Interview with James Huberty

James J. Huberty #853 (2007)

RL: This is Tape #2, Side 1 of the ongoing Oral History interview with UW alumnus Jim Huberty. So, Jim, we were at the fall of 1968, you're talking about there are repeated protests of any corporate organization, private or government connected with the war.

JH: Right. I do want to go back to one piece, and that was in the spring of '68. I believe it was around Memorial Day. Well, it was around Memorial Day, I know, um, still being in the Air Force ROTC, they had their, they still had these parades for Memorial Day around the square.

RL: Oh.

JH: And I remember that, um, I was supposed to march with my ROTC unit around the square dressed in our full ROTC uniform, in my case, it was the Air Force. And then all the other military, um, services are represented also. It's you 00:01:00know, a traditional Memorial Day Parade around the square. And I was, I remember, I must've been involved even at that point in some, um, demonstrations that were prelim-, um, previous to the Dow demonstrations because I would, I marched around the square with my ROTC unit, but I was trying to hide the fact that I was there.

I had my head down, and I had, just trying to just keep my face so that people couldn't see I was in ROTC because I didn't want to be in it. I wanted to be out of it, not part of it. I'm still trying to please my dad by being in it, but I knew I didn't want to be there myself. So I'm very much in conflict about this whole thing of being in the ROTC, um, not wanting to be in this parade, but having to be there because of the fact, um, my unit commander said I had to be there.

So and, um, at the same time, a lot of the students are growing their hair 00:02:00longer, and I'm forced to have this kind of military haircut thing going on. And so there's a lot of, um, mixed feelings about what's going on. I'm trying to not have it both ways, but trying to match the different energies going on. It's a very uncomfortable situation. And that continued into the fall, um, bringing it back to just around the Dow demonstrations and subsequent fall demonstrations, and as I'm still in ROTC --

RL: Oh, you are still.

JH: Still in it, I'm still demonstrating with the students and picketing around buildings and against campus recruiters, or if there's student actions going on, and then going to ROTC class. And the two things are not necessarily totally in conflict with each other, but they are at some level, for me, anyhow. And literally, I had to walk down the street, down to Johnson Street or to the ROTC Building, and I really wasn't comfortable doing that, but I had to do it because 00:03:00of the requirement of ROTC, and yet, I wanted to be the student demonstrator.

And I was committed to that. I was totally not committed to the [word unclear], the ROTC thing, but I was still doing that to keep this illusion going that I was pleasing my dad. So that's going on also in the fall of, um, fall of '68 semester, you know.

RL: Jim, is it in the fall of 1968 when there is increasing campus awareness of the Army Math Research Center?

JH: Definitely, and also on this, it's also that, it's not just the, um, Army Math Research Center, but it's the Land Tenure Center, it's the recruitment on campus by corporations, it's the University's role in supporting what they felt was supporting the war in Vietnam.

It's also a time of awareness of the original, some of the beginnings of the formation of the TA Association, Teaching Assistant's Association, effort to unionize them, and it's also the beginnings of the, say, some of the black 00:04:00student movement on campus, black power movement, and even other things, such as women's rights and the American Indian Movement. So there's a fair amount of continuing issues and the emergence of some new issues, and this whole thing is starting to really bubble up from the students.

RL: Uh, again, I go back to my use of the adjective thrilling, and that's not what I want here. Were you quite alive at this time? Was it exciting in an intellectual, emotional, committed sort of way?

JH: Definitely an emotional excitement going on because as all of this activity that is totally a new experience to me, so I'm kind of drawn to what I feel almost as an anarchy and drawn to an anarchy, coming from a place of real 00:05:00structure and rigidity. So what I, uh, so here's what I see going on in myself, have a, you know, vivid recollections of this is I would demonstrate around buildings, I would hand out leaflets, I would parade around and picket, and then three minutes before my next class, I would make sure I got to it on time.

So I would try to be the student that I needed to be to get to classes because I needed the grades, but then I was also trying to protest against all of these, protest with the students against these things. So some of these were mutually, I mean, you couldn't be one and be the other, but I was trying to have it both ways. And I was trying to be on this line of being legal, so that the police wouldn't arrest me, and until they weren't there anymore. Then I would try to be on the other side. So I was, I come back to that word, conflict.

I was drawn to the need to be, um, the way my parents expected it, me to behave or the way I'd been trained to behave growing up, versus all of this new 00:06:00excitement and emotional connection, intellectual connection, an intellectual connection with breaking the rules and rebelling and the revolution is coming, and it's like, this is kind of a tap dance going on in me.

RL: Uh-huh. Um, are you off academic probation by this time?

JH: I'm off academic probation. I have come to this place where I've pretty much got my requirements out of the way. I'm no longer constrained by the under, the freshman and early sophomore year requirements of the UW, so I can take what I want to take. And so I take every political science and history course I can carry, you know, 16 credits or so. And then I take absolutely only what I have to take that the University says, for example, an English course, or I think it was my second semester of my sophomore year, which would be the spring of '69, I 00:07:00still had to take either a math or a language course, so I took French because I clearly was fed up with German. I saw no purpose in it.

I didn't have any interest in doing well in it. But I wasn't going to go back to calculus either. So I took, decided to take French as a next, a next available course. But then again, filling up my coursework with political science and history classes, definitely am the, um, affected by certain professors, like Ed Friedman and --

RL: And what did he teach?

