over of airplanes, and it was kind of evolving. And of course you had the Olympics in 72 where the terrorists came in. So you saw some signs and things were coming. What do you think of Boomers will do in their remaining years? A lot of people think that they are going to change the retirement. They have still got 15 to 20 years left because a lot of them have taken care of themselves. They will live longer, particularly females. Think you expect anything from them? I do not. JL (01:54:36): You do not? I do. SM (01:54:38): Yeah. JL (01:54:38): I expect reforms in healthcare. Elder care. Jane Fonda's new book, new project is on aging. And Fonda has always been on, I do not know, the cutting edge or she has always had a sense of what was going on. And that is not to predict that she is right. Again, that, that is not my point. But Fonda, as a public face of that generation of people and this age group that you are talking about here, I think that that is promising. I kind of bond as a bell weather of where our generation might go. SM (01:55:40): It is interesting. Dennis Hopper just passed away. He had that ad on tv, but you guys have got to plan because you are going to live a lot longer. That ad was under quite a time and he was kind of a symbolic of a generation, even though he is a little older and now he has passed on, you do not see the ads anymore. A question on the books of the period, there is three books I wanted to ask you on. SM (01:56:03): On the books of the period, there is three books I wanted to ask you on, seeing if they were good books or you read them and they were right on, or a piece of junk, basically. Theodore Roszak's book, The Making of a Counterculture. Did you ever read it and what did you think of it? JL (01:56:18): Sure. One of the books that educated me about the counterculture. I read it in graduate school when I was trying to understand the counterculture and what it was. I knew the counterculture through books like that more than I knew through participation in the counterculture. SM (01:56:40): How about The Greening of America by Charles Reich? JL (01:56:43): Read it. SM (01:56:45): Seen to be a classic book. JL (01:56:47): Oh, my. Gosh, it is so important for me, but I am at a loss for words to say what that was, because it was so long ago and I have never talked about it. I do not think I have... I have never heard that title. SM (01:57:05): Those two books are very influential to me too, and they were powerful. JL (01:57:09): But I do not remember how and why. SM (01:57:11): They were required in grad school to read. I interviewed Daniel Bell, the great associate from Harvard, and I asked him about these two books. He said, "They are terrible books. They do not have any ideas in them," because he is... Then I asked him, "Well, how about Eric Erickson's books?" because they are also very good, and the one... Oh, come on, Steve. Kenneth Keniston. He said Kenneth Keniston's books- JL (01:57:38): Youth and Rebellion. SM (01:57:43): Yeah, those were good. They were good. And then the other one was The Culture of Narcissism, which a lot of people... Christopher Lasch. JL (01:57:49): Yes. Yes-yes-yes. SM (01:57:50): That is where a lot of the Boomers were heading or whatever. JL (01:57:53): A lot where they were heading, uh-huh. All these are... SM (01:58:00): I am down to my last... Do you have five minutes more? JL (01:58:04): Sure. SM (01:58:07): These are just real fast responses to... This is what I did yesterday with Dr. Baxendale. And quick, real fast responses. What do you think of these people, or this? What do you think about The Wall, the Vietnam Memorial? Just a quick... JL (01:58:23): Do not like it, did not like it. Did not like it, do not like it. SM (01:58:30): In what way in particular do not you like it? JL (01:58:33): It evokes wrong feelings. It makes Vietnam veterans the victims of the war and shifts the sentiments away from the Vietnamese as being victims of our aggression. That is it. SM (01:58:59): What do you think of Kent State and Jackson State? JL (01:59:06): One thing I have never been clear on is whether they belong in the same sentence. I just do not know, because I do not know... Jackson State, I have never quite been able to get a fix on what that was about. SM (01:59:19): 10 days later [inaudible]- JL (01:59:20): 10 days later. Was it? SM (01:59:23): Yeah, it was. JL (01:59:25): Somewhat... SM (01:59:28): At Kent State, they have made an effort to make sure that when they could do their remembrance, that they conclude them both and they bring speakers in from both. Because it was a loss no one... Whenever I talk about Kent State, so predominantly white campus and black campus, they did not talk about it. There was also Orangeburg too, earlier on. JL (01:59:45): I wrote a large piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education this spring. I do not know if you saw this- SM (01:59:49): No, I did not. JL (01:59:49): ...if you know about that. Yeah, it was the cover. It was a cover story. There was the weekly insert. SM (01:59:59): Oh, yes, I know. I know. JL (02:00:00): It is very good. And my piece was the cover piece, April 26th edition, I think, of it. SM (02:00:09): And what was that on? JL (02:00:09): On Kent State. SM (02:00:11): Oh, really? JL (02:00:12): Yeah. The title of it is The Times, They Changed. The point of it was why is there so much quiescence on American campuses today, 40 years after Kent State? And what I was saying, it was not the students. It was not the students, it was the times. Sociologically. You know what I am saying? The times made the students then. The times today are making the students now. SM (02:00:46): Very good point. JL (02:00:47): With an emphasis on the management of higher education, the administration of higher education, and the proliferation of a lot of those programs that you mentioned is part of that. A lot of those programs came out of that time period. And the effect of a lot of those programs is a cooling out effect. It is to say would be activists, "Here, you have got your program, you have got your budget, you have got your offices, now get to work." And that has worked. And the thing that is worked better than any is study abroad programs. SM (02:01:33): No, they are good. Yeah, I know. Every student I know is doing it. Every student, for at least one semester, and I wish I had done it. JL (02:01:41): Usually their junior year. But it completely fractures campus politics. It completely fractures political organization on campus. SM (02:01:52): As well as the amount of work they have to do to survive. They got to work so they do not have time for other things. JL (02:01:58): Do not have time for other things. So all of that is in there. SM (02:02:02): A few more and then we are done. I find it interesting that the women nurses that were murdered in 1989 up in Canada, that the Women's Center will now have annual events just about on every campus in remembrance of those female students, think 11 or 12, yet universities have never remembered Kent State, ever. And they tried to not remember it at Kent State, but now it is [inaudible] you go back. And the [inaudible] University, the (19)60s was the homecoming theme a year ago. And I would have nothing to do with it, because I was there. They were making it look like everything was happy, rock and roll. And yeah, there is a lot of good, happy remembering times, but I think they were taking away from the serious parts of that particular thing. JL (02:02:51): Last... SM (02:02:52): Go ahead. JL (02:02:53): Well, last summer at this time, (20)09, 40th anniversaries of Woodstock were all over the US News media. Everybody was talking about Woodstock and, "Were your parents at Woodstock?" Huge big deal. What, three months later, 40th anniversary of the October moratorium. Not a word. Not a word. November moratorium of (19)69. Not a word. Very little leading up to Kent State, 40th anniversary of Kent State. There was not much. Kent State came very close, the 40th anniversary came very close to going with no attention. SM (02:03:43): See, I have been there the last four years at the events, and if it was not for the [inaudible] of the world and the people pushing on that student organization, which is about 15 people... JL (02:03:53): The piece I started to write on Kent State was, I was going to start out with Woodstock and compare 40th... SM (02:04:00): Most of my interviews have been long because of... Anyway. JL (02:04:15): Yeah. SM (02:04:18): How much time do you have? JL (02:04:19): I really should... As quickly as possible, we should wrap up. SM (02:04:22): Just real fast, just say one or two words. Free speech movement. JL (02:04:32): Well, very, very important as a run-up to the anti-war movement. SM (02:04:44): Freedom Summer. JL (02:04:45): I was not part of it. I knew it was happening. SM (02:04:55): Seemed to be a great education vehicle for many of the activists down the road. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which is Dr. King's big thing that he came to prominence. Any thoughts on Emmett Till? JL (02:05:08): These are all things, the civil rights movement. I knew about it through the news, but did not have any involvement in it. SM (02:05:15): The March on Washington (19)63? JL (02:05:17): No. SM (02:05:18): How about 1968 as a year? What are your thoughts on the year? JL (02:05:22): Oh, well, I got drafted. I got drafted in 1968. My dad died in 1968. 1968 was a keystone year, a watershed year for me. SM (02:05:33): These other events, Chicago Eight trial, the Gulf of Tonkin... Well, that was (19)64. And Tet, which was a major- JL (02:05:42): Well, I got drafted because of Tet. I started paying attention probably with Tet that year. SM (02:05:50): These are two things that we are not very proud of as Americans, and that is My Lei and Attica. Just your comments on those two. JL (02:06:00): Attica, I followed quite closely. It was shortly after I got home from Vietnam, I am thinking, right? Was 1970, (19)71? SM (02:06:10): Yeah. And that is Governor Rockefeller. JL (02:06:12): Yeah. Yeah. Also, I was in graduate school, and what was then known as the Radical Criminology movement was quite powerful, on the West Coast anyway, because of the crim school in Berkeley. And so I started following criminology issues and crime issues quite a lot. My Lei was important because I had been to Vietnam and [inaudible]- SM (02:06:48): Clicking all day long here. This the last. Yeah, that is the last on that one. Okay, good. He has done. I am retiring him. I will not go over any more of these. There is quite a few. You can see I have quite a few here, and I am not going to go over these. The last question is when the best history books and sociology books are written when the Boomer generation has passed on. I say this because I drive to Gettysburg 10 times a year. I go to the battlefield to understand what it was like for that tremendous loss of what war's all about. And they have a statue there of the last man who participated in the Civil War. He died in 1924. I always sit there and I say, "Geez, the last person who was in the Civil War died in 1924." The books are carrying the message on. So the question I am asking, what will be the legacy of this generation that grew up after World War II in the history books, once they are long gone? JL (02:07:59): I think it is going to be a positive legacy. It is going to be positive. I think the legacy will be building on the best of what came out of the Greatest Generation. SM (02:08:19): Yeah, it is interesting because we are the kids of the Greatest Generation. JL (02:08:23): Yeah. Yeah. I think the Boomer generation might be the best and most important product of the Greatest Generation. SM (02:08:32): It is interesting because you told me already how important your parents were, and I know how important my parents were. So when we are critical of the (19)50s for all the things we have discussed about the things behind the scenes that were happening, I do not blame my parents. My parents did everything in their lives to give me the happiness and health, and devoted their lives to their kids. Do you feel the same way? JL (02:09:00): Well, see, I do not think I have said along the way, in fact, I maybe sort of implied that I... In fact, I said the (19)50s for me was a time of hope and promise and optimism. That was my (19)50s. SM (02:09:19): And that was my (19)50s. JL (02:09:23): I think because of my parents, and they were products of the thirties and the forties. So I think that is where I am. That is where I am. I know that my (19)50s was not everybody's (19)50s, right? SM (02:09:43): Yeah. Certainly African-Americans and certainly women, in some respects, although some women did have a happy 1950s because they were expected to be mothers. And very few, they ended up being teachers, but they all were expecting to be married by a certain age and raise kids. They did not think of other things until all these movements happened, and a lot of the people in the (19)50s really did not start thinking about these things until the (19)60s. But I do not think they ever blamed their parents, in most respects. Well, thank you very much. When I go to the Vietnam Memorial, and I have gone now since 1994 in honor of Lewis Puller, the one thing about... Speaker 3 (02:10:24): Hey. SM (02:10:26): Hey, how you doing? Speaker 3 (02:10:26): All right. Hey. Hi, Jerry. JL (02:10:28): Hi. SM (02:10:29): Let me see now. The people they dislike the most are still Jane Fonda, because you see the stickers they sell about Jane Fonda, the decals that they wear on their clothes. They did do not like McNamara, because a couple times I have been to The Wall and they had actually had McNamara's book there with bullet holes through it. And they did not like Bill Clinton. JL (02:10:56): They are not going to do that to my book. SM (02:11:00): No. And they did not like Bill Clinton when he came there. There was some booing, some of them booing because he did not... So there was that kind of thing. There is still that strong animosity toward Jane Fonda, and Lewis Puller and Jan Scruggs, and I think the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund have done a great job in terms of trying to do their best to heal from the divisions in America by bringing Bill Clinton to The Wall and bringing some others. I often ask the vets if they brought Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, what kind of reception they would get, although probably they would not do it, number one. If McNamara was alive, would he ever have had the courage to go there now, just to protect them? But I do not know if you have any other thoughts on anything I was saying or... JL (02:11:57): The only thought is that it is... I thought where you were maybe leading with this, is why do people like this hang on? I think it is a lost war phenomenon. It is what happens after a war is lost. People have a hard time letting go of it. They want it to come out differently. Lifton would be the one to talk about sort of collective trauma. So cultural expressions come from that and the people who then are held responsible for the loss of the war are not let go of in those memories. Those things hang on. They become hang-ups, in a sense, and people cannot get beyond those. And World War I, it is not quite like Vietnam, but the outcome of it is not conclusive like World War II is. First of all, it is not a very popular war in the United States, World War I. A lot of dissent. SM (02:13:15): Very short too. JL (02:13:16): It is short. A lot of dissent. And then 12 years or so after the end of the war, you got the Depression, and World War I veterans are still looking for their bonus pay and so forth. That all gets scuttled by the Hoover administration, so you have veterans marching on... So their sense of themselves as veterans and the controversy surrounding that, the controversy surrounding the war, the nature of the war, then causes them to think about what they did in the war, what happened to them in the war. And then, 10 years after the war, they are still living their lives as veterans yet, because they are looking for the bonus payments and so forth. So there is a messy post-war period after World War I, not after World War II, but it is pretty cut and dried. SM (02:14:24): GI Bill. JL (02:14:24): War is over, people come home, the GI Bill. The country moves on. America into its glory days. Vietnam, again, the post-war legacy of Vietnam, very much more like World War I. It is messy. SM (02:14:40): Then you had the blip of the Korean War, some people say the lost war, and they did not get a whole lot either. JL (02:14:49): Well, Korea sort of gets subsumed, I think, in World War II culture. People are still looking at World War II movies and watching Victory at Sea on television. SM (02:15:11): Victory at Sea. That is another thing that you grew up in as Boomers. JL (02:15:14): Boy, we sure did. SM (02:15:15): [inaudible] television, and that guy with a voice and... JL (02:15:20): All right, I got [inaudible]- SM (02:15:21): I am going to take four more pictures and you are out of here. I know you probably do not like taking a picture of your book, but I am going to... And then I have a mannequin of Jane Fonda. I am going to bring it out here. Sorry. There we go. Get that closer in there. You going to talk to Jane at all? Do you talk to her at all? JL (02:15:45): No. No, I do not. SM (02:15:47): There you go. Ready. JL (02:15:51): Have emailed a little bit. SM (02:15:54): Here we go. I am going to take a picture right here. Right at one. Two. And the last one but not least. Ready? Three. JL (02:16:06): This is for the before and after? SM (02:16:08): Yeah. You look a little more tired. Ready. That is it. Very good. JL (02:16:15): All right. SM (02:16:19): Well, thank you very much. Pleasure meeting you. JL (02:16:21): My pleasure. SM (02:16:23): I hope you do another myth book. Are you thinking of doing another myth book? JL (02:16:29): I am not. No. I am thinking of doing whatever I can to make this book successful still and get out of it everything that can be gotten out of it. One idea that some theaters are interested in, I have got one planned now and two others, the Fonda films that I use in this book, the idea would be a mini-series, maybe done over one long weekend or over a few weekends, and then me talk about why I think those films work the way they do in the culture, the way I write about them in the book here. There is two or three theaters, small community independent theaters, that are interested in doing that. So it is things like that that I want to do before I move on to something else. SM (02:17:27): Ever thought of going out with Jane? I mean, maybe do two or three... She probably charges an arm and a leg, but she is so rich she does not need the money. But going to a place like the Ritz Theater in Philadelphia. The Ritz Theater is the one, The Most Dangerous Man In America, which was the film on Daniel Ellsberg. JL (02:17:46): Great film. SM (02:17:46): The William Kunstler movie that the daughter came and spoke at the Ritz Theater in Philly. I know there is also a really good theater at Kent State, which is the Kent State Theater, which is really... This kind of stuff would go over well there, because they have a big following from the remembrance and everything. JL (02:18:06): I would love to. Any chance that I could have to do something programmatically with Fonda and the book and films I think is just a terrific idea. I think what it needs is a venue. SM (02:18:21): I know Dr. Greene. I only got to know him because of my dad before he died, was an athlete there. And