"This is going to be a good Wednesday!" Lent begins

Tromped out across the ice to the bus stop at 6:33 this morning. Usually the 6:42 bus is pretty full but there was only one other person on the bus. He smiled at me and mumbled something., Then he said "you got change for a dollar?" "No," I said, "but I do have a dollar." "That'll do," he repelled. I gave it to him. I tried to start a conversation but he kept on mumbling in his private world, Then smiled at me and said "God bless you. This is going to be a good Wednesday!" Indeed! As I walked from the bus station to Immaculate Conception for the 7:00 am Ash Wednesday service I found that stepping where other people had walked was a lot easier than trying to negotiate the slippery unbroken ice. Just like life....Father Bill led the few who made it (including Neil McManus from our Bible study group) in simple a capella singing in the little side chapel. The Gospel was from the Sermon on the Mount, about not giving alms for the purpose of making it known but to do it quietly, and not let people know you are fasting. Bill then talked about the community obligation to repent, renew and share that Lent represents, and how even the animals of Ninvehe repented when Jonah warned the city. The service was short and very simple. Bill signed us with the ashes and we sang one more hymn and filed out. It felt so right to begin Lent with a small group, and a very simple service with no frills. Outside a woman asked me to lend her a pen and it turned out we had clients in common and she can help me with my work--and she was a friend of Neil's. Her daughter who was there too is in a play at Manbites theater which sounds like great fun...We all had a pleasant chat before Neil brought me downtown. So much community, so many blessings from simple acts of charity, so little need to be original as long as you are walking in the Light. "This is going to be a good Wednesday!" Yes it is!

Carolina Way lives on --Thank you Dennis Rogers

Saturday, February 7, 2015


To Dennis Rogers

Dennis,

Your columns in the N & O were a fixture of young adulthood here in central NC. I enjoyed your humor and insight and stories about motorcycle riding, the Army and home living. You are missed now that you are in retirement.

I had to write to you when I read your piece today about the Carolina way being alive and well. As we Quakers say, “The Friend speaks my mind.” You have eloquently put out in the public arena something I have been trying to articulate and saying to my friends a lot over the last several years, exactly what you said. Even with all the athletic scandals, Carolina is still a great place and I am still so proud and happy that my family has so many connections with it.

We moved to Chapel Hill in 1965 from Cornell in upstate New York (back when “Yankee” was still a dirty word), when my dad, Forrest Read, got a job teaching in the English Department at UNC. Maybe you took some of his classes when you we there. It took a while for Carolina fever to catch on (my folks originally planned to stay in this hick state for a few years and then move back up to the Ivy League), but by the time I left the Army in 1976 I knew there was only one place to finish college, UNC. My Mom had gotten her social  work degree at UNC in 1972. When I applied to law school (while getting my Masters in German at UNC) there was only one place, UNC.

By the time my kids applied to college there was barely enough space on the application for all the family members who had been to UNC–my dad, my mom, brothers, sisters, in-laws. My daughter, Dino Mangano, like me, only wanted to go to and apply to UNC (we made her apply to UNC-Asheville, just in case–she did, very grudgingly).  They both graduated (son Quentin in 2009 and Dino 2010). Their Mom, my wife, Maria Mangano, got a job at the UNC Law School (where she got her JD in 1982) and shared the experience even more than I could. The kids both got great educations (as did I) and are developing into great citizens of the world. I am so proud of them and the University.

After she got her Masters in Education at Wake Forest, Dino said that she was so glad she went to UNC as an undergraduate. Not only did she get a great academic education, but she felt she got such a great education in life from being around and sharing the UNC experience with so many different kinds of people, something she felt was missing at WFU.

As this athletic mess has unfolded I have tried to think in what ways if any the dishonesty really touched the lives of my own UNC students during the five years they were there. I have not been able to think of any way that it did. More than the athletes cheating and professors looking the other way my sadness and disappointment now comes from the obfuscations, scapegoating and expensive evasions of the University administration. The lack of success of the basketball team makes me sad, but that is transitory–the reality of life and education in Chapel Hill remains the same and I would go there again myself in a minute.

I recently had dinner at UNC with law students (Witt Professionalism dinner) and came away marveling again at the intelligence, integrity and purpose of so many of the young people who go to UNC. The Carolina way does live on.  Thank you for putting it out there so eloquently.

