Don C. Pease III ‘66
Dartmouth College Oral History Program
The Dartmouth Vietnam Project
February 15, 2016
Transcribed by Mim Eisenberg/WordCraft
[EMILY H.]
BURACK: Hi. My name is Emily Burack. I am sitting in Rauner Special Collections Library in Hanover, New Hampshire, on Monday, February 15th, 2016, at 10 in the morning. I am speaking with Don [C.] Pease [III], who is at his home in Ottawa, Canada.
Good morning, Don.
PEASE: Good morning.
BURACK: Let’s get started. Let’s start at the beginning. Where were you born, and when?
PEASE: I was born in February of 1944 in Burlington, Iowa, which is on the Mississippi River, just about 80 miles up river from Hannibal, Missouri, which is the setting for Huck Finn [The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn], Tom Sawyer [The Adventures of Tom Sawyer] and all of that.
The river, in childhood anyway, dominated the city. It was a city then of wartime, ’44, and it was probably 35,000. It had swelled because it became the site of a [U.S.] Army ammunition weapon manufacturing—bomb manufacturing plant. To this day, that’s still a major industry there.
But in any event, the river really dominated, so if you read Huck Finn especially, you have some idea of what the river, the islands and on shore [unintelligible] would be—would be like.
BURACK: What did your parents do, and what were their names?
PEASE: Yes. My father was Don [Pease] Jr. I’m actually the third. And my father ran the family business, which he had taken over and managed once my grandfather, also named Don [Pease], had died. The family business was a small business, too. He was a beer distributor, a middle man, an intermediary between—between the breweries that he represented and the taverns. And, grocery stores, occasionally.
And my mother—until my youngest brother—I’m one of four, the second of the four, so my youngest brother—nine years younger—until he was I guess in junior high school, she was—she was a homemaker, as we called it in those days, and then she became a secretary in junior high school.
BURACK: Gotcha. What was it like growing up with three siblings?
PEASE: Oh, well, in the postwar, which is, of course, when I had come to consciousness, and during the ’50s, it was very much a—popularly described—I mean, there was certainly a sense of anything is possible. The U.S. was in quite a commanding position in the world and actually experienced a great deal of prosperity during those times from the end of the war until at least the mid-’60s or well beyond.
So there was, certainly compared to today, much less fear in the air. With respect to children, I remember walking to kindergarten, which—I would have been five years old, I guess—walking about, I don’t know, 10, 11 blocks by myself or with another five-year-old. And that was common. So you had pretty well the run of the city without your parents worrying that you were going to be molested, kidnapped, harmed, beaten up or in some way [chuckles] brutalized.
BURACK: Definitely [both chuckle] a different world today.
PEASE: Yes. I always think, certainly from the perspective of living outside of the U.S., that there’s an amazingly quick fear trigger in the broad populace in the States. Very easy to crank that up and get people to do—it’s of course relevant to the war—to do quite extraordinary and dangerous and very often horrific things out of fear. That seems throughout American history to have been—the populace has been conditioned to have quite a—quite a quick trigger on that sort of thing. So there was nuclear war ominous, hanging over, but that was so—and we had—you probably heard it—the air raid drills regularly—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —at the school. You would take cover and have the illusion that you could protect yourself from radioactivity by hiding under a desk or a table and all that sort of thing. [Both chuckle.] So that was there, and certainly the Cold War was very much on when I came to awareness and consciousness, social consciousness. So that was that.
But on a personal level, that didn’t affect the great freedom that we had. We were just roaming around, doing whatever. And certainly where I grew up, there wasn’t a feeling that the world was hostile.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: It certainly would have felt that way. There were very few black people who lived in my hometown. There was de facto segregation in housing and great discrimination in, um, jobs, so for them—but they were a very tiny minority, so the prevailing atmosphere was we can do everything. We are free, and the world is a hospitable place.
BURACK: Mm-hm. How much older was your older sibling than you?
PEASE: Yes. My oldest sister, Diane [Pease], was two and a quarter years older than I, and then following after me: one brother, who was five years younger than I am, and my youngest brother is nine years younger.
BURACK: So did you and Diane go to school together? Or she would walk with you to school?
PEASE: Did I and Diane go to school together?
BURACK: Yes.
PEASE: Oh, yes. She would have accompanied me. That’s an interesting point. She was very nurturing.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: So my oldest granddaughter, who’s now four, and a big sister, herself, I tell her my sister Diane taught me just about everything I knew—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —in the early years, so, yes, she was attentive. But my memories are walking alone or with a kindergarten friend.
BURACK: Yeah.
PEASE: Yeah, she certainly would have been a sheltering presence. [Both chuckle.]
BURACK: Did you play sports, growing up?
PEASE: Oh, yes, sports were always a very big deal. Some of my very early memories were playing what they called the tackles. Tackle football, with the older neighborhood boys. And I was three or four or five, so I was certainly brought up to be—to like that sort of thing and be athletic and show bravery and spunk. And I recall getting a lot of praise for doing that with older kids.
And my father and my uncle, who—by the way, my father’s brother was the principal of the local high school. [unintelligible].
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: He was an important figure in local social landscape and my life as well. But in any event, they were both athletes, and I had good coordination now and all of the things. You need a lot of encouragement. So sports were a very big deal, yes. And all through school I played whatever sport was on that season.
BURACK: Did you play sports in high school?
PEASE: I’m sorry, did I play?
BURACK: Any organized sports in high school? Like, for the school?
PEASE: Oh, yes. Right on through school. We had organized sports. We had organized basketball of a sort even in elementary school, and it meant starting in junior high, which ran I think through nine. There were organized sports, tackle football with equipment, basketball, and, you know, the seventh grade and eighth grade team makes and the varsity, so I played on all of those things. But I was a decent athlete. I was supposed to be in the varsity [unintelligible] starting [unintelligible].
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: Yeah, that was a very big part of my identity.
BURACK: Oh, what, did you like high school, or did you like school, or more of your teams or—what was it like?
PEASE: Oh, I always liked school. I liked [unintelligible]. And junior high. It was—we had a weekly newspaper in grades eight and nine. In ninth grade I was the editor of that local, mimeographed school newspaper. And so I was involved in that and various school government. The usual profile of—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —the Dartmouth student they were looking for back in those days. [Both chuckle.] Broad experience over all sorts of things. I understand it’s not nearly as rigid these days. You think—you might even be looking for an accomplishment or strong interest and involvement in one field, rather than requiring that, a little dab here and there of everything. But—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —that was certainly the standard, the profile that they were looking for at Dartmouth back then, and so it may [unintelligible].
BURACK: So what drew you to, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you.
PEASE: Sorry. I fitted into that model, so—yes.
BURACK: So what drew you to apply to Dartmouth, or what put Dartmouth on your radar in high school?
PEASE: Yes. What put Dartmouth on my radar? It was the fact that [Robert L.] “Bob” Blackman, who was a very successful, quite brilliant coach of the Dartmouth football team, sent out letters to I guess most high schools in the country [both chuckle], to football coaches, asking if they had any student athletes who would fit that profile of school and a decent athlete and that sort of thing, and my—my football coach gave Bob Blackman my name.
And in the fall of my senior year, I started getting these wonderful recruitment letters that were quite enticing to someone like me, describing Dartmouth’s intellectual atmosphere, the football or of course, what to me would have been a cultural feast compared to what was available in my small Midwestern town in terms of classical music, theater, arts, in general. And the real clincher for me was that it was in what was then regarded as the North Woods—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —and all of the outdoors, the Outing Clubs [reference to the Dartmouth Outing Club] and the orientation to the outdoor was huge, in my estimation. I was very much keen on doing outdoor things as much as one could in that environment. So the thought of being in New England, woods and the mountains and water that actually ran clear rather than muddy, like the Mississippi [both chuckle] and many tributary rivers or creeks or anything.
In any event, it was quite enticing, and so I eventually applied, and very last minute under the wire and was accepted and given a scholarship and job. And DBA [Declining Balance Account]—I don’t know if they still call it that, but I think it should, and a loan, but it was actually much cheaper. It didn’t cost my parents much of anything at all to go to Dartmouth, whereas if I’d gone to the University of Iowa or Iowa State [University] or in the northern area, small liberal arts colleges like Grinnell [College]. And it would have cost them much, much more, so it was good.
Other than being so far away from home, there was nothing that was not to like. And at that age, for myself, being far away from home wasn’t an all bad thing, so—[Both chuckle; unintelligible] of course, looking for adventure. Yeah, Dartmouth was very enticing, and I was fortunate to get in and be able to come.
BURACK: So you came to Dartmouth as a football athlete?
PEASE: No. Back then—No, there were no tied athletic scholarships allowed.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: I didn’t even have to go out for the football team to maintain my—my scholarship,—
BURACK: Oh, I see.
PEASE: —the general aid package. So, no, it wasn’t dependent on it, but the reason I heard, along with other states [state schools], of Dartmouth was by football and the recruitment letter, all that.
BURACK: So you graduated high school in 1962? Is that correct?
PEASE: Yes, that’s right.
BURACK: How did you feel upon graduation? Were you excited to leave Iowa and go up to New Hampshire? Were you nervous?
PEASE: Yes, quite excited. I felt that I had had a successful time in high school. I was of course engaged in, looking back on it, what seems like a lot of striving, which I love, and pushing myself through high school to do all of the things—the school newspaper as well. I was playing in sports and student government and all that sort of stuff.
Well, I had to push myself to accomplish—but I wasn’t hugely stressed out or anything.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: I thought it was within my capabilities, and I was quite exciting. Yes, looking forward.
BURACK: So you get—
PEASE: I was not disappointed.
BURACK: So when you get to Dartmouth in the fall of 1962, did you go on a first year trip? What was your first impression of this school?
PEASE: Oh, I— I was—
BURACK: Did it meet your expectations?
PEASE: Oh, yes, absolutely. I wouldn’t have missed the freshman trip for anything.
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: Most members of my class, which was around—slightly over 800, I believe—most members of the class have gone on it—I don’t know if that’s still the case.
BURACK: It still is, yeah.
PEASE: Yeah. And at that time, they broke us up into groups of five freshmen, and a leader—an upperclassman would be the leader, and we would hike for I think it was two, three days before we all gathered at Moosilauke [Ravine Lodge]. I certainly remember all the—the other four members of that little freshman hiking group. I’m still in touch with just one of them, but, yeah, that was a terrific way to start.
BURACK: So freshman fall. Did you join anything, or did you go out for the football team?
PEASE: I did go out—
BURACK: What were you first actions?
PEASE: [Both chuckle.] I did go out for the football team. There were massive numbers of people. I was one of eleven left ends in the first days [both chuckle] of football. And then it was a wonderful practice at Dartmouth. Anybody who went out for the team was on the team. The focus was on participation. Of course, they wanted to win, and Blackman has an undefeated season and won several Ivy League titles, et cetera, so they were successful. But the policy was if you wanted to be on a team, you could be.
So in those days there were separate freshman teams. The NCAA [National Collegiate Athletic Association] rules did not allow first-year students to be on varsity teams, so there was a separate freshman team. I think it was three freshman separate teams. [Both chuckle.] But people stand out, and if they did, there were games and you traveled, and you were a team.
So I made it up to third level on the depth chart [chuckles], which meant I did not play on—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —the first team. Second team, I guess it was. But anyway, I enjoyed that and learned that at just under six-three, six-two-and-a-half or so, and weighing 150 pounds, even in the Ivy League I was not college football material. [Laughs.]
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: So I just concentrated on track, indoor and outdoor track in the winter and the spring seasons my freshman and then my sophomore years. And quite enjoyed that.
BURACK: So you were just on the football team your freshman fall.
PEASE: Just for that first year, right. Then winter and spring track. And the second year, I just stayed with track only. I played—
BURACK: I see.
PEASE: —in various things like that, but sports were less of a focus but still part of my life.
BURACK: What was your first impression of classes? Did you find it harder than high school? What were you interested in studying at the time?
PEASE: Yes, I remember—well, I was quite—I am quite glad, in retrospect at that time—I don’t know what the situation is now— There were distributed requirements, so you had to take so many courses in science, in science, and arts. You had to have a foreign language. Unfortunately, you could take an exam in a foreign language of your choosing as an entering freshman and pass out of it. I was not a good enough student of Spanish and—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —did not pass out of it, so I had the good fortune to be in quite a small, wonderful beginning Spanish class with a professor by the name of Francisco Goto[sic, Ugarte] from Spain, although he identified as Basque. And, yes, he was a fantastic teacher, and I instantly changed my attitude toward Spanish and very much enjoyed it and excelled and ended up majoring in Spanish. So that was one of the three courses I took in my first term of freshman year that was very enjoyable.
