Dear children,
45 years ago today I was closing in on the last weeks of my mission (I came home at the end of May, 1970) to Peru-Ecuador. Just a few days after I returned, there was a massive earthquake in Peru and a huge landslide high in the Andes mountains completely buried an entire town on a calm Sunday morning. (A side note, Gary Johns’ father (Paul Johns), who was in the same mission at the same time, was actually serving near the town that was buried, that I recall and he helped with the rescue and clean up along with many other missionaries.) It so happened that hundreds of children from that town were in a neighboring village attending a carnival. They were all left orphans by the tragic landslide. A month later, returning to BYU for the summer term, I helped organize a campaign to try and bring the orphans to America to be adopted by Utah families. I don’t remember how it turned out but we had great hopes of rescuing the orphaned children.
However, at that time there was another issue that was far greater on the American conscience: the Vietnam War. Riots were starting to break out on campuses across the country and lots of young men were fleeing the country to avoid the much-dreaded draft into what looked like an endless war with no justifiable purpose. Your dad/grandpa had just participated in the first draft lottery (while on my mission) of the Vietnam era and, because my birthday was Dec 30, I was selected #3. They were drafting everyone from 1 to 200 so there was no “wiggle room” for me :)
I was abe to stay out of the draft by attending college. Graduation was still a couple of years out so my concern about going into the military was not overly worrisome until my senior year.
By the next summer, I had secured what was then one of the most plum summer internships any BYU journalist had ever landed: photo editor for the Associated Press in Chicago. Today, that would be a “crumb” compared to the internships current BYU students land. But then it was a big deal. The dean of the Fine Arts College at the time even told me I had just become the “Babe Ruth” of journalism at BYU (what a joke today). I tried not to let it go to be head as I realized my selection was more due to the friendship of my department chair (former US News and World Report bureau chief in Chicago) with the AP chief than my dazzling journalistic skills :)
So in May 1971 I trooped off to Chicago. It was a fascinating summer in the “big city” for an Ajo kid. There were 2 or 3 other interns in our office in downtown Chicago. One of them was a young photographer by the name of John Filo, from Kent State University. Everyone already knew about the photo he had captured the year before. I don’t remember working very closely with him, even though I was a photo editor, but I remember thinking how amazing it was that John had been in the right place at the right time to capture a photo that eventually won a Pulitzer Prize and was credited as one of the singular elements that turned America against the Vietnam War…that later blessed me personally because just 18 months later I would be in boot camp being prepared to go to Vietnam. But fortunately by then the “revolt” in America was so great that the US was pulling out of Southeast Asia and the troops were coming home. I was able to avoid combat thanks to John and many others.
Anyway, thought you might enjoy this thread of our family’s connection to American history. It all came back when I saw this news clip http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/kent-state-the-photo-that-changed-america/ on CBS TV.
I’m glad to be alive and equally grateful and honored to be your dad/grandpa.
Love,
Dad
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