Daniel Read, UNC 78, UNC MA German 1981, UNC JD 1983

http://www.newsobserver.com/2015/02/06/4536004/rogers-despite-uncs-troubles-the.html




Rogers: Despite UNC's troubles, ‘The Carolina Way’ is alive and well
BY DENNIS ROGERS
ColumnistFebruary 6, 2015 Updated 11 hours ago



The sight of protesting UNC-Chapel Hill students marching and chanting slogans because they don’t like the name emblazoned on a campus building warms my heart. Good for them.

The target of their ire is Saunders Hall, named for a former slave owner who was once the King Klucker of the Ku Klux Klan or something. The building bears his name, the university says, because he published the early colonial records of North Carolina, and that, to historians, is a certified big deal.

I don’t really care all that much what the place is called. What I do care about is a phrase that has been ridiculed and bandied about a lot in the past few years: “The Carolina Way.”

Full disclosure: Yep, I’m a Carolina graduate. I wear my Carolina garb with pride, although I’d be a little more proud if the basketball team would quit choking in the second half and maybe, just maybe, hit a clutch free throw occasionally. That said, I’m the guy in the fight song: “I’m a Tar Heel born and a Tar Heel bred and when I die I’m a Tar Heel dead …”

Those in the ABC (Anybody But Carolina) club have made great sport of the university’s signature slogan. “The Carolina Way,” they claim in their endless and often nonsensical tirades on the Internet, means phony classes, phony grades, taking down the championship banners in the Dean Dome, an athletics department doing anything to keep athletes eligible, administrators trying to cover up the whole sordid mess, blah, blah, blah.

No, that’s not The Carolina Way. The Carolina Way is the almost 30,000-member student body going to class every day to study medicine, history, journalism, art, chemistry, law, education, astronomy, music or a hundred other disciplines.

The Carolina Way is students who volunteer to work with needy people at home and abroad, building houses, tutoring and, yes, cheering like mad at sporting events.

The Carolina Way is about professors who encourage disheartened students, who do research and remember they are there to teach, inspire and motivate. And, yes, The Carolina Way is their underpaid and overworked graduate assistants who never get the praise or the money they deserve.

I lived it

So the naysayers are wasting their time telling me what they think The Carolina Way is.

I know what it is because I lived it.

My heart was in my throat the first day I walked on campus in the summer of 1970. Fresh out of the Army, I was 27 with a wife and two kids and had been admitted as a “high-risk” provisional student, meaning I was expected to fail and hit the road. The deal was, I had to take two classes in each session of summer school and pass all four with no grade less than a “B” or I was gone.

Two years and two semesters later, I graduated with honors and a degree in journalism.

How? Because of The Carolina Way.

The Carolina Way is married students working day and night to keep family and education going. My wife worked at the Institute of Government and as a waitress while I repaired books at Wilson Library and slung words at the Chapel Hill Weekly. And when we needed a car to get to these jobs, her boss, professor Jake Wicker, sold us one for $65 that had a new set of tires and a new battery.

The Carolina Way was Dean John Adams coming up with a thousand-dollar grant from the Journalism Foundation when, in spite of our four jobs and the GI Bill, we ran out of money for books and tuition and I was looking at having to re-enlist.

The Carolina Way was a grad student teaching French who took pity on me and my Southern accent that first summer and promised that if I tried real hard and came to class every day, I would pass with the “B” I needed to be admitted as a full-time student. I worked harder in her class, and learned more, than in any other class I took.

The Carolina Way? It is journalism professor Walter Spearman arranging a part-time job for me that paid $2 an hour. And it’s another journalism professor lending me his prized and expensive Hasselblad camera so I could take his photography class. And he gave me film for it.

Protests and vigils

The Carolina Way is students marching to support higher wages for cafeteria workers and bravely facing down armed state highway patrolmen. It is working to end the disastrous war in Vietnam. It is lighting candles in silent grief for the murdered Eve Carson. It is protesting the legislature’s attempt to decide who can or cannot speak on campus. It is standing up for your beliefs even when they are unpopular. Especially then.

