Robert Santulli
Dartmouth College Oral History Program
Dartmouth Vietnam Project
October 5, 2016
Transcribed by Mim Eisenberg/WordCraft
[EMILY R.]
EVERHARD: This is Emily Everhard. I am at Rauner Library at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Today is the fifth of October, 2016. I’m interviewing Robert Santulli, and this interview is for the Dartmouth Vietnam Project.
Also, if you ever want to take a break or have a drink of water or anything, just let me know.
SANTULLI: Okay.
EVERHARD: Okay. And so just to start off this interview, can you tell me a little bit about where and when you were born?
SANTULLI: Okay. I was born in New York City, 1947—October 1947, and lived pretty much in the New York area until we came up to Hanover in 1990.
EVERHARD: Okay. And what was your family like? What did your parents do?
SANTULLI: My father was a surgeon. My mother was a homemaker. And that was it. I have one brother.
EVERHARD: One brother. And what were your parents’ names?
SANTULLI: Thomas [V.] and Dorothy [Beverly].
EVERHARD: Okay. And what was your brother’s name?
SANTULLI: Thomas, Jr.
EVERHARD: Okay. And was he older or younger?
SANTULLI: Yeah, he’s older.
EVERHARD: Older. And what was—what’s the age difference between—
SANTULLI: Three years, exactly. We were born on the same day three years apart. [Chuckles.]
EVERHARD: Really?
SANTULLI: Yeah, it’s amazing, yeah.
EVERHARD: What day is that?
SANTULLI: October 17th, so it’s coming up.
EVERHARD: Oh. And so you said your father was a surgeon. What kind of surgeon was he?
SANTULLI: Pediatric surgeon. Operated on little kids. Infants, mostly. That was his specialty.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm. And was your family religious?
SANTULLI: Not particularly. You know, we—no. We went to church, which people did in the fifties, whether they were that religious or not, but not particularly.
EVERHARD: And do you remember, did your family talk a lot about politics?
SANTULLI: No, very little.
EVERHARD: What do you remember, like, doing with your parents a lot?
SANTULLI: With my father, we used to go fishing. That was one thing that sticks out because that was something that we looked forward to every season, when that would come, and he liked to trout fish, and we went along with him. And that was the main thing I can think of.
With my mother, she was, oh, pretty much a homebody, so nothing out and adventurous like that, more just around the house.
EVERHARD: And what did you like to do when you were a kid?
SANTULLI: What did I like to do? Well, I liked to play with my friends. I had a bicycle. I loved to ride a bike and rode all over town and played—my brother and I used to play a lot of baseball and tennis and things like that when we were young, so those kinds of things.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm. And do you remember what your elementary school was like, or your middle school?
SANTULLI: Yes. What can I tell you? What do you want to know about?
EVERHARD: I mean, just what you liked to learn about, maybe.
SANTULLI: Oh, I don’t know that at that age I really liked to learn about anything in particular. I went to school because that’s what you did. And I actually just on Monday met somebody who’d gone to the same elementary school as me, so that got me thinking about it after—you know, you don’t think about that a lot when you’re in your sixties. But, yeah, I was in elementary school in New York, and—let’s see, through—I was in school in New York until eighth grade, and then I went away to boarding school after that. So it’s hard for me to say what I really enjoyed learning in school. I just went to school because that’s what you did. I think I developed interests later on, but at that point, I don’t know that I can identify anything, particularly.
EVERHARD: Yeah. And did you feel like kind of growing up in the post-World War II era—did you feel like that had an impact on your childhood?
SANTULLI: I didn’t feel it at the time, and, you know, I don’t know that I can even identify aspects of that now. My father was not in the service, and—unlike many, many people who were my peers, whose fathers all were in World War II, or mostly. And I’m not actually totally certain what the reason for that was. It was never really discussed, and he’s no longer living for me to find out.
So, you know, in retrospect, in reading about it and learning the history and, you know, we were really—we were very typical of the fifties, growing up in that era. Lived in sort of a suburban part of New York, which was building up at that time.
But I can’t say I felt anything in particular about the war. I remember as a child watching [O. Adolf] Eichmann on trial. That’s the first sentinent memory that relates directly to the war, to the Second World War, and that was in the sixties sometime. I forget—I don’t remember the exact year, but—
EVERHARD: Right. And you mentioned that you went away to boarding school for high school.
SANTULLI: Mm-hm, mm-hm.
EVERHARD: Where did you go to boarding school?
SANTULLI: Choate School [now Choate Rosemary Hall] in Connecticut.
EVERHARD: Oh, my mom went there.
SANTULLI: She did? How about that? No kidding!
EVERHARD: And so did you go there for ninth through—
SANTULLI: Ninth through twelfth grade. When I went there, there were no girls, so your mom wasn’t there. There was a Choate—I don’t know when it happened. It merged with a girls’ school that was in Greenwich, Connecticut, Rosemary Hall, so it became Choate Rosemary Hall. But at the time that I was there, it was strictly all guys.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm. And so at boarding school, what—did you like to play sports, or—
SANTULLI: I played some sports. I played soccer. I got injured, so that didn’t help me continue that. And I played squash. Nothing—no particular spring sports, but I did those two in the—in the fall and the—and the winter.
EVERHARD: Yeah. And can you talk a little bit about your experience at Choate and what it was like?
SANTULLI: Again, I didn’t particularly enjoy it. It was—and I’m sure when your mom—do you know when your mom graduated?
EVERHARD: Maybe, like, ’83?
SANTULLI: Yeah. See, I graduated in ’65. It was a very different place, and it was very rigid, sort of Episcopal, seven days a week of church, very strict rules, tie and jacket [for] three—all meals, church certainly. It was very strict. And it was also very WASP-y [White Anglo-Saxon Protestant], which I wasn’t. I’m Italian background, and so that—you know, I felt that, even at that time, but I didn’t quite fit in with the sort of the WASP-y, blueblood—I wasn’t horribly abused or mistreated by that, but there was just, you know, a sense that I wasn’t quite up to snuff with everybody else.
I did well there, and I was—you know, I did pretty well academically and got into a good college, and so—and I think I got a good education there, but I can’t say I loved it. And one of my first recollections related to [the] Vietnam [War]—I was thinking about this in preparation for this—is the headmaster at the time was—who I’m sure was gone by the time your mom was there—Seymour St. John—does that name ring a bell?
EVERHARD: Nn-nn.
