Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio Happy Friday.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy B.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2: We uh spent the whole week talking about the Vietnam
Speaker 2: War and draft board raids. This was an episode that
Speaker 2: when I started thinking about it five years ago and
Speaker 2: in the times that I've thought about it since, I
Speaker 2: was like, is there gonna be enough information about this
Speaker 2: because it seemed kind of scattered and a lot of
Speaker 2: what you find unless you're going through like news reporting
Speaker 2: as it happened, of every single thing, which I did
Speaker 2: do a lot of reading of the news reports of
Speaker 2: what happened. A lot of times things are summed up
Speaker 2: in just a couple of sentences. So it's like twenty
Speaker 2: eight people broke into this place and they did this
Speaker 2: to the draft records. So I was like, is this
Speaker 2: really gonna work? And then as I got into the
Speaker 2: Camden twenty eight story and was like, this is wild.
Speaker 2: We had these people do this, they have their their
Speaker 2: friend informing on them, we have this trial that needs
Speaker 2: its whole section. I was like, maybe it's a whole
Speaker 2: episode on just the Camden twenty eight, and that felt
Speaker 2: like it was not doing justice to the fact that
Speaker 2: it was part of a much bigger movement, and then
Speaker 2: talking about the much bigger movement needed a lot more
Speaker 2: explanation of why we were even having this happen, which
Speaker 2: meant discussion in more detail of the Vietnam War than
Speaker 2: I think you and I have ever gotten into on
Speaker 2: the show on purpose. Yes, a topic I have not
Speaker 2: been comfortable really getting into. Yeah. Me, my dad served
Speaker 2: in Vietnam. He was deployed to Vietnam in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: so during that period that you know, removal of troops
Speaker 2: was happening, but people also being sent over there for
Speaker 2: the first time. I also have more extended a member
Speaker 2: of the family who was killed in Vietnam and then
Speaker 2: growing up in the you know, latter half of the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies and into the nineteen eighties and just kind
Speaker 2: of being steeped in what the culture of the United
Speaker 2: States was like at that point. I've always been like, yikes,
Speaker 2: we have plenty of other stuff to talk about. Don't
Speaker 2: really need to get into that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, here we are here, we are.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean my dad is career military and served in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: We have never talked about it. Yeah, that was made
Speaker 1: very clear to me as a kid that that was
Speaker 1: an off limits subject. Yeah, so I don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of information.
Speaker 2: I have one story about my dad's time in Vietnam,
Speaker 2: and it is about when he was preparing to go
Speaker 2: home and how everyone was when it was approaching time
Speaker 2: to go home. People were terrified because it was like,
Speaker 2: if something's going to happen to me, now is when
Speaker 2: it's going to happen.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Apparently he had to pass everybody had to pass a
Speaker 2: drug test to be able to go back home, and
Speaker 2: if you didn't pass your drug test, you could only
Speaker 2: get as far as Okinawa and you had to wait
Speaker 2: there for I don't know what. And so in the
Speaker 2: midst of just this anxiety about what was going to happen,
Speaker 2: he hadn't really had anything to eat or drink, and
Speaker 2: so the sample he gave was not valid for his
Speaker 2: drug test. He had to do it over and he's
Speaker 2: not He's not ever told me much more about it
Speaker 2: beyond that, but having been kind of a pacifist person
Speaker 2: from my early childhood generally feeling that war is bad,
Speaker 2: and then growing up through the years of stuff like
Speaker 2: Operation desert storm, and like people's responses about that still
Speaker 2: being cut by what had happened with the anti Vietnam
Speaker 2: War movement, which, as we said in the episode, way
Speaker 2: broader than hippies and college kids. Yeah, anyway, it was
Speaker 2: just it was a weird time to grow up.
Speaker 1: For sure. And I feel like part of the reason
Speaker 1: that it was always off limits in my family for
Speaker 1: discussion was because not just of my father's service, but
Speaker 1: my mom, who I would not say was anti war
Speaker 1: or a pacifist, although I don't really know. We never
Speaker 1: talked about it. Was very Catholic, and so I wonder
Speaker 1: if there was some like just like, we don't want
Speaker 1: to start peeling this onion. It is too complicated. There
Speaker 1: are too many issues in play. Yeah, Like, I think
Speaker 1: it was just a let's not have a potentially tricky conversation.