The past few years have been difficult for those of us who love Carolina. We are disgusted with the whole stinking mess and look forward to the day when those in whose hands we have entrusted our beloved university will have the courage to do the right thing, openly and boldly. Remember what’s written on the university seal?

“Lux Libertas” (Light and Liberty).

That’s The Carolina Way too.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2015/02/06/4536004/rogers-despite-uncs-troubles-the.html#storylink=cpy

Christmas Cookie baking

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Many writers have demonstrated the evocative power of food to bring up associations from the past–most famously Proust and his madeleines. I think also of MFK Fisher making blackberry jam with her grandmother, the taste of jam evoking sweaty summer days in the kitchen. I wrote recently about Thanksgiving pies (and made one). Now Advent is here, and making Christmas cookies conjures up my youth.

We lived in Ithaca, New York to the time I was 12. My dad was a lowly associate professor at Cornell and with four kids crowded into a little house there was not a lot extra to go around. My parents argued about money a lot–we always had enough, but never too much, and part of the struggle of their two powerful personalities was figuring out how it got spent.

My mom grew up in the wealth and comfort of Buffalo high society. Her family had servants. She was sent to an elite boarding school, then Smith College. She told me once she never made a bed until she was 18. Then she married my father, from a suburban middle class family, gravitated to Socialist thinking, and had a three children in thee years. No more servants, to say the least. She had to learn how to keep house and cook. With her intelligence and creativity she became a good cook, as was expected of young faculty wives in the days.

So she decided for Christmas, since money was short, to make cookies for the neighbors. This became a family tradition which continued to her death. Mom lost interest in cooking in her later years: having to grind out three meals a day for so long (probably plus more than three decades of heavy smoking) dulled her interest. She would rather read or work in her studio than cook. Her last Christmas she dutifully made cookies, and not very well. “I made them with hate in my heart,” she said, “but I made them!”

In the little kitchen at the little house on Hanshaw Road she would mix up the cookie dough and wrap it in wax paper to chill. When the dough was cold (and the kids had snitched a fingerful of it every now and again when they  passed through the kitchen–the taste of raw cookie dough is  powerful, probably boosted by the surreptitious snitching involved–no wonder Ben & Jerry sell so much cookie dough ice cream!) we would roll it out and cut it with tin holiday cookie cutters–hearts, stars, Christmas trees, turkeys. (There was even a hatchet for George Washington’s birthday.)

The house didn’t seem too small to me then–it was just our house–though it must have felt awfully crowded for Mom and Da. Nick, Emily and me would sit around a little yellow table Nana had painted for us with our names on it (Tony hadn’t been born when she made it). By the time we got home from school it was already dark and cold. Part of the warmth of the memory for me probably has to do with being out in the snowy cold and then coming into the light of the kitchen to make cookies. And once I was in the house it got even darker outside.

Mom baked the cookies, including the traditional big letter cookie each of us got to cut out–a big D for me, which then would be loaded up with all the frosting and decorations that would fit. Then we would mix up frosting (confectioners sugar and milk) and color the frosting with food coloring. Then came the decorations–colored sprinkles, chocolate jimmies, and little silver sugar balls. And plates of cookies would go to the neighbors–and plenty for us too! The brightly colored cookies were fun to carry through the white, snowy yards to our neighbors.

Mom and I did not talk about recipes much when she was alive but I have the kitchen classic, The Joy of Cooking, which Mom also used (and gave me a copy of when I got my first apartment in Chapel Hill). Joy has a recipe for refrigerator cookies which must be the one Mom used. Mix the dough, chill it, then roll and bake. Pretty easy stuff. The cookies we made were not fancy or especially aesthetically pleasing–they were good heartland home baking, plain and simple. I started making the same kind of Christmas cookies with my own kids back when they were little. The same dough snitching, big letter cookies,  and kitchen conviviality. The tradition lives on.

One kind of cookies Mom liked to make was pinwheel cookies. Basically make a bunch of vanilla cookie dough, then separate into two parts and mix chocolate into one half. Roll the dough out as thin as you can, then lay one sheet on top of the other and roll them up.  Once the logs of dough are rolled, wrap them in wax paper and then plastic  (wrap well so it doesn’t get too dry) and put them back into the fridge to chill. Slice and bake (what’s left after the kids have discovered the wax paper logs and sliced off big hunks!).