Dr. Greene is the main historian at Cazenovia College. Got a book coming out on the (19)60s. Now he is kind of a conservative guy. But I am trying to talk to them about where I am going to donate all my stuff, my archives and stuff. And in my parents' honor. Everything is for my parents, because I love them desperately. He is bringing in James Kunen, who wrote The Strawberry Statement. So I could talk to him, because he does the interviews. So you might be a good person to come in and talk about Hanoi Jane. If I was still working at the universities, I would probably be bringing you in in a minute, but I am not there anymore. So I might mention your name to Dr. Greene in August. I am going to be up there just before Labor Day. And I am interviewing Minnie Bruce Pratt. I do not know if you know her. She is at Syracuse University, a distinguished professor. I am interviewing her and then I am going to go over there. But there is a lot about this, and I think the way you write this, it really can appeal to young people. And movies, doing it through the movies is how a lot of young people... Today we did a movie series and we discussed what the movie meant. And we get people there. We link to the academic classroom. So I think there is a lot here. And she reinvents herself many times in her life, and she also has an unbelievable sense of humor. I have seen her on TV. She is a very serious person when it gets to politics, but I am telling you, she also has a great sense of humor. JL (02:20:10): Yeah. I saw the serious side of her, the time that I spent with her. A real no bullshit kind of person. SM (02:20:20): What is amazing is that relationship with Tom Hayden. I can understand the Ted Turner one. I can understand the vet, Roger Vadim. I do not understand the Tom Hayden one. Tom Hayden, historically, everybody respects him as an activist and a great writer, assertive and everything, but he has not good with women. I have had several people say that they admire him as an activist and what he has done with his life, but in terms of how he treats women, it is not good. JL (02:20:51): Turns out his, I think, still current wife, Barbara is her name... I met Barbara when Barbara was in high school in Vancouver, British Columbia, when I was up there, mini tour with my first book, One Union In Wood, on the wood products industry. I had interviewed a then older guy up there. It is kind of serendipitous now, but she was there in this bar where I was with these other folks. A couple years ago, I was back in Vancouver for a memorial service for this older guy, and Hayden came to that with Barbara. And she said to me, she said, "I bet you do not remember me, do you?" And I said, "No." And then she told me where we had met. SM (02:21:55): Oh, my God. JL (02:21:56): And I had a great time with Hayden. SM (02:21:58): Oh, he is great, and he is great to talk to. JL (02:22:01): He is so [inaudible]. SM (02:22:03): He sits down like this and... That is the Hayden that I like to remember. That is the one I always want to remember. JL (02:22:10): I just love the guy. SM (02:22:12): Yeah. I guess he is just struck some of the women the wrong way. And I am not saying that Fonda criticism, but some of the feminists have known some of the things he has done. So they do not consider him a, what is that word, a big supporter of women, I guess, in the long run. JL (02:22:37): All right, my friend. SM (02:22:39): All right. JL (02:22:39): Got to go. SM (02:22:39): All right. Thank you. JL (02:22:40): Do you get a break before your next interview? SM (02:22:42): Yeah, I think it is at two o'clock, with Dr. [inaudible]. I have his... What time is it? JL (02:22:46): [inaudible]. SM (02:22:48): Oh yeah, half hour. Okay, great talking. JL (02:22:50): All right, good talking to you. SM (02:22:51): Yep. Have a safe trip back. JL (02:22:53): Thank you. Thank you. SM (02:22:54): And I will be emailing you, and maybe we can have a three-way conversation with Jane Fonda. JL (02:23:02): I am going to be... Well, I am not sure actually. I may be in Philadelphia [inaudible]. SM (02:23:12): If you are, let me know, because I am working on the book. I will be hibernating then, doing transcribing and... JL (02:23:16): Maybe get together. SM (02:23:16): Yeah. JL (02:23:16): Okay. All right. Bye. SM (02:23:16): Bye. Have a good day. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Jerry Lembcke Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lembcke, Jerry, 1943- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource College teachers; Sociologists; Lembcke, Jerry, 1943--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Jerry Lembcke is an associate professor emeritus of Sociology at Holy Cross University. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Oregon. He is the author of <em>The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam</em>&nbsp;and <em>Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies of Betrayal</em>. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-07-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.77a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.77b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 144:35 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/f5b12b2193da3fdb68f6419062813d38.jpg be259606999cd012aebcb8930e097d65 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/fd4af6a03cc2f675ba22f6b027f5adf5.mp3 2e013455ee4873327adc67123e91c546 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2003-07-30 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Jim Hilty Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Biographical Text <span data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13059,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,16777215],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}" data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.&quot;}"><span data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13059,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,16777215],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}" data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.&quot;}"><span data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13059,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,16777215],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}" data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.&quot;}">Dr. James Hilty is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. His early career centered on four years in the U.S. Marines (1958-1963) and several years as a history teacher in the Columbus, Ohio school district. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. Dr. Hilty is author of&nbsp;<em>Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector</em>, <em>John F. Kennedy: An Idealist Without Illusion</em>, and <em>Temple University: 125 Years of Service to Philadelphia, the Nation, and the World</em><span data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13059,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,16777215],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}" data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.&quot;}"><span data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13059,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,16777215],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}" data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.&quot;}">. </span></span><span data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13059,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,16777215],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}" data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.&quot;}">He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia.</span></span></span></span><span data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13059,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,16777215],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}" data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.&quot;}"><br /></span> Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;The nineteen sixties; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; Pentagon Papers; Richard Nixon; Jane Fonda; Vietnam War; War draft; pacifists; Anti-War Movement; Marijuana.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:513,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;12&quot;:0}">The nineteen sixties; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; Pentagon Papers; Richard Nixon; Jane Fonda; Vietnam War; War draft; pacifists; Anti-War Movement; Marijuana.</span> Subject LCSH College teachers; Temple University; Historians—United States; Hilty, Jim--Interviews Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 124:13 Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource interview with Dr. Jim Hilty Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hilty, Jim ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource College teachers; Temple University; Historians—United States; Hilty, Jim--Interviews Description An account of the resource <span data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13059,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,16777215],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}" data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.&quot;}">Dr. James Hilty is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. His early career centered on four years in the U.S. Marines (1958-1963) and several years as a history teacher in the Columbus, Ohio school district. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. Dr. Hilty is author of&nbsp;<em>Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector</em>, <em>John F. Kennedy: An Idealist Without Illusion</em>, and <em>Temple University: 125 Years of Service to Philadelphia, the Nation, and the World</em>. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia.</span><span data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:13059,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,16777215],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}" data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. James Hilty is is a Professor Emeritus in History and the former Dean of Ambler College at Temple University. Dr. Hilty is a well-known presidential historian with particular expertise on the Kennedy family and he also serves as a consultant on American politics for national and local media. He received his Bachelor's degree and his Master's degree in Social Studies and History from Ohio State University. Dr. Hilty received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.&quot;}"><br /></span> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003-07-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.199a: McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.199b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 124:13 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/23179c8a8baf3cc960bdbca0d862d340.mp3 67bde3bbfe236be6f80e1051611c3ced Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Broome County Oral History Project Subject The topic of the resource Broome County -- History Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Description An account of the resource The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. <br /><br />In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed.<br /><br />See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information.<br /><br /><strong>Acknowledgment of sensitive content</strong><br />Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. <span>Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community.</span> However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 2 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright&nbsp; Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer Yvonne Deligato, Former University Archivist Shandi Ezraseneh, Student Employee Laura Evans, Former Metadata Librarian Caitlin Holton, Digital Initiatives Assistant Jamey McDermott, Student Employee Erin Rushton, Head of Digital Initiatives David Schuster, Senior Director for Library Technology and Digital Strategies Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1977-1978 Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a> Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Burns, John B. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview O'Neil, Dan Date of Interview 1978-06-16 Collection Broome County Oral History Project Date of Digitization 2016-03-27 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 30:34 Minutes Streaming Audio Streaming URL <a href="https://eternity.binghamton.edu/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE55877">Interview with Dr. John B. Burns</a> Subject LCSH Burns, John B. -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Physicians -- Interviews; Elmira (N.Y.); Binghamton (N.Y.); Immunization; Vaccination; Medicaid Pediatrician; Vitanza, Dr. Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium <p><b>Broome County Oral History Project</b></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Interview with: Dr. John B. Burns</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Interviewed by: Dan O’Neil</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Date of interview: 16 June 1978</span></p> <br /> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Doctor, why don't we start out with the—you tell me your date and place of birth and the reason that you came to Binghamton and your life and experiences in the community.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: OK let’s see, I was born on June 9th 1903 in Elmira, New York and ah my Mother died 3 weeks after I was born and the reason I mention that is because she died with an embolism which is quite unusual at this day and age to have that happen. Ah I went to the schools in Elmira and graduated from Elmira Free Academy in 1922 and then I went from there I went to the University of Buffalo in the College of Arts and Science and the Medical College and I graduated from there in 1928 with an M.D. Degree and a Bachelor of Science in Medicine. Ah I interned at the Myer Memorial Hospital which at that time was called Buffalo City Hospital and ah after leaving there, I went to New York to the New York Nursery and Child's Hospital which is the oldest children’s hospital in America and it was Cornell's Pediatric Department and that’s where I did my pediatric training and after I left New York I went to Baltimore to Johns Hopkins and finished my pediatric training there at Hopkins and it was from there that I came to Binghamton in 1931. Ah you wondered why I came to Binghamton—well when I was in high school at Elmira Free Academy I used to come here to Binghamton to play football and basketball against Binghamton Central and ah I always, when every time I was at Binghamton, I always was quite impressed with the city. Ah at that time the big rivalry was between Elmira and Binghamton—ah Endicott, Vestal and Johnson City, of those weren't in it at all—it was between Binghamton Central and Elmira Free Academy.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And as I say that's the reason that I happened to come here or to think about it. When I was finishing at Hopkins, Dr. Park, who was the Professor of Pediatrics there asked me where I was going to practice and I told him I was thinking of Binghamton and he knew a Dr. Chittenden here ah who had taught him when he was a medical student at P. and S. in New York so he said, "Well I'll write to him and see what the prospects are." Of course this was at the bottom of the Depression.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And he wrote to Dr. Chittenden and I think it was Chittenden who suggested that I come up and see him and talk with him—so I came up one holiday I, I can't remember whether it was the 4th of July or Memorial Day or when it was and ah visited with him and he ah referred me to four different doctors here that I should go around and see and I went around to each one of the four of them but I didn't get any encouragement from any of them—not one. They all said, "Well if you can wait 6 years why you can probably make a go of it or not," but anyway ah I decided to come here to try it out anyway and we had some exciting times at that particular period. I tried to borrow some money from a bank in Elmira and they wouldn't loan me any and ah I finally borrowed $1500 from an uncle of mine and I went to the bank in Elmira to deposit it before transferring it to Binghamton and ah I asked them about what bank I should go to here and they said, "They're all all right, go to any of them," so the man that we rented the apartment from here at 124 Murray Street said the bank, I think it was called the Citizens Trust ah was a bank that would give you a loan easier than anybody else—so I figured that's for me, that's what I want—so I, I went down to the Citizens Trust and made arrangements to have the money transferred from Elmira and then we went to visit Marion's brother over the weekend and came back on Tuesday—was a notice on the bank that it had failed—it had gone under and ah so it's a wonder I didn't have a heart attack right there. Anyway I called Elmira and ah Elmira said that ah that they had gotten wind of it and they had held it up. We, as I mentioned, we lived at 124 Murray Street—rented an apartment there, we paid $55.00 a month and that included a garage and ah all the utilities and everything and ah Mrs. Burns finally got them to cut the rent down to $50 a month because our money was going pretty fast. At that time that I started here in Binghamton, you couldn't put an announcement in the paper that you were opening an office—it was unethical to do it nor could you—that you were moving your office anywhere I mean.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Is that right?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And now of course you can put it in which they should have allowed it anyway but you couldn't then and also we had another ah bad situation and that was that the ah telephone book had just come out so I couldn't get my name in the telephone book and of course it was ah as I said, the bottom of the Depression ah anyway I opened an office on the 25th of September 1931 and I never had a patient for the first 6 weeks and the interesting thing is that the first patient that I had came from Hancock—didn't come from from Binghamton at all. I never had more than one patient a day until the first of April, 1932 and on that day, I had four patients call me in the morning and from there on it began to break and to build up. Ah there are several interesting things about Binghamton at the time that I came here—as a matter of fact there were very few specialists—there was no one who did pediatrics exclusively—there were 3 or 4 doctors who were general practitioners who did a lot of pediatrics but none of them that just did it exclusively and other than the nose and throat men and ah the surgeons, although a great many of the surgeons ah did general practice too ah there were no specialists—they had a dermatologist here before I came but he died just before I came here.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: We had no urologist and no neurosurgeon, no dermatologist at all and no child had ever been cystoscoped here before I came here and I finally got one of the young surgeons to buy a child cystoscope and that was the first one that was ever cysticoped in this area.