Chapter 15 - 1966 Early Vietnam Perspective

Chapter 15 Version 2

1966

“John, answer the phone.” Jane said as she worked on a customer in her beauty shop at 10 Sutton Place in Easthampton. John hated to answer the phone. He put down the “Life” magazine he was reading. Would he take the message correctly? Would he ask the right questions?

“Hello?... mom, can I go with my CCD class to hear a speech by someone at UMass?”

When John graduated from Sacred Heart School, he had a choice to make in where he would go to high school. He could go to St. Michael’s in Northampton, an all boys Catholic School. A second choice could be Williston Academy in Easthampton, an all boys private college prep school where there may be scholarships available. The default choice was coed Easthampton High School. EHS was John’s choice. John had heard that lower income students going to Williston ended up at UMass because they spent their educational savings on high school. John wanted the option to go to a college of his choice either public or private. Going to St. Michael’s would probably track to a Catholic university or UMass. By choosing EHS, John continued his religious study on Monday night for one hour every week in Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, CCD.

The woody station wagon pulled up and John went into the back seat with two other high school freshmen. There were six CCD students going along with the lay teacher.  UMass at Amherst, pronounced with a silent “h” by the locals, was about twenty minutes away. This was the second time John had gone to the campus. The first time was to a regional photography exhibition in the prior summer with his 4H camera club.

“The speaker is going to talk about the Vietnam War. Do you think the speaker will be for or against the war?” asked the CCD teacher as the woody drove past the construction of I-91 at the Oxbow north onto US Route 5 heading for Massachusetts Route 9.

Without hesitation, John piped up, “I think he will be for the war. The Domino Theory says that if we don’t stop the communists in South Vietnam, then Laos and Cambodia will fall to the communists first. Then like a falling line of dominos Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh and India will follow. We will end up fighting the communists in Hawaii so we might as well do the fighting in South Vietnam.” This was an argument from politicians that could be found in news magazines like “Time” or “Newsweek” or on the half hour NBC Huntley-Brinkley Report on television. No other students offered any thoughts and the driver made no additional comments.

The US had been bombing North Vietnam since the Tonkin Gulf Incident in 1964.  The US advisors in South Vietnam who were on the ground before the Kennedy assassination in November of 1963 had been increased to over 184,000 combat troops along with a large 7^th Fleet naval presence off the coast. To supply the troops for the combat buildup, the draft was increased.

The speech at UMass was held in the Student Union cafeteria. The tables were off to the sides and the chairs were lined up in front of a podium. It was a scene of very high emotion as if this was going to be a very important message that was going to be delivered. The seats were full of university students and the CCD class stood in the back of the room by the large glass windows taking in the scene.

There was an introduction by what appeared to be a student for former Kennedy Presidential special assistant Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as the speaker. Schlesinger had returned to academia as the Albert Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at the City University of New York. His first Pulitzer prize was for history in 1946 for the “The Age of Jackson” and his second Pulitzer was for biography in 1966 for “A Thousand Days: JFK in the White House.”  In his 1966 historical retrospective “The Cycles of American History”, Schlesinger explored the cyclical nature in America of multiple aspects of the American experiment including the politics of public purpose versus private interests, the warfare between realism and messianism, and the pendulum swings between ideology and national interest.

In short order, John realized that this was not going to be a pro-war speech to stir on the students to support the escalation of the war in Vietnam. Without a doubt, this was an anti-war speech. Schesinger believed that if Kennedy lived, the President was planning to disengage from the conflict before American combat troops were dragged into the fighting. Politics prevented the pullout as the 1964 elections were complicating the situation. It was not a long speech and it was clear that the university students and others in attendance shared Schlesinger’s viewpoint.

The CCD class trooped back to the station wagon and headed home. If there was any discussion in the automobile, John was unaware of it. He was just trying to make sense of what he had just witnessed. There was one question in his mind.

How could any American be against a war with communists?