And then I had freshman English, which was stimulating. I enjoyed the other students and the whole thing, and I took for science, I think geology. In any of them that first term, I even remember my marks. I guess—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —I had: two A’s and an A-plus, so I felt I was capable of handing this—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —environment fairly comfortably.
BURACK: Were you living with a roommate, or did you have your own room?
PEASE: Yes, I had one of the least expensive rooms, and so I had two roommates. It was quite a nice room, with a fireplace and everything in Richardson Hall.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: But, yes, there were three of us, but it was—basically it was two and in a long hallway, enough room for—yes, it was quite nice, and I was very pleased that we had a fireplace and it was spacious, too, with the long hallway and it was quite nice, and I was very pleased that we had a fireplace which [faced towards] birch fireplace wood, so I couldn’t have been happier.
BURACK: [Chuckles.] That’s good to hear.
So what was the rest of your freshman year like? Did it continue on this very positive streak?
PEASE: I’m sorry, I didn’t catch the last one.
BURACK: Sorry. What was the rest of your freshman year like? Did it continue on this very positive streak?
PEASE: Yes. Yes, it did. The big event, just a month or so into the term, was the Cuban Missile Crisis—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: — and it caught our attention, and I distinctly remember reading in The [New York] Times—we got The Times delivered to our door every day, and reading in The Times at one point in the crisis—there was an article with illustrations and a map, with American missile sites near the borders of the Soviet Union and central Europe and in Turkey, certainly within 90 miles as to the west side. And I remember thinking, Gee, we can be on their border, but they can’t be on ours. Is that fair? [Laughs.]
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: So that was sort of the first questioning, more or less. It was just a questioning of the explicit questioning of the basic ideas of the geopolitics and the U.S. role in the world and all of that. So, yeah, I was aware.
And certainly civil rights mattered within my political consciousness for a long time, starting at least in the mid-’50s. I think there had been various civil rights protests and some civil disobedience, it was certainly very prominent, and that was always the background issue, and I was interested and concerned about it but didn’t know a lot of black people other than one black teammate, who actually went on to play in the NFL [National Football League], on my high school team. I knew Tony Bates, but there were very few black people in my class. I think there were four or five in total out of a high school graduating class of 325 or so. A small minority.
The issues weren’t really engaged in my hometown in a political sense, it was there, it was underlined. It was always a consciousness happening that we were very separate but—so that was the background, and there were some activities on campus beginning around civil rights issues. But generally it was—politically it was quiet compared to what it would be later. [Laughs.]
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: [unintelligible] the level of activism these days [unintelligible].
BURACK: So would you describe the—
PEASE: [unintelligible] the ’50s, running into the actual chronological ’60s. It was still that—that kind of quiet and self-satisfaction. The country did not feel immediately, hugely threatened, which seems incredibly in light of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the fact that [President John F.] Kennedy, reportedly by Arthur [M.] Schlesinger [Jr.], and other aides felt at the time that by putting up the blockade, he was thinking there was a two out of three chance that it would lead to nuclear holocaust. And he was looking to do that. [Chuckles.] It seems quite—
BURACK: Yeah.
PEASE: — [unintelligible] to me right now.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: But the U.S. was still so supreme that at least I didn’t get a huge sense of immediate threat. There were seen as a country and kind of American individuals we could do pretty well anything we wanted to do, and what that would mean was of course inherently, intrinsically be a good thing because we were Americans and Americans did good things.
BURACK: Mm-hm. So would you mark—
PEASE: [unintelligible] active but there were underlying things and questions here, but the overall feeling was quite comfortable.
BURACK: So would you mark the Cuban Missile Crisis as your kind of first sort of questioning of American action?
PEASE: Yes. As I look back on it, there are things in my childhood, one thing especially to do with the Korean War, but they were never really formulated as questions. Oh, yes, the Cuban Missile Crisis and [unintelligible] surrounding that [unintelligible] come close to—that sort of first wave.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: There were other—
BURACK: What—
PEASE: —underlying factors in my upbringing, in my life until then that would have caused skepticism. I think I was open to see and thinking [unintelligible] eventually [unintelligible] things that conditioned me to be open to that perspective. But it certainly wasn’t at a terribly conscious level at that point. If there were problems—
BURACK: Can you speak—
PEASE: —they could be fixed through will and energy, and hopes were abundant that all good things would come of that.
BURACK: Could you speak further on what you just mentioned about the Korean War?
PEASE: Oh, yes, as far as that. Growing up, we lived, the first seven years of my life, next door to a family called Morrison. They had three sons. They were all mechanics. They were older. They were adult sons, or late teenagers when I was quite small, and they lived immediately next door. All three sons I believe still lived at home.
One of them, the youngest of the three sons, named [Richard O.] “Dick” Morrison, had sort of adopted me. He was very nice to me. Delivered groceries in a truck, and he would take me along, and that was a huge thing, to be able to deliver groceries. And, You know, he was just very, very nice.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: And he and his brothers always rescued our red cocker spaniel, which was determined, as much as possible,—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —to pick a fight with the big black Doberman Pinscher across the street. The Morrison boys would always save Mickey, our dog’s life by getting the Doberman Pinscher off.
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: So anyway, they—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —[unintelligible].
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: And when the Korean War came along, he was drafted, I believe, into the military in Korea and was captured by the Chinese and became a prisoner of war, and it was a big issue during the war. I remember the newspapers, and seeing the coverage and all, that a number of the American POWs became labeled turncoats because they said things in captivity that were against what the U.S. was doing, et cetera. And Dick Morrison was one of those. So he was labeled publicly, I don’t know, by the government, but certainly by popular opinion and what was in the newspapers. As a traitor and a turncoat.
Well, I knew that he was a good person, and just thinking back on that, that was an experience that—that showed me you had to be conscious [unintelligible], of course, but it gave me the message that society can condemn what you’re doing and what you are, and the government might do so as well. But that doesn’t mean it’s true, so that was [unintelligible].
That makes me think of other things. I have very vivid memories of when the Rosenbergs [Ethel Greenglass and Julius Rosenberg], husband and wife, were executed during ’53, ’54. Executed. Quite public. They [unintelligible] executions for being spies, atomic spies for the Russians. I remember—I can still see their pictures on the day that they were—the picture on the front page of The Des Moines Register, which was The New York Times of the state of Iowa. [Chuckles.] Quite a—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —cheap paper. Anyway, there was a big picture of them being led to the electric chair, and I was not terribly old, but nine or ten or whatever, but I remember that picture very vividly, and I remember feeling, That’s really cruel. It just seemed so cold-blooded and so terrible. [Chuckles.] They were just a couple.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: who had kids—I think their boys were about my age. Anyway, that [unintelligible], learning that things are done officially and by the government are not necessarily right, and they’re not necessarily moral, and they’re not necessarily a good thing to do.
And another thing that I think very much contributed was my church. My family was a member of the First Congregational Church [unintelligible] institution.
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: It had been led, back in the mid-19th century, uniformly by [unintelligible]. Most of the professionals [unintelligible] that had been led by people educated in, by men who were professionals, professional class who actually came from university and colleges or at least part of that.
One of the things that came from that was Abolitionism and my church was very much a part of the Underground Railway. They [unintelligible] the years leading up to [unintelligible] northern states were required to return [unintelligible]. Well, North [unintelligible] to Canada.
As part of that, we were shown,—almost every year in Sunday school we were shown the part in the basement where the slaves were hidden. Of course, [unintelligible]. There are times when you’re not guilty, but the law [unintelligible] in order to do what is morally right, not just a good thing, but a moral imperative in a situation like that.
I think that was—that was an important background [unintelligible] way—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —of thinking. And it really [made me feel there are just kind of childhood that made me more comfortable, [unintelligible].
BURACK: So—
PEASE: I [unintelligible] anyway. I finished [unintelligible]. I [unintelligible]. Coming from the Midwest at that time, especially from my family’s structured life, where I was physically not— I was not [unintelligible]. Very few people were thinking about what happened in the years where I [unintelligible]. [Both chuckle.] I think there were maybe an innocence and certainly a lack of [unintelligible] that meant I would be quite sensitive to and reactive to the country not living up to the ideals its fathers as recited every day with the Pledge of Allegiance, that kind of thing. I think I was right to feel much more easily betrayed than if I had grown up elsewhere and had a more informal worldly view.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
So jumping back forward [sic] in time, when you’re at Dartmouth and the Cuban Missile Crisis happens, do you remember talking about it with friends, or how did the campus react to it?
PEASE: To? I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch—
BURACK: Sorry.
PEASE: I—
BURACK: Sorry, the microphone is kind of shoddy. No, about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
PEASE: Oh, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
BURACK: Do you remember people being concerned? Yeah.
PEASE: Yes. There certainly wasn’t—I don’t remember any meetings or any teach-ins. In the U.S. and certainly in Europe and in England there was the anti-nuclear movement. I was not aware of any presence of that anti-nuclear war movement on the Dartmouth campus. It might have been there, but I wasn’t aware of it. So there was nothing that was an organized discussion about the matter. I certainly talked about it with roommates and with friends, but it wasn’t an immense—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —impact. It was certainly a tense time, but, no, there wasn’t a whole lot of follow-up or putting it into political, intellectual—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —perspective. Nothing that was organized that I was involved in or aware about.
BURACK: And then if you flash forward [sic] a year and you have Kennedy’s assassination,—
PEASE: Yes.
BURACK: —what was the reaction of that on campus? Or your reaction in particular.
PEASE: Well, that was an immense, and classes were cancelled, although we were coming—November 23rd—we were coming up to the end of the term and the beginning of events, and not—not too far off from then. And I don’t remember exactly how many days classes were cancelled, but things stopped, and people were taking it in. And then the assassination by [Jack] Ruby of [Lee Harvey] Oswald and all the stuff was just—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —hard to digest. “Just unbelievable.” Or “Can’t happen here” “but it is” sorts of feelings. But there was enough school pressure at the end of the term that people did get back to—to their daily activities fairly quickly. It was a huge shock, of course, and many of us, myself included, had—had been very much awakened to active idealism by Kennedy’s eloquence in his inaugural—inauguration speech and speeches before that and speeches during his presidency, although I remember before he was assassinated, in that year between the Cuban Missile Crisis and the—and the November ’63 assassination, I remember being—
And speaking of being disillusioned with Kennedy’s death, on civil rights they just weren’t doing enough to match their actions with their, with their words, that there was a real gap there, and I was quite bothered by it. They—they were hesitating to use federal law, federal force to enforce desegregation. They were very loath to offend southern Democrats at that point. The South was automatically Democratic and Dixiecrats. And, of course, there was still segregation all throughout the South and, to a large extent, in Washington, D.C., being a southern town.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: So I remember being upset at both Kennedys for not using the power at their command to—to protect black people, to advance desegregation. But for me, Kennedy was—was quite a hero, embodied lots of ideals, and so it was a real shock, yes.
BURACK: Just speaking on the civil rights thing,—
PEASE: Mm-hm.
BURACK: —do you think your church and its kind of long history of activism—you carried with you to Dartmouth? Did you seek out groups like that on campus in your first year there?
PEASE: I’m sorry. I didn’t understand about “long history.”
BURACK: Of your church back home in Iowa.
PEASE: Oh, my church. Yes, okay. Sorry, I missed the words—
BURACK: I’m sorry. The microphone is very—the microphone on this is very wonky. I apologize.
PEASE: Well, it’s my hearing as well, although I do have my hearing aids on and telephone.
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: But so—
BURACK: So I—
PEASE: —the history of [unintelligible].
BURACK: —was just asking, with the history of your church and kind of the role it played in your hometown, did you seek out a similar group on campus, maybe another Christian group or a student activist group in relation to civil rights or—
PEASE: Well, I was [unintelligible] there in the first two years at Dartmouth. I was aware of the DCU, the Dartmouth Christian Union, and any activism, even in terms of education, that was happening, came out of—almost always came out of the DCU. So I was certainly interested. I attended a few talks and programs focused on civil rights.
And the summer of ’63, so the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, was, of course, the [Rev. Dr.] Martin Luther King [Jr.] March on Washington. I wasn’t part of that, and I didn’t know people who were attending it, because I didn’t know people I talked were planning on attending or had attended.
But in the fall of ’63, before the assassination, certainly civil rights matters were much more actively discussed, and there was a civil rights movement developing, and there were people I knew who then went south in ’64. And I helped raise money and tried to promote it, but I was not, myself, closely—closely involved with it. But I was very aware of it and very interested in it and very sympathetic towards—towards that. But it was small, just beginning. Wasn’t a huge presence on campus.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
So your sophomore year. Do you continue doing the same things you’d done freshman year? You’re still running track? Are you still enjoying your classes and your roommate situation?
