“I think my freshman year that would have been 1964 65 is when I became aware of Vietnam.”
Kathleen Buckley of York was in Virginia, studying at the College of William and Mary.
“I remember standing with one group of people protesting the war in my freshman year. But it was so quiet we could have been holding up you know peace and love signs or something. But at that point in my life I thought well war that’s not the way to solve a problem. You know, I just, it was just in general I didn’t think we should be going to war about anything.”
As Vietnam dragged on many of Kathleen’s classmates developed negative attitudes toward the war.
“There was a big change in the feelings on campus into the years of like 66 68 but even at that time William Mary stayed rather conservative. But there were people talking of going to Canada and everybody was trying to get jobs teaching because teaching was a deferment at that time, if I remember correctly. People that got married wanted to have children right away so they wouldn’t have to get drafted. So there was lots of that kind of talk and I didn’t agree with any of that at all.”
“Our government said we need to do this. We need to protect these people. We need to stop communism. So I think I pretty much went along with that.”