 Here the dough has been rolled out flat and is ready to be rolled up into a log. The cook gets to trim the little ragged bits at the end and eat them.

And now the dough has been rolled up and is ready to chill. Cookie dough rolled up in wax paper. 1959 is calling me!

So the pinwheels have been rolled out and made. Tradition lives on. Food calls me home to my youth. Again.

Papa;s funeral

Joe Mangano’s funeral mass took place Tuesday, November 11, at Saint Raphael’s church in Raleigh. It was a very sad and moving event. So many of our friends showed up unexpectedly-their love and support was really meaningful.

I had called our old friend, Monsignor Michael Shugrue, to let him know about the funeral Mass. He had not known about it and said he would be there–and put on his robe and shared the pulpit with Father Gerald Lewis, the long time rector of Saint Raphael and a long time friend of the Mangano family, and Father Gerry Blaszczak, the current rector. It was such a blessing to have Mike there, who had married us, and baptized Dino, and been such a good friend over the years, along with Father Lewis, who had been especially close to Joe and gave him his first anointing of the sick back in May. Father Gerry was newer but had already endeared himself to the Mangano family with his intelligence, kindness and strength. We were so lucky to have all three of them there.

Before the Mass there was a reception hour where the family mingled with guests in the lobby of the church. There were plenty of medical people and some old patients of Joe’s. The mood was pleasant but somber–it was good to chat some with the guests beforehand and share memories of Joe and hear how he had touched the lives of people we had never met before. We talked and watched a loop of photographs from Joe’s life that the funeral home had put together. Maria and I were touched that a good number of our friends had made the trip over from Durham, earning a hug of surprise and joy as they walked in the door–“Beth and Keith! This is so nice of you!” Alex Charns came, and Sue Coon and other friends–and Shawn and Lynn and Sadie from Maria’s office–people from all parts of our lives. My sister-in-law Glenda drove up from Charlotte. It was poignant, but good to see them all, even if we did not get to socialize with them much.

We processed in after the priests and the service began. Maria and I cried on and off–to see the family in the pews, watching Grandma cry, listening to Dino read the Old Testament portion from the book of Wisdom (“I was glad to go first,” said Dino, “before I got all choked up.”). Looking at the little gold metallic box that contained Joe’s ashes, and that sat on a table in the center of the broad area between the pulpit and the dais where priests sat, was so sad. Maria read from 1 Thessalonians 4, about those who have died in Christ: “For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”

Father Gerry, a big hearty Jesuit (a real contrast to the mild plump Father Lewis and the serious asceticism of Father Mike),  had chosen for the Gospel John 13:1-17:

It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. 3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

*******

10 Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was going to betray him, and that was why he said not every one was clean. 12 When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. 13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

Gerry explained this choice, which he said was rather unusual for a funeral, by saying that Joe had told him several times “I am not a very religious man,” but that in his lifetime of service to his family and to his patients he had lived out real Christian faith in a humble and devoted way. “Now that you know these things,” how Joe lived his life, “you will be blessed if you do them.” It was a powerful sermon. He ended with the last words of the Divine Comedy, spoken in Italian:

ma già volgeva il mio disio e ’l velle,
sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa,

l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

(but already I could feel my being turned -
instinct and intellect balanced equally

as in a wheel whose motion nothing jars -
by the Love that moves the sun and other stars. )

El, Alex and Quentin all gave their eulogies right before the close of the Mass. Each was well-spoken and heartfelt. It felt good to have grandchildren from both our family and the Cioffi family speak about how much their Papa had meant to them and what a constant, devoted (Quentin’s words) grandfather he had been. It was good to hear El to talk about her Pop;  she had done so much for him over the last year. And it was especially touching to me that Chris Cioffi, who could not come from Montana on short notice, had collaborated with Alex on what to say and that Alex gave him credit. Quentin talked about Papa’s weekly letters with the Final Jeopardy answers carefully copied out, the crossword puzzles, a $20 bill. Those letters–like Papa--have been such a fixture for our kids for so many years, wherever they have been. More tears were shed about that.