SANTULLI: Well, you wouldn’t—you never went there. So anyway, he was the headmaster, and his father had been headmaster. It was a real dynasty. And he was a very supercilious, haughty fellow, very conservative guy who I think a year or two after I graduated, which was ’65—it was the very early part of the Vietnam War—he went over to Vietnam, under some—for some sort of pro- —something. Came back and told people that this was a good thing that we were there and we were doing the right thing, which was early on, but it was something that most of the young people certainly weren’t feeling at that time.
EVERHARD: Yeah. And—
SANTULLI: I didn’t like him, as you can probably tell.
EVERHARD: [Both chuckle.] Yeah. And so you mentioned that it was a very religious school. Was that a massive change from—you said when you were growing up, [cross-talk; unintelligible; 8:37].
SANTULLI: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the school—it wasn’t that you had to be very religious, but you had to observe their custom, which was to go to chapel seven days a week. And the headmaster was a minister, an Episcopal minister, and was also a chaplain, so there was a—you know, there was those religious overtones, but you didn’t have to be Episcopal, but the vast majority of the kids who went there were. At the time I went there, I think there were a tiny handful of Jews or—and Catholics and things to that effect.
I was at Choate when President [John F.] Kennedy was assassinated. I remember that day very vividly. And he had gone to Choate, but he was never very accepted. First, he was Irish, and he was Catholic, and he was a Democrat, a progre- —a somewhat liberal Democrat.
So there wasn’t a whole lot of sense that, you know, “our boy was killed.” There was—and Choate made—the day of Kennedy’s funeral was a national day of mourning. Everything was closed. Choate decided to hold classes that day. And it was a real slap in the face to the Kennedy, I think. And a lot of people felt at the time, and I think even more so now, that that was because he was never—he went to Choate, and they were, you know, in some ways glad to claim him as, you know, their son, president of the United States, but he was not really—he was like me in certain ways, but even more different. He was, you know, Catholic and Irish. He was—and when he went, which was much earlier than I did—I don’t remember what year he graduated—he was not a typical Choatie.
EVERHARD: Yeah, that was actually going to be one of my next questions I was going to ask you about, what that day was like when JFK was assassinated and to just kind of walk me through your memories.
SANTULLI: Yeah. Well, it was—it was November 22nd, as you probably know, and it was exam time. I remember going into an exam—right on the way into an exam, the word came out that the president had been shot. And that’s all we knew. And, you know, of course, in those days there was no, you know, instant communication of any kind. There were no computers or anything like that, or CNN [Cable News Network].
But when we came out of the exam—I came out of the exam and I saw the school flag was at half mast. That told me that he had died.
And so I remember going down that day, going down into downtown Wallingford, which is the town that Choate’s in, to buy—I wanted to buy a newspaper. I wanted to, you know, commemorate it in that way. There weren’t really newspapers that I recall around the campus. And I just remember doing that.
And it—it was—you know, people were in shock, and certainly by then the TVs were on, but there weren’t TVs all over. You had to go into the masters’ houses to see the TV and so forth, so there was awareness. And then, because he had gone to Choate, over the next few days there were various TV stations and film crews coming to do little clips about Choate and interview faculty who had known him then and so forth. So that, I remember.
But as I said, the school in a way didn’t—didn’t stop—they didn’t—of course, you know, overtly the acknowledgement was: This is the president who has died. This is a national, you know, tragedy. But there was the sense that, you know—it wasn’t—you would have thought it would be greater that he was their—their boy, but—which is interesting.
EVERHARD: And, I mean, while you were at Choate and, I’m sure, like, while you’re entering college, too, there was a lot going on in America—
SANTULLI: Mmm.
EVERHARD: —with regards to the civil rights movement.
SANTULLI: Mm-hm.
EVERHARD: And I just wanted to ask you, in general, how did you feel the civil rights movement kind of impacted you at this time, if it did?
SANTULLI: Probably it—it didn’t directly impact me because I came from a level of society that—and I’m white, so probably in that sense I watched about it on TV, read about it. I remember even as a kid, before I went to Choate, going on a school trip to Washington, D.C., from the school in New York that I went to. And we stopped at a roadside stop that had a sign on the door that said, “No Coloreds.” So it was, you know, very much a part of my awareness about what was going on, and—but I didn’t—I wasn’t personally, directly involved in any protests or marching.
EVERHARD: Do you remember, like, the March on Washington [for Jobs and Freedom, in May 1970]?
SANTULLI: Yeah, that came when I was in college, I think.
EVERHARD: Okay.
SANTULLI: Yeah. But [the Rev. Dr.] Martin Luther King [Jr.]—yes, certainly when I was in college. I do remember that, yeah.
EVERHARD: And then also just taking another look at America in the 1960s, I’m just curious about kind of the general culture, and there was, you know, rock ’n’ roll and all those movements like that, and I’m just kind of curious about what you were interested in.
SANTULLI: I loved rock ’n’ roll, you know, and I was—had my radio glued to my ear all the time, except when we were at Choate, you couldn’t have a radio in your first year. You couldn’t have any kind of connection to the outside world. It was like North Korea. And then by second year, you could have a radio, and so listened to plenty—or a phonograph. You couldn’t have either of those in freshman year.
But, you know, before that, before I went to Choate and when I wasn’t at Choate, I was very much into rock ’n’ roll and still listen to fifties rock when I’m driving my car, on Sirius [SM Satellite Radio].
So it was very definitely a—I remember—now, this is a little bit earlier than that—you know, seeing Elvis [A. Presley] on TV and being cut off from the air because they didn’t want to show his pelvis [gyrating as he sang]—
EVERHARD: [Chuckles.]
SANTULLI: —and seeing the Beatles when they first came to New Y- —to [The] Ed Sullivan Show. That was in the mid-six- —early sixties. I forget. When they first came to the United States. “The Beatles in Beige,” whatever it was called. So those were—I was very much aware of that, and part of that—I mean, I didn’t go to—I didn’t go to rock concerts, but I was certainly aware of it, and—
EVERHARD: Yeah, definitely. And when do you feel like you started to kind of become politically aware of what was happening in American foreign policy and stuff like that?
SANTULLI: Probably not till I was first at college. I don’t—this—I told you about when the headmaster came back [unintelligible; 16:11]. I think—as I recall, that may have—I may have already been an alumni [sic] then and was back for an alumni event when he came and spoke. I may—like, a year or two out of college. I mean, out of Choate. So I would say I first became politically aware probably in—in college. Vietnam was certainly heating up. I started college in fall of ’65, and so it was—you know, it wasn’t the height of Vietnam at that point, but it was certainly a major issue. And the draft was cer- —I don’t remember what—I don’t know when the draft started. I can’t recall that. But I remember I certainly could register for the draft and had a draft card and all of that.
