27 Nov 2023
During the summer of 1974, I received a call from a Navy captain on behalf of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO, Zumwalt) to determine if there was a way that I might be convinced to remain on active duty in light of my resignation. The Navy at the time had a shortfall of junior officers aspiring to command.
I was 5 years into a very rewarding surface line officer experience. I loved engaging with my men and the larger crew.I had experienced 3 tours in the Gulf of Tonkin on 2 Gearing class destroyers, each more intense than the previous as ground troops were withdrawn and the shortfall partially covered by an increasingly intense air and gunfire support effort,
The Paris peace talks were stalled over seating arrangements, and it had become clear that the nation had been lied to regarding not only the Gulf of Tonkin incident but also so much more subsequently.
But back to me. I had unsuccessfully pushed against the Navy to be recognized for what I had earned, and my then first marriage was not working. So I had set on a path to the outside world, successfully applying to Harvard Business School with the (naive) objective to save my marriage, and then submitting a heartfelt resignation to the US Navy that ended up in the hands of the CNO,
When presented with a list of ideal assignments should I stay on active duty, and asked what it would take for me to withdraw my resignation, I responded that the Navy pays my full pay and allowances. and tuition, while I attend Harvard Business School. In retrospect, while this would have been a tremendous financial relief, it would not have saved my first marriage. However, it would have been a safety net.
The Captain's response was that he was afraid I would ask for that, because Congress, now 5 years out from the building takeovers and demonstrations, had withdrawn Department of Defense (DoD) funding for DoD personnel at Ivy League and other such institutions. We both appreciated the irony and ended the call.
So there it was, the events of 5 years before had reached forward to affect me personally, as the different players had reacted in their turn.
When I entered Dartmouth in the fall of 1965, I became an enthusiastic Big Greener. I supported the football rallies at the Hop, the bonfires on the green, the Lambert Trophy win, the campus ice statue, and any number of performance artists, not to mention a few campus wide snowball fights - including one involving Dad Thad and Robert Reich supporting diversionary efforts to move away from Baker to the Green.
I was following a pre-med set of courses because it was laid out in the course guide and covered a good portion of the distribution requirement - although this ended with organic chemistry at the start of sophomore year. I started to engage in active choices and heading toward English Literature, in large part due to exposure to Professor James Cox sophomore year.
Freshman Year, I signed up for NROTC. Viet Nam was not even on my mind - my motive was about expanding my navigation and piloting skills relating to my summer job on a windjammers out of Camden Maine. (At 18, my Junior summer, I earned my 100-ton auxiliary sail operators license for carrying passengers for hire.
In the spring of 1966, the ROTC units marched in downtown Hanover, I believe on Armed Forces Day. I remember feeling that it seemed an archaic holdover from WWII and did not fit well into Hanover and Dartmouth - but again without the context of the looming VietNam draft. Each subsequent, as VietNam became more present in our campus consciousness, the Armed Forces Day event, together with protests, moved further from campus -- in 1969, at the athletic fields with schoolmates yelling at one another.
As I mentioned, Sophomore year, as guided by Professor James Cox,I discovered English literature. I was captured and assiduously sought out his and other courses of similar ilk, e.g., Vance British and American Poetry. The highlight was my senior seminar with Professor Cox focused on Nathaniel Hawthorne. I discovered in myself a new found confidence in my ideas and thoughts that has served me since.
Looking back, I realize that in the hours I happily and delightedly invested in preparing for and participating in the senior seminar, I was totally and wonderefully focused, without distraction.
Gnawing at the edges were the growing national and local protests against the basis for the VietNam war, the impact of the draft, and the cost in terms of lives and resources became much more apparent.. I strenuously wished for a stand down to the confrontations, for a means by which I might protest without risking my NROTC status, for a change the status of ROTC faculty on campus. Of course, I knew none of this would change the outcome at the time, even if the actions were possible.
I was frightened by the NH state troopers presence on Tuck Drive after the takeover of Parkhurst, hoping for restraint on the part of all. I was deeply disappointed in the calls for amnesty,, I viewed it as taking no accountability for an act of civil disobedience.