Usually the procession out of the church after Mass ends at the door to the sanctuary, when the priests turn off to go in to the sacristy to disrobe, while the congregants pass out through the lobby to the parking lot and the world outside. But this time the three priests walked on ahead, in their bright white robes and red and gold stoles, toward the columbarium, across the parking lot, where Joe’s ashes would be interred. Because of the simple luck of where we were sitting Maria and I were among the first to walk out of the church right behind them and walked with them out into the driveway.

I saw that I was walking next to Charles Mangano, who was carrying the gold box with Joe’s ashes. The family had had long discussions about who would get to speak, and for how long, during the Mass (the diocese only allows 5 minutes), but no one had said anything about who would carry the box. I don’t think Joe had ever said anything about it. And there it was, right next to me. Without really thinking about propriety or what Charles might feel or say, totally on the spur of the moment, I asked Charles if he would let me carry the box a little bit. I assume he had not expected anyone to ask this, but anyway he promptly replied “Sure” and handed the box over to me.

What an incredible honor–to carry the box with Joe’s ashes. “I’m gonna carry him,” I said to myself as much to anyone who was near, “ Just like he carried me.”  The box was heavy–surprisingly so for a little metal box–it carried not just bones and dust but all the weight of the life that Joe had lived and was now gone, and the sadness which weighed down the family walking behind me, and the love and devotion he had shown to our family and with which we were marking his passing into the next world. I offered the box to Maria and Dino, who were walking near me, but they did not want to carry it–I did not really mind when they said no. Nobody else claimed it and I wound up carrying it up the hill and holding the box as the three priests stood by the niche in the columbarium and intoned the final funeral prayers. The box really was heavy and my arms began to tremble, but there was no way it was ever going to fall as long as I had breath to hold it up. We all said a Hail Mary and the Lord’s Prayer and I placed the box into the niche.

I know Joe’s spirit has gone on and what was in the box was just the bones and ashes of his earthly body. I know that his body, like mine, was dust and will return to dust. I know that his spirit lives on still in the loving devotion of his children to their families, in the little Papa whistles they give, and the many memories we all share. But I am only human. The inward is most important, but outward acts, even if symbolic, are also hugely important. The ritual of carrying him that last weary mile, of holding him up that one last time, really meant so much to me.

When the prayers had ended and the priests dismissed us I ran crying to Charles and hugged and thanked him over and over for letting me do this thing. I think he was surprised–“I was just conscripted,” he said later–that I wanted to carry Joe’s ashes and that it meant so much to me. So it was. I will always be grateful to Charles for readily saying “Sure” and allowing me to do that.

We had talked some about getting some of Joe’s ashes–to have in the house, to scatter on the family graves in Mount Vernon. I, much more than Maria,  thought putting some of his ashes on his parents’ graves would be important. Now that I have done this though, I do not really feel much need. It is done. God Bless you Joe.

Sea Fever--from Maria's first book of poetry

Monday, October 27

I went over to see Maria Mangano's dad Joe today. He really loved me reading "October's Bright Blue Weather" by Helen Jackson so I thought I would bring a book of poetry along and see if he wanted me to read anything. I looked through Maria's poetry compilations and found "Magic Casements" a book of favorite poems published in 1937. I had it out on the counter and Maria saw it and asked "Where did you get that book?" I explained my purpose in pulling it out and she asked if I had looked on the inside cover."Why, no..." It turns out it was the very first book of her own that she had ever owned; her father Joe had bought it for her in Rutland VT in 1970. She had in her careful schoolgirl handwriting inscribed the book as shown in the photo. We had a good cry about that--I brought the book to Joe's house and I showed him the inscription. He got teary too...he instantly found "Sea Fever" by John Masefield and I read it aloud to him, he recited along with the parts he remembered. More tears about that...

Sea Fever
BY JOHN MASEFIELD

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking,

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Parable of the Sower

On Sunday my Sunday school kids and I walked up to the statue of the Sower in front of the music building on the Duke East Campus and read and discussed the parable of the sower (Mark 4) as we walked along. One reason was it was a beautiful day and another was because seeing the statue might give the kids a better idea of just how sowing seeds works. It was a lot of fun. As we walked we identified the path which was hard where seeds would never take root (a sidewalk, actually), some stony ground that just had a little but of grass, and some thick weeds that would have choked a good seed. We talked about how the good soil usually needs to be prepared first, it works a lot better if the seed falls on ground that has been cleared of weeds and chopped up so the seeds will take root. That's why I teach Sunday school, to prepare the soil, besides the sheer joy of talking to the kids and hearing what they have to say.

