I graduated college in 1969, and began a Masters in Education at Syracuse U. Student-taught in an inner city junior high for a semester and felt overwhelmed by the chaos and the fact that I did more baby-sitting than teaching. Quit after one semester, and that ended my draft deferment for teaching.
I began to seriously think about whether I could go and kill people I knew nothing about over in Vietnam. I had researched the war thoroughly and thought it was both unnecessary and foolish. I knew that I could not kill people that I had never even had any contact with in a war that seemed very wrong-headed.
I applied to my draft board in Lexington, KY for a I-0 exemption as a conscientious objector. I was willing to either leave for Canada or go to prison instead of fighting.
I was willing to either leave for Canada or go to prison instead of fighting.
My draft board had evidently never had an application for I-0 in their memory and weren’t sure what to make of me. I was a Caucasian, college-educated, middle class young man, whose father taught at the University of Kentucky Medical school. My application was granted and I spent two years in alternative service. I also counseled other men who were struggling with their own consciences about what to do about being drafted.
One of the factors that influenced my application was a nascent belief that there is some kind of Higher Power in the universe who I believed felt it was wrong to kill other people just because you were ordered to do so. That belief strengthened over the years into a deep belief in the God of the Bible, and I served almost 30 years in the pulpit of the Presbyterian Church.
I never felt anger at the returning veterans – they had been sent on an errand not of their own choosing and had simply done what they believed was their duty. I believed that I had done the same thing, in a different way.