PEASE: Yes, very much so. And things were going well, and the one jarring thing about Dartmouth at that time was that it was male only, and—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —it would be with town and all of that. It was just a dysfunctional social situation [chuckles],—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —where you would either travel to or freshman or sophomore years, young women bused in from—from women’s colleges for the weekend, and that whole dating situation, et cetera.
And sophomore year, I did actually participate in pledging for a fraternity, and I—I did join DU at the time, before it disaffiliated from the national Delta Upsilon. I did join that. I didn’t participate in any of the initiation [chuckles] activities.
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: I was a ghost. That’s what they called a person who didn’t participate in those days. But—so there was that social activity. And I actually had met a young woman from Colby [College], and we had a relationship starting in the winter of my sophomore year, so that was—that was a very good thing. And my life was more normal socially that way, as much as it can be in an all-male environment.
BURACK: Mm-hm. [Chuckles.] Yeah. So—
PEASE: So thing were going along.
BURACK: So then, if I remember correctly from when we were speaking this summer, in fall of 1964 you went to study abroad in Spain?
PEASE: Yes, yes. I actually went in late July, early August.
BURACK: Oh, late July. Excuse me.
PEASE: Five, six weeks early, before we all had to be there. There was a group of eight students and a professor, Robert [H.] Russell, and his wife. That was the Dartmouth contingent in Salamanca, Spain, that fall. So, yes, I had a month on my own, wandering around a bit in Paris and then hitchhiking through Spain, which was a great experience.
And I remember checking in with the International Herald Tribune [now International New York Times], which was one of the—I guess it was The New York Times European edition as well, but it was the Herald Tribune then—I think still now—was a principal source for American news. So that was, of course, the primary place. And it was the national convention of the Democrats and Republicans, so [Barry [M.] Goldwater chosen by the Republicans; [Lyndon B.] Johnson, nominated for the Democrats. And I followed those debates through the newspaper, followed in Europe, and I—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —remember two things struck me. Of course, they’re highlighted in retrospect. But I remember at the time I was struck by certainly the Johnson campaign, which was heavily portraying Goldwater as a warmonger. That made a big impression on me, and I was concerned about who would win the election and that I really wanted Johnson to win, just because things would be safe and peaceful.
The other thing that happened [chuckles] during that period was the Tonkin Gulf [Gulf of Tonkin] incident, which has shown to be pretty well bogus and news gabs and excuse. Certainly, something happened, but it wasn’t the attack that they claimed, and the Tonkin Gulf [sic; Gulf of Tonkin] Resolution was what Johnson used to expand the war. That was crucial authorization from the Senate.
So I remember reading about the incident. I believe it happened that summer, and being concerned, quite interested in the whole thing—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —And trying to follow it. But at that point, ground troops of any number in Vietnam wasn’t an issue, and even though Johnson had a plan for a backup during that election campaign, he was not letting on he had planned a massive expansion, et cetera. He was going to be the one who was pursuing war. Well, I mean, against Goldwater on that basis [chuckles], so—
In any event—yeah, I was aware, quite aware of things that were happening. And the biggest impression, actually, the shock for me was just how repressive, just how really nasty, [Spanish General Francisco] Franco’s fascist Spain was. People could not—the people lived in great, great fear, and the Guardia Civil [under Franco, military police for civilians] with machine guns were very common, especially at night. If you were wandering around, walking, you would run into the Guardia with their machine guns, and it was fairly common—if people found out you were American or North American, they would seek [kick?] you out, and if they were Basque or if they were Protestant—and I found it quite common. They would tell me the story of how they couldn’t do anything. They couldn't be buried in the cemetery. They couldn't worship as Protestants. And the Basques, of course, had the beginnings of their separatism [unintelligible].
At that time, I remember I met a priest who was sympathetic to the Basque separatist movement, and he talked to me quite a bit about their conditions at the time, so it made quite an impression of just how bad the government was. And, of course, it was just 20 years after—19 years after the end of World War II against fascism, and here we were—there were four American bases in Spain at that time, and they were part of the so-called free world, while being every bit as bad as the fascists in World War II were labeled.
So that—that gave me great pause. Big impression.
BURACK: So studying abroad there, did you ever feel fear—feel the same fear that you were talking to these Basque and these Protestants—that they felt?
PEASE: No, I felt I wore that invisible American cloak, so nothing bad—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —could happen to me. There was a certain—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —empowerment there, where—it was not just in that age, where it’s quite common for people to feel immortal—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —but to be quite indifferent to what’s happening. But being American at that point certainly gave one an extra added feeling that nothing bad could happen to one, even civilians, of course. So, no, I don’t remember feeling fear. I remember—
BURACK: Um—
PEASE: —feeling that on behalf of the people who did feel fear and were subjugated. And I talked to some workers as well. And, of course, outside of the official fascist syndicates, there was no real organized unions or anything to—to protect themselves, so that aspect was—was there as well.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: I wish I—
BURACK: Do you remem- —
PEASE: —had been more politically conscious with this thing. Of course, Franco’s big slogan when I was there in ’64 was [unintelligible] 25 years of peace. It was 25 years since ’39, since the end of the Spanish Civil War, in which there had been, of course, in many ways, a run-up to, a precursor, a dress rehearsal for World War II.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: I wish I had been more aware, and I would have sought out people and been able to speak more knowledgeably. I was trying to educate myself but did not have a good understanding of it.
BURACK: So when you got back from Spain, did you take this kind of upset and shock over the regime there, and did you translate that into actions when you were back on campus?
PEASE: I did. I was back on cam- —I think shock was probably—a world view, shock, was probably—that’s probably a fair description. Uncharacteristically, once I was back on campus, I didn’t attend my classes. I’d never done that. I wasn’t doing my work. I was just up in the Tower Room. Alternately, reading escapist literature and trying to educate myself about what’s happening in the world, to make sense of all of this.
So I left—I don’t remember. I think it was still January, early in the term. I just decided to drop out of school and see what I could do: go to Boston, go to New York, figure things out, see what I wanted to do. I did that. I remember my financial aid adviser saying, “You really shouldn’t do this. You know, you’ll get drafted immediately.” And I said, “Nothing could touch me. I’m gonna do this. That’s it.” So he had tried to—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —inform me, but [unintelligible] the draft [unintelligible]. I was not taking it in. So anyway, I did leave, stayed with a friend at Harvard for a couple of weeks, I guess, and then on to New York and there on my own for three or four weeks, during which time Malcolm X was assassinated in Harlem [New York City, New York]. And I was staying at the Y[MCA], and [Robert] Sargent [“Sarge”] Shriver, who was a relative of the Kennedys, was coming through—the first of—the beginnings of Johnson’s War on Poverty effort, and Shriver, as the head of VISTA, Volunteers in Service to America [now AmeriCorps VISTA], the domestic Peace Corp.
And I met him in the lobby, actually. They had a play, and we happened to be there, and spoke to him at length about VISTA, and I ended up volunteering for that, and doing training in Baltimore for six weeks that winter-spring, and then going to the Central Valley, the San Joaquin Valley in California to work [unintelligible] families, to work with Mexican-American farmworkers. And, as luck would have it, César [E.] Chavez, in the town of Delano, maybe 40, 50 miles south of where I was in [unintelligible]—he had been, in the previous year, just starting up his farmworkers movement. And the first day we were there, the district coordinator for the state took us to meet Mr. Chavez. That was—
BURACK: Wow.
PEASE: —fortuitous. Fortuitous and very interesting and influential. As VISTA volunteers we could help with the farmworkers union [Mexican-American National Farmworkers Union] on our own time, which was sort of a strange concept [chuckles], but anyway,—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —we had permission to do that. But, of course, we could not be more official due to [unintelligible] great, great opposition from the establishment, from the large farmers and [unintelligible].
So anyway, I went, and [unintelligible] political state of shock into a very activist environment in [unintelligible] at that time with farmworkers. And, of course, that was ’65, and so the war was escalating very, very rapidly, and Johnson was pouring in over half a million troops, and the war was very active, very hot and a very big deal.
So all of that was—oh, and my—
BURACK: Yeah—
PEASE: —fellow VISTA volunteers in part, was a young woman, Lucy Norman, who was a Quaker. [unintelligible] known her, and their peace testimony pacifism, opposition to war, and activism in civil rights matters. And the Quaker community that she was a part of there in California that was also a significant influence.
BURACK: So just to—
PEASE: —[unintelligible] by ‘65—
BURACK: —a lot—yeah.
PEASE: —the war was picking up, and even in terms of civil rights were certainly coming much more to a crunch, so [unintelligible].
BURACK: Yes. So—
PEASE: There were all sorts of things going on. And at one point there was an official with the War on Poverty, who was also a professor of social work at [University of California,] Berkeley. He took myself and a guy [unintelligible]. He took us to his class in Berkeley, just to speak about the type of organizing, the things that were going on.
And, of course, this plaza, where the free speech movement had taken place, and there were all sorts of tables with literature and people to talk to about everything, including, of course, Vietnam and the civil rights movement.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: And the literature that I picked up just then—it was a day trip, we didn’t stay overnight, to Berkeley was very [chuckles]—was very influential in helping me put some things together S that was just—
BURACK: So just to—
PEASE: —[unintelligible].
BURACK: Before—
PEASE: Dropped out. Ended up in VISTA. And on to California, which was a hotbed for all sorts of political movements. Yeah, those were all major influences.
BURACK: Yeah.
Just to back up a little, because there’s still much I want to learn more about—
PEASE: [Laughs.]
BURACK: [Laughs.] You said you— just keep going. When you were in New York, and Sargent Shriver was at your Y, how did he convince you to join VISTA?
PEASE: Oh, I didn’t need much—
BURACK: Or what was his pitch?
PEASE: — huge convincing—
BURACK: Oh, you didn’t need much convincing. [Laughs.]
PEASE: —as I applied for what it was. And, you know, there are all these problems, and I have some abilities and energy and interest and idealism, and—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: Yeah, it was a good fit. Didn’t take much convincing at all. [Chuckles.] I was—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —[unintelligible] something.
BURACK: Okay. So when you get out to California and you, like, meet César Chavez on your first day, what’s your impression of all that?
PEASE: Oh, just that it was wonderful stuff, and I was trying to catch up on the background, the history, the technique and all of this. It was a steep learning curve for me because I hadn’t been—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —immediately involved in political movements. I was very interested, was very sympathetic, had done things on the periphery but had never been centrally involved, let alone an organizer, so, yes, it was a steep learning curve, and I was very motivated, and it was—it was—
BURACK: And—
PEASE: —interesting—
BURACK: Just—
PEASE: —and exciting and extremely worthwhile.
BURACK: If you could just explain to me what VISTA volunteers did in California.
PEASE: Yeah, it was—
BURACK: I’m not too aware of their—
PEASE: —very wide open. What we were doing in the south, in Parlier, California—there was—Parlier-organized [unintelligible], an area outside of that jurisdiction on the edge of it but in an unorganized municipality called The Colonia or La Colonia, where the farmworkers lived. And the politics beyond the War on Poverty being brought to Parlier were—was that the Catholic Church, which was traditionally well embedded, of course, in Mexican-American farmworkers—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —was under great challenge by evangelical Protestants. And Father Collin, the local priest, who spent most of his career in Latin America and was brought in to California to fight this battle with the prostitutes [chuckles]—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: He was able to make an application on behalf of the community, which was legitimate—they were a large part of the community—to VISTA volunteers, to help in La Colonia to get a water system, to provide educational opportunities, just a vast array of meetings, and we were there to do whatever we could—it wasn’t well defined—working with the local community. But in fact the local community, was represented by Father Collin, and his intention was shore up the Catholic Church against the—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: — new development we progressed very quickly and distanced ourselves [chuckles], but nonetheless, Lucy was quite involved with—with setting up summer camp program and after-school programs, and she had a number of volunteers come for the summer, nursing and university students, who helped with that.
I was more involved with a group of men and Father Collin not involved. We were trying to get the water system, which was very erratic, somewhat unsafe, and it was very expensive, a private water system, trying to get that in the hands of the community to incorporate and to move towards purchasing and improving that water system. That was my main project, but I also worked with some of the teenage boys.