JH: Political science, in particular, he was teaching Chinese history, modern Chinese history, which would be the Chinese revolution and what, what they called Red China still at the time, but the People's Republic of China. I was very fascinated by Mao Tse-Tung, and [Jo En Li?], and the Chinese revolution. I was also, took courses from Ed Friedman that related to Soviet history and that, 00:08:00I was fascinated by Trotsky and Lenin, more Trotsky than Lenin, clearly remember reading all of the material.

And also Eugene [Boardman?], who was in the History Department, was very, very, and Theodore Hamerow, who was also in the History Department, military history, I took from him. So I'm very, um, connected to history, to political science, and that feeds into what's going on on the campus at the same time, politics.

RL: Now you, you are collecting fliers and posters this fall.

JH: Yeah, so --

RL: And why are you doing that, Jim?

JH: Because what I'm feeling it that this is a unique, I'm feeling based on what's going on in the world that some, I really don't have a direct knowledge of it being a, like there's a total certain direction. It's just that, with the assassinations that had happened with all of the world events, with the continuing Vietnam problems and so on, that something is headed somewhere. And 00:09:00for some reason, that this is part of it. It's a huge piece of it. Um, it felt like there was some change going on in the world and more directly, in the United States, perhaps, some sort of a revolution.

That was the word that was in the music. The music was talking about revolution. And student leaders were talking about it. Um, there was just kind of an atmosphere, call it the counterculture stuff, the coming into Madison of more drugs, I suppose, at the time. But there was just a sense of all of this is happening, and it was cool, and I'm drawn to it. And it's a connective piece to me. It's connected to my emotions. It's connecting to my intellect.

RL: Now are your parents, uh, becoming concerned about you being down here?

JH: They're concerned to the degree that, again, I have my aunt and uncle, who 00:10:00are kind of keeping them informed. I believe it was the fall of 1968, I want to say, either that or the early spring of '69. I want to say the early spring, when Father James Groppi from Milwaukee is leading protests and so on, and leading on the effort at the State Capital, for civil rights, and I'm part of that. I mean, I'm very much interested in Father Groppi and his issues, the protest coming from Milwaukee and getting support in Madison.

Um, and my parents are becoming more concerned because my, I'm growing my hair longer, I'm starting to dress like the hippies of the time, let's call it. My aunt and uncle are seeing this in me. They're seeing me more involved in student, because I'm talking about it with them, and so they're reporting back to my parents. And my parents are very, at least, my dad, my mom never said much. But my dad was becoming, not more concerned, but more upset, upset and 00:11:00very vocal about it too. So --

RL: Mm-hmm. Now are, how long do you stay in the ROTC?

JH: I stayed in it until the spring of '69. That was the point where they would need a, um, decision from me to sign the contract. And I am at this point where I've had it with this, this, um, this disguise, this façade, this business of trying to please my dad and also trying to have it both ways, that I, I'm not going to be able to make the choice to be in an ROTC program, so I chose to drop it. I clearly remember telling my dad, and I said, I just don't have time for it. It, it's interfering with my studies. And so I made up this ridiculous story because I needed an out story for him. I'm sure he didn't believe it, but that's what I told him, was that it was interfering with my studies, so I had to drop ROTC.

And additionally, I had flown, the ROTC, the Air Force had flown me down, I 00:12:00forget exactly where, but I had talked to one of my instructors and said, um, if they could give me an assurance that if I signed up for the total program that they wouldn't send me to Vietnam, and they said, no, they wouldn't do it, that they, if I signed up, that I was likely going to be trained to be a pilot for, to fly in Vietnam potentially. And I was definitely not interested in that, so by the spring of 1969, I mean, toward the end of the semester, when it was time for me to make my decision, I said, that's it. I just walked away from it, and it was a kind of a burden had been lifted from me because I no longer had to wear that mask.

RL: Yeah, yeah.

JH: It was powerful.

RL: Yeah, indeed. So you were in the ROTC for two, almost two years.

JH: Almost two years in, and virtually, the entire time I was just holding my nose the whole time.

RL: Uh-huh, yeah.

JH: But I've always been sort of drawn, I like, I like military technology. I 00:13:00like study of military history in the salon, but it's the, it's a conflicting thing again, where I'm drawn to it, and I'm rejecting it at the same time. And it kind of feeds into this business of trying to please my dad, knowing that I can't. That still went back to the fact he wanted me to go to West Point --

RL: Sure.

JH: -- and this is a, a substitute for that. But knowing that, I can't do it anymore. It's time to, to I have to make a choice. So I made the choice I needed to make.

RL: Now, uh, your coursework, Jim, how adversely affected was the academic experience here by the protest culture on campus?

JH: Sure, um, well, remembering my freshman year, I don't remember much except perhaps some things in my, in the spring of '68, that of my second semester as a 00:14:00freshman. But more in the first semester of my sophomore year in the fall of '69, fall of '68, particularly after the Dow Chemical experience at the Commerce Building, that there were more protests, more efforts to what they would say, go on strike against, uh, not going to classes, to affect the University's decisions to activate, to get more activism on behalf of the students, there were more picket lines around buildings, around entrances, I clearly remember that.