And I went to—I went to Yale [University]. It was a fairly liberal school. And there were –there was—there were people there who were fairly conservative, and there were people—they had—they still had a branch of ROTC [pronouncing it ROT-see; Reserve Officers’ Training Corps]. That was kicked off campus when I was a student. But initi- —do you know what ROTC is?
EVERHARD: Mm-hm.
SANTULLI: Yeah. I don’t even know if they still have it, actually.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm, ROTC [pronouncing it R-O-T-C].
SANTULLI: Yeah, yeah. And—but those were—you know, those were a segment of the population, and it—it wasn’t that we would—you know, they could be your roommate, could be your neighbors in the hall, and that was fine, but they were—they had different points of view. The major- —and, you know, people weren’t nasty to them or anything like that, individually. You know, people would protest ROTC and all of that, but not one on one. But the majority of the school was anti war.
EVERHARD: Anti war.
SANTULLI: That probably was true of most colleges.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm. Yeah. That leads into my question. I was going to ask you about kind of what led you to choosing Yale for your undergraduate degree?
SANTULLI: Well, I applied to Yale and Harvard [University], and I didn’t get into Harvard [laughs], so—at that time—and I applied to Columbia [University]—Yale, Harvard and Columbia, and I—I got into Columbia, and I got into Yale, and I wanted to go to Yale, so—I probably would have gotten into Harvard if I had gotten in, but I didn’t, so—
EVERHARD: [Chuckles.] And then you mentioned that this school was generally anti war, but I was just wondering if you could elaborate on maybe, like, what the political climate was like and if you remember any specific maybe, like, organizations on campus?
SANTULLI: Actually—you know, it’s so far back. I really don’t remember the organizations.
EVERHARD: That’s okay.
SANTULLI: There was—there were—there were organi- —SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and other antiwar groups, organized groups. I’m certainly aware of that. I wasn’t—I was in the background. I was against—I was mostly just terrified of it and terrified of having to go. I can’t say that I was—put my money where my mouth was or that I was, you know, very, very politically active, but I was certainly very aware of what was going on. There were—you know, as college went on, as we got closer to, you know, the height of the war and—I graduated in ’69, so as we got closer to that, there was an increasing sense of—and there was, you know, the Chicago [Democratic National] Convention in ’68, which was, you know, violently divided: antiwar protests there.
But certainly we were all increasingly aware of, you know, this big dark cloud looming out after—that was going on now, that we were aware of. But most people—most people at that time at Yale were from privileged backgrounds. [mumbles; unintelligible; 19:59] they were all wealthy, but they were—you know, more or less—
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: —privileged backgrounds. And so many people probably didn’t know anybody who was in Vietnam, but some did, at that point, while we were in college. And—but we knew about what was going on there, and we were against it. Of course, our generation was accused of being—of self-interest by saying we were against it because we didn’t want to go. I think—I’m sure that it played some role, but I think as the rest of the nation came to feel about Vietnam, that we were against it because we saw the lunacy of it and the—the immorality of it, the futility of it.
But I—but it more and more colored my experience—and [unintelligible 23:03]—this is true for everyone there, I’m sure, most everyone there. It more and more colored our experiences, you know, as we were—you know, it tainted college so that it was wonderful, but this was—this is such a big thing going on in America that it—you couldn’t say, “Boy, I’m happy and carefree. I’m a college student.” I don’t know if college students ever say that, but, you know, there was this thing in the background that—that was terrible, and there was a risk that as soon as we graduated, we were going to get hauled off to Vietnam.
There was—you know, there were—there were all kinds of protests. I remember one guy—for some reason, this incident sticks out in my mind, and I can still see it. He was—he set fire to his draft card, you know, in public, as a protest. Or tried to. It was plastic, so it didn’t burn. But—and, you know, there was—there was lots of that, and it—it did—whenever—I forget who the person was I was speaking to that got me hooked up to this program. I remember telling her that it really—it tainted and colored our college experience in a very negative way because there was this—this terrible thing that we had to face.
Now, I was—at that point, I was—as a psychology major, I was very interested in that, and I was debating between going to medical school and going to graduate school in psychology. And I often say that I made the right choice for the wrong reasons. I’m glad I became a doctor. I’m glad I became a doctor, and I had a very good career, from which I retired a couple of years ago. And enjoyed what I did. I was a psychiatrist. And—
But at the time, I probably—you know, I knew that I could—I could go to medical school, and that was an automatic deferment for four years, or I could not to go medical school and face the risk of going to Vietnam. At that point, there had not b- —when—I was already in medical school when they came up with the draft lottery, or—have you heard about that?
EVERHARD: Mm-hm.
SANTULLI: Yeah, so—but in college, it was unknown what was going to happen except you were—you—your head was on the chopping block the day you graduated.
EVERHARD: Graduated.
SANTULLI: Because college was a deferment, an automatic deferment. And so was medical school. And a few other things, like going into the priesthood, which—that was not for me, but—so I—I made the decision to go to medical school, for a lot of reasons. I don’t want to say that the Vietnam War was the only one or the major one, but it was certainly a factor. It—it helped me to make that decision. Had it not been for that, there’s a very good chance I would have gone and got a Ph.D. [Doctor of Philosophy] in psychology. I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad I went the route I went. But it’s—certainly that was a factor at the time in my decision making.
And so then when I was in medical school, my first year of medical school, it was very hard. I didn’t like it very much. I went to Columbia [University College of Physicians and Surgeons, now Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons]. And I thought—I—I—again, you know, I had this safe haven of medical school. The draft lottery came about I think it was the fall of my freshman year, and my lottery number was not bad; it was—you know, I don’t actually remember the number. It was in the mid-200s, high-200s maybe, even, out of 365. And they ended up only drafting up through the high 100s, or near 200. Of course, that was not known at that time. I just knew that I—I wasn’t going to be the first to be drafted, but I wasn’t 365, either. So depending on what they decided they needed and how the war would go, you know, I was not going to be the first to go, but I wasn’t home free.
And that—had that not been going on, I might have taken a year off from medical school or taken time before I started medical school. Many people today don’t—they have friends who were pre-med. Practically everybody takes time off before they go, which is a good idea, although it wasn’t that that was common in those days, but it was done. But I—that was not an option that was open if I—you know, because of this, and—
Now, you know, you could argue, as people do, that, you know, people like me and Donald [J.] Trump were, you know, the ones who got off easy while less privileged people went and fought and got injured and got killed. And that’s true, and I can’t deny that. I utiliz- —used my ability to go to medical school and to be in medical school to keep me out of that.