Speaker 1: I'm making, you know, the following items for dinner. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: not necessarily a fan of nuance my mom, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that was part of it too. So for
Speaker 1: all I know, my dad would have been like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll talk about it. My mom was like, let's not.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I can still ask my dad, but
Speaker 1: you know, I kind of don't want to bug a
Speaker 1: dude in his eighties about stuff like that, right, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's never volunteered anything, so right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my dad also worked in a motor pool, so
Speaker 2: he was not in a like frontline kind of combat position.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 2: I had a couple of things that came up in
Speaker 2: the research for this that didn't have just a good
Speaker 2: place to go in the episode, so I kind of
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about them and behind the scenes now
Speaker 2: that I have talked about my profoundest comfort of trying
Speaker 2: to talk about Vietnam on the show. One the flower
Speaker 2: Power image. Love that photo. I really do. The person
Speaker 2: in the photo George Harris, really George Harris the third
Speaker 2: later known as Hibiscus, so I think he was eighteen
Speaker 2: or nineteen when that picture was taken. Had a theater
Speaker 2: background or from childhood, like theater family and like doing plays,
Speaker 2: the siblings and all of that. After the war, went
Speaker 2: to the San Francisco Bay area and helped found an
Speaker 2: avant garde drag performance group called the Cockettes. Other cocattes
Speaker 2: include Divine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know of the Cockettes. I did not realize
Speaker 1: this was the connection though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Hibiscus, one of the founders of the Cocattes,
Speaker 2: also one of the founders of the Angel of Light
Speaker 2: Theater Troop, one of his fellow performers in all of this,
Speaker 2: in an article about him in The New York Times,
Speaker 2: described him as quote, he came out of the closet
Speaker 2: wearing the entire closet. I love that so much. It's
Speaker 2: also very clear that his gender was pretty fluid. But
Speaker 2: everything that I have read about him has used him
Speaker 2: pronouns for him. He had a relationship with Alan Ginsberg,
Speaker 2: like a relationship, right, like a physical slash romantic relationship.
Speaker 2: So tragically he died of AIDS related diseases in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two. That was so early in the AIDS crisis
Speaker 2: that the terms human immune deficiency virus and acquired immune
Speaker 2: deficiency syndrome had not even been coined yet to describe it.
Speaker 2: He was only thirty two. I'd want to go back
Speaker 2: in time and with his consent, hug him. That was
Speaker 2: thing number one. I just I wanted to talk more
Speaker 2: about Pybiscus and all of that and kind of you know,
Speaker 2: where his life went from being in this famous picture
Speaker 2: the other thing father Michael Doyle. Yeah, this requires a
Speaker 2: little bit of context. So in a number of Christian
Speaker 2: denominations on ash Wednesday, there is some kind of like
Speaker 2: observation or service right that is usually done with the
Speaker 2: palms from Palm Sunday the previous year. So Palm Sunday
Speaker 2: commemorates Jesus coming into Jerusalem and people waving palm branches,
Speaker 2: and there's usually something with palm branches at the church service,
Speaker 2: and then those branches are saved. The next year, they
Speaker 2: are burned to make the ashes for ash Wednesday, and
Speaker 2: then on ash Wednesday there's something that often involves a
Speaker 2: person getting some of the ash on their head, often
Speaker 2: on their forehead in the shape of a cross. YEP,
Speaker 2: A lot of different Like I was, I was raised Methodist.
Speaker 2: We didn't really do this.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, I've had I've had the ash face many times.
Speaker 2: Yes, Catholics do. I think Episcopalians do not. Just broadly speaking,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying every single Catholic in the world has
Speaker 2: done this.
Speaker 1: You do you.
Speaker 2: I'm not given commands here. So Michael Doyle, at some
Speaker 2: point during all of this, I think it might have
Speaker 2: been after the trial, made the ashes for ash Wednesday
Speaker 2: by burning a copy of the Pentagon papers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had heard that, but I did not know
Speaker 1: if that was true or not.
Speaker 2: I think there's a picture of it he's burning.
Speaker 1: Oh, I believe you. I just mean I never looked
Speaker 1: it up like I heard it like a non verified source.
Speaker 1: Was like, oh, yeah, that happened, and I'm like.