There was a sort of low-level problems with fights though there wasn’t any gang–
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —activity, but there was some violence and people who [unintelligible], so there I was, at the age of 21, trying to [laughs]—trying to help deal with—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: — the guys who were a few years younger than I was and from a different culture. Anyway, we made some progress, nothing spectacular, but some progress on both fronts. And the community—not while I was there, but eventually it got—it took over the water system and became incorporated and [unintelligible]. On the side, I was of course very interested in the farmworkers’ unionization and organization, [unintelligible] was necessary to point out wages and working conditions, which were quite terrible, with long hours and—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: — uh so, yeah, a maelstrom of—
BURACK: So—
PEASE: —[unintelligible].
BURACK: Yeah! It seems like it. [Chuckles.]
So I have two more questions about this time. You mentioned that your coworker, Lucy, was a Quaker. Was this your first introduction to kind of Quaker doctrine and peace activism or pacifism, excuse me?
PEASE: Yes it was most—[unintelligible]. I was vaguely aware, but, yes, that was certainly the real introduction—
BURACK: So—
PEASE: —to that way of thinking that approached that history. And it was—
BURACK: Um,—
PEASE: —influential.
BURACK: Did you—so I know when you were back on—at Dartmouth campus—and we can talk about this in a bit—but you worked with the Quakers on campus?
PEASE: Yes, yes. And my wife, whom I met at Dartmouth in summer school in 1966, when they were first allowing women be in summer school—it wasn’t the first year, the second or third, somewhere in there. Anyway, Carol-Anne [Riese] became and still is my wife, was coming from a Quaker background, herself. She—
BURACK: Mmm.
PEASE: —is not herself a Quaker at all [chuckles], but she went to a private boarding school on the Main Line in Philadelphia, and they were let out of the grounds only on certain occasions, one of which was Sunday morning they could leave, on their own, and walk to church. And it happened that the Friends Meeting House was the furthest away, so the longest walk she could—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: [Unintelligible, laughs].
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: She started going to the Quaker meeting and became quite—
BURACK: I see.
PEASE: —enthusiastic about it, and then when she was at UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles], she actually helped, with one of the founders of the new Quaker museum [unintelligible] and all that. So she had the beginnings of a Quaker background, and we met in my first class back at Dartmouth. Once I left and returned my draft card and eventually made my way back to Dartmouth in June of ’66, to finish up my degree, and my class was graduating in June of ’66, and I got there in time to see some of my friends when they to say “hey” and to work after graduation, which was a bit—[laugh], and the reunion—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —unusual activity, but anyway, I was back. My first class was introduction to [unintelligible]. There were only two of us in the class, myself and [unintelligible], and the first day, we went to lunch and we had a nice lunch, and—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —and became quite involved [unintelligible] and got the next [unintelligible] of my introduction to Dartmouth. I started off—
BURACK: [Chuckles.] Very good note.
PEASE: Yes. [Both chuckle.]
BURACK: Just to go back to VISTA, and then we’ll talk more about the rest of your time at Dartmouth, you said that Father Collin was the one that brought in the VISTA volunteers into this district. So how involved do you see religion in these activist movements?
PEASE: Ah.
BURACK: Or not activist movement, in the War on Poverty, the role of the church in the War on Poverty—
PEASE: Yeah.
BURACK: —is my question.
PEASE: The church—from my understanding—I don’t have a broad knowledge of it, but my understanding is that local groups would often have some religious component, and, you know, I don’t think that was explicit that the church, itself, could bring in a—be the actual contractor to sign an agreement—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —on the War of Poverty. It was community groups associated with the church and Father Collin? 1:13:50] was at the—at the—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: But—
BURACK: Yeah.
PEASE: But it was fairly common that interest groups would be involved in some way.
BURACK: Gotcha.
PEASE: —it wasn’t always the case, by any means, but it was fairly common.
BURACK: And so what did it—I mean, I’m trying to formulate this question. Are you—do you sign up for VISTA for a specific amount of time, or you were just ready to leave that spring?
PEASE: Yes, for a year.
BURACK: Okay.
PEASE: For a year, so—I actually left shortly before my year was up. It was January, I guess it would have been a couple of months before my [unintelligible].
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: I came to the point that winter of ’65-’66, where I just was—really, I was upset about the war, knew I had to deal with the draft in some way, at some point in the near future. And I just became so horrified by the whole thing that I ended up returning my draft card fairly publicly and making an issue of it. I would—if I had it to do over, of course I would do it with much more consideration for my poor parents, who were—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —hit with this pretty much out of the blue. And I was quite fortunate that the editor of my hometown newspaper, an ex-Marine who simply had no love of war and was a Democratic Party activist—and by that point in early January ’66, he was quite strongly antiwar, so he was upset when I returned the draft card, this hugely public, with a letter explaining the actions, and I sent a copy to him. And he gave my action and my situation front-page coverage for quite a while, from an antiwar slant. So he was quite complimentary to me and my background, and the take he had on it was an all-American boy, you know, went through high school, was horrified by what the country was doing. So—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —if the local editor had been of a different political outlook, I could still be quite [chuckles]—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —nailed. Yes. And it would have been even tougher on my parents. I think it made it considerably easier for them, although it wasn’t easy for them, given that he was giving a very positive coverage and saying this was a good thing and society should take notice, somebody who was so embedded, so involved in [unintelligible] to the structure and the ideals of dissolution. We should break up and look at what’s going on here. So with that setting of it,—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —they protected –I’ve never experienced hostility directly towards me in my hometown at that time. I went back, and I took my draft card—I went back to my home for all of that. The only—
BURACK: So what are the—
PEASE: Yeah, an interesting little quirk back to childhood neighbors and activities. I had mentioned that when I was small, I got a lot of praise from the local older kids in the neighborhood for doing—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —game and playing tackle football and other sports. Well, that came back [chuckles] to—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —bite me and only hostile letter that I saw in the local newspaper was from one of the youngest about—He was about my age, and his older brothers were given to, when we were little, praising me for being tough and brave and game, and using that as a stick with which to shame him.
So anyway, he wrote a hostile letter [chuckles]—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —about [unintelligible]
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: but that was the only visit of real hostility—went back to a childhood experience and—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: [unintelligible].
BURACK: So—
PEASE: Anyway, I was quite fortunate in having the support of the local newspaper—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —in that it was presented [unintelligible].
BURACK: So can you just talk me through the process of returning your draft card? What kind of spurred you into that action? Was it more press coverage of Vietnam? Was it leaving VISTA? Kind of what brought you to that act?
PEASE: You know, as I say, I think I really had to deal with the draft at some point. I likely—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —could have gone back to Dartmouth and had an exemption for the time there, but it was going to have to be dealt with. And I was quite taken by what was happening in Vietnam. There was a buildup in troops. There was, of course, much more emphasis on— It was personal inasmuch as—I’ve mentioned that there were student nurses who had come for the summer to VISTA to work, helping with summer daycare programs. And there was a boyfriend who was a Marine and being shipped off to Vietnam came to visit and stayed with me while he was visiting his girlfriend, before he shipped out to Vietnam. So that was the summer of—
BURACK: Wow.
PEASE: —’67, during that huge buildup. The fact that I knew him and he was going off and he was going to be killing and possibly be killed, himself. I mean, that was very difficult to me.
And then the fact that there were a number of people in the Congress, two senators in particular, Senator Frank [F.] Church [III] of Utah and Senator Wayne [L.] Morse of the state of Washington. They were both quite outspoken about Vietnam being wrong, very strongly with questions. But [Arkansas] Senator [J. William] Fulbright was questioning, but in a much more moderate—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —way. But I remember meeting in San Francisco [unintelligible] every day and I was still in California, and they gave quite prominent coverage to what Senators Church and Morse were saying. That was certainly influential, that there were people in the establishment who felt compelled to speak out.
And along with my letter to the draft board, which I [unintelligible]—along with my own letter, I included several pages of quotes, many of which were from the senators talking about what was wrong with what we were doing in Vietnam.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: Anyway, that’s the background.
BURACK: Yeah.
PEASE: Once I returned my draft card, and left VISTA and was in Iowa, and I was in my hometown, in Burlington, for a good number of weeks. Probably, like, six weeks I was in Iowa City, which was—is where the University of Iowa is, and I was staying with a high school friend and started a relationship with a young woman from my high school as well during that period in the spring, before I developed—before I returned to Dartmouth.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: So I was engaged in trying to persuade friends of my views on Vietnam, to get them to join me in not going into the Army, et cetera. I was singularly unsuccessful in convincing any of them.
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: But I’m glad I had direct contact with them. And the person I was staying with, John Cloyd, a friend from high school, that was in a university seventy-five miles away from my hometown. I stayed with John. And he ended up going to Vietnam and having one of the most—and surviving, having one of the most dangerous jobs. He ran sniffer dogs outside the wire at night, looking for Viet Cong snipers. There was a very high mortality rate in that job, but he came back alive and not injured physically. I’m very glad that we are able to maintain our friendship while he was in Vietnam. And subsequently he and his wife came to see us in Canada right after he got back from Vietnam in 1968. So it was a very—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —immediate [unintelligible] in terms of—
Mm-hm.
PEASE: —having friends who were going off to [unintelligible], all that sort of thing, centered around my hometown, was very visceral—those were important experiences that I’ve had—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: [Unintelligible].
BURACK: So—
PEASE: [Unintelligible] for that time. I was very glad to get back to Dartmouth in June of ’66.
BURACK: Yeah. So I was just about to ask—so you get back on campus.
PEASE: Mm-hm.
BURACK: And you’re in this New Testament religion class, where you meet Carol-Anne. [Chuckles.]
PEASE: I wanted to know if Jesus really was a pacifist—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —and had similar interests. [Laughs.]
BURACK: Did you find out?
PEASE: [Laughs.] You can find what you wish to find in the Bible.
BURACK: That’s very true.
PEASE: I certainly was convinced then and still on the whole that the account given is a pacifist one, but it was not exclusively so. [Chuckles.]
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: I think it’s strongly enough leaning towards pacifism, though, that it’s—it’s quite startling that Christianity can be used for military crusades. I found that quite out of step with the actual texts and early traditions. Anyway, that’s another discussion.
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: You are taking religion courses. Is that right?
BURACK: Yes, I am. I’m studying history and religion here at Dartmouth.
PEASE: Right.
BURACK: It’s a very cool department. I’ve been a fan of all the classes I’ve taken thus far.
PEASE: Okay.
BURACK: So were you taking other classes or just this one?
PEASE: No, I took another class. It was a big seminar class called The Guards of Modern Self-Consciousness, through literature, when called “How human beings came to be aware of self and society”, et cetera. A broad topic. Interesting. All the students other than myself, however, were still in high school or had just graduated and were taking a summer course. Anyway,—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —my main contact with people that summer was Carol—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —and our relationship developing.
BURACK: Yeah.
PEASE: Go on?
BURACK: Did you like—did you like being back on campus?
PEASE: Oh, yes, I did. Very much.
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: And Richard—Richard [P.] Unsworth was the dean of the [William Jewett] Tucker Foundation at that time. And he was friends with prominent pacifists, the leader of the pacifist movement in the U.S., called A. J. Muste. Anyway, I had been to see Richard Unsworth as the head of the Tucker Foundation, and, of course—to see [unintelligible] the head of the Dartmouth Christian Union, the Rev. George [H.] Kalbfleisch. I got in touch with them immediately when I was back on campus. I knew that they—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —were like me, antiwar. They were certainly involved with the civil rights movement. And they were personally very, very supportive, so I tried to organize something during—in summer school to deal with the war. It was a pretty sleepy time on campus. There weren’t many—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —students. There were interesting things. There was the ABC program, A Better Chance, which was taking largely black, and a few white kids, I guess, kids from inner cities and giving them pre-university courses and training in preparation for university. One of my many—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —summer jobs that summer was—was a bit of tutoring and just being at a session study hall with those students. So that was interesting. But politically, certainly in terms of antiwar events, there was not anything going on, so we just would, with money from the Tucker Foundation and Richard Unsworth’s help, we got [unintelligible]. She wasn’t available [unintelligible]—Johnson from the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker social action—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —committee, and he came. The Quakers had written a very dissected, sort of moderate, sort of a political book against the war on [sic] Vietnam. And he was the author of that book. And he came and spoke to [unintelligible]—
BURACK: What was his name? Sorry.
PEASE: —on campus, which we held at the old—the old math building. And I suppose there were maybe—oh, I don’t know, 30 to 50 people there for that. But that’s the only thing we did in the way of antiwar stuff in that summer.
BURACK: Sorry, what was the name of the man who wrote that book and came to speak?
PEASE: I forget his first name, but his last name was Johnson. And he had—
BURACK: Okay.
PEASE: —written a Quaker small booklet on—on the war in Vietnam.
BURACK: Okay.
