John, Kentucky, 1969. No. 262: Respect and Disrespect

My father was a WWII B-17 pilot and POW, and my father-in-law had been an Army officer who spent 3 years in the Pacific theater. I grew up with a strong belief that military service was one of the obligations of citizenship.  

I wanted to fly and enrolled in AF ROTC at UK, and the war in Vietnam was a fact of life that I expected to deal with.  The lottery was interesting, but not a factor as my decision was already made.  UK wasn’t a hotbed of protest, but I remember the burning of an ROTC building, and National Guard troops in front of the armory in the spring of 1970.  In those days you traveled in uniform and while on leave from pilot training I got the "baby-killer" speech in the St Louis airport. 

I have a lot of respect for the true conscientious objectors who stood on the strength of their convictions and looked for alternative service, but not much respect at all for those who in my book were more than willing to accept the benefits of citizenship without service, or who were simply cowards.