And again, I would participate in those all the time. There were more gatherings on Bascom Hill and on the library mall down by the Student Union, the old Memorial Union down by the lake and so on. And there would be marches to protest against the presence of ROTC on campus, to protest in support of the TAAs, or 00:15:00the TAs who were forming their union. And also then in the spring semester, which would be my sophomore year, 1969, the spring semester, was a black student strike on campus, which was supported by Milwaukee Chapter of the Black Panthers. I remember them coming up here.

And a variety of other issues, and it wasn't those issues existing in a vacuum because when the black students were on strike or forming their strike, on campus, they were trying to bring in the, they were bringing in the antiwar people or the TAs. And when the TAs had their strike, they were bringing in the antiwar people and the, um, the protesters from all of the, from a variety of these other issues.

So it was a very much an experience of something always going on, not to exaggerate that, but it was very regular to have announcements of protest and rallies and strikes and picketings and effort to get campus recruiters off 00:16:00campus. So it was a turbulence that was really gaining speed and momentum in the fall of '68, and in the spring of '69, it was so many, there's lots of stories to tell.

RL: Well, tell some of them.

JH: Well, one story in particular, when Father James Groppi came up from Milwaukee with, um, again, with the, again, with the, some of this I don't have a clear recollection of all the issues that he was involved in, but let's just say they were protesting at the capital. And he ended up coming down State Street, and he was in the St. Paul Catholic Center, and the sheriff at the time, Jack Leslie, came in with Dane County Sheriff's deputies and arrested Father Groppi inside St. Paul's Catholic Center. And I remember seeing the commotion and going inside, and standing literally next to Father Groppi when he was arrested.

And, of course, the media is there, and they took this picture of the sheriff and his deputies arresting Father Groppi, and he has his hand up to keep the demonstrators from intervening and turning this thing into some sort of a riot. And I'm standing next to Father Groppi, and the next day, my picture is in The Milwaukee Journal, standing next to Father Groppi with the Sheriff's Department arresting him. And, of course, that newspaper The Milwaukee Journal, is read in Kiel, and so that fast, my parents found out, and they were, my mom never said anything, but my dad was outraged.

And it was just further evidence that I'm going down the wrong, the wrong road, to him. And my aunt and uncle, of course, are in Madison, are dutifully reporting this to him. And so I had to make up this story again because the local newspaper in Kiel picked up on it. And they were wondering what I was doing in this arrest scene with Father Groppi. And --

RL: Were you identified in The Milwaukee Journal?

JH: No, I wasn't identified, but I was in Kiel right away, and it was in the town newspaper. So I wrote them a letter saying I was going between classes because I had books in my hand. So I just stopped in to see what was going on. So I made again, this ridiculous story, and I somehow quasi-sold it because I think some of the people, um, probably thought there might be some truth to it. But I think they also knew it was just bologna, that it wasn't really true.

And certainly, I think my dad could see through the story. But I had to say something. I couldn't say what I needed to say because it would be in conflict with my, you know, my family, with my parents. It would also be in conflict with the people in Kiel, and I was totally aware that my mom and dad and my family were living in that little town.

RL: Sure.

JH: So they were affected by what I was doing. So I could make up this story, because I had to make it up, because if I truly revealed myself and said this is 00:19:00what I believe and this is what I'm doing, then it would come back to them in terms of, um, they have to live in this small town. So I'm trying to be sensitive to what's going on with them and their lives. It's a duplicitous, um, situation for me because, again, there's this conflict of what's going on, wanting to be this revolutionary, but also wanting to be this good little boy, Catholic boy, a Catholic young man from Kiel and still taking all, bringing, bringing all that baggage along with me.

So that's an event. I also remember in the spring of '69, of I believe that was the first time I have recollection of the National Guard being called to campus to maintain what they call control of the campus, and that was during the black students' strike in February of '69. So I believe that's my first recollection of National Guard troops being on campus. And also there'd be an escalation, a 00:20:00continuing escalation of the protests, the demonstrations, and the marches that the students were becoming more confrontational with the police.

And the police in response were being more aggressive and more response to the students with use of force, night sticks, tear gas, tactics, there was an escalation in tactics throughout this whole, um, period of time, I want to say the fall of '68 into the spring of '69. Became an es-, a continuing escalation of tactics between the students and the police, so there was more tear gas on campus, there was more expectation of, of things escalating from the moment that we would show up at rallies or protests and marches, that it was almost assumed that there was going to be violence. And I think that was, I think that actually, it was a strategy, actually, and talk more about that, but I think 00:21:00that was a strategy going on there.

RL: Strategies originating where?

JH: By some of the students, in fact, because it was, um, it wasn't unusual, I mean, you would go to these rallies, these protests, which would end up in marches down State Street or starting to block traffic on University Avenue and Johnson Street. The students would get out into the crosswalks and walk, um, in the crosswalks to disrupt traffic even after the light had changed, and eventually, the students just got out in the street and challenged, basically challenged the police to remove them. And the police would try to, and there'd be conflict.

And then once the, the students would then move in groups in massive groups, or they'd break down into smaller groups and do the same things throughout the streets, whether it was Park Street, Langdon Street, University, Johnson Street, Dayton Street, I mean, we're talking about rallies of, um, of several thousand 00:22:00students at the time. And the police would be trying to keep the streets open. They'd be showing up in, um, what by then was riot gear, which was, you know, helmets and masks and with tear gas and their, you know, their night sticks and so on.