PEASE: And very effective in [unintelligible] churches and amongst respectable [chuckles], pretty well mainstream people. In fact, in my hometown, after I had returned my draft card, it was quite interesting. And it became a big public event. People came out of the woodwork, out of the woods, all sorts of peaceniks, who had been in my hometown, who had been my teachers—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —contacted me and said they had long contributed to the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors. They long committed to the Quaker—the American Friends Service committee. They were a member of this peace group and that. They didn’t ever feel confident enough to be open about it in our little [chuckles] closed society.
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: So they did contact me, and there were possibly peace churches, like Mennonites, ministers who contacted me, even a Baptist minister who had been active in the civil rights movement and was a pacifist himself, personally, even though the church was not. He contacted me. It was quite amazing.
But the most surprising one from all of the antiwar people who came out—I became aware of after I returned my draft card with publicity was one of the richest men in town, the owner of the local department store, [James Siegmund (J.S.)] Schramm, and he had been very much a [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower Republican and served in Eisenhower’s administration on various trade and diplomatic missions, so I was astounded to discover that he was—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —he wrote booklet against the War on [sic] Vietnam in the winter of ’66, because many people in town asked if he possibly could. So that—
BURACK: Wow.
PEASE: — that was [unintelligible]—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —that—that booklet, and the author of it. It’s the same guy who we happened to—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —[unintelligible] speak to in the summer. So there were some nice connections there. [Chuckles.]
BURACK: So it seems like—
PEASE: It was a very interesting process. I was amazed at just how many left-leaning, pro-peace sentiments on what activist on backgrounds, there was also a guy who had worked—scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project developing—developing the atomic bomb, who was very regretful of that, had retreated back to her [sic] hometown and was just working as a scientist at the local foundry. He lived a block and a half away from my home in Burlington. He contacted me to tell me about his anti-nuclear war and other activism, so I was—I got a new perspective on my own town—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —by going—
BURACK: It seems like you had—
PEASE: —south. Yeah. Very, very interesting.
BURACK: It seems like you had quite the outpouring of support.
PEASE: It was. It was quite wonderful. I was very fortunate. Not everyone—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —opposing the war had such support.
And at Dartmouth the people I have—oh, Robert Russell, as well, who himself had been a CO [conscientious objector], a professor who had been with our group, Spanish study in Spain. Robert [H.] Russell, actually—he and his wife together had me stay with them when I first came back to Dartmouth before the summer school started. I was there for a couple of weeks, I guess. I stayed with them. I learned that—I hadn’t known—that he was a pacifist as well. So there was lots of support at Dartmouth, including from Dean Thaddeus Seymour, who everyone called Dad Thad.
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: Dean Seymour was very personally supportive to me and very helpful in many ways, even though in the fall of—no, I guess it was the spring of ’67, so the next spring, there was the annual ROTC [Reserve Officer Training Corps] march/formation ceremony out on the football field. And by that time, there was an established antiwar movement led by Jonathan Mirsky, a professor of Chinese.
Anyway, we had a small demonstration at the—at the football stadium at the same time the ceremony was going on, but we were off in a corner; we weren’t disrupting anything. But contrary to what he apparently had promised to Professor Mirsky, Dean Seymour had called out the New Hampshire state troopers, so there were 50 to 100—
BURACK: Wow!
PEASE: —of them—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —between us, this small group of peaceniks singing “We Shall Overcome” [chuckles] and the equally innocent, I must say, ROTC students. So there was a good bit of upset and arguing about the fact that the state troopers were called
and that—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —was contrary to what Mirsky had been promised. So we actually had a march on the administrative building. The name escapes me. I don’t know why I can’t remember the name of—where the president and the deans offices—
BURACK: Parkhurst [Hall]?
PEASE: Pardon?
BURACK: Parkhurst. Parkhurst?
PEASE: Yes, that’s right. So we—we had a demonstration there and a small—actually, a small sit-in, a small occupation that only lasted, like, an hour or two at the most—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —and it was quite peaceful. But that was interesting to me. I had a very good relationship with—with Dean Seymour before that and after that. But his role in the power structure was of course to do what he did, all of it very—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —interesting. But I never felt personally attacked or, or scorned or anything, but supported, actually. Very fortunate.
BURACK: Mm-hm. So after summer session ends and more students come back on campus, did the antiwar movement become more organized?
PEASE: It did, and I think it was in September I got to know a student by the name of Mike Mikelson from the [unintelligible]. Anyway, somewhere in there. From the Class of ’67, so he was going into his senior year. Turned out he had gone to a Quaker school. His father had been a screenwriter who was banned during the blacklist, anti-communist hysteria blacklist in Hollywood, and he can do writing as well. So that was Mike’s background. He came from political [unintelligible]. His family had gone to a Quaker school. So we both were interested in doing something about the war, so Mike suggested that we have a Quaker style silent vigil on the Green.
So he and I—we didn’t even set up a literature table. We just stood alone one side [chuckles] of the—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —main pathway running from Dartmouth Hall to Thayer [Dining Room, now Class of 1953 Commons] at the Main Street side. Facing the administration building. We were right there on—on that would be the North side of that pathway, just standing for hours in silent vigil in the first few days. I think it was just once a week, I’m not sure if it was on Wednesdays. Anyways, we started that out.
But then very some local area —
BURACK: Mmm?
PEASE: — activists. There were actually—one of the guys was a theology— professor of theology. And he had a printing press, and we’d go down to have a shot at printing press.
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: So he had this—articles and booklets, antiwar literature. And he set up a table right next to where our [chuckles]—our vigil was. Within the first few weeks he did that. Tommy Jackson, “T. J.”, was his name. He worked at the computer center. In any event, then some professors who were antiwar joined us, and a few other students. But it was quite small and pretty calm for the first—probably for that first term in the fall of—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —six- —there were many other things going on.
BURACK: So the rest of the year.
PEASE: Pard’ me. Hmm?
BURACK: I’m assuming you didn’t have the—
PEASE: [Unintelligible]—
BURACK: —standing on the Green—
PEASE: Yes. I’m sorry.
BURACK: —during the winter.
PEASE: I seem to have lost you.
BURACK: Oh, no worries.
PEASE: Are you there?
BURACK: Can you hear me now? Hello?
PEASE: Just barely. Just one second. How about if we take a few minutes’ break?
BURACK: And I’ll call you back in five minutes?
PEASE: Okay. That’s good. I need to—
BURACK: Hello? Okay.
PEASE: [Unintelligible]. Okay. Talk to you soon.
BURACK: Okay. All right. Sounds good. All right. Bye.
[Recording interruption.]
BURACK: Hello, this is still Emily Burack. It is still Monday, February 15th, 2016. It is now 11:50 a.m., and I am speaking with Don Pease, who is in Ottawa, Canada, right now. We just took a brief break, and now we’re back.
All right, and the hearing is better.
BURACK: Okay.
PEASE: [Chuckles.]
BURACK: And the sound is better. Okay, so we were just speaking about the weekly silent vigils on the Green in the fall of ‘66
PEASE: Yes, the fall of ’66. But it built gradually, and we had the literature table, and I tried to stay abreast and stay in touch with the national antiwar efforts. The main thing was building up to a large march in April of ’67 in New York City,—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —accommodating a speech at—in front of the U.N. [United Nations] by Martin Luther King, who was in ’67 increasingly taking a very expressive antiwar stance, so—and there was a buildup to that. There were various things. And the focus, as far as I was concerned, was the vigil. There were teach-ins, as I recall, and I think before I returned in June of ’66 there had been some things that spring. They did not carry into the summer school session, but there had been activities, and some of that kept on.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: And there was a growing anti-war movement. The war was quite serious, quite bloody, quite horrific, and so there was more and more focus upon it. And, of course, it was part of the immediate future for all the students, with the draft.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: And the issue—
PEASE: So—
BURACK: —of conscription was an issue we could not avoid.
BURACK: Mm-hm. So this march in April of ’67—did you go down to New York for it?
PEASE: Yes, yes. And by that time, Carol-Anne had left UCLA, just a few months before graduating. I think it was probably February of ’67. She was to graduate in June. She left, because we didn’t know—I should say, what had happened after I returned—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —my draft card was that I did go straight onto my parents, by my parents and by actually a lawyer who was a member of the local draft board. I was persuaded by them to formally [unintelligible] take back the card and apply for conscientious objector status, so that was what was going on from the spring of ’66 right on through and probably ends in ’67. My application was being investigated by the FBI. They sent the FBI out to talk to people everywhere, so I have a 19-page, single-spaced typed—
BURACK: Oh, my gosh!
PEASE: —FBI summary report—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —of people they talked to in my hometown and California, et cetera, et cetera, and up at Dartmouth. In any event, there were appeal levels after I was eventually turned down, but—
BURACK: What did you apply on the basis on?
PEASE: —the application was in process at that time. The conscientious objector application was in process for that year and a half or more.
BURACK: What did you give your reason as, your reason for conscientious objector status?
PEASE: Yes. Well, I didn’t come from a traditional peace church. It’s not Mennonite Brethren [Church] or Quaker—you know, a matter of faith, never—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —[unintelligible]. But I set out my view of things, not explicitly Christian religion but certainly some of the aspects of it. And the Quaker philosophy was certainly very—very strong. I don’t remember everything in the long—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —application. I certainly [unintelligible] how much [unintelligible] justice from my church. It’s very much encouraged. Didn’t have a strong doctrine other than [unintelligible] think for yourself, and in the Sunday school, my normal experience from fifth grades was that we were very strongly encouraged to think for ourselves, [unintelligible] critical of the issues of the day, so that certainly [unintelligible] aware of things. But in the context of—of doing good and—in any event, I just presented that, and it was not accepted—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —in any event. There was no real reason. That they should.
Just as a side note, the draft, of course, was scandalized in its unequal administration. If you were poor, you had a much higher chance of getting drafted, and the granting of conscientious objector status could be done by local draft boards, and in the Northeast were patterned by unexplainable [unintelligible] varied by draftboard to draftboard. But many of them were sympathetic, were antiwar. And they were granting them fairly easily, even if you weren’t from a traditional peace church.
Other places—you wouldn’t [chuckles] stand a chance,—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —and in terms of those who refused to go into the Army and stayed in the country and went to jail, the sentences very much varied, depending on where you were in this country.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: They could go from the full five years and ten thousand [dollars] in the South, hardline areas to too much left in more traditionally antiwar areas. So the draft, in addition to coercing people to kill, was terribly, terribly inequitable in its impact on people and its [unintelligible] according to class, and race, and all the usual things.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: All the usual things.
BURACK: Mm-hm. So going back to the spring of ’67, your CO application is denied at this point.
PEASE: My CO application was pending.
BURACK: Oh, it was still pending. And Carol had come back?
PEASE: In the spring of ’67, did you say?
BURACK: Yeah. Yes.
PEASE: Yes, yes, leading up to the march in New York.
BURACK: Yes.
PEASE: Yes, so Carol had left UCLA just a few months before graduating because we didn’t know—I could be—the decision could have come down at any time, in which case the process of trial and going to jail, which was the only thing I was contemplating at the time,—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —but [unintelligible], and Carol wanted to have as much—we both wanted to have as much time together as possible, and she was willing to not have.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: So we were together then and were planning to get married, which we did in June, at the Quaker Meeting House on Rope Ferry Road [in Hanover, New Hampshire]. But she had an interesting experience, coming from a wealthy, privileged background. Her parents were not supportive of her leaving—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —[unintelligible], just before graduating. And so she had no financial support. She was working, for the first time having a job, and she was working as a waitress [unintelligible] The Green Lantern—The Green something on Main Street. And [chuckles] she said she had a class experience for the first time. The Dartmouth students who were coming there would treat her very badly, had very condescending [unintelligible], until they found out she had been a university student—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —and her boyfriend was a Dartmouth student. That was night and day.
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: So she said. [Laughs.] [unintelligible]. We were—she, of course, had a separate room from—we lived in separate rooming house type situations.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: Until we were married. I don’t think anyone would have rented to us, a non-married couple at that time.
BURACK: Yeah.
PEASE: I’m not sure. It just certainly wasn’t—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —on the—on the horizon at that time. So, yes, we were respectively together, and we—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —went, you know, to the March on Washington together,
BURACK: So—
PEASE: —along with other friends, who were—
BURACK: Okay. We’ll get to the March on Washington. I want to hear about the march in New York,—
PEASE: Mm-hm.
BURACK: —when MLK spoke. Did you see—
PEASE: I’m sorry?
BURACK: In that spring, before you were married, I think, you went down to New York?
PEASE: Yes, that’s right. That was before we were married in June. Mm-hm.
BURACK: June. So what was that like?