I found myself unable to speak out when the opportunity arose in Professor Vance's class - I felt inadequate to express my argument in any depth, and I didn't wish to say anything I would regret I resented the intrusion into what was for me a unique state of thinking about the import of the 19th and 20th century American novel as imparted by Professor Cox and its reflection of the American myth and society.
I disagreed with the faculty decision to remove ROTC from campus - I felt it would be short-lived and ultimately not make a difference - at the same time, I understood the need to strike out at the closest manifestation of the military on campus in light of the campus referendum and the growing opposition to Vietnam.
In the Spring of 1969, I met with Professor Cox in Sanborn, to obtain guidance for a reading list while on active duty to position myself for possible graduate school in English literature. His advice was to read as much as I could about the Navy, to immerse myself in my shipboard experience, to view the ship's organization and the way it worked as a reflection of US society at large, and to contact him with a synopsis of what I had done in the interim, together with a photo, if I ever needed a reference in the future. His advice I took to heart, and it served me well in achieving success during my 5 years of active duty and beyond.
I'm not sure why I choose to write this narrative at this time of life I have long wanted to share part of my story - why I have been a disaffected member of the great class of 1969 for so long - time to get over it - or that I'm in hospice care after having managed prostate cancer for the past 16 years. I have read virtually every class note and newsletter, recognizing many names and conjuring up young faces, valuing th4 memories stirred while sitting on the side.
Early on, I tried to reach out to classmates by joining fund raising efforts = not a comfortable space for me. I returned for our 10th reunion, to see how I felt having divorced my first wife (she had been a constant weekend presence during our senior year) and not having achieved a level of professional success i felt appropriate - I had left what had seemed a promising Naval career and was still finding my way within Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).
It was nonetheless good to see familiar and new, welcoming classmate faces. Waking at 4:00 am Saturday morning, I found my way to the class tent, staffed by 4 or 5 undergraduates shepherding the last 2 (inebriated) celebrating classmates back to their dorms. I had awoken to the ubiquitous smell of fresh floor wax and the stiffness of clean sheets in the dorm - the smells were heady and took me back to undergraduate days living in Russell Sage Hall - goodness of days then past. Neither of my roommates attended the 10th - Art Soter and Mike Olsachan - so I was feeling a bit at loose ends.
Going to the Green at morning twilight, I took in the beauty of Baker and Dartmouth Row, and the randomness of the many class tents covering the Green, where so many hours our class had invested in bonfires and ice statues. I talked with the students. asking where they were from, what they were doing at Dartmouth, and how it was going. They were enthusiastic, even at that hour of the morning, optimistic, and unencumbered in that moment of a tragedy like that of Vietnam.I felt Darmouth was serving them well, and that they were serving Dartmouth well. I returned to my room, packed, and left for home.
Growing up,my life was dotted with Dartmouth. My paternal grandfather, Dorr Theron (DT) Burnett, was a devoted member of the class of 1919. Although he did not graduate - he left to serve in the US Navy, he maintained not only an active communication with his classmates, but also with college President Hopkins on several occasions.
My father, Sherwood Grant Burnett, was a dedicated member
of the class of 1940, He nurtured lifelong friendships from amongst his classmates through correspondence and reunions, and built new ones through his multi-year enrollments in the Alumni College.
They each epitomized the refrain:
Though ‘round the girdled earth they roam,Her spell on them remains;They have the still North in their hearts, The hill winds in their veins,And the granite of New HampshireIn their muscles and their brains
I'm always stirred by the songs of Dartmouth - I sang them in Freshman Glee Club - but I've rarely acted on them. Time to change that.
In 2015, I endured a successful aortic valve replacement to address symptoms I had not recognized, or had attributed to my ongoing full hormone therapy for my prostate cancer. And I am now just beyond the third anniversary - 30 July, 2020 - of having passed out at the top of my stairs and falling backwards, fracturing several cervical vertebrae and displacing my cervical spine. Emergency surgery - fusing c2--C7 and putting my spinal cord back where it belonged - and 7 weeks of rehab brought me back from paralysis to being able to walk in a manner with aids.
Since June 1, my chemo pills have been suspended and my mind seems reinitialized with steroids, I'm reading, I'm mentally engaged again, my pain is under control, and I find myself treasuring memories and wanting to share my thoughts with others.