Chapter 33 - 1968 The Draft and College as a High School Senior

Chapter 33 Version 1

1968

Joining the military is usually an option. For some it is more than an option. The draft was in full swing in the late 1960’s. Those who were not in school were likely to be drafted and sent to Vietnam. John always knew that college was in his future. With his work with his father and uncles in the construction business and his comfort with math and science, he decided to pursue a degree in civil engineering. He had been working with his father Joe and his uncle Stanley in the construction trade and at the Zywar Bros. lumber/hardware and paint store located on Northampton Street. He just needed to have the draft not interfere with this plan.

Joe thought that UMass in Amherst would be a good choice as John could save money by commuting from home. John wanted to go away to college and he scoured the college bulletins in the high school library and applied to four schools as the $20 application fee was pricy for the day – over a day’s work at the $1.90/hour minimum wage. MIT was the stretch. Rensselaer and Worcester Polytechs were the probables and Lowell Tech was the safety school. He took tours of WPI and RPI. After his interview at WPI, John’s parents were called in:

“Your son will probably be accepted but there is almost no chance of any scholarship” they were told. John’s parents did not tell John what they were told as without a substantial scholarship, WPI would be too expensive for him to attend.

John’s friend Frank was intent on going to WPI and wanted John to come to Worcester to “our college”.

John’s friend Richard was awarded the Rensselaer medal in his junior year that included a half tuition scholarship to RPI. Richard decided to go away from technology and to the humanities at Hampshire College leaving the half tuition scholarship unused. When John toured RPI, he quickly made up his mind. This is where he belonged. The pre-engineering curriculum was highly structured and John needed the structure. He felt comfortable on campus and they did have upper class dorms so he would not have to consider joining a crazy fraternity or living off campus.

In January the college letters arrived. Thick ones were acceptances and thin ones were rejections. MIT was a thin one. Lowell, WPI and RPI were thick ones. Then it was time to wait for the scholarship letters. To Jane’s surprise, both RPI and WPI offered about a third of the cost in scholarship. That was enough to go to RPI.

John was not a natural leader. He joined the math club and the chess club to bolster a weak resume of extracurricular activities along with having an interest in those areas. To his surprise, he was elected president of a rather large math club. The math club advisor had some ideas and John organized a dance to raise money for a math scholarship prize at graduation even though that would be the only dance he would ever attend in high school. He also ran a math contest with the winner being drawn from the correct entries at the dance.

John had been working with his father during the summer and on Saturdays and Friday evenings at the lumber yard. Last summer they built an addition on the M&M service station on Parson Street. He lifted concrete block onto the staging and mixed the mortar using a 1/2/3 measuring system – one shovel of hydrated lime/two shovels of Portland cement/3 shovels of fine mason sand. Add water to get a nice consistency that doesn’t get too gritty when picked up between the thumb and the index finger. But Joe decided to leave his association with Stanley and take a job as a maintenance craftsman at the Easthampton School Department in 1969. At the School Department he would have a pension and health insurance for his family. John would not be working with his father this summer. John had taken the civil service exam and scored in the 96^th percentile but did not get a summer job with the post office. So Joe, before leaving the lumber yard, asked a customer who was the head nurse at Northampton State Hospital if John could get a summer job at the hospital. The answer was “Have him come up to the hospital, fill out an application and have an interview”. John did and had the world’s shortest interview.

“Why do you want a job at the state hospital?” asked the head nurse Miss Florence.

“I am going to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the fall and need a summer job to help pay for the tuition.” John responded.

“Well if you are good enough to get into Rensselaer that is good enough for me. You can start as soon as you graduate from high school.” John later found that Rensselaer’s first professor was Amos Eaton and Eaton was the head nurse’s name.

Graduation was approaching in the middle of June of 1969. John liked to notice what his friends were reading. Generally, his liberal friends were readers and his conservative friends read less. John received conservative ideas from TV’s Crossfire (“Up From Liberalism” by William F. Buckley, Jr.) and from articles in his own subscription to the conservative “National Review” magazine and from conservative politicians. He read “Six Crises” by Richard M. Nixon. John went with his friend Mike to see an address by South Carolina US Senator Strom Thurmond at UMass.

A liberal friend Lynne was reading “Soul on Ice” by Eldridge Cleaver. John lent Lynne his copy of “The Real World of Democracy” and never received it back. He hoped it was given a good home or better yet, traveled to other readers and in a sense became homeless.

John’s friend Richard was reading “The Poetry of Rock” by Richard Goldstein – a collection of rock music lyrics of the 1950’s and 1960’s presented as poetry. John bought his own paperback copy. In it he found lyrics like Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne”, Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and the Association’s “Along Comes Mary”. John was always a music lover and sang “Let Me Go Lover” as a young child at a relatives wedding. That was his last public performance as his singing ability could be rated minimal. Joe had bought a large black walnut console stereo at an auction and John began buying music albums. “Bee Gees First” was the start and then it was one or two albums per month with consultations to Stereo Review magazine. No genre was out of bounds with music from Johnny Cash to Pete Seeger to Bob Dylan to Simon and Garfunkel to the Rolling Stones and Beatles. Each album was first played multiple times without looking at the lyrics to get the overall mood. Then the lyrics were studied.

John had just purchased a copy of Crosby, Stills & Nash’s debut album when it was time to get ready for golf. John had made the last position, seventh man, on a six man golf team as a junior. There were some very good golfers on the team including his best friend Bob. John was always looking to get better and so he bought two books on golf – “Slammin’ Sam Snead’s How To Play Golf” and Gary Player’s “Positive golf: Understanding and Applying the fundamentals of the game”. Trying to change his swing, John was very inconsistent in his golf that spring. The clubs that his father had bought for him when he was a freshman were now too short and he was playing with a full set of clubs borrowed from his uncle Stanley. One of the better golfers on the team recommended that John let a younger player have the last spot on the team to get some experience for the next years as there were almost all seniors on the team. John declined as the spot on the team entitled the player to golf four times per week for free. The coach decided to have a two hole playoff for the final alternate’s spot on the team between John and a sophomore. John was down by two strokes after the first hole and shanked his tee shot almost into a stream from an elevated tee while his opponent was safely off the side the green by about 10 feet. John took out his $2.00 wedge he bought at Caldor’s and chipped to about a foot from the cup for a par. His opponent double bogeyed the hole and John won the spot by winning the next two holes.  Later that spring, John had his best round he would ever golf – two over par for nine holes. John got to the course late one day and there were only three high school girls left to join from the golf club which played once per week. After double bogeying the first hole, he played par golf the rest of the round with one birdie offsetting one bogey.

The EHS golf team was undefeated the first year he played and untied/undefeated the second year. Six golfers played in match play format. The team member with the highest medal score sat out the next match and the alternate played. John played every other match and never lost a match…but he did tie quite a few. In one match he lost the first four holes and won the last four for a tie. The golf team received a bid to compete in the Massachusetts State High School Tournament his senior year. The School Board decided that the team would not compete. After inquiries were made and offers to cover their own transportation and costs, the golf team was ordered to stand down. If the discussion continued, the School Board let it be known that they would take it out on the golf coach. The golf coach was well respected and liked so there was no more pushing the issue. That is the kind of politics that children of the 60’s were rebelling against although the decisions being protested were more of a life and death nature as the KIA numbers for the week broadcast on the nightly news were coming in near a steady 200/week from Vietnam.

John’s senior year was full and he knew in the back of his mind that he needed to register for the draft. He would be eighteen in mid July. He needed a college deferment or risk being drafted. In his mind he had the phrase “within one week of your eighteenth birthday” as the required registration period so there was about month to do that after graduation.