PEASE: Oh, that was quite the immense gathering. And it was a very—a very joyful demonstration inasmuch as there were groups of high school students who were dancing and marching and shouting and having a good time in their opposition, and it was quite an immense march. Part of it assembled in the Sheep Meadow in Central Park, which is a huge area.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: And it was—it was pretty well just completely packed with people waiting to line up for the march, and the march went on forever and ever. It was certainly the largest gathering and formal event of any kind of the opposition that I’d ever been involved in.
We had quite an interesting experience in staying in four different locations the four nights we were there.
BURACK: Wow. [Chuckles.]
PEASE: We stayed, I believe the first night—yes, we stayed with a fraternity brother who recently [unintelligible; 1:53:09] and he was working in Bedford-Stuyvesant, [a low-income neighborhood] in Brooklyn. And we stayed in his apartment that night, Carol and I and some other friends who also were members of the U and were down for the antiwar march. We stayed there. So we stayed in a ghetto the first night.
The second night—we’d been invited by someone we had met at summer school, who was the daughter of the head of Lincoln Center [for the Performing Arts],—
BURACK: Hmm!
PEASE: —a man by the name of [William H.] Schuman. So they had a penthouse on Central Park East. Huge. They weren’t there. Their daughter wasn’t there, but she had arranged for us to be able to [laughs] stay there.
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —for one night immediately before the march. So we just went up from the ghetto to the luxurious, immense penthouse, with all sorts of original paintings and things I was not terribly familiar with as being in one’s residence. Anyway,—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —we left from there. Went directly out to Central Park, to the demonstration.
After the demonstration, we went out to where Carol had grown up. She was born in New York City but mainly grew up, until the age of 11, on Long Island and still had very good friends there, so we went and stayed with the parents of her lifelong friend and Siamese twin [laughs]. Anyway,—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —we stayed in suburban New York. And, of course, the contrasts and the attitudes amongst them all was—immense contrasts.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: Very interesting perspectives to—to get in—in three or four nights such a range of poverty to wealth and the large middle class. What struck us about Long Island was the fear that was pervasive, the fear of crime. People were generally antiwar, and certainly the parents of her good friend, where we were staying, were strongly antiwar.
But the predominant thing was fear of violence, which, of course, had a racial overtone, and people were afraid to go into the city and walk around in their tails. You know, if one thing happened, they got told again and again, and it became an immense thing. And so from our perspective, having come from Bedford-Stuyvesant, where we actually went out at night and walked around—probably foolish—but anyway, we didn’t encounter any problems [chuckles]—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —of being white-white. Anyway, so the level of fear in suburbia really struck us as extraordinary, given what was the actual level of threat. But that was a terribly interesting experience.
The demonstration, itself, was so huge, we didn’t ever make it all the way to the end of [unintelligible], so we couldn’t get to hear Martin Luther King speak, but in one of the nights before the actual demonstration, [unintelligible] and heard a scholar by the name of [A.] Noam Chomsky. He was actually trying to speak on the same stage with Norman [K.] Mailer, and they were being obstreperous.
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: They were trying to dominate everything. But Chomsky actually got to speak, and he is immensely impressive with the scholarship. His level of—level voice and level-headed outrage was just like a factual basis that he had established his conclusions and hearing him made quite a bit impression on me.
And I don’t know if that was right then—or it would have been—early or later, somewhere around those events, Chomsky published a famous essay in The New York Review of Books, a big cover. I think there was [unintelligible] cartoon, an illustration. Anyway, the responsibility of the intellectual. [Transcriber’s note: “A Special Supplement: The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the February 23, 1967, issue of The New York Review of Books.
Source: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1967/02/23/a-special-supplement-the-responsibility-of-intelle/ ] And it was all about people who fancied themselves intellectuals in response to— in the face of the war [unintelligible] oppose it with every ounce of your—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —your responsibility. Anyway, that was all coming together, bonding at that time. And it was a terrible situation. It was an awful war with a result of the destruction, but in terms of social movement and intellectual activity and inquiry, it was a very alive, intense time, of course.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: At the same time, personal future via conscription, volunteer [unintelligible] very seriously.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
So—and you go back up to Dartmouth to get married. What do you do that summer?
PEASE: I went to summer school again. I was trying to get all my credits as quickly—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —as possible, and I worked at a variety [sic] of jobs, and we lived in a nice apartment. Finally got to live together at—
BURACK: Yay!
PEASE: — at number [unintelligible], quite near the street, alleyway that runs alongside the Dartmouth Bookstore.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: So anyway, we were there for the summer and were married, as I say, at the Quaker Meeting House. And Professor Robin [J.] Scroggs, who had conducted the New Testament seminar in which we met—he attended and spoke at our wedding. In a Quaker ceremony where people being married, married one another. It’s legally signed by the clerk of the Friends Meeting, but there is nobody officiating as such. It’s the usual silent meeting, and at some point the people being married stand up and say their vows to one another in front of everyone, and then they sit down, and if anyone feels called upon to speak, then they stand up and do so.
And one of the many speakers, actually, was—was Professor Scroggs. So that was a nice bit of that full circle. Continuity. And he quite generously—he offered us, for the fall of 1967, his home out on the road to Lyme, his home overlooking the Connecticut River. He was going to Germany with his wife on sabbatical, but he lent us his Volkswagen Beetle for back and forth to campus and his beautiful home, so that’s [chuckles] where we stayed—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —in the fall of ’67. As I say, quite a wonderfully supportive environment, [unintelligible].
BURACK: Yeah, it sounds great.
So the fall of ’67, from my understanding, is when activism kind of really picks up on campus, more or less. Can you speak kind of about what you were doing that fall? I know the march on D.C. happened during this time. Had you heard about your CO status? Kind of talk me through what was going on.
PEASE: Yes. I think I had an appeal-level hearing that summer, for which I went back to Iowa that was, and it was still pending. That’s all.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: So certainly from the fall, the previous fall of ’66, right on through, the antiwar movement and the antiwar activities had continued to build a good deal at Dartmouth, and I was very much involved with them, and Carol was as well. In fact, the summer of 1967, the summer we were married, was called Vietnam Summer, and it was a nationwide project to help students spend the summer doing antiwar organizing wherever they happened to live, and a bunch of people had organized Vietnam Summer at Dartmouth, and we were—we were very much a part of that.
There must have been at least a dozen people, most of them staying at the Quaker Meeting house. The Quakers, of course, were supportive. I don’t know where people, individuals’ livelihoods came from. There were people in the communities who donated to the Vietnam Summer project, professors and others. But there were about—I guess about a dozen who were involved in that.
I was going to school and doing various jobs, but I also was involved in organizing. We would take neighborhoods and go door to door and try to organize evening meetings in somebody’s homes, or we could talk to them about the war and tell them our perspective. It was moderately successful. I wouldn't say an immense success, but it was chipping away, and it was worthwhile, and—yeah, it was all part of things continuing to build the antiwar movement.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: And the war was still expanding in terms of American bombing and American troops on the ground and free fire films and all sorts of horrendous things. And the movement was much, much larger on—on the Dartmouth campus by the fall of ’67 so that our—our vigils were—one center point for activities, and the literature was given out there, and people would I guess fairly—I guess in the year prior to that thing going on, people would occasionally stop and want to talk or would challenge or whatever, and then one of us would leave the line and—and things were silent and go speak with them and have literature. So it was quite active constantly, trying to organize, spreading the word. And it was in fact building considerably.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —so we had a lot of people at the vigil, to the point where I believe it had to be that fall, pro-war people took umbrage and organized a counter-demonstration, lining up on the other side of the pathway. They announced this, called it, and so it became the standoff. I haven’t—I didn’t save the Dartmouth accounts of it or whatever, but I’m sure it’s there.
BURACK: It does exist, yeah. I have read it. [Chuckles.]
PEASE: Oh, okay. What date is it that it took place?
BURACK: I don’t have it in front of me, but it was that fall.
PEASE: Okay.
BURACK: Yes.
PEASE: The memory is not completely shot.
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: I remember going up to my old haunt in the Tower Room at Baker Library [Fisher Ames Baker Memorial Library, now Baker-Berry Library] and looking down on a demonstration, and I don’t know if there was a photo. I think there was from it in The Dartmouth. But it was quite striking, the lines of people facing one another across—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —many, many pathways on the Green. They were immense, It turned out to be several thousand people taking pretty well over the entire Green, with the antiwar people in slight majority—
BURACK: Yeah, I actually—I just looked back in my notes. It was the spring of ’67, too. It says there was roughly a thousand people on the Green.
PEASE: Oh, it was the spring, not the fall.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: Then the counter-demonstration took place.
BURACK: Yes, and I think it continued into the fall.
PEASE: And roughly a thousand, not thousands. Okay.
BURACK: Yeah, roughly a thousand.
PEASE: Okay. [Chuckles.]
BURACK: Still, still, that’s many—that’s so many people!
PEASE: Yeah.
BURACK: It says—
PEASE: It was large, and it was interesting, and certainly the dialogue was—was engaged, so—[Chuckles.]
BURACK: Yeah.
PEASE: That was—
BURACK: It said—
PEASE: It wasn’t just shouting at one another.
BURACK: No.
PEASE: There was some of that, I gather, but my experience was mostly people would talk and—
BURACK: Yeah.
PEASE: —sometimes it could be heated, but there was—there was engagement, anyway.
BURACK: Yeah. The article says the peace students had the majority. I don’t know if you remember, a slight—a slight majority. [Chuckles.] Well, anyway, so that fall—did you participate in any more demonstrations like the one in New York?
PEASE: Oh, yes, the big—the biggest demonstration was called the March on Washington,—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —which was over I think October 21st, if I’m not mistaken—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —and was a march from the Mall, from the Lincoln Memorial and—assembling there and going a long ways back towards—from the Lincoln Memorial back towards the Washington Monument, assembling to march past the—to the Pentagon and, to the extent possible, surround the Pentagon. That was the massive demonstration of—
BURACK: How did you hear about it?
PEASE: Oh, it was the focus of the antiwar movement, a national movement, and I and others were in touch with that. We tried to coordinate with them with certainly literature. Cornell [University] was one of the places were this literature was published, and they were very well organized, so I was in fairly close touch with people at Cornell. And it just was a focus of the antiwar—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —network. Because this massive effort to have this huge thing, demonstration, including civil disobedience at the Pentagon that fall. So that was a major focus of what we were doing, and quite a number of us went down.
BURACK: So when you went down, how long were you there for? What was the march like?
PEASE: Well, it was several days. I know that the night before, my friend Paul [S.] Stetzer [Jr., Class of 1967], who is my good friend to this day. Paul Stetzer, he was a fellow member of DU. And he was in touch with a DU member who had graduated and lived in Washington, and his parents had a big home and we were welcome to stay there, so a large group of us stayed there. He was one of the—I think he was the only—the guy who hosted us. I think he was the only black student in DU at the time I was there. I—
BURACK: Just to clarify,—
PEASE: [unintelligible] black students on campus was not large, but he—
BURACK: Do you—
PEASE: —hosted us. They—
BURACK: DU is Dartmouth—
PEASE: Hmm? He was a—
BURACK: Sorry. Sorry to interrupt you. Just to clarify, DU is Dartmouth Christian Union?
PEASE: No, I’m sorry,—
BURACK: Oh.
PEASE: —DU is Delta Upsilon,—
BURACK: Oh, okay. [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —a fraternity.
BURACK: Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Just—
PEASE: Yes.
BURACK: I just got confused. Okay.
PEASE: The other is DCU. Yes, no, Dartmouth—
BURACK: Oh, okay.
PEASE: Delta Upsilon. It later became Foley House, I think—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —after ’67. I wasn’t active with it, so I don’t know.
BURACK: Okay.
PEASE: No.
BURACK: Sorry. I just wanted to clarify that.
PEASE: [unintelligible] Foley House disaffiliated because of racial policies by the national fraternity. That’s all.
BURACK: Okay.
PEASE: But at that time,—
BURACK: Sorry. I just wanted to clarify that.
PEASE: Yes.
BURACK: So you stayed—
PEASE: Yes, Yes.
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: There was definitely Dartmouth Christian Union was the center for all antiwar and civil rights activities, so there were many, many people from DCU, who affiliated one way or another with DCU, who came down on the march. We didn’t hire a bus. Everybody made his or her way there on their own, but there was quite a—quite a group.
BURACK: Okay. So you were staying with a DU brother, or an alumni [sic; alumnus].
PEASE: Mm-hm.
BURACK: And did he participate with you guys in the march the next day?