Visiting the statue reminded me again how the Word literally gets scattered about. The Sower takes a handful of seeds and tosses them out, not seeking carefully for the perfect place. That's what the Pharisees wanted--"We have been paying our tithes and strictly obeying the laws, why are you spreading the Word to those tax collectors and prostitutes?" It is there with us and all around us, we just have to ready to receive it. Or as Jesus said, "Who has ears, let them hear."

Week of October 27, 2014
Army memoir

Today, October 27, is a very bright cold October morning, reminding me strongly of an October morning forty years ago, October 29, 1974, when I reported to the Armed Services induction station in Raleigh to join the Army. The memories flood in.

I had dropped out of Princeton in May 1974. My failure there was the immediate result of ceasing to attend class, caused by depression from working really hard in the dining hall to pay my way there without really knowing why I was doing it (my major was history but I had no idea where I was going with it), loneliness, and feelings of inadequacy (these people were so smart– I was smart too but didn’t have the drive to study). It occurs to me now as I write this that the fact that my father had remarried and his new wife was expecting a baby in July may have unconsciously contributed to my discouragement and feelings of worthlessness (he did later write of myself and my siblings from his first marriage as his “former family”). Anyway, I left when my mother called in May after the Dean of Students called her because I had made myself scarce (when I wasn’t working in the dining hall I usually hung out in the Public Library just down Witherspoon Street, no one could find me there). She said “If you are really so unhappy, why don’t you just come home?” I did.

Over the next five months I settled down some and looked for work, in sales, construction, and finally got a job as a taxi driver in Durham. I lived mostly with my mother in Chapel Hill but also with my father at his home out in the country. I was still pretty depressed and lonely. Taxi driving soon proved to be a dead-end job and demanded 72 hour weeks. I ran off once for a couple of days but came back. Generally, as I had at Princeton, I remained quiet and secretive.

The Army recruiting station was on Orange Street in downtown Durham and I passed by frequently. One day I stopped in – the war in Vietnam was winding down and looked like there would not be another shooting war again soon, what with the divided ugly mood in the country. Army pay was not great but it came with free room and board. Boot camp would toughen me up. And I could learn a trade or go to Europe. (I had studied German and most US soldiers in Europe were shipped there.)

The more I talked to the recruiter, Sergeant Bowman, the more attractive it seemed. There would even be money for college after I got out. I wanted to go to mapmaking or language school in California but there would be a wait to enlist of about a year. I knew it was now or never. If I signed up for two years they would pick the job but I could pick the duty station and I could pick Europe. I figured I was smart, surely they would not assign me to be an infantryman. That is what I decided to do.

My father had been one of the UNC campus leaders in the anti-war protests during the late 1960's and early 1970's. Although he had cajoled his mother into allowing him to volunteer in 1974 at 17, and had never surrendered his commission as a lieutenant in the Navy Reserves, all I knew was that he was totally against war. He attended Chapel Hill’s Quaker Meeting for a while and brought myself and my older brother Nick along, with the hope that we would catch on to Quakerism and become conscientious objectors (Nick had a high draft number and wasn’t going to be drafted anyway; Quakerism came for me twenty years later). How would Da react?

Sgt. Bowman visited me at Mom’s house, not Da’s, and she did not object or try to talk me out of it – she later said she did not like it, but she thought I needed to make a break in some way and this seemed as good a way as any. I did not tell my father right away. When I finally did, we were sitting at a picnic table outside his house on a sunny fall day. I can’t remember exactly what I said – I think it was something along the lines of “You know I’m not too happy driving a taxi. I haven’t been able to find a better job without a college degree and some experience. In the Army I can go to Europe.” He was totally taken aback – it seemed to me that his face turned grey.

He didn’t really try to talk me out of it, though. And when he saw that I really meant to do it, he accepted my decision fairly readily. I weighed 220 pounds after several years of relative sloth and depression, and I needed to lose 15 pounds to meet the Army’s maximum weight for my height. I got right down to it. That showed my parents my determination about as much as anything else. It took about a month. (I also had to get a letter from a psychiatrist that I was not suicidal. I did that, too.)

