As I began my 5th year of high school an odd thing happened. I took a business machines class which was simple addition and subtraction, but I was into it and got a 90 in the class. I was shocked that could get a 90 in anything. This event led to an effort to see what I could do in other classes. When I began my 6th year of high school, I retook classes that I failed in freshman year. I was 18 years old with 14-year-old kids in freshman algebra class killing it. When it was time to present homework, I was the first one up at the chalkboard solving the equation. Things started coming to me easier and suddenly for no apparent reason, I liked learning.
Unfortunately, this sudden intellectual conversion was cut short. About a month into school, I was called down to the guidance counselor and informed that I only needed 6 credits to graduate. I could take two-night classes and graduate in December. I often wondered how my life would have changed if I put up a protest and explained to her how my motivation for learning had changed and I wanted to see how far I could go to rectify my past class failures.
But it was not meant to be. I left without a fight. In Fall of 1973 I was in night school and working odd jobs during the day.
One day I went with my friend Billy Cuthill to the armed forces recruiting station. As I passed the Marine Corps poster of a guy in dress blues, I thought “that is the coolest uniform I’ve ever seen.” I toyed with the thought of joining and a few people said that’s the toughest boot camp there is, you’ll never make it. I knew that was a real possibility. Growing up in Brooklyn in the early 70’s you had Jocks, Disco people, and the Burn Outs. I was a burn out. We were supposed to be into peace and against the war, but I grew up in a haze of drugs and flowed the crowd. When I tuned 18, I has no thought of burning my draft card. I had a respect and honor for the military that I didn’t know existed in me until I turned 18. Now, I took those failure comments as a challenge. Could I get through boot camp? Maybe, maybe not. Only one way to find out. I made my decision, and everybody flipped out. All my friends and family thought I was crazy. But I was determined to go.
On March 1st, 1974, the recruiter picked me up at my parent’s house at the Bay Ridge Towers on 65th Street. The goodbyes were emotional. When I got to the street, I looked up to see my dad holding my crying mom on the 8th floor porch of the high-rise. I had an urge to run back up there and hold her and say, “it’s ok, I’m not going,” but I couldn’t do that. I wanted both, my mom to be happy and to move on. But you can’t have both. Time for both of us to let go. Still, the inability to stop the pain my mother felt in that moment, remains with me. An inner compulsion to find solutions, comfort the suffering, fix a broken world and the reluctant silent acceptance that there are times you cannot.
The recruiter dropped me off at Fort Hamilton Army Base. I was brought into a room with several other recruits all going to different branches of the service. It was only 6:30 in the morning and I had stayed out late the night before, so I was in a daze as we repeated the words for swearing in, but his next statement jarred me back to reality: “YOU ARE NOW PROPERTY OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.” He went on to explain that as property we had no will of our own and were required to obey all commands from any enlisted personal or face prison. That woke me up. It was the first “What have I done?” moment, and many more were to follow in the next few weeks.