PEASE: I don’t—I don’t remember about that. I mainly remember his mother being very warm and hospitable. I don’t know if Mike was even there.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: That’s—that’s unclear. But certainly there were—in New York there had been very large contingents of—of people from Harlem, black students from Harlem high schools and other areas, so there was a large contingent from New York. And certainly there were good numbers of African-Americans at the March on Washington, including—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —prominent civil rights groups [unintelligible].
BURACK: So—
PEASE: Yeah. And it was led by—the very first line, once we started marching towards the Pentagon from the Lincoln Memorial—the front line was Benjamin [M.] Spock and—what’s his name? William Sloane Coffin [Jr.], a prominent minister from Yale. Norman Mailer and Noam Chomsky and a bunch of other prominent people clearly led the demonstration, and they led off with the people willing to and determined to commit civil disobedience and be arrested at the Pentagon.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: And I was of that persuasion. I wasn’t anywhere near the front in that group. [Chuckles.] But the people I was with were also quite looking to be involved in civil disobedience and were prepared for that, [unintelligible]. And a friend of mine, Paul [W.] Beach [Jr.] from the Class of 1967—he eventually ended up going to jail rather than go into the Army and organize. He was with me, and we were arrested together at that demonstration at the Pentagon.
There were, I don’t know, a thousand—eleven, twelve hundred, somewhere in that range—of people arrested at part of the demonstration. And there were troops that dawned [unintelligible], protecting various—various areas of the Pentagon. So I remember sitting down in front of them while it was still daylight, with the [unintelligible]. Of course, they were young kids like us. Didn’t look very [chuckles] thrilled to be there. Were at least as nervous as we were, brandishing these fixed bayonets [chuckles]. But they were not violent [unintelligible]. They were very disciplined.
When we were eventually arrested, it was dark, and the people doing the arrest were middle-aged, usually fairly heavy-set U.S. marshals, and I found them quite disturbing. One of the people with Paul and myself, when we sat down and eventually were arrested and were blocking trucks going in and out—
There was a young blonde woman. It turns out she was a friend of Paul’s. I didn’t know that at the time. Who looked the very picture of the innocent girl next door-ish. She was a young American woman. The marshals were just incensed by her. She looked so much like a girl next door and daughters, and they were quite brutal in handling her, as they were not with us. So that was probably the most disturbing thing of the experience.
Getting arrested—
BURACK: What do you—
PEASE: We only spent 12 hours in jail, and they were prepared for a large—I think there were security jails in the area, so they had prepared to deal with several thousand people. I think it was just over a thousand who were—who were arrested.
So I was in a large room. There must have been 60 beds in there, 40, 50 beds. And in our section there was Noam Chomsky and Norman Mailer. And once again, Mailer totally dominated Chomsky—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —[unintelligible]—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —didn’t get a chance to [unintelligible], unfortunately. But they were around. And I [unintelligible] a guy by the name of [Napthtali] “Tuli” Kupferberg, who was a prominent member of the antiwar, civil rights, aging hippie band called The Fugs, F-u-g-s, out of the Village [Greenwich Village, New York City, New York]. He was in our—our group. I was mainly thrilled that he was there. So anyway—[Laughs.]
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: It wasn’t a harsh prison experience by any means, and we were only there for 12 hours.
BURACK: So when you went to the Pentagon, you all sat down as a means of civil disobedience?
PEASE: Those of us who were—who were—
BURACK: You and Paul.
PEASE: —engaging.
BURACK: Yeah.
PEASE: Not anyone, by any means. Carol-Anne—
BURACK: Uh,—
PEASE: —wasn’t comfortable for that, but she was providing—but she could do First Aid, helping people. There were some people who were a bit injured and such, but that wasn’t common. So people decided what they wanted to do.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: And there were—there were various contingents, of course, of this massive crowd. I don’t know what the official count was, but it was certainly well over 100,000 both in New York and—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —at the Pentagon. And there was a wide variety of—of contingents, of groupings with different approaches, different points of view, different actions they were willing to take. There were people such as [Beat poet I.] Allen Ginsberg, who had—oh, he was also in the front line with Chomsky and Spock, et cetera—Ginsberg, who was leading a group who were going to chant “om” and levitate the Pentagon by the power of spiritual power. [Chuckles.]
BURACK: Oh! [Laughs.]
PEASE: So there was that approach. And then there were people who, I’m convinced, had to be agent provocateurs—in other words, hired by the government or [unintelligible], to do provocative actions. There were some who were actually trying to physically assault and get into doors and things. Quite far out. Just a very few of them. And then there was a large group of people who, following the civil rights movement tactics, were quite willing and prepared to engage in civil—nonviolent civil disobedience. That was the vast, pervading approach. But there were—there were fringe groups in there doing other things.
BURACK: Mm-hm. So how long were you at the Pentagon before you were arrested?
PEASE: Oh, pretty well—between being I guess that’s called the Mall, between the Lincoln and the Washington Memorials—it was all day, from early in the morning—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —until it was well after dark, [unintelligible], so it got dark relatively early, but it was a long day there, and—
BURACK: Yeah.
PEASE: —overnight. We were released the following morning. But despite being, you know, quite a team and intellectually stimulating interest in a brief, brief 12-hour jail experience, the fact that it had jail had some impact on me.
BURACK: When you were taken in, were you, like, questioned or you were just put in this room with the 50 other or so?
PEASE: We were on a paddy wagon, and then we were processed. We were not questioned, no.
Subsequent to it, to the march on the Pentagon and the arrest for disturbing the peace or something innocuous like that—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —I was [unintelligible] within a few weeks of being back [unintelligible] a couple of FBI agents. And they wanted to know my intentions and my views and if I could tell them about any identifying marks on my body. [Laughs.]
BURACK: Oh, wow! [Laughs.]
PEASE: [Laughs.] So anyway, yes, they came to Scroggs’ house that we were fortunate enough to be occupying at that time. Came to interview me about my intentions. But—
BURACK: Do you—
PEASE: —at that point, I had returned my draft card again.
BURACK: Okay.
PEASE: In that fall, building up to—well, from—from April of ’67, the big antiwar demo in New York, there was a movement to return draft cards. There was some burning draft cards. I remember witnessing the burning of draft cards during April [unintelligible] New York. And certainly in the fall, leading up to the march on the Pentagon and after that [unintelligible] there was a strong movement to try to organize a mass civil disobedience, not cooperating with the draft. So as part of that, I did return my draft card again that—that fall.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: And I think the reason for the FBI interviewing me was both the Pentagon arrest and the returning of the draft card.
BURACK: How did you react when the FBI showed up at your door?
PEASE: Well, I’d had previous contact with the FBI because of my CO application, so it wasn’t hugely scary. It was—you know, I was—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —I was [unintelligible], I think. But I don’t remember other—other reactions. I have had them, but—
BURACK: Yeah.
PEASE: —they haven’t stayed with me.
BURACK: [Chuckles.] So nothing too significant.
PEASE: No.
BURACK: So when you returned—so you were released 12 hours after your arrest.
PEASE: Yes.
BURACK: And did you go straight back to Dartmouth?
PEASE: Yes, I came back, and—
BURACK: What were your next steps, kind of?
PEASE: —then—from then until we actually left—on December 10th we left the U.S. to come to Canada, so after that march, I hadn’t fully made up my mind about what we were doing or were going to do, whether I was going to continue to plan to go to jail or—Canada became an option that I was thinking about after we were married. It was the idea of my going to jail was—was very difficult for my mother to accept and for Carol-Anne as well.
And for Carol-Anne it was particularly torturous because she was a strongly believing Quaker and believing that that civil disobedience and carrying through on it was—was the right way to do things. But personally she just couldn’t—it was very hard to, you know, the thought of being separated for that long, however long it might be, we couldn’t know the sentence but up to five years. And to think of what I might be going through while in prison.
So that—their views certainly had an impact on me. I think even as mild and as cushy as the jail experience was, it was that little tiny taste of deprivation of freedom brought the jail idea much closer to my mind. And I was watching the draft card return movement, with civil disobedience in respect of conscription movement carefully and hoping it would build, and I came to a conclusion that it wasn’t going to be build enough to be effective.
And so anyway, that was then my personal situation, and difficult, difficult decision, but we decided to come to Canada rather than to go to jail.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: Those were the options that I considered, so that’s the decision we made. And we left from Chicago. We actually went back to the Midwest and to Erie [Pennsylvania], where Carol’s parents lived, and we went—we flew from Chicago to Toronto on December 10th, 1967. That’s the day that we always in our family celebrate as a personal Canada Day,—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: The national holiday is July first, called Canada Day, but we have—have our Pease family Canada Day on December 10th, the anniversary of the day we came to Canada. We have always always felt that was very good decision, in terms of the quality of our lives and for raising our children and just for being in [unintelligible.] Very glad to have the chance—have had the chance to be Canadians.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: But that was quite a big decision, of course, to change course like that. And I still have some mixed feelings about not having followed the pure path of going to jail. My friend Paul—Paul—Beach is his last name; remember, the Class of ’67. He was with me at the March on Washington. We were arrested together there. He’s still quite a close, good good friend.
Paul had decided to take the path of going into the [U.S.] Army and organizing from within the Army against the war. That turned out to be a very effective tactic. In retrospect, I think the most useful person I know, [unintelligible] say and anti-war group at Dartmouth was—the one person I know who actually did that went into the Army and organized.
Again, it was another member of the Class of ’67, [Richard W.] “Dick” Olson, who happens to be from my hometown in Burlington, Iowa—a member of the Class of ’68, I should say, [unintelligible]. Did that. He was very good with languages. He had Vietnamese language training. Was almost shipped off to Vietnam until they decided that it really wouldn’t be in the U.S. government’s interest to have an antiwar—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —Vietnamese G.I. in Vietnam. And I think he was in some jeopardy actually, as well. So they kept him in the States. Kept him at Fort Benning I think Georgia. And he became of the journalists—he became one of the editors of the large antiwar newspaper on the campus and quite openly organized against the war. By that point, the late 69, basically—it was low-level, a lot of unwillingness to fight, and the Army at that point had to just tolerate the open antiwar activity because to suppress it would have been—allowed it to grow even faster, so—
So [unintelligible], who Paul had wanted, had planned to do [chuckles], which is go into the Army—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —and organize against the war [unintelligible]. Dick Olson did that, and terrifically effective. He went on to a career with the UAW [United Auto Workers Union] communications department and stayed in handling civil rights matters
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: That certainly was the most effective thing to do, and I think my friend Paul Beach had intended to do that, but instead in Philadelphia it became time for him to take a symbolic step across the line and step forward after induction [unintelligible.] He found that he just could not do it. And much to his surprise, ended up in jail from that point on. [Chuckles.] He was tired of trial. So he ended up getting out in three and a half years sentence and served —
BURACK: Wow.
PEASE: —two and a half of other. So I certainly know the impact of that jail experience upon him.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: And from a personal point of view, I made the right decision for myself, for Carol [unintelligible] to come to Canada. It wasn’t the most effective antiwar decision I could have made, nor the purest decision I could have done, but—
BURACK: It was the right thing for you.
PEASE: [Chuckles.] Yeah. I am satisfied with—
BURACK: Yeah.
PEASE: —[unintelligible]. Yeah.
BURACK: So when you got to Canada, what were your next steps in settling down there?
PEASE: Yes. Well, it was quite—quite a startling change. Nineteen- —
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —sixty-seven, a centennial year, [unintelligible]—
BURACK: Hmm.
PEASE: —[unintelligible] Canadian confederation ’67 in my [unintelligible] there were world expositions, several expositions of that year, in conjunction with the centennial. And it was a huge outpouring of self-confidence and energy and pride in Canada, so we came out at very much a high point [unintelligible] English-Canadian identity, and [unintelligible] regarding the [unintelligible] energy. And we were struck, outcasts, actually.
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: We stood for liberal government, liberal part of the Canada forms of government of Canada in 1967, Lester [B.] Pearson, who was the Nobel Peace Prize winner for his actions over the Suez Canal at the time of the Suez crisis. He was prime minister. And Pierre Elliott Trudeau, a cabinet minister and minister of justice. And they were [unintelligible] that we could not [unintelligible] could be said [chuckles]—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —the position in North America, not only about the war—and they were quite openly welcoming draft dodgers and even deserters of that time, [unintelligible]. And they were talking about some political social issues, liberalizations as well. Trudeau especially, with the minister of justice and the following liberal party [unintelligible].
Then the following week [unintelligible; 2:33:46] arrived here [unintelligible; 2:33:44]. Trudeau became the prime minister. [unintelligible; 2:33:49]. And he took on the leadership of the party, which then had a majority in Parliament [unintelligible] election now a majority government, and proceeded to act in strong, independent ways as they could possibly do with respect to their allies in the U.S and welcoming draft dodgers and deserters. Trudeau said what was the [unintelligible] such as we welcome people who refused to [unintelligible] from anywhere, and [unintelligible] we welcome them to Canada, we are delighted to have them as our citizens.