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns : Now of course we've got lots of urologists and ah the specialty that you need. Ah we, they had a situation at the City Hospital at that time when if you had a patient with say meningitis or scarlet fever or polio, you send it into the hospital, you lost control of it completely because this one doctor, who was a General Practitioner ah had charge of that contagious hospital.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And that irritated me quite badly because I mean I didn't see any reason why I shouldn’t be able to take care of my own ah patients with contagious disease because I’d had special training in it—so after I had been here about a year, I got ahold of this doctor one morning and I told him that ah I was going to get a lawyer and if necessary, I was going to go to court to see why it was that I couldn't go in and take care of my own patients. I think that upset him a little bit because he said, "Now if you ah just don’t say anything about it, I’ll let you take care of your patients when they go in.” Well of course it was just a question of time when the other doctors saw that I was going in, that they went in too.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And the arrangements that they had was that they had—the door was locked and the nurse had the key to it and she was the only one that could let you in or out so she knew those that had permission to go in, see, and ah but that, that was overcome. Had another interesting situation in Binghamton and that was ah the it was a great center for certified raw milk, which was ah a very excellent milk but it was raw.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And of course I had been ah brought up in the hospitals where I was in using pasteurized milk.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Ah I was even accused of using dirty milk in my patients ah when using pasteurized milk—anyway eventually this dairy who did the, made the certified milk did pasteurize their milk too so that they finally had a certified pasteurized milk and then of course eventually why pasteurization took over completely but ah, ah, ah let’s see here—Oh I one ah factor that was ah helped me quite a lot when I came here was that I did have an opportunity to give some anesthetics for ah nose and throat men and for surgical patients ah I fortunately had had some experience at that at Nursery and Child’s so while I never enjoyed giving anesthesia, I mean it did help to keep me going.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Umum.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: I also used to do quite a little lab work here ah for example if a doctor thought he had a child with an appendix and wanted a blood count done why I would go out and do the blood count for him of if they thought a child has polio, I would go out and do the lumbar puncture and examine the spinal fluid and call him back and give him the report on it.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Umum.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And I remember one very interesting ah ah day—I don't know whether this was would be interesting or not but ah there was either the 4th of July or Memorial Day ah that one of the doctors had a little girl in Lourdes that had a bloodstream infection and of course in those days you didn't have any sulfa or penicillin or any of those things, see and she had to be transfused or rather they tried to transfuse her but they didn't have anyone apparently available at that time that could do typing and crossmatching so I don't know how many hours I spent typing and crossmatching ah donors until finally we got one that they could use on the girl but it didn't do any good, she, she didn't survive anyway.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Umum—would that be the what they call the RH factor?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: No—that one was not RH. This was a septicemia bloodstream infection with a strep infection. No, the RH factor of course when I started we didn't know that RH factor—we used to call it Icterus Gravis in the newborn. We knew that it was a very serious condition and a lot of them were deaf afterwards and a lot of them were mentally defective afterwards and a number of them died.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Umum.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And it wasn't until the RD factor was discovered that we could really do something and Dr. Vitanza and I did the first exchange transfusion on one of her patients here in the city ah whether it was done, others done in the area or not, I do not know but ah it took us 7 hours to do the first exchange transfusion—now after that we got so that each individual could do it in an hour or hour and a half.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: But this child survived anyway even though it took that length of time to do it ah it was interesting in being able to practice before the advent of sulfa and penicillin because practice of medicine is entirely different after the advent of those drugs—it just made it entirely different.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Let’s see what else—in 19, I spent even three years in the service from 1942 to 1945 and ah then when I came back, there was already another pediatrician that had come in.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: But you were the first pediatrician in the area.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: I was the first ah pediatrician first one that did it exclusively and first one that was certified by the American Board of Pediatrics.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Umum.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Especially ah as you probably know, because you had to have it done when you were young, had to be vaccinated against smallpox before you could go to school—you also had to be protected against diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus and I think one of the most interesting things today is the fact that it's no longer—you do not have to be vaccinated against smallpox—smallpox has been eradicated throughout the world.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Umum.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And the same thing will probably happen with polio if they can only get the people to cooperate well enough. Now of course you not only have to be inoculated against whooping cough and diphtheria and tetanus but you also have to be immunized against measles and rubella, that's 3 day measles ah mumps ah those three. Yes, measles, mumps and rubella ah they have to be done before they could go to school now. So there’s been a big advance in the immunization ah let’s see what else is there?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Now you spoke it took you almost a year to get ah started.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: That's right.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: You went from what, 6 patients or something like that you had at the end of the year.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Well, I don't, I had after my first patient, I say I never had more than one a day until April Fools Day—the last day of April.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And then I had four and from then on I didn't keep track of them. I—know one thing that when I filed my first income tax return that the Federal Government got after me and wanted to know why it was I hadn't previously filed it—they thought that there was something funny about it.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: When they found out that I had just started in practice I mean why it turned out to be all right.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh—Now when you retired, how many, how many patients did you have approximately, Doctor, that is in a year?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Oh gee I haven't any idea how many I had.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Can you figure just a guess?&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: In a year—in the course of a year?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah in the course of a year when you knew—just, just round figures. Just give you an idea how you built up your practice from nothing.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Well I know I used to work ah in the morning from—I’d give anesthetics from eight o'clock, from seven o'clock until about 8:30 and then start in the office at nine and work in the office all day and then go out and make house calls from about 8 o'clock at night ‘til midnight but I can't remember the ah when I look back now I don't see how I did it.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Gee I—Marion?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: Yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Do you have any idea—what do you mean a day how many I saw in a day or—</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: No about—you know how many patients you had in about a year’s time, you know.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: I don't have any idea.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Do you have any idea how many patients I had a year before I had to retire.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: Oh Lord no—how are you this morning?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Good, Mrs. Burns.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: Did you have a nice trip?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Very nice.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: No, John, I haven't to be honest.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: How many patients did you see on the average a day, Doctor?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: Oh—</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Would you know that?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: Get out one of your books and I'll count them up just for fun.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: No, no, just, just a guess.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Well we'd see them every fifteen minutes from 9 o’clock in the morning and take about a half hour out for lunch and finish up at 6 o'clock at night.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: If you were lucky—it usually was later than 6 o'clock at night.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: You saw one every fifteen minutes?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Yes but we worked others in between—emergencies we would have to bring in between too and inoculations I mean that we gave in between, see, so even with that, we figured 15 minutes but we had others coming in also.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah—I know you were awfully busy—your office, your waiting room was packed—we used to try and ask for the first appointment after lunch so we could get in a halfway decent hour, otherwise we had to wait 2 or 3 hours.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: (laughter) Sit there and wait—how true.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Well.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Now the—I think Doctor there's something that you ah left out—we'll see. Ah polio vaccination program, immunization program when they introduced the Salk vaccine—you participated in that program—could you tell me a little about that?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Well ah it was just the fact it was ah it was a killed vaccine and it was given by injection.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: In contradistinction to the Sabin vaccine which was given by mouth and ah course when the Salk vaccine first came out as I remember correctly, I think we discontinued our regular practice for several days and did nothing but immunize the children against polio.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yes, I know that Alice, our oldest daughter participated in that program and in other words in administering that in order to see how effective it is was or get a control on it, why you kept either they didn't know whether they were getting the real vaccine or else a placebo.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Oh we, that must have been done experimentally because we always gave the regular vaccine.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah but this was when it was first introduced.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: To see how effective it was.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: But Sabin—there was a Sabin vaccine but that was a live virus wasn’t it?&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Sabin is still live and it's a live vaccine and is given by mouth and ah of course they're both two good vaccines.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: But the Sabin is probably a little superior and much easier to administer too.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: The Sabin is.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Yes, of course just given by mouth.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: But there have been some cases of polio resulting from the Sabin vaccine.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: They're rare but there have been cases discovered and there's been just recently a case of a father who picked up polio from after his child was immunized with Sabin vaccine.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Umum, yeah, so ah you of course didn't always make house calls did you—you had to terminate those as your practice advanced didn't you?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Well I made house calls right up until after I came back from the service and of course when I came back from the service, the practice of medicine had changed considerably because the doctors weren't able to make house calls and people got in the habit of going to the doctor' s office.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: So I continued to make house calls up until I quit practice on certain instances. I mean sometimes I mean just obligated.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: But ah ah before I went into service I mean, I'd make house calls from the NOB down in Endicott up to Chenango Bridge and I've been even to Sayre, Pennsylvania to make a house call.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Gee.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Ah but I remember one down near Chemung one Sunday, of course we used to tie these up going out for a ride or something on Sunday too—we thought, “kill two birds with one stone.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: But Bingharnton has been very good to me ah I'm glad that I came here to practice—I've enjoyed it—I think Binghamton is an excellent city.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: That's good.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And ah I think I would do over again. As I say I'm certified by the American Board of Pediatrics; member of the American Academy of Pediatrics; Central New York Pediatric Club; of course the Broome County Medical Society and the State Society and the AMA. Happen to be a life member of those—also the Academy of Pediatrics ah I don't know much else that ah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Now when you retired didn't they honor you by over to Lourdes Hospital by the Maternity section over there?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Yeah, they donated ah ah incubator in my name over there it's one of the latest incubators and not only that but they gave Mrs. Sabini a pearl necklace and then they gave me this (pointing to mantle piece) over here which is worth over $300—that thing, that there.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And in addition to that they had $300 left over and ah they called and wanted to know what to, what to do with that so I suggested that they give that to Lourdes too.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Which they did—to the pediatric department.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Umum.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: When I came here of course Lourdes Hospital had no pediatric department at all. It really wasn't until after I came back from the service that Lourdes had any pediatric department to amount to anything and the one at the General is when I came here was very unsatisfactory—I mean it wasn't a good setup at all but I have in the past been head of the Pediatrics Department at both the General and at Lourdes and I did work at the General probably 90% of my 25 years over there. Now they both have excellent pediatric departments—very well run, excellent nurses and everything.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Umum.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: It’s entirely different from what it used to be.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Umum. Now of course I have to transcribe this and some of this spelling here I’d like—this Icterus Gravis, how do you spell that?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: I-C-T-E-R-U-S.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: I-C-T—</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: —E-R-U-S G-R-A-V-I-S.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Gravis, OK, and in your internship, what ah what school was it in Elmira—you went to some school there in Elmira.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Well just the Elmira Free Academy.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: But there was an intern—</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: No—interned in Buffalo.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: In Buffalo.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: At Myer Memorial Hospital.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: That was it, what was it, Elmira?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: No no Myer—M-Y-E-R.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Myer, OK.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: It was Buffalo City Hospital is what it was then—now it's the Myer Memorial Hospital.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Umum and you retired in what year Doctor?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: 1942.*</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: ‘42.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: September 13th.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Umum.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Not by choice.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Not by choice.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: No.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Unfortunately—OK well is there anything else that you’d like to add?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Well I was just trying to think whether there’s ah I’ll have to admit one thing and that is that I am sure in the 41 years that I was in practice that I saw a few miracles.&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: You saw a few miracles.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: I think, I think most doctors will tell you that they've seen some miracles too.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Is that right?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Great.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Of course we got credit for a lot of things and all that ah the Lord took care of.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Oh sure, well we know that we got to work together.