And I—and I had a few colleagues in college—I’m thinking of one guy who actually then became a doctor years, you know, afterwards, who felt strongly about it and volunteered after college, to go into the military.
EVERHARD: Do you remember his name?
SANTULLI: [Randolph B.] “Randy” Schiffer. I know him well, He was a psychiatrist, and we ended up—you know, we were good friends in college. He was a very conservative guy. And he—but he—he may have been in ROTC. That part, I can’t remember. But he was gung-ho, and he thought we ought to—I don’t know how he feels about it now. We’ve never talked about it. But at the time he did. He went, and thankfully he wasn’t injured. I’ve seen him in-you know, the last ten years, and he’s fine. But he was the exception. Most people didn’t do that, and most people who had—but there were—you know, it was—it was those of us who went to med school, people who, you know, trumped up injuries, like Trump, and people who went to divinity school and things like that, who got out, and everybody else was—it was a roll of the dice or the lott- —you know, whether they were going or not. And many did.
I don’t actually know—I haven’t kept in touch with tons of people from college, just a handful over the years. I’m not aware of people in my class—there were not people that I knew who were injured or killed, but there were people in my class who were injured or killed there. You know, I read about it one of my magazines, but people I didn’t [mumbles, unintelligible; 28:22]. It wasn’t all that much bigger than Dartmouth. You know, it was about 4,000 at the time, but there was the sense that—there were tons of people you didn’t know.
EVERHARD: Yes.
SANTULLI: And so, you know, I would read about people who I didn’t know or didn’t even—hadn’t even heard of, who had gone, who had died.
EVERHARD: Yeah. And so you were speaking about that, speaking of reading about it. What was—what did you think media coverage was like during, you know, the beginning of the war, and did you change as the war began to escalate?
SANTULLI: I don’t—I don’t know. I don’t recall. I certainly know—and I don’t know what I know—what I remember from then and what I know since then is that that media had a profound effect on the—on the war and public attitudes about it because it was the first war in our history where you saw it every night on the news.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm.
SANTULLI: That didn’t happen in the Second World War or the Korean War, before, but—so—and—and certainly as time went on, it was clear that the media was not hesitant about covering the protests, the negative sentiments among people in general and for young people in particular towards the war, but they also, you know, covered—you know, anytime they’d cover a protest, you’d see the antiwar people and you’d see this whole herd of people who were screaming epithets at them because they thought they, we were, you know, you know, not—
EVERHARD: [unintelligible; 20:13].
SANTULLI: —doing our citizenly duty. And, you know, so—so I know that it was—it was balanced—“balanced”!—relatively balanced. Both sides were shown in the media, but the fact—and I don’t know if that began that way—I just don’t remember, but I wasn’t aware—but I certainly know that as the war went on, there was not—there was plenty of coverage of the protests, of the antiwar sentiment that was growing. It was huge and growing in the country among—among not just college students but others as well, particularly as when things went on and on and on in Vietnam, and it became clear it was just a quagmire.
EVERHARD: Yeah. And going back a little bit, you mentioned remembering, you know, having to get your draft card and stuff like that, and can you kind of walk me through your experience?
SANTULLI: Actually, I don’t remember getting my draft card. I remember having it.
EVERHARD: Having it.
SANTULLI: I don’t—I be- —I don’t—I don’t recall if I had to go someplace and get it or if it was mailed to me. I believe that’s how it came, because I seem to remember—you get it when you’re eighteen, and I remember when I was at college people turning—others turning eighteen as I did, I guess, my freshman—yeah, fall of my freshman year I turned eighteen, I guess, but—and I remember—but I—and I remember this more with others than myself, people getting letters from the Selective Service System. “Greetings,” it always began. “Here’s your draft card.” [Chuckles.] So I think it came in the mail. I can’t swear to that. That’s vaguely what I recall, but—
EVERHARD: And then you mentioned how when they started doing the lottery—did you watch that on television?
SANTULLI: Oh, yeah. I think I—I think I remember—listened to it on the radio.
EVERHARD: Listened to it on the radio?
SANTULLI: That was a very tense day. My God! And, you know, I don’t—as I said, I came out really not so bad, but it wasn’t good enough to assuage my anxiety about it, and I didn’t—I felt some sense of relief, but not total. If I was 362, it would have been different, but it was—you know, it wasn’t.
I can—I—and at that point, you know, I was—it was—I was—I forget what they call it, a 2-S deferment [a Selective Service System classification meaning “Registrant deferred because of collegiate study”; in other words, a student deferment], whatever kind of deferment for medical school. So it wasn’t even relevant. It wasn’t that it was—it was only if—if I decided not to stay in medical school. I mean, you couldn't say, “Well, I want to keep my deferment because I want to take a year off.” You’d take time off, you’re 1-A [Selective Service System classification; available for unrestricted military service] again.
So it—the lottery was—didn’t affect me—it wouldn’t have affected me—didn’t affect me. It wouldn’t have affected me unless I didn’t stay in med school, because by the time—I don’t remember what year it was, but certainly it was before I finished medical school. The lottery—the draft had ended. Do you know when that ended? Maybe you know that.
EVERHARD: Not off the top of my head.
SANTULLI: Yeah, I don’t remember, either. But it was—you know, it was—it might have been in the sev- —early sev- —it must have been in the early seventies sometime. It was—it was before we left Vietnam, but—yeah, I don’t remember.
EVERHARD: And so did you ever talk with your peers at medical school about how you felt about the deferment or about how they felt and—with it, a general, similar sentiment, or [cross-talk; unintelligible; 34:05].
SANTULLI: I think that—no,—well, there were people who didn’t talk about it. There were those who did. Most people—I think mo- —as far as I knew, most people in medical school were happy to be there and had no thoughts about, you know, taking time off or leaving or not staying with it. I think I was somewhat in the minority in that I was—had those thoughts that went through—no, maybe people did and they didn’t talk about it, but I don’t think so. I think people were more gung-ho about it. So, you know, everybody knew they were—we were—they were fine. We were safe. We were—we were not—it was “them” who had to worry about it and not “us.”
Do I remember talking to anybody about—you know, I remember talking to my girlfriend at the time about, you know, my torn feelings about whether I would—you know, what I could do and what I couldn’t do because of the—the draft situation. I don’t actually remember talking to classmates in med school about it.
EVERHARD: And so you were at school while the Vietnam War also started to intensify—
SANTULLI: In col- —mm-hm, yup.
EVERHARD: —with events like the Tet Offensive in 1968 and so, yeah, so going a little back.