Da actually was the one who took me to the entrance station. And the adventure began. We arrived on a morning like this, bright and cold, as the sun was coming up. He drove off in his blue VW bug and I walked in.

The entrance station had a big crowd of young men, and a few military guys. We sat around and got tested and examined, played cards, and hung around some more. Finally in the late afternoon we signed the enlistment contracts, swore the oath to defend and obey, and we were enlisted soldiers. Then we were flown out to Fort Knox for basic training. We loaded onto a dingy Army bus at the airport and headed out to the fort, arriving in the wee hours of the morning. That day started out with us being marched around the base from one building to the next, getting short haircuts and ID cards, and issued uniforms and blankets. Some of the guys had real long hair – they cried when the barber zipped it all off in 30 seconds. By the end of the day, we started to look almost like soldiers.  There was a training film that night and after 36 hours without sleep I dozed off. The drill sergeant noticed and drew a circle on the blackboard and made me stand with my nose in the circle until the movie was over. I was not in charge anymore, that was for certain. There was no easy way out, not for two whole years. I couldn’t just hide in the library. So I got down to it.

I realized even more what a different place I was in the second night when the drill sergeant asked the platoon (a platoon is about 50 men–four squads make a platoon, four platoons make a company) who had graduated from high school. About a third of us raised our hands. How many had been to college? Three of us. How many actually graduated? Just one (not me, obviously).  He picked four squad leaders and a platoon leader, mostly on size and his initial perceptions. We got up each morning at 5:00 a.m., ran to the chow hall (the company area was “Big Foot Country”–you had to run everywhere), did PT  (physical training), and commenced drilling and marching and doing weapons training and doing push-ups for the slightest infraction (“Drop! Gimme 25!”) and all the other things the Army expects recruits to do. By the time lights went out around 9 we just fell to sleep. Then the next day more of the same. Woke up in the dark, went to sleep in the dark, and stayed on the go pretty much all the time in between.

Boot camp did indeed toughen me up. Our platoon sergeants were Drill Sergeant Osborn and DS Byrd. They were men of war, tough, fierce and stern, but I had, and still have, tremendous respect for them. They were always in command and in perfect order; if they lacked integrity I never saw it nor heard of it. After only a week or so DS Osborn recognized I was probably going to make it. One day we were in formation and he told me, “Read, take the squad leader armband. You are a squad leader now.” Reluctantly I took the black band from poor Pope, who was as dumbfounded as I was. But I did well. I think that was after one night when our platoon had done something minor and he made us “duck-walk” (walk in a seated position) back and forth in front of the barracks. DS Osborn sent me on some BS errand which I quickly completed. I think he had meant for me to escape the torture of the duck-walk. The platoon was still outside and so I went back and rejoined them.  Another time Captain Johnson, the handsome, athletic company commander, started running alongside me as we ran around the parade field. He gave me a look like “What the hell is a dumpy guy like you doing leading a squad in MY company?” He ran us around the field about three extra times, staying right beside me, as we ran and sang the stupid songs the Army makes you sing. I kept up. I got respect. Another exercise was running a box of tank rounds (actually just cardboard tubes) through the woods. My partner and I were running along when the box, made of cheap wood, broke and gashed open the base of my thumb, tearing not only the skin but layers of muscle as well. I held the ripped flesh together and told my partner, “Let’s go and finish this.” We picked up the pieces and ran through the rest of the course. I dropped the box at DS Osborn’s feet and told him, “I think I need to get my hand stitched up, drill sergeant.” I was back on duty the next day.

The main thing I worried about that might keep me in boot camp was the overhead walk–hanging from the metal bars of a 20 foot ladder eight feet off the ground and walking hand over hand to the other end, turning around and coming back. The first few times I tried it I couldn’t do it. Every time I had a little bit of free time, though, I practiced on my own. I didn’t do great on the final physical test, but I passed, hurting hands and all.  After two months of boot camp I had lost about 25 pounds (even though we were on the go all the time, the food was so bad almost everybody, even the slim guys, lost weight). I came home for Christmas right out of boot camp. I don’t know who was prouder, Da or me, when I walked across the road from his house to church in my dress uniform.