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: OK Doctor, well if there isn't anything else why I’ll turn this off. Would you like me to play it back for you?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: I can 't—do you have any other questions that ah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: No I think you've covered it very well.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: At least I told you all the hard luck that we had (laughter) that you wanted, history, that's history.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Oh that, that makes it interesting because it gives you an idea in other words most of our interviews why the people starting out you know were making $3.00 a week and when people realize that you try and raise a family on $3.00 a week why they're squeaking on 20 or 30,000 incomes a year why you wonder how they ever made it.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Well, I had patients, one I’ll never forget, used to bring me a chicken. Poor old fellow he was a dirt farmer from out near Montrose and he’d bring in the skinniest, scrawniest chicken that there was but his heart was in the right place. Had another one bring in a rabbit—I’d never eaten rabbit before in my life but we were glad to get ‘em.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Oh sure.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Well another thing that we did which, I, I’m kind of sorry it isn’t that way today and that is we took care of the charity patients for nothing—like I would serve 6 months on and 6 months off at the General Hospital and ah I’ll say one thing that those charity patients got just as good care as your wealthiest patients got.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: Wonderful care. See, now with Medicaid and Medicare and all of that, that’s a thing of the past and I think sometimes it's too bad. We never got a penny for taking care of any of the charity patients from the City of Binghamton and the Town of Union used to pay us a dollar a day for the hospital calls that we made and that was the only thing that we ever got.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Is that right?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: I think ah sometimes it's just too bad that they didn't, the way it was of course welfare is so—Marion—can she listen to this when you play it back?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Sure.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: I think it's too bad the way welfare is today, I mean it’s not like it used to be.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: No, no.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: Well he used to be on call for all the welfare, so-called “welfare patients.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: That's what I said.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: There was no pay given at that time a t all.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: That's just what I told him.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: The doctors took care of them free of charge.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah, yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: And he used to be on seeing them at a time.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: 6 months.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah, yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: Never less than 4 months out of the year.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah, yeah, well things have changed an awful lot with the Medicare and Medicaid—some of them have gotten rich.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: They sure have.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah when you read about some of them that are collecting a quarter of a million dollars a year just from Medicare.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: It's ridiculous isn't it?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Isn't it?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: I have one other interesting thing that I feel pretty proud of and that is I have the smallest baby that ever lived at Lourdes—she only weighed one pound and 12 oz when she was born and she went down to one pound and 7 oz and she's graduating this June as a Registered Nurse in North Carolina.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Is that right?</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: I feel pretty, pretty proud of her. Her mother—</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marion: She's a beautiful girl.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: —was convinced, was convinced she was going to live and I was convinced as much that she wasn't going to make the grade but she did.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And the best part is she is right mentally.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Uh huh.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: And that’s the nice part, she writes to me 2 or 3 times a year and she's going to send me an invitation when she graduates.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Yeah, yeah.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: But those are things that make the practice of medicine worthwhile. I can't think of anything.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dan: Well if you can't think of anything else, Doctor, I'll turn this off and play it back for you.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Burns: OK, maybe I better not listen to it.</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">[PAUSE]</span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">*Dan: Dr. Burns would like me to make a correction in this interview—he retired in 1972, not 1942 as stated.</span></p> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. John B. Burns Subject The topic of the resource Burns, John B. -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Physicians -- Interviews; Elmira (N.Y.); Binghamton (N.Y.); Immunization; Vaccination; Medicaid; Pediatrician; Vitanza, Dr. Description An account of the resource Dr. John B. Burns talks about his birth in Elmira and how he later opened the first certified pediatrician's office in the city of Binghamton, NY. He discusses his professional achievements in exchange transfusion combatting the RH factor, how sulfa drugs , penicillin, vaccination and immunization affected the practice of medicine. He also describes the evolution of his practice and struggles with accepting little or no payment before the advent of Medicare and Medicaid. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Recording 10 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Burns, John B. ; O'Neil, Dan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978-06-16 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2016-03-27 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. Broome County Oral History Project Extent The size or duration of the resource. 30:34 Minutes https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/dc1ebb7be68e7b9a389d2f3415171a16.jpg f835e42634b348075aba1aea8f014b5d https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/30eb73dbef0da20a42a8ace0a6a8906c.mp3 7f8c1a18fe3ebfc74e4518673e2d8944 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2009-11-02 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Jonah Raskin, 1942- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Jonah Raskin is a scholar and author. Dr. Raskin gave up his teaching position at a university in order to participate in the 1970's radical counterculture movement as a freelance journalist. Raskin returned to academics in 1981 and taught media law, history of communications, film noir, and writing for newspapers, magazines, radio, and movies. He received his Bachelor's degree and Master's degree in American Literature from Columbia University. Raskin received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester with a dissertation on the mythology of imperialism. &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:7051,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:[null,2,0]},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Dr. Jonah Raskin is a scholar and author. Dr. Raskin gave up his teaching position at a university in order to participate in the 1970s radical counterculture movement as a freelance journalist. Raskin returned to academics in 1981 and taught media law, history of communications, film noir, and writing for newspapers, magazines, radio, and movies. He received his Bachelor's degree and Master's degree in American Literature from Columbia University. Raskin received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester with a dissertation on the mythology of imperialism. </span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 Microcassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 83:49 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Music; Motown; Rock and Roll; Folk Newport Folk Festival; Jazz; Vietnam War; Thelonious Monk; John Coltrane; Bob Dylan; Beatles; Soul on Ice; Feminine Mystique; Counterculture; Berlin wall; Vietnam memorial&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:16370588},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Music; Motown; Rock and Roll; Folk Newport Folk Festival; Jazz; Vietnam War; Thelonious Monk; John Coltrane; Bob Dylan; Beatles; Soul on Ice; Feminine Mystique; Counterculture; Berlin wall; Vietnam memorial</span> Subject LCSH Authors; Scholars;Journalists; College teachers; Counterculture;Raskin, Jonah, 1942--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Jonah Raskin Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Raskin, Jonah, 1942- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors; Scholars;Journalists; College teachers; Counterculture;Raskin, Jonah, 1942--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Jonah Raskin is a scholar and author. Dr. Raskin gave up his teaching position at a university in order to participate in the 1970s radical counterculture movement as a freelance journalist. Raskin returned to academics in 1981 and taught media law, history of communications, film noir, and writing for newspapers, magazines, radio, and movies. He received his Bachelor's degree and Master's degree in American Literature from Columbia University. Raskin received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester with a dissertation on the mythology of imperialism. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-11-02 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.96 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2018-03-29 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 83:49 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/3b91fb2ecf3f3e25b2f67097ddfb8e39.jpg 7ee80168ea72382994af99a9a0fc8d33 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/73e62013f7973248eaf08f6339ca5d03.mp3 12b65d907f5dfb040b48788033df4dd2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2009-11-09 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Joseph T. Cox, 1946- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Joseph T. Cox is a retired army officer, educator, author and the former headmaster of Haverford School. Cox was also an English professor at West Point. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College and a Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15105,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Dr. Joseph T. Cox is a retired army officer, educator, author and the former headmaster of Haverford School. Cox was also an English professor at West Point. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College and a Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.</span> Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 109:05 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;The nineteen sixties; Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Vietnam War; Colin Powell; Baby boom generation; Cold War; Nineteen fifties; Assassination of John F. Kennedy.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792}}">The nineteen sixties; Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Vietnam War; Colin Powell; Baby boom generation; Cold War; Nineteen fifties; Assassination of John F. Kennedy.</span> Subject LCSH Soldiers; College teachers; Cox, Joseph T., 1946--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Joseph Fox Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 23 July 1987 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:12): Testing, one, two, testing. Okay. So again, some of these are specific questions, and some are general. And I will keep looking at this, because the one time, the thing stopped. When you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, or that period of the (19)60s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? JC (00:00:33): Well, I graduated from college in 1968, so I think of the things that happened, the first thing probably is Martin Luther King's assassination. I was a senior in high school when Kennedy was assassinated, and then I had graduated from college when RFK was assassinated. But the real turning point in my head was when Martin Luther King was assassinated. It was just a kick in the gut, and just, "What is going on," kind of sense of things. I felt like we had started to slide with JFK's assassination, and you did not think it could get too much worse. And then the next two assassinations just really, I think, affected me. SM (00:01:31): Now, when you went to Vietnam and you came back home, what was the kind of America that you saw upon your return? Now, was it a welcoming America, or were you disappointed in the country that you came back to as opposed to the country when you left? JC (00:01:50): Well, I graduated in (19)68 and went off to Airborne and Ranger School, and then went to Fort Carson Fifth Infantry Division, assuming I was going to go right to Vietnam. And I remember the battalion commander called me in and said, "What do you want to do next?" And I said, "Oh, command B Company if you let me." I said, "I expect to go to Vietnam." And he said, "Well, we have got other plans." And they sent me to Germany to be a General's Aide. So I went to Germany for almost two years before, when I went to Vietnam from Germany. So, I had been out of the country, living in the country for three years. And when I came back it was totally different. I mean, I went to Germany in 1969, early (19)69, and I got back three years later. What is that? (19)71? It was just a- SM (00:02:47): (19)70s? JC (00:02:49): Late (19)71. It was just different... It seemed very, very different. And I felt alienated from that country that I came back to. I was told on the... I left Vietnam in my tan uniform, and we were told, "Going into Travis, do not wear your uniform," which made me a little bit stubborn. I just made.... I was going to wear my uniform. Nobody is going to tell me I could not wear my uniform. And I felt like people were staring at me. I felt ostracized. I thought the price of beer in the San Francisco airport was outrageous. It was probably a buck 75 or something like that. And I just felt kind of alienated to some things. And I remember that the 4th of July after I got home, I actually went down on a Gettysburg tour, and the buses that were touring Gettysburg, while Vietnam was still going on, were practically empty. But it was something I did just to kind of reconnect with soldiers and organize my thoughts about whatever. And I just felt a bit like an outsider. And as a funny piece to this, because I ended up staying in the Army for 30 years, and I am not sure why I stayed in the Army for 30 years. I could give you a lot of reasons. Probably the main reason was I enjoyed the people I worked with, and every job you have in the Army, the next job is kind of a challenge. You do not think you are really ready for it, and I liked that. But I stayed in for 30 years. And right before I was going to get out, I really had this anxiety over getting out. I could not understand it. And I reread Tobias Wolff's In Pharaoh's Army and that section where he is thinking about riding the bus and thinking about getting out of the army after he got back from Vietnam. All of a sudden, I identified with it, and I honestly thought, "Okay, this is what you were afraid of all the time. It is one reason you probably stayed in the army." And it really kind of put my mind at ease. And I retired after 30 years and a day and never looked back and felt very good about it. But it all was still connected with Vietnam, and it was all still connected with coming back to a country that had changed, seemed like that was different. And another thing that happened in coming back, all of a sudden, I had this huge passion for baseball. I could not play enough softball, I could not watch enough baseball. And I never had this passion prior to that. I liked baseball, but I did not play in high school, played little league and stuff. But I, all of a sudden, had this passion for baseball, and it was unexplainable except that I had been away from the United States. And that is when I came back, I identified baseball at the United States. It was strange. SM (00:06:13): When you went in, what college did you go to? JC (00:06:15): I went to Lafayette. SM (00:06:17): When you went to college, did you know you were going to go into the military? JC (00:06:20): No. SM (00:06:20): Or what were your goals when you first started? JC (00:06:23): Well, I grew up in Springfield, Mass. I went to Springfield Technical High School, and I thought I was going to be an engineer. I had a wonderful English teacher in high school, and he prepared me better than I realized. I got to Lafayette, I started, and I realized coming out of probably a pretty good high school, but I realized it was a lot of work in college. It was tough. And the only thing that came easy to me was writing in my English course, thanks to the guy who actually had a PhD and was teaching in a big inner city technical high school. So I ended up an English major, because I got my best grades in English, and I knew I was going to have to concentrate on something eight hours a day. And in addition to going to classes, and it turned out it was what I enjoyed. So I had no idea what I was going to do. I thought I would probably coach and teach English. When I went to Lafayette, they had mandatory ROTC. And I was in the ROTC program, and my father had been a sergeant in the Second World War, and then was a warrant officer, a full-time warrant officer in the National Guard. So, he did not make a lot of money, and the bills were piling up, college bills. And they offered a two-year ROTC scholarship at Lafayette. I think another guy and I were the first two to get the full scholarship, books, tuition fees, and a hundred dollars a month. So they paid for everything. There probably were not a lot of takers in 1965, (19)66. And I got that scholarship. And then I knew I was going to have to serve in the Army, but I wanted to serve in the Army. I wanted to go to Vietnam. I had read too much Hemingway, probably. So I had kind of a perverted sense, a perverted desire to go to war. And as I said, I graduated in 1968. I was a regular army officer and was sure I was headed to Vietnam. When I was in Vietnam, my boss was a man named Bill Reno, retired as a Lieutenant General. And in Vietnam, I was planning to get out of the Army, and General, or Major Reno, then I was a captain, asked me what I was going to do, and it was back to the same plan. "I am going