I’m Seeking Names Of Some Draft Resisters
Classmates, do any of you remember or have information about a small anti-draft demonstration on Beinecke Plaza one wintry morning in early 1968, our junior year? Three seniors handed their draft cards to Bill Coffin in an act of civil-disobedience, stating that they would refuse conscription into the Vietnam War.
I came across the gathering on my way to a class, and I’ve described what I remember in a few paragraphs, beginning in the fourth paragraph of a column I wrote last year. I’d like to contact any of the participants, but I haven’t found a record of the event in the YDN.
I don’t know what happened to these draft resisters, who were probably from the Class of ’68, and I want to preserve their privacy, but if you have any information about the event or the individuals that would enable me to contact them, please write me at jimsleep@aol.com. Here’s the column: http://billmoyers.com/story/
I may have been one of them– at least was one of those who handed a draft card to WS Coffin at a similar event, I think in Beinecke Plaza. (I’m Class of 1969, and I would have guessed that my “surrender” of my draft card was in my senior year, so late 1968 or early 1969, but my memory is fallible.). Coffin was one of two or three people on stage: I remember choosing to put my card in HIS hand rather than one of the others because I felt a connection to (though certainly not at the time a belief in) Protestant Christianity. A few weeks later I got a letter from the Selective Service System saying that they understood I had (lost? surrendered? abandoned? — I don’t remember the exact word) my draft card, and would I accept a new one? I telephoned Coffin to ask if, under the circumstances, it was honorable for me to accept a new draft card– he refused to give any opinion, said it was up to me. I felt a bit browned off by his apparent unwillingness to provide pastoral advice, and decided to accept a new draft card. (Same draft number, as I recall.) Ultimately I got out of serving in the Trumpian manner: physical flaw (old knee injury that tended to bother me about 30 seconds each month) that the army’s medical examiners (Whitehall Street in NYC: I have that much in common with Arlo Guthrie!) wouldn’t have noticed, but that a private orthopedic surgeon could write a plausible letter about.
Not one of my prouder memories, but maybe not the one I am most ashamed of. –Allen Hazen
Thanks, Allen. I’ve received a few messages from other classmates who got out of the war similarly. As I hope my column makes clear, this is no time to judge such choices harshly — unless someone who took a medical deferment went on to be a flag-waving patriot, even saying, “I don’t like people who were captured,” as little Donnie Bone Spurs said about John McCain. (Donnie Tax Cheat also doesn’t like people who pay their taxes, at least if he’s one of the people.) As the Vietnam War is concerned, I meant only to share a memory and to prompt some reflections and some sharing. So, thank you.
I don’t remember that particular event but I did sign something saying I would refuse to be drafted, I believe sometime in the fall of 1968. My recollection, admittedly hazy, is that the list of signers was published in the YDN. So maybe you need to search the autumn versions. After a few weeks of reflection I concluded that I was not really willing to emigrate to Canada or go to jail, so I requested that my name be removed from the list. I don’t remember who the organizers were. In the spring I applied to Navy OCS and was accepted, and signed the papers. My lottery number that fall was 336 but I would have been drafted by then. My Navy experience was very fulfilling and I’ve always been happy with that decision.
Tom Earley
Thanks, Tom. I’ll check the YDN and report back on what i find. I wasn’t aware of it being reported at all.
I hope that this post and more replies like yours and Allen’s, above, will open a skein of memories and ruminations. Although I find myself pretty much on the left these days — by default, not by any deep affection for or attachment to the left as I’ve known it over the years — I truly respect all honest , thoughtful reckonings with what we had to reckon with as college seniors. Some of my recent Yale students have gone into the military, two of them into Special Forces. I keep in touch with them when possible.