And then I would see outside the campus, I'm going all over the place here, but I would see at rallies and pickets around the campus buildings, the police would be at the front of the buildings, keeping the doors open, so that the recruiters could get in or classes could be held. And the students would be pushing up against the police almost to picket against the recruiters, or to picket to close down classes. And more increasingly, I saw stuff being thrown at the cops, like rocks and things like that.

And then I started to pick up on this, what was happening too was some of the students would be in the back of these, um, rallies or these picket lines, so 00:23:00they might we 50, 60 people deep. And on the outside of the students throwing stuff up front at the police, and the police, of course, are then just, they're provoked by this, so they push back against the students. The students in back are able to run away and get away from this. The students who are up in the front of these picket lines and so on are taking the [word unclear], taking the police's response to the, to the throwing of bottles and rocks and so on.

So it's almost like a tactic to also provoke the police to a response, so then the police do something, which then provokes the students to more response, and it just becomes an escalation. It's just like the police using the tear gas, or they'd throw a tear gas, just, um, almost indiscriminately, and they'd fire it into the, you know, into the crowds. They'd fire it into the buildings, and the 00:24:00tear gas would, you know, go throughout the building. It wouldn't just affect the students who were protesting or rioting, but it would affect the students who were doing other things like studying.

And, you know, there was an indiscriminate force. There was an indiscriminate use of this stuff that, um, then tended to provoke the students [words unclear] just like radicalize the students, let's say, a little bit against the police, what they felt was police excessive response. So I think there was almost a strategy to get the police to use more repression to radicalize more of the students, you know, so there was that dynamic going on.

And that was kind of evident by some of the stuff I saw was going on, and I got to realize right away, I needed to be on the fringes of some of these protests and demonstrations and marches. Otherwise, I was going to get caught up in the stuff like night sticks being swung, and I was very determined not to get hit by a nightstick. I'd seen one of my roommates, um, had his head split open a little 00:25:00bit by a nightstick. Actually, I bailed him out of jail twice in a protest, so I was very determined not to get arrested and not to get hit by a nightstick. Otherwise, everything else, I was --

RL: Because you as still a relatively serious student, I'm assuming.

JH: Sort of kind of. I've set myself up to take the classes I know I can do well in, which is political science and history. I am a natural for that. I can, I'm interested in it. I can achieve well in it. It feeds my energy. It feeds my intellect. Um, I'm taking classes on Chinese history and politics, and, um, Soviet history and politics, whatever I can. And really, I was following Ed Friedman and Gene Boardman through the curriculum as much as I could. And I was also trying to pick up some other courses that I had to take, whether it's a literature or this ongoing adventure with French. But my, I tried to load up my, 00:26:00um, my, my schedule up with, with these courses that reflected what, what my interest was, which was political science and history.

RL: Now by this time, I'm assuming that you are conscious of the draft, that if you flunk out of school, that you'll be drafted?

JH: Yeah. Yeah, that's very much, um, that's all of a sudden the revelation that I have to stay in school, um, because as the University was expelling students at the time --

RL: Oh, it was?

JH: -- for some of the student, uh, activities, like if they found there were what they called student leaders that were doing things that were against the University rules and regulations, they could expel them. That's what they did actually back in the, after the Dow demonstrations and protests, and the violence was, they were attempting to expel students for their actions.

And so there was the knowledge that if you didn't, if you flunked out of school, if you quit school, if you were thrown out of school, or is you chose to leave school for any other reason, that immediately, were available to be drafted. And so it was so necessary to protect that 2-S deferment. That 2-S deferment was the, was the only thing that protected me from the draft.

RL: Right.

JH: Which by that time, I was convinced I wasn't going to be drafted. I was going to take every, every measure to, the best thing I could do was stay in school. So I had to be darn sure I didn't do something that would provoke the University to throw me out of school. So --

RL: Uh-huh. Uh, so we're in your spring semester of your sophomore year, and you are continuing to gather posters, fliers, newspapers.

JH: Yeah, again --

RL: And are you storing them?

JH: Yeah, I'm just keeping them. I've got a pile of them. I don't know how I've got them organized or collected, but I'm, you know, and again, this is, there's also musical events going on, and there's the counterculture of the time, um, I remember, that was when Jimmy Hendrix came to Madison. I went to his concert. I've got the poster from that, from that concert at the coliseum. I'm going to football games, basketball games, I'm interested in hockey games, so I'm doing all of this. I've saved also all the football and hockey and basketball programs and newspapers, some of them entire newspapers from that time.

RL: Was the football team any good in those days?

JH: No, the football team was terrible [Laughs.]. Um, and my, there's a lot of stories I could tell you about that. We misbehaved a lot at the football games too. We carried around, um, bed sheets. We'd steal bed sheets from the dorms, and then we'd paint slo-, signs, over the bed sheets, and we'd carry them around 00:29:00the football stadium. And they were very much unflattering remarks about the football team because the football team was in a 23-game losing streak. In fact, when they broke that streak, against Iowa, in 1969, I think it was, I was too drunk to remember, and most of my friends were too. So we have a vague memory of that.

But what's going on in that time is I'm collecting all of this stuff. I'm saving it, but I don't know quite why except it still feels like, I keep coming back to it feels like, that there's a revolution that's in process, that the turbulence, not just at the UW, but throughout the country and in the world is that there's something is going to happen. I, I keep using that word revolution, but, and I guess some of that is being fed by what I've been studying and reading and, you know, relative to Soviet history and the Chinese Revolution and so on, that 00:30:00maybe I'm, I'm seeing something that actually isn't there, but at the same time, all the signs suggest that there's some, it's becoming more like an anarchy in the world.