to teach. I am going to go somewhere, get a Master's degree in English, teach and coach." I did not really know the prep school path, but I probably would have ended up at a prep school as an English teacher/coach. And that was always my plan. He said, "You can do that in the Army." I said, "Oh, I doubt that." And he said, "No, you can." And he paved the way, and I ended up going up to West Point, getting an interview. And the Army sent me to University of North Carolina for my Master's degree. And when I got up to West Point, I think those of us who were not West Point graduates were in a minority. And I ended up teaching four years at West Point before I went back into the regular Army. SM (00:10:12): [inaudible]. When you went to Lafayette College, what was the environment like? Obviously, there was a lot of anti-war people going on at that time on most college campuses. Did you feel the pressure that was going on in America regarding the anti-war movement? And how did you feel about your fellow peers that were your age who were against the war? And how did they treat people like you, who were in ROTC? Because I can remember when I was in college at Binghamton, we banned, they banned ROTC from the campus. JC (00:10:47): Lafayette was all male. And it is a fairly conservative school. Out of about 400, I guess in my class, I think 52 of us were commissioned in one service or another. It was small. People knew each other. I was in student government, I was elected to the student council. Also, I washed pots for my meals in a social dorm. There were 19 fraternities, and there was this social dorm. And I ate all my meals in the social dorm, and the social dorm had the radicals. So I would sit at supper time, and we would read Jim Reston's editorials in the New York Times and discussing, or breakfast and then discussing. So some of the guys who were the biggest "protestors" were the people I broke bread with, so they were friends. I was in student government with them. Actually, at that time, and again, this is (19)66, (19)67, things were falling apart, (19)67, (19)68, my senior year in Vietnam. But I did not have a sense, it was not Berkeley. It was much, much more conservative and much more civil. And it was funny, I was one of the two battalion commanders in the ROTC unit, and we would march through our drill and go back, put our weapons away, and guys would bomb us with water balloons. They were the same guys I would have supper with a half an hour later. And it was not as confrontational and as bitter as it might have been in other places. I think it probably got more difficult, but at least I came into Lafayette in kind of an innocent period in (19)64. They still had us wearing beanies and singing. We could still sing the alma mater, because they made us memorize it. And it was a big fraternity dominated school. So it just was a little bit different, because it was a smaller school. And you had formed friendships, and there were differences of political opinion. But it was all actually pretty healthy. One of my best friends is a man named Lowell Lifschultz, who is a lawyer now. Not as often as I would like, but we still talk to each other. But Lowell was a very, very bright guy, and intellectually would give me a hard time over it. But I was destined. I had signed the paperwork, and I was getting the scholarship. And I knew where I was going, and I had no illusions about that. SM (00:13:58): Did you feel that when you were over in Vietnam that a lot of the things that were happening in America were divisions between Black and white, drug culture, the different styles, different political viewpoints forward against the war was actually also taking place within the Army and the Marines? Someone said to separate the Marines, Army. Someone told me separate the Marines, because they were gung ho. I am not sure if that is true. Because the hip people would say that the Military went really down during that (19)67 to (19)71 period, and then around (19)71, (19)72, it started changing. So just your thoughts that some of the issues that were actually happening in America were happening in the armed forces in Vietnam. JC (00:14:45): Well, I think units that... I think every experience was different depending on where you were, and especially when you were there. And I think things were a lot different in 1968 than they were in 1971. And I think by 1971, there were deeper racial divides. There were drugs... There were real lines between the people who used alcohol and the people who used marijuana. And then I know I was with a combat engineer unit. There was hardcore heroin use, where the heroin was so pure and so plentiful, the guys would melt it and put it on a cigarette. And the efficiency of that is fairly low, but it was so plentiful they could do it. So, you were dealing with those things. And I think people had no illusions about winning the war. My role as an Army captain with essentially seven platoons that were spread out in MR2, building roads, was to make sure that I did not do anything stupid to get somebody hurt. And my year started, what? My countdown started the day I got there, and everybody else had a different countdown. So, there was not a real cohesion, which did not help things either. But all the tensions that were there, I thought, as I said, from Germany to Vietnam, it was probably racial tensions were higher in Germany. And there were few by the Germans too than they were in Vietnam where people were more isolated and had a common mission. But they were there, and I am not... It was still a draftee army. So that created interesting combinations of people. I also had McNamara Project 100,000 soldiers in my unit. SM (00:17:05): Oh, wow. JC (00:17:06): I had a young man, and I wrote about him in one of the poems, who was just an incredibly hardworking young man. And he was very efficient, and I wanted to promote him. And I sat him down, and I said, "Larry read this." And he said, "Sir, I cannot read." And I said, "Quit kidding around. Read this. I want you to go before the board, and I want to promote you to sergeant." He said, "I cannot read." He started talking about his life. He had had a child when he was 14. He was from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and he had dropped out of school. And there was a project, 100,000 soldiers who were not mentally up to it, but I do not know if it was 100,000, but they brought some soldiers in. I looked at his records and realized that he was one of these soldiers. And it was just a very interesting social experiment. In the same unit, I had a guy who had a Master's in classics from Columbia, and then I had Larry, and another kid who... Larry was very, very productive. The other kid was like a little kid, and we had him take care of the dogs and paint the walls, and he was like everybody's little 12-year-old brother, who was kind of sad. But it was an interesting microcosm. SM (00:18:29): Did most of the people you served with feel that they could have won this war if the government had given you more support? And it depends on who you talked to again, but how many people really were against the war that was in this service over there? And how many were upset that they were not given the [inaudible] necessary to win the war? So, there is two different questions there. JC (00:18:57): Yeah. I think again, it is what time you were serving. And I was serving late in the war, and I do not think anybody had those... Honestly, I do not think anybody really felt... And again, we were building roads, we were trying to... We were turning the war over to the Vietnamese. So, I do not think anybody had a sense of not having permission to bomb here, or do this, or do that. I never really got into those kinds of conversations with folks. It was, again, taking care of ourselves, doing what we had to do. I did not have a sense of that kind of frustration, and I did not sense that even among my peers subsequent to the war. That was never really a big part of the conversation. And again, it was because we were so late in the war. SM (00:20:12): And you were there from what time to what time? JC (00:20:15): I am trying to think now. It was 1971 till, I may have come home in February of (19)72, so it was a year. SM (00:20:27): Before the last people really came out in (19)73. JC (00:20:30): Yeah. SM (00:20:30): The helicopter. JC (00:20:31): Yeah. Yeah. So it was later in the war. And all those kinds of thoughts were kind of... I think those had gone away. The being for against the war, that too was shaped by the inevitability of our withdrawal, which we were there to withdraw. And I remember going into Vietnam, and I had a choice. I could have gone to the 101st, or to, I think, the 25th. And I deliberately asked to go to an engineer unit, because I did not want to... We knew the combat units were getting pulled out, and I did not want to go to a combat unit and then go and get pulled out. I was there, I wanted to experience it. And I deliberately remember not making that choice. And they were pulled out while I was there. A lot of our security was turned over to the Vietnamese, which was an interesting experience, because we did not feel as secure. And it really created a whole different feel about it. It made it a little bit more wild west. It was just different, because we were coordinating with the Vietnamese for security. And in the Koreans, the White Horse Division, it was very much, I think, a different experience than some other people had, because the fighting actually was being done by the Vietnamese than the South Korean units. SM (00:22:25): When do you feel, individually, that the (19)60s, the genre, the (19)60s actually begin? Was there a specific event? Was there a series of specific events? Was there a specific year that separated, say, the boomers when they were in the (19)50s, when they were elementary school kids, basically? And I have had a lot of different responses to this. Just your thoughts of, was there anything, do you feel- JC (00:22:58): November 23rd, 1961. That begins the (19)60s. And I think that is the assassination of JFK, isn't it? SM (00:23:03): It was (19)63. JC (00:23:03): (19)63. Okay. SM (00:23:03): Yeah. November 20- JC (00:23:03): Yeah, (19)63. SM (00:23:03): November 22nd. JC (00:23:11): November 22nd, (19)63. Here I am, so sure my date. (19)63. That, to me, was the beginning of the (19)60s, because that was a loss of innocence, and that was a turning point. And for me, it was the beginning of the (19)60s, because I was a senior in high school. So, I am just starting to come into my consciousness of the world around me. I remember the Bay of Pigs. I remember the tension. I remember thinking... This tells you more about maybe what a weird kid I was, but I remember getting off the bus and walking to high school, thinking, "Should I go down, lie about my age, and enlist in the Marines?" Because something is going to happen, which is- SM (00:23:59): Yeah. JC (00:23:59): ...pretty dumb on my part. But that was a period I remember. But I honestly see the turning point is, and I do not know why I keep saying (19)61, because maybe that is the Bay of Pigs. SM (00:24:14): Yeah. JC (00:24:14): (19)63- SM (00:24:14): Or (19)62 was the Cuban Crisis. JC (00:24:17): Yeah. SM (00:24:19): Do you remember the exact moment when you first heard the Kennedy was shot? JC (00:24:24): Yeah. SM (00:24:25): A lot of people that were boomers were in school, and they heard it in a class, or a teacher said it. How did you first find out about it? JC (00:24:29): I was a teacher's writer for our high school newspaper, and it was the newspaper period. So those of us who worked on the newspaper, we were fairly close, and it was informal. And Mrs. Shea was crying and told us, and we just could not believe it. It was an afternoon, I guess, near the end of the day in school. SM (00:25:02): Yeah. JC (00:25:03): And it was interesting, because I just had my 45th reunion, and we were talking about- SM (00:25:08): Oh, wow. JC (00:25:11): ... about that. And there were about three of us, or four of us at the 45th year of reunion, who actually had first heard it together. So we were sharing that memory, and Mrs. Shea. It was- SM (00:25:28): And you lived on the East Coast at that time? JC (00:25:29): I lived in Massachusetts. SM (00:25:30): Yeah. So if you were in class, it was probably close to the end of the school. JC (00:25:33): It was the end of the school day. SM (00:25:35): One period left. Probably one period left. JC (00:25:35): Yeah. That was our last period. SM (00:25:36): Yeah. JC (00:25:37): And my father, being a Boston Irishman, non-practicing Catholic, but he had the Boston Irish stubbornness. And I remember one time in Holyoke, Massachusetts, they used to paint the center stripe green. And one time, John Kennedy was leading the parade, and they went by, my father got right in my face and said, "Someday, he's going to be president." I did not say this to my father, because I did not talk to my father this way, but I am thinking, "Do not get mad at me, dad. I am not sure... Why are you..." And it was that stubborn Irish pride. And my neighborhood was very... It was Italian and Irish. So I grew up in a very ethnic Catholic part of Springfield. So, it was a big deal. SM (00:26:38): But you just said it was a magic moment. See, that reason why I am titling my book A Magic Moment is that in every interview I have had, there has been magic moments that I did not expect. And I only picked that when I think I was on my 30th interview, and I had not gone up for the title yet. And someone said, "We have already talked about the magic moments that you have had in some of these interviews. That would be a great title for your book." JC (00:27:03): Somebody else has had said the same, Kennedy assassination, have not they? SM (00:27:03): Yes, they have. JC (00:27:03): Oh, yeah. SM (00:27:03): Yeah. And other- JC (00:27:03): Not that magic. SM (00:27:10): Some said Kent State. JC (00:27:11): See, I was out of the country. SM (00:27:13): Yeah. Kent State. Well, that was the one that... No, when you look at the boomer generation, which is those born between (19)46 and (19)64, and of course, a lot of the people that were in the anti-war movement were born in (19)43 and (19)44. And a lot of the people I have interviewed, over half are not in boomers. They lived during the time that boomers were young. So all their opinions count. What is your thoughts on the boomer generation, this generation of 70 to 74 million, depending on... The millennials now, the young people that are here in this school, now are part of the largest generation in American history. They are 80 million strong. And I think boomers would be a little sensitive to know that they are no longer the biggest group. But just your thoughts on the boomer generation, what you- SM (00:28:03): But just your thoughts on the boomer generation, what you think are some of their strengths or their weaknesses? JC (00:28:08): Well, I think boomers were idealistic, obviously idealistic in both left and right causes. I saw Vietnam as part of the Kennedy's column. I was idealistic. I do not think I had any illusions about it, but I still saw it in those terms. And so I think very, very idealistic. Very, I think selfish in many ways. I think for whatever reasons, I think boomers think of themselves as a chosen people. Special time in history, unique time in history, deserving more than perhaps we think we should. In contrast to my father's depression era attitudes, we always just thought that things should be ours, material things should be ours in ways that I do not think too many generations before us felt that way. And I think we are selfish in... Although there is an awful lot of rhetoric about one world. I think Americans are, I think, we are uniquely ethnic centric about our experiences. I do not think we are very open-minded, even those who... I just do not think we are that open-minded. I think the kids today have a much more real sense of how flat the world is. I do not think we still even have that sensed the way we should. Let us see. It is hard to characterize a group of people. I think we... I do not know. I have a sense that something has owed us and it is an unrealistic sense that something he has owed us. And it is going to be interesting as we become the non-productive age, the non-productive part of our society, how that is going to work itself out. Because I do not think other generations have that sense of entitlement as much as our generation does. SM (00:31:21): That was one of the questions, and you already answered it, that there was a feeling of uniqueness. That we are the most unique generation of history. And not only when they were young, there was this feeling, I remember being around it, that we can really make a difference in this world by ending war, by bringing the races together, by showing equality toward all groups, stealing the... Like a panacea, a cure-all. We are going to be the group that is going to be able to do it. And even talking to some people today that are our age who still feel... Some have gone on and made a lot of money but some still feel it. JC (00:31:59): That is good. I am encouraged. I just felt... I do not know. I understood all that and felt that a lot of people feel that way. And there is a lot of generosity. Part of it too is the Vietnam experience. Paul Fussell said, "Once a pissed off infantry man, always a pissed off infantry man." And I could always tell when I met somebody in the army, a career soldier in the army, I could always tell a fellow officer who had served in Vietnam or one who had not, there's an element of cynicism in the person who had served in Vietnam and there is a skepticism there. Part of my more pessimistic take on the idealism of our generation is probably a result of that Vietnam skepticism because so much was promised there and so much in the delivery was so short. SM (00:33:12): How do you feel when... George will does this all the time. He will write an article, and he has done it for years in all his books. He loves to take shots at the older generation, the (19)60s generation and prove that he was against the war and then supported McGovern (19)68 and (19)72 and the whole history there. And certainly in (19)94 when Newt Gingrich came to power, he loved it too. He has made a lot of comments about it. I tried to get him to be in this project, he has rejected twice and I know people close to him. But what are your thoughts when you hear people like that who will just condemn the generation as all the reasons we have problems in America today. That all of our problems will go back to that time when things were loose, the sexual revolution, they just had a television show on that the other night and we saw it. It was unbelievable, there were things I never saw before. And division between black and white, those who supported the war, those who were against it. Just your thoughts. The blame game. JC (00:34:18): I think that is too easy. I just think there is certain tensions in society that exist, have always existed. Lots of good people trying to do good things to relieve those tensions, and the tensions are still there. I think a lot of it is a function of just society. And I think trying to blame a period or trying to blame a generation, that is a cop out. That is just too easy. I never really had that sense. Here is an interesting moment for me. Going back to graduate school, coming back from Vietnam, playing softball for the English department softball team, graduate team at University of North Carolina. One of my teammates was a man named Gordon Ball. Gordon Ball wrote Ginsberg