Speaker 2: Burned the Pentagon papers in an army helmet. Uh. And
Speaker 2: then you know, told the congregation about like this, this
Speaker 2: ash Wednesday ash was like a peace demonstration of he
Speaker 2: did get in trouble uh with the you know, the
Speaker 2: the more the higher up church authority in the Catholic
Speaker 2: Church for doing this. I don't I didn't write down
Speaker 2: like what specifically, whether he was reprimanded, exactly what happened,
Speaker 2: but I was like the ash Wednesday ashes out of
Speaker 2: the Pentagon papers. I don't want to step on anyone's
Speaker 2: religious convictions, but I was like, I am be this
Speaker 2: actually in just a philosophical way. I cannot speak to
Speaker 2: it from a religious way because again, it's not part
Speaker 2: of my religious tradition. Right, I will say this, right,
Speaker 2: although he may have gotten in trouble for that, he
Speaker 2: was a mon senior when he died, Okay, which is
Speaker 2: a title that you get that's bestowed on people for
Speaker 2: extraordinary service by the post.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, the bishop. You know, the hierarchy of the
Speaker 1: church is very political, but the priest bishop has to
Speaker 1: recommend them, but then the pope typically is the one
Speaker 1: who gives them the actual title of monsignor. So while
Speaker 1: he may have had brushes with being reprimanded, ultimately he
Speaker 1: was recognized for his service.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He died only a couple of years ago. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a lot of the people who were involved
Speaker 2: in this some way died in the period sort of
Speaker 2: between the nineteen nineties and now, and some are presumably
Speaker 2: still living, especially the younger people who were part of
Speaker 2: these demonstrations. So so many like were already living a
Speaker 2: life that was really focused on service and was focused
Speaker 2: on social issue shoes and went on to continue to
Speaker 2: do that after the war for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 2: The book that I mentioned that recently came out about
Speaker 2: the Camden twenty it kind of talked a little bit
Speaker 2: about the Catholic left movement and some of the things
Speaker 2: that happened in the years after this, like people who
Speaker 2: had been part of the Vietnam the anti Vietnam protests
Speaker 2: and really dedicated to that work were not necessarily of
Speaker 2: the same mind as about things like abortion, right. And
Speaker 2: then also there was the massive uh you know, sex
Speaker 2: abuse within the Catholic Church that came to like after
Speaker 2: all of this, and so like all of those things
Speaker 2: played a part in uh, you know, how people continued
Speaker 2: to do work or demonstrations and all of that afterward.
Speaker 2: I sure do you find the Berrigan brothers fascinating, utterly fascinating.
Speaker 2: One of them I do not remember, which went on
Speaker 2: to get married to a former nun but still called
Speaker 2: himself a priest afterward. Apparently they just did a lot
Speaker 2: of very dramatic work related to a number of causes,
Speaker 2: including the anti nuclear weapons movement after all of this,
Speaker 2: And there's a I think fairly recent book just about
Speaker 2: them also.
Speaker 1: That seems correct.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this episode was about stuff that's a little
Speaker 2: more recent than we often talk about. I sort of
Speaker 2: have realized recently, I'm turning fifty, which means, stef that
Speaker 2: happened before I was born happened more than fifty years ago.
Speaker 2: And I know that seems obvious so jarmy, But you know,
Speaker 2: having started working on this podcast more than a decade ago,
Speaker 2: it feels a little different stuff that happened forty years
Speaker 2: ago versus stuff that happened fifty years ago in terms
Speaker 2: of like how much historical remove do we have on
Speaker 2: this at this point? Right? So yeah, anyway, yeah, I was.
Speaker 2: I was alive during this, so yeah, yeah, I was.
Speaker 2: I was born in nineteen seventy five, so just afterward.
Speaker 2: But I still feel like the Vietnam War really dominated
Speaker 2: so much socially and politically. Oh yes, through my whole upbringing.
Speaker 1: Oh yes. So anyway, yeah we're old. I don't know
Speaker 1: what to tell you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, aging, aging is happening. It was really working on
Speaker 2: this episode that I I kind of like, we don't
Speaker 2: It's not like we have a demographic survey of our
Speaker 2: entire audience, right, we do have some indications of a
Speaker 2: little bit of like the demographic trends of our audience,
Speaker 2: and I was like, we really are at a point
Speaker 2: where most of the audience probably did not live through
Speaker 2: the sixties, seventies and eighties. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things that I have loved
Speaker 1: seeing about our audience, and we have heard it from
Speaker 1: people when we've done live shows and whatnot, is how
Speaker 1: many of them, you know, started listening to the show
Speaker 1: as part of like school curriculum. Oh yeah, but then
Speaker 1: continued to listen after they had finished their education. So
Speaker 1: they're aging up, but that still means that they were
Speaker 1: much younger when we were, you know, initially talking to
Speaker 1: them and yes, yeah, way outside the time window, right,
Speaker 1: and this would have been really actively going on. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: So whatever is happening on your weekend, boy do I
Speaker 2: hope it is as great as possible if you're able
Speaker 2: to take a little time for yourself, have a moment,
Speaker 2: take a breath, maybe take a walk outside the weather's nice,
Speaker 2: Maybe just a look outside if the weather's not nice,
Speaker 2: or if you don't want to go out there. We'll
Speaker 2: be back with a Saturday classic tomorrow and something brand
Speaker 2: new on Monday. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
Speaker 2: a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 2: your favorite shows.