And certainly it feels that way on the campus because absolutely every demonstration by that time is almost absolutely every demonstration ends up with a march down State Street to the capitol, the breaking of every window on State Street, then breaking into smaller groups, and by mean, by then, the larger groups are turning into 5,000, 6,000 large or even 10,000, and then they break into these groups of hundreds, and they go around and trash, trashing of buildings, trashing of businesses, um, street battles with the police, who are responding with tear gas and nightsticks.

By then, the police, the police always had these unmarked squad cars with this license plate that said, Y, I think it said, Y2 on it. And it took them quite 00:31:00awhile to figure out that we knew that they were police cars because of what we knew that the license plates said. So finally, um, I think they changed their license plates because it was pretty obvious who they were.

RL: This concludes Side 1 of Tape 2.

RL: This is Side 2 of Tape 2. Jim, as you are observing the state of anarchy, and perhaps participating a bit from the fringes, is there a certain element of discomfort for you having been raised as a good boy in Kiel and to respect authority?

JH: [Words unclear] a small piece of that, but it was a more of the piece that I was going to do what I could do, but I had to be careful I didn't get caught. So I'm, I'm going to do this. I'm going to leaflet. I'm going to march around the buildings. I'm going to march in every protest. I'm going to attend the rallies. I'm going to block traffic on all the streets with all the students. I'm going 00:32:00to disrupt as much as I can disrupt. But I'm not going to first of all get caught. And the second thing is I'm not going to get thrown out of school because I'm, I need to protect my 2-S deferment.

So there's also a piece of that also knowing that my parents are totally, would disapprove of all this. So, for example, when I go home on visits, and my dad is, again, my dad did all the, all the talking, he would complain about the protests or say that all the stuff is communist and so on. I'd say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe, you know, kind of, I'd have to agree with him to keep peace in the family. Or I'd make up a story, or he'd say that, um, something favorable about Nixon or Agnew and I'd say, yeah. I would just try to keep the peace.

I'd say whatever I needed to say to keep peace. But it wasn't the way I felt, be-, that wasn't certainly the way I was behaving. So my visits to home became less and less and less. I started not going home to Kiel. I would find reasons 00:33:00not to. And I was basically not comfortable going over there anymore because it wasn't a comfortable situation being with my family. And then still, my aunt and uncle are kind of down here, um, reporting back on me, and certainly reporting back on all the disruption on campus.

One other thing I should mention is, it was in the summer of, um, 1969, I think it was, I did have, had gone home to visit, and I was taking a, just sleeping, taking a nap. And my dad woke me up on a Saturday afternoon, woke me up, and he said to me, he says, um, I think you're turning pink. And I, okay, I kind of don't know what you mean. But I went back to sleep. But he woke me up a little later and said, no, I, definitely, you're turning red. He said to me, you're turning red. And right away, I felt a need to get out of the house and get back down to Madison.

RL: Oh, he was talking politically.

JH: Yeah, he was, he was saying in no, in no unclear terms that he thought I was becoming a communist. As to what the word pink and what the word red meant back then --

RL: And, therefore, he wanted you out of the house?

JH: Well, no, he didn't want, he wanted, he wanted con-, basically, I think, he just wanted to, um, intimidate me out of that behavior or else was just angry at me, and that was is way of expressing it. I needed to leave. I couldn't be around that because I could see it wasn't going to end well, and that I could no longer, because my hair was long, I was dressing more, like I say, counterculture, um, definitely all the signs were that I wasn't the same son that had left Kiel in the fall of '67. He was seeing somebody he probably didn't like to see.

He had dropped out of ROTC. He knew I was involved in campus activities, and from his point of view, I was turning into a communist and not this West Point 00:35:00cadet that he had wanted a couple of years earlier.

RL: Are they paying for any of your tuition, or are you paying it all yourself?

JH: Well, they're not paying for any of it. I'm, uh, borrowing my way through school, through the National Defense Student Loan Program. I'm also getting some grants. And the thing about that I didn't realize now, then, that I realize now is that I could've become an unqualified for these National Defense Student Loans if I was thrown out of school. I mean, I'd have to, um, there was some recrimination for that, but, no, my parents hadn't -- they had, my mom had filled out the forms that allowed me to qualify for some of this financial aid.

RL: I see.

JH: So if I had, I'd give it, I'd say 70% of my, um, school was paid for by National Defense Student Loans and grants. I don't remember the name of the grants anymore. And then about 30% or so was my working on campus and different 00:36:00jobs to get myself through school.

RL: Jim, when you think about your family, did you have younger brothers or sisters who were getting ready to come to college too, and was there interest on their, any of them following you down here?

JH: My recollection of that is that, yes, of course, I've got younger siblings coming up. My next oldest brother, who's, I'm number two in the family, he's my next oldest brother or sister is a brother, and he was not really going to be going to college in Madison. I think he tried to, I think he went to UW-Sheboygan Center for part of a semester, and then he was drafted.

RL: Oh.