Verbatim. Gordon Ball was my fellow graduate student at Carolina and he gets nominated for one of the best... He gets a Pulitzer nomination for a critical book, Ginsberg Verbatim. Gordon was a North Carolina farm boy. When Ginsberg started a farm, a co-op or whatever, Gordon's there and he actually knows how to run a farm. He is part of it and he takes the notes and writes Ginsberg Verbatim, which is a pretty good book. Well, he likes to play softball, I like to play softball. We are teammates, we are friends and both of us from probably different directions are completely outraged by Watergate, completely outraged by the abuse of the presidency. And so Gordon and I at University of North Carolina manned a petition booth together. And we are about as far away from each other politically and in every other way that you can imagine. And we are both just upset about what happened and just outraged by the abuse of power and the abuse of fundamentals and the constitution and so on. That is a bookend event for my generation. SM (00:37:01): It is a very interesting thing that, Max, because when I interviewed Chic Canfora, who is the sister of Allen who was a Kent State, she is a professor, she is a dynamic professor there. But she was one of the students that was at Kent State. And when I was listing the names as I would do at the very end of the interview and I mentioned the name John Dean, some people just revile and maybe just a lot of negative stuff. But for this anti-war activist who was there the day the four students were shot, she looked upon him as a hero. And she went on and said, "I wish he had run for president because he was a Republican who has been very critical of Republicans and Democrats and his recent writings he is on the conservative movement, liberals. He is just fair in every way." It is interesting how...That is what the whole Free Speech Movement was all about at Berkeley. It was not about being a liberal or conservative, it was about that Dr. Kerr tried to shut down a booth on campus and the students that were against that group, they did not like him politically, did not like him personally, but when the president tried to shut them down to hand out literature, they all came together, Liberals, Conservatives, because it was students, It was students uniting on a cause, so you made a very important point here. One of the things too is just your thoughts on the movement. Before I get to that, what kind of parents have boomers been? When you define the boomer generation you also oftentimes think of the term activism, it was an activist generation, both Liberals and Conservatives. Young Americans for Freedom, which is a very conservative group, was very anti-war and were involved in the movement. And just like Harry talked about, let us get the military point of view on war, we need to get the conservative anti-war movement war, which has been excluded from the books. But just your thought on how they have raised their kids and their grandkids. Have they shared their ideas with them? Have they created another generation of activists? Because it does not seem like they are. How have they been as parents and grandparents? You're dealing with probably parents of these kids now who are in that generation and there seems to be a tremendous link. There does not seem to be a generation gap between the parents and their kids like there was between our generations. JC (00:39:29): I do not know. I put myself in this category, I think the parent... Probably my generation, boomer generation parents are much more tolerant. I would hope. Maybe because I did not have kids until I was a little older, a little bit more open to all the crazy stuff that goes on. I think there is another generation of parents who are the younger parents now who are very anxious. And I am not sure, I think parents are getting even more anxious as we go on. I am not sure what the reason for that is, but I think... And it is funny, I have met kids who parents have really grown up as loose as possible who were in the army. We have got a friend who is the head of the school in San Francisco and he called me and I could tell by his voice something was really bad and he is a dear friend and I said, "What is it?" He said, "My son wants to fly a helicopter and he's enlisting in the army." It was like the end of the world for him. I am exaggerating a bit, but you could tell he was concerned. And I calmed him down. I just said, "Well, he will do this and this and this." And he calls me and he said, "I was just out at the basic training," or whatever, maybe it was a helicopter school, and he said, "They are just like us, they are teachers," talking about the sergeants in the army. But it was such a foreign experience to him. And his son obviously had these desires to do that. And maybe he did it partly in rebellion, I do not know. But thank God his son is safe. And this guy who did not have any experience with the military has I think a very favorable experience. It is just difficult to generalize. SM (00:41:53): Do you sense that just from young people you deal with, not only here but the other schools that you are aware of, that there just does not seem to be activism anymore? There are activists, students are involved in a lot of different things that we may not be aware of just the media just is not covering them. JC (00:42:10): I think there is a real strong service ethic among our kids. Kids here, actually, because I belong to that social dorm and my friends had organized... I actually poled for McCarthy when I was ROTC. SM (00:42:32): Oh, wow. JC (00:42:33): But I went out and I did it because I was living with these guys. SM (00:42:37): Clean for Gene. JC (00:42:38): Neat and clean for Gene. SM (00:42:39): Yes. JC (00:42:44): You about the motivation, I was doing it just to help a friend, and my motivation was not that strong. I think kids today... I will tell you the kids I am around, they really want to make a difference. And I think they are much more generous and honest in their desire to help other people. At least the kids that I have seen in the past 10 years around here. SM (00:43:18): Do you think that, this is important, volunteerism is activism. On university campuses 95 percent of students are on volunteer duty. Some that is mandatory like in fraternities and sororities, so many hours, some groups are required to do it. The key question here is, I am not saying it is not activism is, when they leave school, is it more of, I am going to do this every two weeks for two hours- JC (00:43:45): No. SM (00:43:45): ... or is it a mentality of 24 to seven and it is part of who I am as a person? JC (00:43:49): I think it is part of who they are. We do not have mandatory community service and we do not even call it community service. We call it service learning, it is integrated into the curriculum. It is part of what you do as a frame of mind. It is a state of mind and it is a piece to the larger global state of mind that I think our kids have too. It is a sense of, we are all in this together. It is a real strong sense of what is right and wrong. Fairness issues. I think I could go out and grab a kid out in the hallway and we start asking him those questions. I think you would be very, very positively impressed with... It is part of their ethical makeup. I am very optimistic about that. And the kids will make fun of a lot of things, but they do not make fun of that. SM (00:44:50): Your views are very important because I had many that are very negative, not about young people because they all believe in young people. You would not be in higher ed if you did not believe in people. Some people may develop at a different time. You may not see them activists when they are a junior or senior in college, but you can darn tooting they will be doing something in their 20s or 30s. It is just they involve at different times and we have to have respect that amongst younger people. But some of the people I have interviewed have been very negative about today's generation with respect to the lack of activism but the sense of volunteerism is there, but whether it is really part of them as a human being. This gets right into the issue of movements. One of the things that defines often times the boomer generation are the movements. Obviously the Civil Rights Movement was already happening when boomers were in their teenage years. You have got the Women's Movement, the Gay and Lesbian Movement, the Chicano, the Native American movement, the Environmental Movement, all these movements that came about, anti-war movement around the late (19)60s and they just abound through today. Your thoughts on how important they are in America, but if you really can link them to define part of what the boomer generation is? JC (00:46:07): Obviously, I think they are historical, really significant. I think they were focused on in ways that raised everybody's attention to certain issues. And they are unique for the boomer generation and obviously the boomer generation were people then and... I am not sure I am answering this question fully. I think, again, this is probably the post- Vietnam skepticism. I am a little skeptical of movements, whether they be the kind that were bigger and more boisterous in my younger days. But even in terms of I am a registered Independent and proud of it. I am just skeptical of things being... Just skeptical of movements in general and I think that is probably left over from my experience. I am not sure I was ever fully invested in a movement. SM (00:47:48): I am going to read this one because this is a very important part of the project. There is two big issues that I have shut in on. One of them is this issue of healing and the second one is an issue of trust. The question I am asking right now, and I want to read because I feel I have missed something. Do you feel that the boomer generation is still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore this nation apart in your youth? The division between black and white, the divisions between those who supported authority and those who criticized it, the division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. Of course, I will throw in here too. What role did the Vietnam Memorial play in healing divisions, not only within the Vietnam veteran community and their families, but also the nation as a whole, or do you feel that the boomer generation will go to their graves like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made the statement, time heals all wounds the truth? And I prefaced this question by something. I took a group of students from Westchester University to meet Senator Muskie before he passed away, he was not well. I got to know [inaudible] quite well and he set up some meetings with us on our Leadership on the Road program to talk about his leadership. And I asked the same question to him and I have it on tape. And he did not respond right away to this question. He gave a melodramatic pause and actually had to show tears coming up. The tears that we saw that when he was attacked because he'd showed he was more feminine because he cried. And his response was that, "I just got out of the hospital. I just had an opportunity to see the Ken Burns series that was on public television about the Civil War." He went on and talked about the 400,000 men who had died in the war. And then he said, "I am not going to answer your question because I know you're asking the question regarding 1968 and all the things that happened in that convention. And I am not going to answer it that way because I cannot. The way I am going to answer it is that we have not healed since the Civil War. I just ask you to go to Gettysburg and just drive on each side you will see." Your thoughts on whether this is really even an issue. Some people will say, "Steve, people do not walk around Washington with lack of healing on their sleeves." But then others have said, "This is a very serious question because if we have not healed as a nation is what we are seeing today, not what you just explained to us about people from different points of view coming together, but this constant, you are the problem, you are the enemy, you are the..." This division of not coming together and no healing and the effect that it might be having on the boomer generation, and then that is having on their kids and their grandkids by witnessing these feelings. Is healing an issue in your viewpoint? JC (00:50:59): Absolutely. I think the issues that were at the root of the Civil War were never fully resolved, that is why the Civil War looms so large in our imaginations. To a certain extent those issues were revisited in the Vietnam War and they are still unresolved so intellectually it is still part of our... SM (00:51:25): Please speak up too. JC (00:51:28): It is still part of what's going on. However, I do not know if Bill Ehrhart explained how we met. We met at Vietnam Reconciliation Conference in 1992 at Notre Dame and Father Hesburgh brought people together for this Vietnam Reconciliation Conference. I think it was one of the first times they included Vietnamese voices and the Vietnam War took place in Vietnam, but it was all about the American experience, but the (19)92 conference made us a little bit more honest about it. And I may be naive, but I think a lot of the sharp edges are smooth. Bill Ehrhart and I are best of friends. We still have our probably fundamental political differences and I think most people are like that. And I may be naive because the past couple of presidential elections, not the last one, but the ones before it were so evenly split down the middle. You worry about that and it seems like we could go back to that 49/51 split and everything that you see in politics, in the way people position politics, it does seem to be a zero-sum game and it does seem to be a 50/50 split down the middle. I may be completely, absolutely wrong in my gut feeling that time does heal wounds, but maybe I am being naive in that. But I honestly believe that. I would not blame the boomer generation for what we see today. I do not think the roots of that 50/50 split is in the boomer generation, I think it is in the issues that are around us today. I am not going to take the blame for that one. SM (00:53:52): To me, the wall moves an awful lot. It is just one person. I lived in California in 1980 through (19)83 in the Bay Area for a while. And first thing I had to get to the wall as soon as I moved to Philadelphia to work at Thomas Jefferson University. And within a week I was on the train and got done to DC because I had not gotten a car yet. It means an awful lot, and I am not a Vietnam veteran. How important has the wall been? I know already it has been important for vets and their families. As Jan Scruggs says in the title of his book, To Heal a Nation... JC (00:54:30): Saving electricity. SM (00:54:37): Okay. To Heal a Nation, "We really heal the nation from the wall beyond just the mess." JC (00:54:44): My personal experience with the wall is interesting. I was in the Army, I did not really get involved in it. I knew the controversy. There was a part of me that wanted some kind of recognition, there was a part of me that heard, obviously, an abstract representation of it. I did not have a problem with that as much as some other people did, wanting a more literal representation. I think for me it works the way it is supposed to work in an abstract sense. I had not visited the wall and I was at the Army War College in Carlisle and we were on a trip to Washington and I got up in the morning and I ran to the wall at Sunrise and I looked up the names of the four or five people I knew that were on the wall. And it was an incredibly moving experience, primarily because it was an individual experience. I do not think there was anybody else around... For me it was a very, very good experience. If I'd gone there when people were... JC (00:56:03): ... if I had gone there when people were walking around and it was a busy mall, I do not think it would have been the same. It worked for me. There is an interesting guy named John Wolf, who is an artist and he is a good artist. I hope he is still going strong. He actually got hit by two RPGs and it blew off one of his legs and he died on the operating time two or three times. He actually writes about dying on the operating table, and I was doing a Vietnam summer workshop at West Point, and I think we had Bill come up but we had lots of Vietnam veterans come, and John came down from New Rochelle ... I am sorry. Not New Rochelle. [inaudible]. He has a studio in [inaudible]. He is a successful artist but he is the kind of guy who would not park in a handicap spot. He is on crutches. He is an exclamation point and very interesting guy. One of the female cadets asked him what he thought of the wall, and he looked at her and he said it is a fucking abomination, and I am speaking both as an artist and a Vietnam veteran. It represents nothing of what my service in Vietnam or the army was, and then he went on to really get vulgar about the [inaudible] in the earth. It was interesting. When the younger officers met Bill Ehrhart and they met John Wolf, they said, "We got to bring them together" but they would have fought ... Back then, Bill ... They both would have fought like cats and dogs and it was really a surprise, to me, to somebody who is an artist, who was so badly wounded, had such strong feelings about the wall, and I tried to explain to him my experience and that I really felt like I was honoring the people that I knew, who were on that wall. He did not get that. He just thought it was a political statement, so to say that it ... Does it bring people together? It brings some people together I guess but ... SM (00:58:38): It is interesting. When I came to Jefferson, [inaudible] posttraumatic stress disorder with Dr. Schwartz up at Jefferson, I am not sure if he's still there, the [inaudible] going to be about PTSD and it ended up being [inaudible] all the Vietnam vets that I guess [inaudible] Dwight Edwards, the whole group that was involved with the wall in Philly, and they had this politician from Pittsburgh. He had a Purple Heart. I cannot remember his name. He was a Congressman, and he came, but he refused to shake the hands of any of the other vets, because they supported the wall in Washington and he did not. He would not even talk to them and they were all... I did not quite understand that. JC (00:59:27): I do not get that. SM (00:59:28): And they never did and then he kind of blasted Dr. Zuckerman, for being an anti-war person [inaudible] were still there but... JC (00:59:36): I do not know. SM (00:59:37): You know, Lewis Puller, who wrote Fortunate Son, which I think is the best book ever written, I just reread the book in the last month and hoping to interview his wife Toddy, if I can get her to be interviewed, that would be a coup, but he loved the wall, and they tried to make it as non-political as it is, a non-political statement but even I, as an observer, who sits there, has a sense that some of the comments being made, not by Jan Scruggs but by others, are very political and so he might ... Jan might have to rethink some of the things some of these people are saying and the wall. Some of the other questions here... The issue of trust is one I want to bring up. This is very important, because I can remember in the psychology 101 class when I was in college, I think, and a professor talking about do you trust your neighbor? Do you trust your friends? Do you trust your parents? He would go around the room. He also, the next class, [inaudible] and we were all stuck with this guy. We wanted to get him fired but he was [inaudible] distinguished professor of philosophy, his father was well-known at Johns Hopkins and all the other stuff. He was new then. He really struck something that was very important to me. He said that if you cannot trust someone in your life, then you will not be a success. You have to trust people. That has always stuck with me, not as a college student but as I have gone on into my life, because I am wondering... I have a sense that many of the boomers... I know boomers were distrustful of the leaders. It is very obvious. They did not trust presidents, they did not trust college presidents, they did not trust religious leaders. They did not really accept corporations. They did not trust anybody in a position of responsibility, including all the college administrators I was around, because they had been lied to. The lies came from Watergate, they came from the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. They came from Eisenhower, who lied to the national public about U2. They lied on [inaudible] 1959. Then the continuation of here in the Reagan administration, of course, the... It is a long story here but boomers have seen it. But in their youth, they did not trust leaders and that is why they went out [inaudible] so many times. Do you think this quality of lack of trust in many a generation, and I preface this by stating that only 15 percent were truly active, so we are talking about 85 percent who were not, but subconsciously, that 85 percent had to be affected also by what was going on in their youth. Do you think they have passed this lack of trust onto their kids and their grandkids? Again, it's a long question but it has a lot of meaning. The fact is if you are a study of history and political science, which I am, a lack of trust in your government is healthy. It is the first thing you learn in political science. That is how you learn and then that makes government better. But just your thought on the issue of trust, whether we really have a problem here in the nation, not only today, but throughout the boomer’s lives, because of experiences they had when they were younger. JC (01:03:10): Well, it is interesting and I will bring it back to my experiences. I was a company grade officer in Vietnam and there was a sense and, of course, I was a military region too ... Actually my corps commander was John [inaudible]. SM (01:03:27): Oh, wow. JC (01:03:28): He was in charge while I was [inaudible] there. Yeah. You talk about trust and so on, but I, obviously, did not know him or work closely with him. However, there was this sense, at least ... I do not think I am speaking entirely for myself. Part of it is those bastards at platoon headquarters mentality that is in the army. You know, the higher the headquarters, the more screwed up, but there was another dimension to it and it was I had ... You will read in the piece I gave you, there is a perspective on somebody who is trying to get a star, and a distrust of that next level of leadership in the army, and as I stayed in the army, I worried about the generation of leaders, the next generation of leaders, and I was unbelievably pleasantly surprised with the Colin Powell or the commanders, the ... My direct boss in 101st, when I was a battalion commander, was a man named Herb Watson, who got killed with the president of Pakistan when the president of Pakistan's plane got blown out of the sky. The commanding general of the 101st and the 82nd airborne, two units, I would ... Just incredibly trustworthy, wonderful leaders. It was like they saw what was happening in Vietnam and they were not going to repeat it. Colin Powell, I think stands out, because [inaudible]. He stands out as that kind of exemplar. I ended up with the healthy skepticism and the natural, "Those bastards at platoon quarters" mentality that is always in organizations, I came out with a lot of confidence and trust in that next level of commanders. It really sustained me through 30 years in the army, because I would not want to be in an organization where I did not have that trust. That said, maybe one reason I stayed in the army, because I was working for people I trusted, and maybe I had a fear of going out into another world where you did not have that trust. The other side to that or the larger piece to that I guess is the whole notion of politicians and there is a deep distrust of politicizing things, drawing up lines, making arguments based on political motivation rather than what is the best decision, and, again, I agree, that is healthy skepticism. Maybe there is more of that when it comes to politics among boomers, and now are you infecting your kids or your grandkids? I do not know. I think there ... I just got an email from a friend and he could verify these numbers for me, like out of the two million whatever Vietnam veterans who served in Vietnam... SM (01:07:00): Three million. Three million served and I believe 450,000 and 500,000 were on the front lines. JC (01:07:08): Okay, but of the 380,000 or whatever it was, only 270,000 left. It was mind-boggling. I could pull up the email. I remember having a colleague, a guy I actually taught at West Point, his name is Elliott Gruner, who wrote a book about POWs, it is pretty controversial, and he would always... We had discussions, he was a colonel, and he was a major I guess at the time, but he would ... He would always just cut the conversation with, "You're still my favorite burnt out Vietnam vet." Actually the person who sent me those statistics I think is kind of a dig that you are a dinosaur, assigned it your favorite burned out Vietnam vet, so there is that I think stigma and there is probably some truth to it but I do not think... I think most of us look at it with some fabrication and some sense of humor. I do not think we're really trying to make everybody else that skeptical. SM (01:08:26): What do you feel is the number one reason the Vietnam War ended? How important were college students on the campuses in ending the war? JC (01:08:36): I think it is what is going to end Afghanistan and Iraq, just exhaustion, just our attention span is not that long. I do not think college students were a huge factor. Although, it was a strong voice that contributed to the overall exhaustion, but I do not think it was a primary cause. I think we are going to declare victory and get the hell out of Iraq, and we probably have a right to declare victory. SM (01:09:19): Do you worry that when you read articles, Afghanistan is another Vietnam? How do you feel when you hear that people get upset by every comparison of conflict around the world? Or they always bring up Vietnam. I sense in the university, they get very uptight. It's just a bunch of boomers, again, trying to be nostalgic or remember but that is not the purpose. Vietnam had so many meanings. Just to bring the word of Vietnam in a conversation with fellow boomers who may be in leadership roles in the universities, like, "There he goes again." JC (01:09:59): Well, it is a useful metaphor but it is ... I think it is an oversimplification. You worry about ... I worry about Pakistan. I mean, I worry ... That is the nexus of what you really have to worry about I think. I think we have probably exhausted ourselves in many ways in this. That is another story. SM (01:10:31): When did the (19)60s end? Just the (19)60s itself. Was there a period that you knew it was over? JC (01:10:36): Maybe Watergate. SM (01:10:36): Okay. JC (01:10:40): The Kennedy assassination, Watergate, that is a good 10 years... SM (01:10:44): How important was the music? Because when you think of the music, it had so many social messages in it. JC (01:10:48): It was great music. SM (01:10:49): It was great music and it is still being played today [inaudible 01:10:53] showed you the article he has on the wall in there, about one of the (19)60s ... A member of the Who refuses to sell his music for TV commercials. I think that is a lesson for students, he is not selling out. JC (01:11:10): Yeah. SM (01:11:12): He wrote the music for that generation to not be selling out. How important was music within this boomer generation in terms of not only their anti-war and their involvement but just your thoughts on the music? Who were your favorite musicians? JC (01:11:31): I remember my first wife, our first date, we went to a movie, the Cardinal, and then we went and saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show at my friend Jacques [inaudible]'s house. SM (01:11:45): Right. JC (01:11:47): There was a ... The Beatles were ... I remember waking up and hearing on the radio and just, "Wow. This is ..." But there is the ... You go from the Beatles to more of a Stones fan now, so that is the loss of innocence. I became a Stones fan pretty quickly. SM (01:12:15): I think I would ... Well, I like rock music but my mom used to watch As The World Turns, which is a TV show in the afternoon. I can remember coming home once and I had a day off or a two day break or whatever. She was watching it and on the background music on As The World Turns, they were playing I Cannot Get No Satisfaction. I said if it gets on TV like that, it is certainly getting into the mainstream and that was around 1967. Yeah. The folk music of that period, all the messages and, certainly, the Motown sound. JC (01:12:47): Yeah. Very-very important. SM (01:12:49): It was important. JC (01:12:50): You know, it brings you back in the best ways I guess but... SM (01:13:01): Before I get into the names here, just were there any books that were an influence to you that you read when you were young? Novelists or non-fiction books. JC (01:13:14): Yeah. SM (01:13:14): That you can think of in the (19)60s or (19)70s. JC (01:13:17): Well, they are not... I was a 19th century American guy, so I read a lot of Walden and Emerson, Moby Dick is my favorite... If I had a favorite book, Moby Dick and Absalom Absalom, but I remember I was reading Herman Hesse in Vietnam and I can actually remember sitting on an air strip reading... SM (01:13:48): Herman Hesse? JC (01:13:49): Yeah. SM (01:13:49): Wow. JC (01:13:51): You know, just... You got free books in Vietnam. I still have books probably on that shelf that I got from the Red Cross. SM (01:13:57): Hard backs? JC (01:13:58): No, paperbacks. SM (01:13:58): Oh, paperbacks. JC (01:14:00): Nobody in the unit was getting them, so I... English major. I brought lots of books back from the Red Cross book boxes. SM (01:14:11): They might be valuable if they are first editions. Even paperbacks. JC (01:14:15): I do not know. They were pretty beat up. I had them in a rucksack. There was a lot of time... A lot of time to read. I did have a reading experience, which isn't directly related to your question but when did Going After Cacciato get published? About (19)76 or so. (19)77. SM (01:14:38): I do not know. JC (01:14:39): I remember being in a bookstore and picking up Going After Cacciato and looking and reading, reading, reading and looking at my watch and it is about two hours, two and a half hours later. It was the first time anybody had written about and processed and written about, for me, the Vietnam War. SM (01:15:01): Wow. JC (01:15:04): In a way. I had become good friends with Tim O'Brien. SM (01:15:08): Oh, yeah. Book one [inaudible]. JC (01:15:10): Yeah. I remember the first time I met Tim O'Brien, I met him in a ... He was doing a reading at University of North Carolina Wilmington, and I was actually camping on the beach in Wilmington and was in the men's room and Tim came in and we were standing there. I explained how important his Going After Cacciato was for my processing. I said, "Did you ever read J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors?" Tim stopped and he goes, "Not too many people know about that book. You appreciate it because [inaudible]." J. Glenn Gray... SM (01:15:46): Is that G-L-E-N? JC (01:15:48): J G-L-E-N-N Gray. SM (01:15:54): J. Glenn... JC (01:15:56): J, just the letter J. SM (01:15:58): J. Glenn. JC (01:15:58): Gray, The Warriors. He got his draft notice for the Second World War the same day he got his PHD of philosophy from Columbia, and he went and was a military intelligence officer, and saw action all through Italy and all the way up. Then he had a Fulbright and went back to Germany, and then his Fulbright, he took topics in war and analyzed them as a philosopher would analyze them, so attitudes toward the enemy, all the different attitudes toward the enemy, love in war, he analyzed that like a philosopher would, [inaudible] experiences. It is a fascinating book and it is exactly I think what incredibly influenced Tim O'Brien, like you cannot believe and I think he... It is one of those books. SM (01:16:53): Yeah. Well, I am at the part of the interview now where I just mention some names or terms of the period and you just give short responses to them. Some may have a greater effect than others. We already talked about the wall. What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? JC (01:17:12): Again, I was out of the country, so the full impact did not affect me. I am sure if I were in college or in the States, it would have been a different impact. SM (01:17:24): What did you think when you heard that four college students were killed on a university campus? JC (01:17:32): Well, it was... This sounds small but it was an undisciplined National Guardsman versus a disciplined regular army. It said something about the National Guard was a way to avoid the draft, and like Lieutenant Calley, there were people in positions they should not have been in. It was an insult to the profession of arms, and to the profession period. I, obviously, have a regular army officer view of it. It was a breakdown. SM (01:18:07): Watergate. You already mentioned a little bit. What did Watergate mean to you? How do you think it affected the younger generation? JC (01:18:18): Well, I think it was something I did not want to believe and when all the facts came out, it was really disheartening. It reinforced skepticism and cynicism but it also, at the same time, gave me great confidence in the system, the justice system. SM (01:18:41): Woodstock? JC (01:18:43): Again, I missed it. It just was not part of my life, because I was in the army with my head shaved. SM (01:18:58): [inaudible] this year. It has had a lot of different meaning. Everybody seems to [inaudible]. JC (01:19:01): You know, if I could live my life over again, I might want to be there but I probably would not want to not do what I did in the army. SM (01:19:14): All the cars going down the 81 heading toward that area, and I can remember ... I never thought once about it. I was a student [inaudible] and I never thought about it. JC (01:19:24): I am surprised you were not there. SM (01:19:25): I did not have a car and that did not stop anybody, though. 1968? JC (01:19:34): Year I graduated. Some great movies, Cool Hand Luke, Bonnie and Clyde. Martin Luther King's assassination. SM (01:19:55): The conventions. JC (01:19:56): Yeah. The conventions... I was in ranger school during that stuff, so I was in a gulag. SM (01:20:07): How about counter-culture? Just the term counter-culture? JC (01:20:11): Useful term. Does not give me any feelings. SM (01:20:16): How about hippies and yippies? There was a difference. JC (01:20:21): I guess the yippies were more political. I do not know. The hippies were just laissez faire. I liked San Francisco. SM (01:20:30): Yeah. SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. JC (01:20:34): I think a bit of... I think I am not sure of the best motivated. SM (01:20:49): Of course, the Weatherman were [inaudible]. JC (01:20:49): A hard line. SM (01:20:49): The Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which was real big in (19)71. They kind of took over the anti-war movement through their throwing their awards away. Your thought on that? John Kerry has always identified he is the man who spoke but the biggest names in that group were not John Kerry. JC (01:21:09): Bill Ehrhart. SM (01:21:10): Yeah. He is very proud of it. [inaudible] was in the group. JC (01:21:15): You know, I was out of the country. I may have been in Vietnam during a lot of that. I do not have real strong feelings one way or another. I did not see it. I was not here to witness it. SM (01:21:31): What about... These are names now. Jane Fonda? JC (01:21:38): I watched Jane Fonda movies. Barbarella. I have got friends who... I mean, that is the trigger name. I just think somebody is not the brightest. SM (01:21:52): How about Tom Hayden? Her husband at that time. JC (01:22:03): Well, he was a politician, and became a politician. I do not have feelings one way or another. SM (01:22:03): How about Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin? They were the yippies. JC (01:22:09): Kind of comic characters. There is a certain very prankster part to that that I may not have the full story but that is my impression. SM (01:22:21): Timothy Leary? JC (01:22:23): Yeah. [inaudible] LSD. Seemed like an interesting guy. SM (01:22:29): Dr. Benjamin Spock? JC (01:22:31): Obviously, I am part of the boomer generation and he supposedly influenced... I think he probably gets more credit than he deserves. SM (01:22:41): How about Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew? JC (01:22:47): I think petty politicians. SM (01:22:52): Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. JC (01:22:55): I really respected Eugene McCarthy. I do not know why I liked him as much as I did, but I think it was partly because he was kind of above it all. George McGovern, consistent, basically very good man. I liked McCarthy better. I would have voted for McCarthy. I did not vote for McGovern. SM (01:23:29): The ultimate mystery that I asked him is why he did not... Why he just dropped out. He said, "Read my book." He is a nice guy. I am Irish, he is Irish. I had met him twice before I interviewed him, but he... The one question where he really got upset is when I mentioned the name Bobby Kennedy. He said, "Read my book." I mean, he was dead serious. He did not want to talk about it. I go right into it now, John... SM (01:24:03): That meeting was dead serious. You do not want to talk about it. And I go right into it. Now, John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. JC (01:24:13): Well, again, I shared some of that. I was very idealistic, and obviously Western Massachusetts and really worshiped Kennedy. Actually, here is a boomer echo. I honestly feel that Obama is the first president we have had since Kennedy, who has that kind of ability to synthesize things, makes sense, and talk public policy. I just live in fear that somebody is going to kill him. SM (01:24:47): I worry that, too, and I know the students at Westchester worry about that. The fact is he is a boomer, you know. He's a very late boom. He was born in (19)62 or something like that. (19)61. He is 48 now, but he is the real youngest boomer. But I had the same kind of fears and let us pray to God that does not happen. JC (01:25:07): But I have got the idealization of JFK. RFK I think was probably a shit, but he was a good shit. He was good at the- SM (01:25:16): The last two years of his life. JC (01:25:20): He was a pragmatist. I thought it was a real loss. I got a little bit of my father in me, I guess. My father used to scream and holler at Teddy on the TV and then go out and vote for him. It is that kind of whatever. Whatever gene it is that happens to Boston Irishmen. SM (01:25:50): How about Lyndon Johnson now? JC (01:25:51): Oh, I think he became such a cartoon of himself, and I think that was just sad. SM (01:26:05): Robert McNamara? JC (01:26:05): I am not a McNamara fan. I think he knew he