So it was quite the contrast in social atmospheres. [Chuckles.]
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: [Unintelligible] realities compared to what was happening in the States in 1968. So we came in December of ’67, and February of ’68 was the Tet Offensive, the uprising which saw the South Vietnamese [unintelligible]. The Viet Cong [in the National Liberation Front [NLF] of South Vietnam being on the ground of the U.S. Embassy. And [unintelligible] announces an uprising that set the tone for the U.S. having to get out of Vietnam from that time forward. There was that February.
Then in March Johnson announced that he would not run again. There was the—of course, it was an election year, and Eugene [J.] McCarthy had done quite well in New Hampshire, supported by a lot of Dartmouth [unintelligible]—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —and students. And so there was a growing antiwar movement. And Lyndon Johnson had to vow he would not seek reelection. The assassination of Martin Luther King and then of Robert Kennedy within the sight of the convention [unintelligible] after [unintelligible] African-American community—[unintelligible] come out and there could not have been a greater contrast to what was happening [unintelligible] in Canada and [unintelligible]. So it was not—our heads were spinning from sorting everything out, so—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —[unintelligible] country [unintelligible] country and what was happening in Canada.
I was politically active with the movement here, and I was engaged in trying to help other draft dodgers and deserters. There were organized aid committees, and I was involved in that as much as I could do. And there were antiwar, anti-Vietnam War activities that would take place in Canada: demonstrations outside of the U.S. consulate in Toronto. We lived in London, which was an hour and a half, two hours from there. So we would go to those things on the university campus in London, Ontario.
So we were active with student groups. We would join the various [unintelligible], especially [unintelligible], on Carol [unintelligible], but not as much. We were certainly involved in the kind of sorts of activities, but in a very different context.
And my head was certainly spinning, getting my bearings on my—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —[unintelligible] not only in the U.S. but in Canada and away and unable to go back and impact on my family. All of those things [unintelligible] active in too short of a time.
BURACK: Yeah. So in terms of that, how were you feeling about maybe not being able to return to America?
PEASE: No, I was certainly quite focused, even though I was living in Canada, and being involved in the Canadian-centered activities to a good extent—attention and [unintelligible]. I thought—I was still very, very caught up in and very focused on what was happening in the U.S., especially with regard to the war, but everything else. It was a time of immense tumult and cultural changes, as all of the political [unintelligible].
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: I was fortunate in the sense that many of the people in the political movements I was involved in here in Canada—and I was in those movements, it just happened I was the only American in those groups. There were people by [unintelligible] who were becoming strongly national. They were very concerned about a security position in Canada relative to the U.S. And they would let me know when I was far too focused, centered on the U.S. and not paying attention to where I lived now. So that was—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —they were gentle about it, in a good Canadian way.
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: But they let me know that I really should learn about Canada and think about being here, and to a certain extent we [unintelligible] to the U.S. the reality for Canadians is you always have to be extremely aware of what’s happening in the U.S. because—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —it’s going to affect you very, very much. But I’ve grown since and tried a moderate [chuckles], of course keeping our Canadian stereotype. A moderate—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —was taking hold and was—was beneficial, and that—that was certainly helpful to me, to encourage me to get my bearing here and—while still being incredibly interested in what was happening in the States, to build my life here.
The community of draft dodgers and increasingly of the deserted of the war—that community—the estimates are roughly 60,000. That community was split between those who thought of themselves as oriented to building lives Canada and those who saw themselves as expatriates. And once there was a pardon, eight years after we came, the pardon first by [President Gerald R.] Ford [Jr.] and then a more comprehensive pardon by [President James Earl] “Jimmy” Carter [Jr.] in the mid-’70s, so that was the eight years [unintelligible]. I could go back then because of the pardon, and actually charges had been dropped for me a year or so before I found out about it, so even without the pardon I could have gone back because there were not any charges.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: Anyway, during that eight-year period when I did not go back, my family was very good. They came to visit. But both grandmothers died. I couldn’t go to their funerals. So FBI agents attended both [chuckles] of them.
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: That’s pretty obvious. There were those things that I got cut off, but that also gave me the opportunity to focus on Canada and to become integrated here and to see myself and Carol as well. I’m very much inclined to say we see ourselves as new Canadian. And, of course, having time to be interested, if not wholly focused on—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —what was happening [unintelligible].
BURACK: So you settled into life in Canada—
PEASE: We settled in,—
BURACK: —quite well.
PEASE: —yes. I stopped striving. In a sense, I had a period of—of what must have been 15 years—no, it’s nine years—I should get my chronology straight. I worked at a clerical job at the National Library of Canada, [now part of Library and Archives Canada], a librarian type of job, and was politically active but did not personally try to establish myself in a profession or anything like that until I decided to go to law school in ’76, so it was just short of nine years from coming to Canada [unintelligible].
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —[unintelligible]. A lot of that application came from—in the spring of 1970, so two and a half years after we came, I became very ill with Crohn’s disease, which is an inflammatory around the intestines. And really had to take it particularly easy and work 30 hours rather than 40 a week, et cetera, et cetera, for a number of years after that. And then I had another diagnosis, multiple sclerosis, in the later ’70s, in the middle of law school [unintelligible].
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: Which turned out to be false. I was undiagnosed after 20 years. But anyway, a bunch of health concerns as well as being sort of stunned, I would think. I’m certainly not starting along on the path I would have if there hadn’t been a war and turnover in our lives [unintelligible].
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: So that was a period of taking stock and of relative quiescence except for the illnesses. [Chuckles.]
BURACK: Mm-hm. So you went to law school. Did you enjoy it?
PEASE: Oh, I enjoyed it.
BURACK: How long were you there? [Laughs.]
PEASE: Three years, until the early part of my last—my third year. I got the symptoms of what was then diagnosed was MS. It turned out to be inflammatory arthritis, not rheumatoid but something like that.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: Anyway, that caused another pause, so, because I had these two major health problems, I—I didn’t finish my fourth, the following year.
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: That was another reason. I thought I had two major—Crohn’s and multiple sclerosis, so I did not fully pursue the legal profession. I did not go and article and do the five years of—of junior slavery to get a position, get established.
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: But [unintelligible] legal skills, legal training as a staff member at the public service employee union, dealing with human rights and a lot of disability and immigration and general legal matters. So it was good decision to go to law school—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —I was able to put it to use, [unintelligible], so that was very good. But there wasn’t a significant period when I wasn’t pursuing anything at all like that.
BURACK: Mm-hm. So you worked as—for this public service employee union for the rest of your working career?
PEASE: Yes, for the—yes, for the last 18, 19 years of my working career, and that was very satisfying because it was a progressive union so that—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —I’m in charge of things like disability rights, we were one of the large unions in the country, and we were the leading union fighting that battle on the union front. And, of course, [unintelligible] moved along quite rapidly there, for [unintelligible] more rapidly in Canada, so that—that was successful in ten years. And eventually [unintelligible]. So on that front—that was a very nice time to be able to be a small part of that, and within our duty to do [unintelligible] a part of that. We had some significant victories. Nothing earth shattering, but they all added to the buildup of [unintelligible]. So that was very satisfying to be a part of.
And very satisfying to be a part of disability rights because once I had the diagnosis of MS, I got involved in the MS society and did a lot of volunteer work, building social action with the affect of committees of people with MS, which was a new matter with the traditional health [unintelligible] organization, very much a corporate [unintelligible]. And the people with the predicted condition [unintelligible] other groups. They’re not active [unintelligible] things being done for, rather than with, and I was able to part of the movement [unintelligible] society. People were going have to be making decisions [unintelligible].
I got into advocacy work, which fished in with my legal training. And political, potentially, so that was—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —[unintelligible] opportunity so I’m glad I was able to be part of that.
BURACK: So as sort of one last question I have for you: How do you view your years at Dartmouth and your years as someone that was very involved in the Vietnam antiwar movement? How do you view that as a lasting impact on kind of your life in Canada following—like, what do you view as the biggest impact of those years?
PEASE: Of my experiences at Dartmouth on my life in Canada, my adult life?
BURACK: Yeah, and your experiences in activism.
PEASE: Very crucial. Certainly having the opportunity to go to Dartmouth and to be successful at Dartmouth helped my self-confidence in—one second. I’m getting interference.
BURACK: Oh, okay.
PEASE: Just—I’ll put the phone down for one second.
BURACK: Okay.
PEASE: Hello, Emily.
BURACK: Hi. I’m still here. [Laughs.]
PEASE: My hearing aid is acting up. I don’t know—
BURACK: Okay.
PEASE: —if you can hear all the beeps, but they were going crazy.
BURACK: No. Oh, no! I—
PEASE: They seem to have calmed down now. [Laughs.]
BURACK: Good to hear. [Chuckles.]
PEASE: You were asking me about how Dartmouth had an impact on my adult life in Canada.
BURACK: Yeah.
PEASE: Yeah.
BURACK: Yes, and the impact of your activist years. Or your activism, yes.
PEASE: Well, Dartmouth certainly set the pattern, the interests and activities I had and developed at Dartmouth, certainly outdoors activities: hiking and canoeing, all those sorts of wonderful North Woods things. Where better place could one be but in Canada—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —for pursuing even further? And to be in Ottawa. We eventually, after a few years, moved from London to Ottawa, the capital. And Ottawa is beautifully situated on the edge of the wilderness. You know, you go 20 minutes and you’re in a national park, which has—it’s very good at an illusion of wilderness,—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —and there’s actual wilderness, which goes on and on and on, not far beyond that. So living in Ottawa, you have great access to anything outdoors like that. It’s the confluence of three rivers, a canal so water—so anyway, outdoors Dartmouth. The interest that I had when I came to Dartmouth and was able to greatly develop at Dartmouth, even more so, certainly, in Canada. And our family has done lots of wilderness canoeing. We still do it as a family activity, as much as I’m able. We rearrange things so I can still participate. That’s a great joy.
And a lot of that was reinforced by—by Dartmouth as far as the same [unintelligible], as far as general confidence going to a school such as Dartmouth and seeing it used there and successful there. That certainly helps general self-confidence.
Being involved in the antiwar movement, of course,—and the things leading up to it—certainly, the involvement in VISTA as well, and then in politics of the ’60s and the war and civil rights, all of that. Certainly, there’s continuity in my life [chuckles] on—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: —on such things, so it—it set the table and reinforced—I find it reinforced and developed tendencies I had when I came there, some of them quiet, and some with varied tendencies, but the social justice issue orientation was there. I just needed a means for its expression.
I think Dartmouth prepared me in another way inasmuch as there were classmates and people I knew who went on to leadership positions, and just people like that and feeling at ease amongst that takes away some of the—the distance and the mystery and the art of—of that sort of leadership. Knowing people, and you can respect them greatly, but you’re not going to be over-awed that you know some people and you knew them except that crowd. So that certainly helps to put things in perspective as well.
I couldn’t be happier to have gone to Dartmouth. It certainly fulfilled the expectations that I had. It’s vastly improved, from what I can understand, certainly with coeducation, with greater participation by all sorts of ethnicities. And I think it’s more open to people from various classes, with the various policies on the admission and according to family—not admission. But if you are admitted with financial support, you can possibly go if your family—is it a hundred thousand dollars now? Is that the criteria? Or is it two hundred—
BURACK: I’m not sure the exact—
PEASE: —of family income—
BURACK: —criteria.
PEASE: Yeah.
BURACK: I do know that about half of the student body is on financial aid now, and it’s need-blind [admissions], so—which is pretty neat.
PEASE: Yeah. So those have improved greatly. And when I have walked around—
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: —and watched people relating and going to Thayer and listened to people talk, it’s a vastly better place than it was [chuckles] in—
BURACK: [Laughs.]
PEASE: —[unintelligible]. And I’m happy for that. That doesn’t mean that my experience was bad. It could have been even better. [Chuckles.]
BURACK: Mm-hm.
PEASE: But that was—I was quite thankful to have gone to Dartmouth, and for that, personally, I always found it a very supportive community. It was like being in opposition and the war movement. Dartmouth was not—
BURACK: Okay.
PEASE: —[unintelligible] at all.
BURACK: Well, that’s good.
I think we’ll end on that note unless you have any other, final thoughts?
PEASE: No. No, not for the—not for the interview. No, that’s—
BURACK: [Chuckles.]
PEASE: That’s fine. I’m all talked out. Thank you for—for being interested.
[End of interview.]