SANTULLI: Yeah, mm-hm.
EVERHARD: I was just wondering, do you remember when the Tet Offensive happened?
SANTULLI: Yes, I do, yeah. I—I remember that I was aware of it. At the moment, I can’t rec- —bring back that date, but, you know, it’s like any of these major events that happened in history. You think back of them. You know, you remember remembering them, but I don’t know that I can take myself back to that actual—I believe it was in the spring sometime. And, yeah, the Mỹ Lai Offensive and all—Mỹ Lai Massacre and all of that.
It was—I think only in retrospect—it’s only—and some of this is as much as my own aging and maturity—have I become, you know, even more horrified and outraged about what went on. I think at the time, there was that, certainly, but I think it was so colored by fear for my own safety that—and I just—I think that—I don’t think I had the maturity, as, you know, a young eighteen-, nineteen-, twenty-year old, to really fully appreciate how bad things were. I knew they were bad. I knew I didn’t like it. I know I thought it was stupid we were there. But I don’t—but I don’t—I don’t think I understood the depth of what was going on and—until later on, when I just read about it and learned about it and got more maturity.
EVERHARD: Yeah. And did you feel like most of the people you were [studying? 37:02] with were also anti war?
SANTULLI: Oh, yes, absolutely, universally, universally.
EVERHARD: Okay.
SANTULLI: As I said,—well, I shouldn’t say “university” because that implies 100 percent, but 90 percent, 95 percent maybe. It was just—again, we all thought it was ridiculous. Most college students did. I don’t know what the statistics are, but certainly that’s how it was.
Then, when I—[unintelligible; 37:28]—when I went to medical school, my first year in medical school was ’69-’70, and in the spring of 1970 is when the Kent State event [the Kent State University shootings] happened.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm, yeah.
SANTULLI: Are you aware about—
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: You know about that. And we were all very outraged about that because we identified with the students who were killed. We were medical students, but we weren’t very far away from being college students. And that had—you know, it had to do with protests over the war, so we were—we were outraged about that. We—but there was this sense, too, that we were still protected in this a while because we were—we weren’t vulnerable. We were in med school. We were going to be okay. Probably by that time, I had, you know, resolved whatever issues I had about not wanting to stick with it, and, you know, it was fine, and I ended up doing well when I graduated, but—but I certainly remember the—the Kent State massacres and the outrage that our class—to—to—you know, everyone felt about that at the time.
Med school is probably a somewhat more conservative bunch of people than that I had—than I knew at college, but—but not—you know, not dramatically so. It was just—you know, in those days there were—you know, there were the—the—a lot of—a considerable percentage of people at that time were hippies and, you know, real rad- —they didn’t go to medical school. [Both chuckle.] So the people in med school were the ones who had done all their science courses and were buckled down and—well, I was more that way than—and, you know, not out on the fringes and not taking LSD and stuff. We were the straight arrows in those days.
So it was probably a somewhat more conservative group over all, in that sense, than college, where it was everybody.
EVERHARD: While you were in med school, did you have a sense that the war was going to end, or did it seem like it was just going to just go on forever?
SANTULLI: No, I didn’t have the sense it was going to end, and I think I was surprised—and this was probably because I wasn’t paying enough attention; I was too busy with med school or whatever, but I remember a sense of surprise: Oh, it’s over! You know, surprise and tremendous ebullience and relief. But I don’t think I saw that coming. I don’t know if others did. I don’t know. I just—probably, you know, I was busy with med school. I probably wasn’t paying enough attention to it.
EVERHARD: And so, since you didn’t see the end coming, were you scared about what would happened when you graduated?
SANTULLI: At that point, no, because at that point, it was cl- —by the time I graduated—I graduated in ‘73—it was over. It wasn’t totally—no, it wasn’t totally over. There was still plenty going on in Vietnam.
EVERHARD: The U.S. hadn’t withdrawn by then.
SANTULLI: I think it didn’t end until ’75?
EVERHARD: Yeah, ’75.
SANTULLI: Seventy-four, ’75.
EVERHARD: We withdrew in ’73.
SANTULLI: Yeah, but it was clear we were—I wasn’t going to be drafted. There was no more draft. We weren’t—you know, that the worst was, from a very selfish standpoint, was over, for me. So, no, I didn’t worry about that at that time. And it may even have been that, you know, graduating med school was one thing, but then going on into graduate training would have also deferred me. I don’t—I don’t remember that. But there was no more draft, so—
I could have—because I gradu- —I could have gone into the military with some sort of a rank, to go in as a doctor, but I certainly didn’t want to do that.
EVERHARD: And then—so just moving back a little more—
SANTULLI: Mm-hm, sure.
EVERHARD: —back to this concept of the draft, how did you cope with the fear and anxiety?
SANTULLI: Well, I—a couple of things I guess I would say. One is that it was—I didn’t—I mean, I just—I felt it, so it was there. And as I’ve said earlier, it colored, in a very negative way, my experiences—and I wasn’t alone that way—of being in college. This was not this joyous, you know, time. I think it’s in one of the Yale [University] songs about the gladdest years of life. It wasn’t the gladdest years of life for us, because of this. Maybe never was for others, but—
So it was—it was being anxious. It was coping by just keeping your head down and doing what you had to do. God forbid you got kicked out of college or anything like that, so I made—you know, that wasn’t an issue for me, but I made sure that didn’t happen.
And then, as I say, when I—it influenced the decision to go to medical school rather than to pursue something else or maybe even, you know, just do something totally unrelated for a while while I thought about it, which, you know, people do, and more power to them. I think it’s the right thing to do. I advised a lot of students here who were thinking about pre-med. “If you’re not sure, don’t do it. Take some time off, because it’s a pain in the butt if you—you know, so you really got to be sure you want to do it.”
And—but I don’t think that sort of flexibility existed. At least I didn’t—it didn’t—it didn’t exist. First of all, in general, that was less done than it is now. People were more lock set, whether they were going to law school or they were going to—whatever. You went to college? You finished college? You went in the next fall to your next thing. That’s certainly very different now, which is good. And that wasn’t Vietnam; that was just how it was.
But it certainly—for people who are undecided and who are having mixed feelings about what they’re going to do, it’s important to take the time to make sure you make the right decision. And I don’t—as I said, I don’t think—I felt forced to just continue down that path and—and not—and just not worry about any of the doubts and just put them aside, because this is what I needed to do, because it was—it was—I was—it wasn’t that I didn’t want to be a doctor. I was very interested in being a doctor. But I was also interested in this other thing, and I needed to just follow that path in order to make sure that I kept myself alive, for one thing.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm. And out of curiosity, did your brother have a similar experience?