was sending people to die. I blame him more than probably a lot of other people. SM (01:26:09): George Wallace? JC (01:26:28): I think he was kind of a caricature of a lot of different projected hoops. I was in Georgia when he was running. SM (01:26:30): Oh, when he was shot? JC (01:26:30): Well, no, when he was running. SM (01:26:30): Oh. JC (01:26:31): I was at Fort Benning, Georgia. I will tell you what, for a northern boy had never been south from the Mason-Dixon line to drive down there and to see that and to live that, where the majority of people really thought he was going to be president. Then I was an aid to a general from Mississippi. One time I said something about how stupid I thought all this was and he said, "Well, I completely disagree." SM (01:27:07): Yeah. I forget how he took a lot. Well, he got a lot of votes. JC (01:27:09): Yeah. Yeah. SM (01:27:10): Eight or 9 percent. It was a lot of votes. JC (01:27:13): And it was just such, for somebody like me, it was just... I cannot believe it. SM (01:27:20): How about Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford? JC (01:27:25): I think Gerald Ford was a good man and did the right things to heal the nation. I actually think, I know, I think I know because a friend of mine was a military aid to Reagan, that he was not the buffoon everybody portrayed him to be. He was a pretty sharp guy and he played that role pretty well. SM (01:27:46): I want to mention Jimmy Carter, too, because he is the guy that created the amnesty for those that went to Canada. JC (01:27:53): Even at the time, I think I was there at West Point at the time, that was fine. It was part of the healing process. Jimmy Carter, I think was just too smart for his own good. SM (01:28:09): Your thoughts, you always talk about the Vietnam syndrome. We got to get rid of it. Well, during the Reagan administration, we're back. It was basically a statement saying love America again. Love the American flag again. And certainly bringing the military back to stature. But also with George Bush Senior, you talked about the Vietnam syndrome is over, and he talked about it when he was president. Your thoughts on, looks like they were also making a criticism of that particular era, both Reagan and Bush. What are your thoughts on...? JC (01:28:45): Well, it is interesting because I was in the Command General Staff College. I think all of us felt that Carter was going to get us in a shooting war. I think the weaker your position, the more vulnerable you are. One reason I went to the 82nd was I wanted to be in the best unit I could be in, because I honestly thought I was going to war. Then when Reagan came in, it was all of a sudden it is an era of triple volunteers. Volunteer for the Army, volunteer for the Airborne, volunteer for the 82nd. All of a sudden you have got equipment that you can use, so it really was a turnaround. I put it in professional terms. I do not think I thought in terms of Vietnam or not Vietnam. I remember being in the, maybe it was, I think it was Battalion Commander on 101st when Platoon came out. I remember coming out of a theater and my younger soldiers were there, and it was an eye-opener for them. I remember saying to them, I said, "It is not pretty, is it?" And I had Oliver Stone come to West Point. SM (01:30:06): Oh, wow. JC (01:30:06): I taught his trilogy. It was in the sense of the use of Vietnam from a professional point of view was, I think Platoon was a very, very accurate movie. It is not pretty and there's a lot of... It is obviously a drama. All that did not happen, but all that did happen and Oliver Stone has put it together properly. But I think first President Bush is sitting on a hill, too. I actually have a theory about, we have been using the same myths to talk ourselves into war since the periods. There is the John Smith myth that one European can take on 200 Indians or any other non- Europeans. And we're using that I think in our thinking even today. And then there is the God [inaudible] city upon the hill and chosen people and war is a purifier. To a certain extent, we use that, too. SM (01:31:19): When we think of Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush, they are boomers. JC (01:31:27): Yeah. Interesting. SM (01:31:29): So, what is it about those two that really... They have the characteristics of boomers. A lot of people do not like to answer that. A lot of them say they are typical booms. JC (01:31:38): Yes. Yes. SM (01:31:43): How would you define them as typical boomers? JC (01:31:54): I do not know if I want put this on tape. So full of shit. No. SM (01:31:54): [inaudible]. Hey, I have only got to come up 10 more. Well, I might go- JC (01:31:54): I do not know if I want to be directed that way, but there was that element to both of them, I think, that more of a common denominator than a difference. We go back, you were talking about the characteristics, the sense of entitlement, the sense of uniqueness, self-serving part of it. I am not sure they are the best representatives of the boomer generation, but they did seem to... I do not know; the mental laziness of Bush and the self-indulgence of Clinton are two things that... SM (01:32:38): Yeah, enough said. Your thoughts on Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X? Because they were the predominant figures there. JC (01:32:47): I have got a funny story. I also was a dorm counselor for my room. I was trying to make money any way I could. AI got a call right before my senior year and they said, "We got a guy," and he was the founder of the Black Student Organization at Lafayette. He was from New Rochelle. His name was Jerry Gill. He died a couple of years ago. Got a picture of him. We became very good friends because we ended up rooming together. They said, "Can we put him on his floor?" Because they were worried about him. They wanted somebody to watch him because he is this Black radical. SM (01:33:34): Want this on tape? JC (01:33:34): Sure. SM (01:33:34): Yeah? JC (01:33:37): I just hired a woman, English teacher, who graduated from Tufts. She's sitting here and I am interviewing and I said, "Do you remember Professor Gill?" She burst into tears. He had made that much of a difference in her life. SM (01:33:51): Wow. JC (01:33:52): But Jerry, then they called me and said, "Cannot find a roommate." I said, "I will room with him." So, we are in a room and it is not very big, and over Jerry's bed is big picture of Malcolm X. About a month after we have been rooming together, I walk in and Malcolm's gone and there's a big picture of The Supremes. He goes, "I did that for you." SM (01:34:17): Oh, wow. That is nice. JC (01:34:19): So, we became very-very-very good friends. Obviously, he got honored by Lafayette College and when he came back, I went up there and he gave the talk. He said the best thing about rooming with Joe Cox was I realized there were white people that were poorer than I was, which is- SM (01:34:41): Economics. Economics. Dr. King talked about that. JC (01:34:41): Which is on the record. I knew Dr. King from my lenses, and obviously he was such an elegant person and such an articulate person that even as a dumb kid, that made a big difference. Malcolm X, I probably did not know him through my own lenses. What I learned, I probably learned from a young Black radical. And I saw the movie, so I think I know Malcolm X. But I thoroughly understand it. I understand the Black Muslim movement and thoroughly understand, I think, where he was. SM (01:35:32): What is really interesting when you talk about Malcolm X, "By any means necessary," which is that there is an indication that use guns if you have to. Of course, he changed the last two years after he came back to Mecca. That is what is amazing when you compare, I worked at a piece once on Malcolm and Bobby Kennedy, because Bobby Kennedy was always known as a ruthless guy. But the last two to three years, he had done great things with his brother. All you have to do was read 13 Days to understand that. But something about his personality changed. He was more likable. He was more empathetic, more passionate and caring. So, I have always compared the two of them and the fact that people can change in their lives. But when you look at three quotes by any means necessary by Malcolm X, then the Peter Max, who I always thought had the best quotes on his paintings to define the generation, which is, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, that will be beautiful." Of course, the third one was the quote that Bobby Kennedy used when he was in Indianapolis, and it was actually a quote from I think Henry David Thoreau. Is something about a time, "Some men see things they are and ask why I see things that never were and ask why not." When you look at those three statements, which one best defines the boomers? "By any means necessary," "You do your thing, I will do mine. By chance we should come together, it will be beautiful," and then Bobby Kennedy's, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were going to ask why not." Are they all part of the generation? JC (01:37:04): Well, I think they are all part of it. I think the cynic would say, you do yours and I will do mine. I think most would pop for the Bobby Kennedy. SM (01:37:14): Is that the quote? JC (01:37:16): No, it is the one from South Africa, but it is a good one. SM (01:37:23): I will read this to the tape here if you do not mind. "Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope in the crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current, which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance," Robert Kennedy. Wow. Very nice. Just a couple more names here and then we're done. The Black Panthers, which is Huey Newton and Bobby Seal and Eldridge Cleaver and Angela Davis and Kathleen Cleaver and that group. Just your thoughts on Black power. JC (01:38:08): Well, in Vietnam, one of the books I got out of the Red Cross was Eldridge Cleaver's book. SM (01:38:16): Soul On Ice? JC (01:38:17): Yeah, Soul On Ice. I think they were criminals, but they were fashionable criminals. They are accepted-accepted. SM (01:38:27): How about Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers? JC (01:38:32): Well, I think what he did ultimately was, I mean shedding light on things is good. I wonder about his motivation. I do not know him at all, but it is people with towering egos, boomer egos, who are going to shine a light on themselves no matter how they do it. So, there's a piece of that you kind of resent, but at the same time, the product is... I try to operate; do not do anything I would not want to see on the front page of the New York Times. You hope a lot of people work that way. SM (01:39:11): Yeah. How about the women, the Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan? They were three names that really come to the forefront. Shirley Chisholm's in that group. The Women's Movement. JC (01:39:23): They were pioneers and good spokesman. It is funny, though, I had a situation of someone I knew at North Carolina that was a student and worked with Bella Abzug, and Bella Abzug stood her up and kept the money. So, she did not come across as a nice person from that one experience. Of all of them, I have got this sense of Bella Abzug is not being a person of character. SM (01:39:55): How about the Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, because- JC (01:39:58): Yeah, good judges. Good judges. SM (01:40:03): Yeah. I actually had both of them on our campus, and we actually had Phillip on our campus. He gave his last public speech there at Westchester University before he died. A couple other quick things here. Barry Goldwater? JC (01:40:22): I understand why he lost, but there is almost a, I do not know, there is a nostalgia for... He seems from a different time, not even the (19)60s. He seems from even an earlier time. There is a certain elegance to what he said. I remember the campaign and I remember given my- I could not vote, but it was a bit shocking to me where he was coming from. But it did not... SM (01:41:00): I think there is a lot. Bill Buckley admired him, and Bill Buckley has been standing a lot of today's conservatives. He has passed away. But I can remember that when you think of the irony of a man who was destroyed by Lyndon Johnson, voting wise, numbers wise of the (19)64 election. And the fact that in 1974 it was himself and Hughes Scott, the senator from Tennessee, that were asked to go to the White House to ask Nixon to resign. His stature as a senator is very honest. JC (01:41:34): Well, there is an elegance and an integrity to him that at least looking back now, I appreciate much more. SM (01:41:41): He was a Korean War vet, too, I believe. A fighter pilot. JC (01:41:44): He was a general in the Air Force. My father looked a lot like him, too, so there is that part playing on it. SM (01:41:53): Two or three more here and then we are done. Tech. Tech was obviously very big in the military, big in Vietnam, big in the United States. There may have been lies on this in terms of the American public, too, about the impact. It really, really changed things. JC (01:42:09): Yeah-yeah. Walter Cronkite saying we have lost. Again, that is where Larry Summers, I think, gets it right. And that is why when I went to the Army War College, we were studying Clausewitz. There is a larger impact than just what happens on the battlefield or in one place. So, it was a victory because it impacted so many different areas. It was not a military victory, but it was a victory. It was a turning point. SM (01:42:43): The last person I was going to say was John Dean again, because he is the guy that went before the hearings there. Just your thoughts on John Dean. He was Nixon's lawyer. JC (01:42:54): Yeah. I think obviously there is a, in retrospect, you got to respect what he did. I probably should not end on this, but I remember thinking he had a very nice-looking wife. SM (01:43:08): And she came. They are still together. They live in California. Although, there are rumors that she had been a call-girl at one time. That really got him upset. Remember the bombshell that was... I forgot the congressman. Wanda. JC (01:43:20): Oh, yeah. Dancing in the fountain there. SM (01:43:23): Yes, there is that. The last question I want to ask you, because we have been talking about the time that boomers were basically teenagers and the rest of their lives. How important were the (19)50s? The (19)50s themselves in shaping the boomer generation. I am always fascinated because when I think of the (19)50s, I think of my parents giving me all they could give. Great Christmases, great Thanksgivings, great birthdays, just always being there kind of good times. But we knew there was racism, we knew what was going on in the South, but it was kind of hidden. It seemed like a time of peace, but the Cold War was on. We came so close to nuclear bomb. But as children, though, maybe they do not have a sense of understanding. We'd watch Mickey Mouse Club every week and we would watch the TV westerns. We did not really see the difference between good and bad. The bad was always the Native American Indian. Hop Along Cassidy, all the shows seem like a time of peace. And all of a sudden you start getting into the (19)60s and everything is kind of rebelling against the parents. What was it about the (19)50s that shaped the boomers? JC (01:44:41): You watch Mad Men? SM (01:44:42): Yes, I do. Yes, I did. JC (01:44:47): I think all those hidden tensions. I just think that is one of the best shows I think I have ever seen. There is so much of maybe what I want to remember, the tensions and the unspoken frustrations. In the (19)50s, I think that lack of confrontation led to more of an over confrontation. My parents were products of the depression and products of the Second World War. SM (01:45:34): So were mine. JC (01:45:34): My father never really got over at the Second World War. He was a pretty hard man until he moved back to the Catholic Church later in life. Claire used to say, "Your father is wonderful. Why cannot you talk to him?" I said, "Claire, that is not the man I grew up with. You have changed him." I grew up obviously wanting to please my father in so many ways, but not ever going to acknowledge him in an open way. I think that probably creates a certain schizophrenia that showed itself in the boomer generation. SM (01:46:17): Yeah, those times. I had nothing but good memories of those times, but then I am always deeply reflecting on things. I remember, my dad used to win trips. He worked for Prudential and he won trips to Florida for sales and (19)57, (19)58, (19)59. We took trips for two weeks, got out of school and we drove. You had to drive by the poor homes in the South. It was just eye-opening. One time we were at a restaurant and it was like Aunt Jemima was doing all the serving there. I started to, as a little boy, started to put things together. If you saw them, I met John Kennedy when I was... We were coming back from a vacation during the summer that he was campaigning, and he had been trying to get on a Roosevelt support. I have only read about this in later years. But my mom was tired. She said, "On the way back from vacation, let us stop at Hyde Park." So, we got there. My mom was tired, she crossed the street. They had a place where you could buy pictures back then, it's now gone. But my dad and my little sister and I, we walked in. We did not know what all the promotion was all about. Well, John Kennedy was in the library with Eleanor Roosevelt. So, we got in there and we were all waiting for him to come out the side door. I have been there many times since, and they got rid of the drive there where he was. But came out the side door, or someone was yelling, "He is coming out the side door," and so I ran over there and only one person shook his hand. Well, I got to be honest. I did not catch the grant, but I catched the top as a little boy. And he looked at me with his pin striped suit with that million dollar smile. My sister was on my dad's shoulder and she touched his suit and whatever. Little did I know that he would end up beating Nixon and then becoming president of the United States. When I went to college, that was my first one-minute speech, the most memorable moment in my life up until that point. So anyways, are there any, last question I always ask, is there a question that you thought I might ask that I did not ask that you'd like to make a final comment about the boomer generation and the generation that you grew up with? Or just some final thoughts on them as a whole? Because do not forget, they are approaching 62 now and they have still got their old age, the impact with their old age. So, any other final thoughts? JC (01:48:50): No, I think you covered an awful lot of ground. Pity you having to make sense out of it. SM (01:48:58): Well, I love doing it because... Thank you very much. Now, to turn this off. (End of Interview) Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Joseph Cox Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Cox, Joseph T., 1946- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Soldiers; College teachers; Cox, Joseph T., 1946--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Joseph T. Cox is a retired army officer, educator, author and the former headmaster of Haverford School. Cox was also an English professor at West Point. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College and a Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-11-09 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.65a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.65b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 109:05