It did not take long for that first blush of enthusiasm to wear off and for me to realize that a lot of that constant activity and arbitrary punishments and special Army lingo and songs was a way of making the mind uniform and compliant to match the olive-green exterior we put on the first day.  The more I paused to reflect the more I saw through the mind games the Army plays. I abandoned the idea of going to officer school and began thinking about what to do when I got out. I became aware of how many days were left not too long after I arrived in Germany.

My duty station in Germany had plenty of hard-charging proud warriors, but it also had plenty of lazy time servers who knew they just had to keep their boots shiny and fatigues starched and stay out of trouble and they could do their twenty years and retire. I worked with a lot of these since I got assigned to work in personnel records, basically a clerical job. It was tough to take orders from some of them, knowing how little they really cared about the job from the way they talked to their buddies when the CO was not around. But orders are orders and must be obeyed. And there were plenty of more or less functional alcoholics and drug abusers, too, and people who thought of Germany as a prison they had been sent until they could go back to the “real world.” Fortunately for me in 1975 and 1976 there were also still plenty of collegians who had gotten their draft notices and signed up for an extra year to avoid being sent wherever the Army wanted them to go (anyone want to be a combat infantryman in Vietnam?). They were smart and though they mostly hated the Army they enjoyed being overseas and experiencing German culture beyond the prostitutes and Green Card gold-diggers and hash dealers. Most all of my friends in the service fell into this category.

And I was in Germany. There was so much to see and experience that was so foreign and exciting to me. I could read German pretty well when I arrived, and began to understand the local dialect after a while; I was much more comfortable than most of my fellow GIs. I spent as much time as I could off base, and when the opportunity came to move off post I did not hesitate. My friend Jim had space in his apartment and I moved in with him. We had a lot of fun and good times and good food (Jim really was the one who introduced me to really good food!) and drink (he did good on that, too) together. Jim hung out and spoke Greek with Forti at the Taverna Balkania while I listened to bazouki music and ate real souvlaki; up at the corner of the Jahnstrasse was a real Turkish coffee house full of real Turks; our downstairs neighbor, Herr Forbrich, was a pleasant man who had only returned to Germany from a slave labor camp in Siberia in 1949. I joined a German youth group. I still stay in regular touch with several of the guys from that group. They are fantastically loyal. I traveled a lot–New Years in Venice with Klaus and Wolfram, May Day in Basel with Oskar, trips hiking in the German Alps. Hearing a real yodel out of the fog on a snowy trail in the Alps thrilled me to the core. France was hardly more than an hour away–the horror of Verdun blew me away. I drank beer in village bars where German vets griped that Hitler screwed up, he should have attacked Russia and conquered it, and only THEN attacked England. And there was so much more.

I served my two years, to the day, to October 28, 1976. I was glad to process out at Nellingen Barracks, where I had processed in to my unit in Germany. I traveled around a while in Europe, looked unsuccessfully for jobs, and hung out in my little apartment, before coming home for Christmas 1976.

I tell people when I am talking about my time in the Army that it is like going to the dentist. You don’t like to be there, and it hurts a lot, but when you leave you are glad you went. That is how I feel. There were financial benefits, especially the GI Bill which carried me through law school. But more importantly I learned that I was going to be a leader. I took over the squad. I knew I could take charge of things. When the General ordered our slovenly little unit to do PT every day outside his office window, the CO put me in charge. “You’re kidding, sir,” I said incredulously, “I am supposed to lead these sergeants and career military men?” He just said that was his order (he already had his medical excuse in hand, it turned out). I obeyed. Because I also learned about doing my duty. Even if it is hard and contrary, I have to do my duty. I learned about getting things done in a big organization, and making friends and contacts to accomplish what I wanted done.  And as a bonus my German friends taught me so much about loyalty and openness to the world.

I was back home at my mother’s house in Chapel Hill in early 1977 trying to arrange the delivery of my stuff that I had collected in Germany from Fort Bragg. It required a number of phone calls and about half an hour of cajoling and arranging. When I finally hung up from the last call, she said, “You just are a different person. You spoke with so much authority. I hardly recognized you.” I probably would not have either, before I joined up.