JH: And then he was drafted. And he was doing what every other good, uh, young man from Kiel was doing, and that is either enlisting or allowing themselves to be drafted if they weren't in college. There would be absolutely no way in Kiel that you would think about being a conscientious objector, or going to Canada, 00:37:00or going to jail, or getting a 4-F, trying to get a 4-F deferment. The only op-, the only choices in Kiel were either enlisting, being drafted, or getting a college deferment.

And the college deferment wasn't seen as a way to avoid the draft. It was seen as just going to college. But there was, in, in that, in that small town, as in probably most small towns, it was expected that you didn't, um, avoid the draft or resist the draft or evade the draft. That you preferably enlisted, but minimally allowed yourself to be drafted. And so my brother was drafted. My next sisters that were coming up were going to go to college, but they weren't going to, I think it was pretty clear my dad wasn't going to encourage them to come to Madison. So they ended up going to state schools. But I think it was the turbulence on campus at that time that kind of kept them away.

RL: As it has turned out, Jim, are you the only child in that family who came here?

JH: No, actually, I have a younger brother, but he came here sort of on the scenic route. He went through a couple of centers and then, I think he ended up here in his second semester junior year and so on.

RL: I see.

JH: But that was, um, 15 years after I graduated, so things had changed dramatically since then.

RL: Yes.

JH: So --

RL: Well, it's, it's quite interesting, a glimpse into the culture of the time. Passions were running quite deep.

JH: Well, what I would say about that is, you know, and this is certainly my experience, but it wasn't unique. And that was the, that disruption on campus reflected the national disruption and which somewhat reflected the rural disruption or was part of it. But certainly, even beyond the campus, it affected families. It affected families. It tore some families apart. It may have, other families may have supported the students, the protesting and so on going on 00:39:00throughout the country. But in my case, it continued to drive a wedge between me and my dad at a minimum.

My mom would know things that she wouldn't tell my dad about me because she wanted to protect me from his response. And again, I was affected by, um, I'm just saying, I'm coming back to this, I'm just saying, I think families were many times adversely affected by all of this going on because it was generational, it was the Vietnam War thing, it was civil rights, it was the stuff that was unique to UW-Madison, but there was also stuff coming in from, um, throughout the country, women's rights, the American Indian Movements, and so on, the Black Power Movement. But the whole thing was so disruptive to student life, and then by extension, it disrupted family lives. I still have the, I think the, I still have the scars from it, and I think other students would say they do.

RL: Do your siblings to this day regard you as the odd one out?

JH: [Laughs.] They, um, that's a good, that's a good description, odd one out. I think they, I think I, um, I take great care to continue to show that piece of me whenever I get together with them. They can expect that I'm the one that is going to be in, marching to the different drummer. That's the old saying. In other words, um, they're very conservative, most of my brothers and sisters are very conservative. I've got a couple of sisters that are sort of liberal, and one that's sort of like me. But, you know, I'm kind of a, you know, I provoke.

I'll say the outrageous things. I'll tell them that I'm doing a manual on anarchists, that I, and I'll tell them that I'm writing some book just to get a response from them. So I tend to walk into the stuff because it's, I know, I 00:41:00know who I am, but I, for some reason, they like to think of me as being a rebel in the family or the, um, or the odd one out, I guess you said. So some of that is kind of fun to play with --

RL: Yes.

JH: And provoke a little bit, knowing that most of it is just, um, you know, it's history on me.

RL: Yeah.

JH: It's history on me, so --

RL: So, Jim, let's look now at your junior year, uh, '69 and '70, which, of course, culminates in the Sterling Hall bombing after your junior year. So again, if you would talk about that year on campus, the level of protests, the collection of your archive, and also continuing your studies, what is that year like?

JH: Uh, that, that would be the fall of '69 and into the spring of 1970, and what I remember about that is again, we're coming back to school after the summer of, um, would be the summer of '69, right? We're coming back to school, 00:42:00and there's an anticipation because all the summer has been has been a vacation, not just from the students from school, but a vacation of the University from all of this disruption. There's a full expectation. The war in Vietnam is continuing, I mean, Nixon was elected, and he had this plan, this secret plan to end the war, which hasn't happened. Um, there's continuing recruiting on campus issues.

There's the issue of the Army Mathematics Research Center on campus, the Land Tenure Center, um, the University, what they feel is, students feel is University complicity in the war effort. There's still, you know, issues of black students, women's issues, just a variety of things going on. So there's this edge, this real feeling that here we go again. Another school year starting 00:43:00in the fall of '69, here we go again. It's not if anything is going to happen, it's when is things going to happen.

So what I remember is more of, um, of the student protests against the Army Math Research Center, regular rallies to protest that, certain things that are happening in the war in Vietnam that continue to, to be an issue on the campus, what the University's role is, again, mostly regarding the Army Math Research Center and how it is perceived to support the war effort. And, um, so there are regular rallies, marches, I remember also that there's effort to bring in sometimes, uh, national leaders of the protest. For example, David Dellinger, I want to say Abbey Hoffman, Dr. Benjamin Spock, just a variety of people that 00:44:00come in and talk to the rallies, talk to these giant protests, which, by now, are sometimes reaching 10,000 to 15,000 people.

I mean, in the fall of '69, I think was the, was the November moratorium in Washington, D.C., and so again, there's this national energy, and there's this UW-Madison energy, and there's a full expectation that it won't be long before, you know, all heck is breaking loose again. And again, um, we're coming off of that spring, which I believe was the first Mifflin Street Block Party. So that the energy between the police and the students continues to be one totally of friction, and it's not just the UW. It's the UW Campus Police, it's the City of Madison Police, Dane County Sheriff's Department, State Patrol, and ultimately, the National Guard again.