SANTULLI: He—he’s three years older. He actually—because—and he—he ultimately ended up going to med school, but he did a lot of stuff in be- —before. And he was going to get a graduate degree in art history, architecture or art history, but he had—saw the draft board, you know, breathing down his neck, and he went—he’s more conservative than I am—he went into the military. He went into Officer Candidate School, and he never went to Vietnam; he got sent to Japan. He was in the [U.S.] Navy. And, again, it was—it was one of those things. You had to go. You’re kind of—if you saw it coming, if you were lucky or privileged, you had the option to do certain things that kept you out of the mud of Vietnam, and he took that route. And so he spent a few years in non-combat roles in the military.
And he cer- —you know, as I say, he was somewhat more conservative, but he certainly wouldn’t have chosen to do that were it not for the war. It was certainly the reason he did it, and it was—because at the time, he was able to determine that if he did that, he wouldn’t have to go to Vietnam; he could go somewhere else. I don’t know how he knew that, but he knew that.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm. And did you ever talk to him about his experience when he returned from Japan?
SANTULLI: A li- —some, some. But he was not—you know, it was not at all a combat experience, so we didn’t talk about that. And by that point, he and I had actually were not as close as we had been when we were younger. We were very close when we were younger and not [mumbles; unintelligible; 46:16], unfortunately continued, but—so I think less so than, you know, it might be optimal to do, but—you know, he wasn’t—he didn’t love it. I know that. You know, there’s so many rules and regulations and all this stuff that you have to follow, and he was an officer in the Navy. You have to wear these starched white things all the time. And, you know, it was—he put up with it, but he didn’t love it.
EVERHARD: Yes.
SANTULLI: But he wasn’t there because he really wanted to be a Navy officer; he was there to save his tail.
EVERHARD: Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
SANTULLI: And at that point, he wasn’t—I don’t think he had taken his pre-meds courses, but he certainly wasn’t thinking about medicine at that point. He did the—did the military, did some other things, and then he finally decided, Well, the hell with it. I’ll go to medical school, so—
EVERHARD: And so moving forward a little bit to, like, ’73, ’74, ’75 as the war starts calming down, do you remember having your first moment of relief?
SANTULLI: No, honestly I don’t remember it as a moment. I remember a general feeling at that time of relief that this nightmare was coming to an end. I—I can’t say I recall a specific moment, no.
EVERHARD: Yeah. Well, what kind of change did you feel, I guess, gradually?
SANTULLI: Well, because it was—I hadn’t gone. I had avoided it, and I wasn’t going to ever go, and at that point, I was pretty sure I wasn’t—I was going—you know, the draft was over, and I wasn’t going to go in the military. That was clear. It wasn’t that—in a personal sense, of Phew, I’ve dodged the bullet. I mean, I felt that certainly earlier on. But by the time the war was over, it was just sort of the sense of relief that this crazy thing that was going on was finally—we were pulling out of it.
And there was, of course, all the—there was a lot of controversy at the time whether we, you know, should have pulled out when we did, should have stayed longer, but—could have won, didn’t win. But that it was over and the country could move on to—to, you know, focusing on other things was—was certainly just a generalized sense of relief, though there was certainly plenty of—of concerns about soldiers coming back and the respon- —the reactions that they were getting, both, you know, “Thanks for your service” and, you know, “We were against this anyway.” And—and—I don’t know if you’ve interviewed people who were soldiers there, but, you know, they didn’t come back to hero’s welcome. In many cases, they came back to something quite different, and it was a very bad experience for them. It wasn’t—they weren’t there because they wanted to be there, either, in the vast majority of cases. They were there because they had to go. Some were there because they wanted to be, but—so—
EVERHARD: Yeah, that was actually going to be my next question, is I was going to ask if you had, like, any experiences with veterans when they returned.
SANTULLI: I had—earlier in my practice, I treated some people who had been, who were roughly contemporaries of my age, who had been—it was a number of years after the war, but who had been to Vietnam and who were definitely deeply affected by it. Now we would recognize it as PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. I don’t think I did at the time. I certainly don’t believe the nonsense that Trump said the other day, that it’s weakness. You know, what people have to experience. The only thing that’s amazing is that it wasn’t 100% of people that got it. It was close, but—so, yeah,—I certainly saw people—it stirred up—you know, whenever I would have that experience—less so in more recent years, but certainly earlier on in my—in my life, when—
I’m thinking one partic- —guy in particular, who had a bad time in Vietnam. You know, there was a feeling of survivor’s guilt, that, you know, I—he—he—he didn’t have the options that I had and wasn’t lucky, and I felt very relieved, but somewhat guilty about that too.
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: It would justify it to myself by saying, Well, it was wrong. Shouldn’t have [unintelligible; 51:06], but—but, you know, the fact is, [unintelligible; 51:10], and I didn’t, so—
EVERHARD: And how do you feel—like, you mentioned how some veterans were poorly received. How did you feel about kind of their reintegration into America afterwards, if they were or were not?
SANTULLI: Are you asking me how I feel now about it or at the time?
EVERHARD: At the time.
SANTULLI: Yeah. Again, I’m not sure I can really—
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: —drum it up. I don’t—other than encountering some as patients, because I was in residency. I was finishing my—I was finishing with medical school and coming—going into residency, and so I wasn’t—other than an occasional patient, I wasn’t really encountering, personally in my life, people who had been and come back. Probably that’s kind of the narrow world that I lived in. But most of the people I knew and hung out with were—were doctors, because that’s who I was, and most—and all of us—most all of us had avoided—so, anyway, so I—I don’t know that I had a lot of personal experience with that.
EVERHARD: As doctors, did you guys talk about the consequences of the war a lot?
SANTULLI: No, only when people who had been—I would see people who had been damaged by it, PTSD or physical. As a psychiatrist I didn’t treat physical dam- —you know, broken or lost limbs and things, but more the mental effects. We would talk about it in that context, I think, in the more immediate sense of—of people were coming to us. But I don’t know that there was a lot—and, you know, maybe it was that I was living in—in a rather superficial mindset or—or—or environment, but you didn’t talk about stuff like that particularly, one when you were confronted with it by a person who came to your office.
EVERHARD: And you mentioned that you didn’t recognize some of the stuff as PTSD. Is that because—like, was PTSD kind of a thing that was known about at this time, or was that [cross-talk; unintelligible; 53:36]?
