During the summer of 1969, I received a letter in the mail from the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, that began with those infamous words, “Greetings, you are hereby inducted into the Armed Forces of the United States of America.”
I was obviously upset and crumpled the letter into a ball, throwing it into the corner. My mother was lying in her bedroom in our small house. She was 42 years old, dying of cancer, and I was the eldest of five siblings. She called to me asking what it was that came in the mail. My reply was simply an attempt to avoid the whole thing. “It was nothing, Mom, just a bill for record club.” She was having none of that and asked me to please bring it in to her (she was bedridden at the time) ... so I proceeded to take it to her room, where she read it and began to cry, pulling me toward her and hugging me very tightly, sobbing. She had two brothers and a brother-in-law who fought in Word War II, injured and changed permanently by the experience. She knew the risks and dangers of war and didn’t want that for any of her children.