So we've got all of these different law enforcement agencies prepared to come on campus, and the conflict is always with the students and the City of Madison 00:45:00Police. It's rarely between the students and the campus police because Ralph Hanson is the head of campus police, and Ralph is viewed as sort of this grandfatherly guy, who just tries to get along and make things better. I think it was [Wilbur Emory?], that's the head of the Madison Police Department and Jack Leslie, who's the head of the Dane County Sheriff's Department, and they have got this focus on confronting the students and bringing law and order to, this law-and-order mentality going on in the country too.

So naturally, any time the students and the police are, are coming together, it's almost always friction. And there almost always devolves into violence on the campuses, on the campus, um, so a typical rally might start out in the 00:46:00evening. By now, a lot of the rallies and protests and marches are occurring in the evening to protest either the U.S. presence in Vietnam or in support of some other issue on the campus. So it's the, I see the valley, the rally announcements, and we go down to the campus in the middle of the day, or we go down to the Student Union at night. There's a speaker, and then there's a determination to march down State Street, to disrupt traffic. There's trashing that's going on.

Those aren't really put out as to-do lists, but they are things that are going to happen. We know it's going to happen. And then by this time, the police have armored up their vehicles because throughout the demonstrations of the increasing violence, police cars are turned over, civilian vehicles, buses, buildings are being firebombed, trashed, vandalized, and so on. And so there's 00:47:00also in the background this whole discussion of tactics and what is vandalism versus what is resistance versus what is protesting, and, I mean, this whole issue, I mean, is, it's not just run by one organization. There's competing agendas. There's competing groups on campus.

RL: Are you going to some of those planning meetings?

JH: Not really, no, I mean, I'm aware of SDS and the Yippies and the Weather Underground, and I'm aware of all of these groups, but I'm not really in the planning, or I'm not really involved in all of that discussion. That doesn't really interest me. What interests me is action. I, for some reason, I'm drawn to the action. I'm not drawn to the, the talking parts of it. And so anyway, we show up at, there's rallies, and there's speakers, and then the students are just interested in moving out and getting, you know, in protest and marching, picketing, shutting down the University and so on. And the police are doing what they do.

And like I say, by this time, they're armored up their vehicles. I remember at 00:48:00times, there's just wild chase scenes on campus, police running through with their cars. When State Street was still open, and they'd come down Park Street under that bridge over Park Street that goes from Humanities Building to Bascom Hill, and the students would sit up on that bridge, some of them, and just drop paving stones on the police cars as they went through. Or the students would provoke the police to get out of their cars, and then they'd turn them over and start, and they'd start on fire, or they'd just turn them over. And the same with city buses.

And it's not just like 10 or 20 students. It's like thousands of students all over the campus, and the police are trying to contain and control the whole campus. And there's hundreds of police. And all I can see is what I'm seeing, but there's stuff going on throughout these buildings being firebombed, um --

RL: Where are you living this year?

JH: Oh, in my junior year, I was living on, oh, at the Saxony on Johnson Street, 00:49:00across from the Nitty Gritty.

RL: Oh.

JH: So it's on the corner of, I think it's Johnson, and I can't remember the cross street, if it's Fran-, I think it's Francis Street, actually. And so, you know, clearly, I remember one of the nights, um, in the spring of 1969, no, it would be the spring of 1970, that spring semester, during one of the disruption periods on campus, this giant explosion, and I looked out my back window of my apartment at the Saxony. And they had this big Kroger's Grocery Store that was on University Avenue, well, that had been firebombed that night. Um, there was just continuing, I'm having trouble putting this all together right now. But there's such an atmosphere of, of violence on the campus by that time, that things are just, are getting totally out of control. And that's leading into the 00:50:00spring of 1970.

RL: So I take it the '69-'70 year was qualitatively much more intense and, uh, much more disturbed setting than the '68-'69 year.

JH: Absolutely, things were, um, were getting more intense on campus. The University, I mean, the state government is talking about, you know, outside agitators continually. They're blaming, um, this on even communists, they're saying communists from Vietnam are coming over and training student leaders or providing funding. And there's all of this conspiracy stuff going on by them. There's um, their determination is to keep the campus open, to keep order on campus. That is the administration at UW, administration's message is that we're going to keep the campus open, and we're going to keep order on the campus and order in the city.

Students are saying, we're going to shut the campus down. We're going to disrupt 00:51:00the city. We're going to bring the war home. There's a lot of things being said on, at these rallies and in these marches, um, the slogans that are being chanted are kind of saying what some of the efforts of the students are. I mean, I don't know what you want me to say here, but --

RL: Well, I think you need to say what will give us a correct sense of what it was like.

JH: So, okay, like, you know, marching down the street and singing, oh, one, two, three, four, we don't want your fucking war.

RL: Correct.

JH: Five, six, seven, eight, overthrow and smash the state. Okay. Power to the people, um, they'd say, they'd be yelling off the pigs. Off the pigs was saying kill the police. Um, that comes from some of the Black Panther --

RL: Right.