SANTULLI: No, it was only more recently—soon after that. I—I don’t—I can’t tell you. I don’t remem- —I don’t know when that terminology first came about. Of course, there’s been PTSD going back to the first war that ever happened, and, you know, in World War I they were called shell-shocked, and [unintelligible; 53:58] wars, but in—in—since Vietnam it’s been called PTSD. But I don’t remember when that terminology took hold or people became as aware of that as one of the casualties of the war. I just don’t know that.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm. And I’m not sure if I’m allowed to ask this, because I’m not sure about the, like, confidentiality and all that stuff—
SANTULLI: Go ask anyway.
EVERHARD: But just curious about what maybe some of, you know, the issues that you saw were with, like, returning veterans, mentally and emotionally.
SANTULLI: Yeah. No, I think that’s a very reasonable question, and I’m—you know, I’m not—I don’t have to go into people’s deeply personal histories to tell you about them, and I no longer have those details in my head anyway. But I—I think the kinds of things we saw were people who were easily startled, anxious all the time, and depressed and angry, depressed and angry.
I remember this one particular guy. I took—probably the guy who I—it was probably one person who I treated, whose Vietnam experience was most important in—in his relationship with me, as his doctor, was—he was a very angry guy. He was angry that he had to go, that he had a miserable time there. He was not wounded, as I recall, physically, but he certainly suffered in every other way, and he was chronically depressed and angry. Those were the main things.
And, you know, one of the hallmark symptoms of PTSD is startle—is people who are easily startled, so you can hear a bang, a door slams, and they jump a mile. And some of that’s because your nervous system is just revved up. Some of it is—talked about, “Well, it sounds like a bomb going off,” and it’s probably both those things.
But—and—and—whenever that was first labeled—and I’m sorry I don’t really know when it was; I should probably know that, but it—certainly, as time has gone on, we’ve become very, very, very aware of the impact.
EVERHARD: Yes.
SANTULLI: And now, if you go over to the VA [U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs]—you know, most of the World War II vets, even the Korean [War] vets have died. There’s still some hanging around, but it’s mostly Vietnam people. And since—and the Vietnam people who are—you know, have physical injuries, but they have even more so these horrible psychological injuries.
EVERHARD: Yeah. Yeah. And did you feel like there was not a—like, I don’t know if “stigma” is the right word, but do you feel at this time people were open about talking about their mental health?
SANTULLI: No, not so much, not as much as now. I mean, you know, if they came into my office as a psychiatrist, they were by definition talking about it, practically, although a little was resistance, but, of course, there were many who would never get that far. And, no, I think in general, society didn’t—wasn’t as open to hearing about it. People weren’t encouraged to express it. People—society didn’t feel a sense of—of concern about it the way I think society as a whole does now. Obviously, there’s exceptions and variations, but—
But I think in those days—and whether it was related to the war or whether it was related to, you know, other things in people’s lives, there was just less openness to talk about things of a personal—of a deeply personal nature than there is now.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm. And as their doctor, would you—were they open with speaking to you about their war experiences?
SANTULLI: Not immediately. It took some doing, and—again, I—I haven’t—I can’t say I treated tons of—of Vietnam vets. I treated some of them, and they were—they did talk about it, but I’m certainly aware there are plenty who won’t, just as there are World War II vets or concentration camp people who will not—many of them are gone, but when they were living would not talk about their experiences. It was just too painful. It was just too—it was buried and needs to stay there.
I think we’ve developed an awareness that the importance of talking about it and working it through—that didn’t exist, you know, thirty years ago, or twenty-five years ago. We’ve developed an awareness of that is very, very important, so people are encouraged to do that. But I think—I would say I saw as a—as a psychiatrist, I saw a skewed sample because they had to walk into my door—my office. And though people would come in and say, “Well, I’m here because of Vietnam,” but, you know, eventually it would come out that that was—
And many people, I think, who were—who were suffering—of course, some people would have flashbacks and nightmares of the—of the jungle, and it was all too clear what the problem was. For others, it was less direct than that, and they may not even have known what was ailing them. Do you know what I mean?
EVERHARD: Yeah, definitely.
SANTULLI: So I that took some digging to—to get at then.
EVERHARD: Yeah, and still talking about those kind of postwar years, were there any other, like, long-lasting impacts you feel like the Vietnam War had on America?
SANTULLI: On America as a whole? Yes. Well, I think it—it made America, the people of America, realize that our leaders don’t always get it right. And certainly it’s hard to know how [unintelligible; 1:00:30], but certainly World War II there was none of that. Well, there was some, but it was so isolated, but Vietnam, I think—the im- —the long-la- —one of the long-lasting impacts of Vietnam was that you can’t necessa- —because—because, you know, [President Richard M.] Nixon or [President Lyndon B.] Johnson says, “This is good. Let’s go,” that you necessarily have to believe that and that—they turned out to be wrong. Some of them came to admit that they were wrong, but—and many people came to realize how wrong it was afterwards.
But I think that’s—I think we lo- —certainly lost some sense of innocence and—and, you know, that’s—that’s—became more realistic, but—and certainly that’s proven true since [the wars in] Iraq and Afghanistan.
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: But that—Vietnam really was responsible for that, to a great degree, I think, in this country as a real sea change in how people view the government and what—and—and the—the—the—and gave up the view that whatever America does is always right—
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: —you know, which used to be how it was seen, but that’s certainly not any longer the case.
EVERHARD: And—yeah, before we kind of move on to the post war and you coming up to Hanover and stuff like that, is there anything you feel like I didn’t cover that you want to maybe go into more detail about the war with?
SANTULLI: No. And, you know, as—and to preface this: There are many people you can speak to who obviously have a lot more to say about Vietnam because they have a lot more—it was—it was out there, and that certainly affected me, but I emphasize—you know, I’m one of the very lucky ones. Sure, it bothered me and all that, but I didn’t have to go, and the people who went there—they’re the ones who need to be talked to. I’m the lucky one. And I have no—I’m certainly very aware of that and want to emphasize that. You know, I may have suffered about Vietnam like every other American did, but I was the lucky one, one of the lucky ones because I didn’t go.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm.
SANTULLI: I didn’t have to go because I was privileged.
EVERHARD: Yeah, and so after medical school at Columbia, you did your residency in New York, correct?
SANTULLI: Mm-hm, at Columbia.
EVERHARD: And then—yeah, can you walk me through—so you did your residency—
SANTULLI: What happened after that?
CHIN: Yeah.
SANTULLI: I got married after my residency and practiced psychiatry in— actually outside of New York City, in suburban New Jersey for twelve years. Had the kids.
EVERHARD: How many kids do you have?
SANTULLI: We have two kids.
EVERHARD: And what are their names?
SANTULLI: Stephen [R.] [Santulli] and Elizabeth E. “Liza” [Santulli].
EVERHARD: I’m sorry, what’s your wife’s name?
SANTULLI: Linda [D’Eugenio Santulli]. And so when they were—my son was seven, and my daughter was just born—well, actually, before she was born we began to make our plans to move, for—for a variety of reasons, including a) we really didn’t love the New York area, even though I’m from there; my wife’s from Connecticut. But—but we didn’t want to raise kids in that environment. We wanted to get out and do more—
And also I was—I was in private practice. I wanted to get—I had gotten sort of away from—I did some teaching weekly at Columbia, but I really wanted to get back more full time into academics. And so decided to—to look around in New England and came upon the job at Dartmouth, which was, you know, really suited what I wanted very much, both in terms of the nature of the job and the location.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm.
SANTULLI: And so—and then my daughter was born, and she was six months old when we moved up here. My son, as I said, was seven. [cross-talk; unintelligible; 1:04:42].
EVERHARD: What year was this?
SANTULLI: We moved in 1990.
EVERHARD: Okay.
SANTULLI: At that time, the hospital, Hitchcock Hospital [sic; Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center] was over where—those dorms. What are they? McLaughlin Cluster.
EVERHARD: McLaughlin?
SANTULLI: Yeah. That’s where the hospital was. And they took that down in 1991, when we moved to the site in Lebanon [New Hampshire]. And so I have been here—since then—since I moved up here, I actually, after a few years, started to specialize in geriatrics, and that is what I’ve spent the bulk of my career at, certainly here at Dartmouth. Was head of geriatric psychiatry at Dartmouth and had developed a specialty in dementia. And I practiced until June 2014 and retired from the hospital at that time.
I’d been—the last half a dozen years or so, I’ve actually gotten [involved? 1:05:41] with the college in supervising students. I ran an elective. And this coming winter, I have right now four [James O. Freedman] Presidential Scholars that I’m supervising—that I’m advising.
EVERHARD: And what are they—are they working on dementia and Alzheimer’s research, or—
SANTULLI: Yes. Yeah, things related to that. And—
EVERHARD: Are these medical students?
SANTULLI: No, undergrads.
EVERHARD: Undergrads. Oh, wow.
SANTULLI: Undergrads, yeah. I actually have relatively little to do with the med school. I have much more to do with the college. I’m teaching a course in PBS [the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences] this winter, on dementia. I’m faculty adviser for AXiD [pronounced A-Z-D; Alpha Xi Delta], a sorority, so I’m heavily involved in the col- —I actually feel I’m more, in these last few years especially—I’ve more into being a college teacher than a doctor. I no longer have a medical license. I gave that up. I didn’t want to spend the three hundred bucks. And I knew I wasn’t going back to practice. I’m done with that.
EVERHARD: Mm-hm. So while you were practicing, were you teaching at Dartmouth as well, or were you just practicing at—
SANTULLI: I was practicing and teaching—you know, it means supervising residents, some medical students coming through. I did some lectures in the medical school.
EVERHARD: And that was all connected to Geisel?
SANTULLI: Yes. Yeah. And—but most of my time, I was spent—spent seeing patients,—
EVERHARD: Okay.
SANTULLI: —for most of those years.
EVERHARD: Yeah. Anything else you want to say about your connection with Dartmouth?
SANTULLI: Oh, I enjoy my connection with Dartmouth. I really like—I feel—you know, I like Dartmouth very much. I envy the kids who are here.
EVERHARD: [Chuckles.]
SANTULLI: I’m also very glad not to be twenty years old again, but in some ways I envy them. I think it—you know, college is different—when I went to Yale, it was all male.
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: It changed to female—to co-ed shortly after I left. It’s so much saner to go to a college—I mean, there are very few schools that aren’t.
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: And—and it’s the focus, I think, on stud- —I’m not saying Dartmouth is perfect; it obviously isn’t. But, you know, people seem to be happy here, generally,—
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: —and it’s—I envy them. You know, it’s a good—there are so many options, opportunities you have here.
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: So I enjoy that. I like that. I feel—I feel very—you know, positive feelings about the college. Not, you know, without awareness of some of the problems that exist, but—
EVERHARD: Yeah. And so now kind of to—sort of the last thing I want to dive into is now that we’re removed—time has kind of moved on since the Vietnam War—and you’ve already reflected on this a bit, but at this point, you know, what are kind of your attitudes towards the war?
SANTULLI: Towards the Vietnam War in particular?
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: That it was a great tragedy—
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: —that—that we got involved, that 65,000 people were killed and untold numbers were damaged in one way or another, physically or mentally or both, aside from all the money and all that, and all of the people lost in Vietnam—we’re just talking about the Americans. It was a terrible tragedy, but I’ve I think, you know, come to realize since then that it’s a mistake we made, and it’s a mistake we’re continuing—we’re going to continue to make, unfortunately. We made it in Iraq. Maybe we’ve made it in Afghanistan. It’s just human nature which drives us to do these—not just us, all countries around the world—this deep need for people to have war and fight each other, which is very sad, but it’s clearly a realistic fact.
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: I mean, Vietnam I think stands out as a remarkably bad experience for this country and for the people who were in it. And you know, if you read about it, the—the way decisions were made and the—and so forth, it was remarkably bad. But—but, you know, I think—you talk to somebody who’s been in Iraq for a few years and somebody who was in Vietnam, they’re not that different.
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: So it’s—it would be nice if you say, “Well, thank goodness we learned from that and now we’ll never go through that”—we will! And we already have, and we’ll continue to do that. I think that’s just human nature.
EVERHARD: Okay. And is there anything else that you want to say?
SANTULLI: No. I mean, I did—I hope this is useful to the project. As I say, my contact is so peripheral. But, you know, I’m very aware of that. I was one of the lucky ones. I just want to keep saying that because I do feel that way and don’t want to leave any other impression.
EVERHARD: Yeah.
SANTULLI: I’m very aware of how I lucked out.
EVERHARD: Yeah, and this is absolutely valuable to the project because we’re just trying to examine, you know, the range of experiences.
SANTULLI: Sure.
EVERHARD: We’ve talk to, I think, [unintelligible; 1:1:01].
SANTULLI: People went to Canada.
EVERHARD: Yeah, and stuff like that, so thank you so much for giving me time.
SANTULLI: Sure. It’s been all my pleasure. I’m glad to do it.
EVERHARD: Thank you so much for telling your story.
SANTULLI: You’re very welcome.
[End of interview.]