JH: -- terminology. Anyway, there's, what it's reflecting is the energy. It's reflecting incredible, just incredible friction between the police and the 00:52:00students, literally, you know, to overthrow, overthrow what it is right now, and then whether it's the University or whether it's the state government or whether it's the national, you know, the United States government. So there's this rhetoric, there's rhetoric that is being, um, said by the leaders, by the students, by, you know, chanting as we go up the street and so on.

And so the actions are reflecting those words. And there's literally an effort to shut the city down, to bring the Vietnam War home to Madison, you know, to bring it home to the United States of America. And Madison's going to bring the war home here. It's going to disrupt, going to shut down the University, going to get Army Math Research off campus.

RL: Is the Army Math Research Center becoming the center of protest?

JH: It's becoming a common denominator, so that if nothing else is going on, at least there's that going on. So there's a constant effort that in The Daily 00:53:00Cardinal and the demonstrations and so on to talk, to rail against the Army Mathematics Research Center, to get it off campus because it's seen as complicit with the war effort, and that the University should not be part of that. And so every, and also to get ROTC off of campus, and the ROTC is saying, no, we are going to stay, or the University is saying, ROTC is going to stay on campus.

So there's firebombing of this building called T-16 out on the west side of campus, which is seen as a target. The Army Math Research Center is seen as located at Sterling Hall. And, of course, there's research facilities all over campus that are increasingly seen as not appropriate to this campus, whether it's animal testing at the primate lab or the weather, the astronomy people on campus maybe doing weather projections or weather studies that help the war effort.

Or whether it's the mathematics being studied at the Army Math Research Center, that are used for the military use in Vietnam or other places and so on, so the math, the Army Math Research Center is kind of being the, um, the hub of the activity. And certainly everything else that's coming in, the ongoing protests against the war, you know, the war's not winding down. The war continues to, you know --

RL: And is that what is animating your involvement? Is it the war exclusively, or is it other causes?

JH: I'm pretty much drawn to a menu of things, the war first, the antiwar rallies and the protests. I'm also drawn to the black students, particularly, I am very fascinated with the Black Panther Party. Um, they look like they're really ready for the revolution. And so it's almost that anything that is extreme, I'm almost attracted to the extreme stuff. And I'm still studying all 00:55:00this stuff about Marx and Lenin and Trotsky and Mao Tse-Tung and Jo En Li and so on, studying a lot of the, the politics of their movements, and the revolutions in those countries.

And what I was seeing is, in fact, it's really curious because, again, this other stuff doesn't exist in a vacuum. The music, the culture, are all suggesting this stuff is happening. And it's like if this happens, I want to be -- if this does happen, if this is going to be a revolution, I got to be ready for it. And as silly, it actually seems silly in retrospect, but the feeling at the time was, there's, you know, that this, this is going to happen. I mean, the campuses are literally on fire. There's all this repression. Nixon had done a study, actually, Daniel Patrick Moynihan did a study that what would happen if 00:56:00Nixon suspended it? The 1972 elections, because of this civil, um, issues in this country of disruption and so on, so there's a real feeling, and again, coming out of all this history of assassinations and so on, what is happening with this country? Their fabric, it's like it's being ripped apart, and I better be, you know, I got to be, I got to be ready or prepared or whatever. I don't know, it's felt that way on this campus, so that there is something happening.

RL: Now, Jim, are you still a fairly responsible student in the '69-'70 year? Are you going to class?

JH: Um, I'm protecting myself. I'm taking, making sure I'm doing my work. I'm going to classes I need to go to. I'm being more, um, true to the, you know, in other words, if I'm picketing around buildings or picketing with the students or 00:57:00so on, I'm being more careful to try to be, um, true to the principle of what I'm doing, in other words, not trying to protest this hour, and the next hour get to class on time. So I'm being more active that way, but at the same time, protecting my grades because I need to protect that 2-S deferment. That is kind of the baseline of everything is, whatever I do, I cannot lose that deferment. So --

RL: Uh, are you, have you declared a major at this point?

JH: I declared my major as political science, as a double major, political science and history, and I believe it was the spring of, 19-, either in the fall of '69, no, actually, it was the spring of '70, one of the two, so --

RL: Uh, maybe this is a good time to switch to or move on to the spring semester 00:58:00of 1970, which I think is perhaps one of the key periods from this time of, uh, turmoil.

JH: Yeah. That is, um, I remember, again, remember, for example, Melvin Laird was in a visit to campus, I believe it was in the winter of '69 just be -- and the students were prepared for him. I have a poster that says, you know, Meat Laird, M-e-a-t would suggest to do something other than meet him, to more or less do violence to the, to him. Anyway, he chose not to come to campus because it was determined it wasn't safe for him to visit the campus. Um, the National Guard had been on campus during the black students' protests, in support of the Black Protest in the winter of '69. It's all leading up to kind of a, um, disruption on campus, feeling relentless.

We didn't know, I didn't, certainly didn't know what was going. It just was a continuum of violence and, um, I'm trying to put this, for example, in that more of the classes that I remember were not being held because of the constant disruption. So we would meet, not in the classroom, but perhaps, we'd meet down at the Student Union in the Rathskeller. One of the professors, I remember, Frank [Battaglia?], that was an English literature course. We started meeting down in the Student Union because he didn't, we couldn't meet in the, we couldn't meet in the campus classrooms. So that was, it was definitely becoming more, um, more disruptive.

I remember also going to more and more of the rallies and the demonstrations as they were announced, and I bought a gas mask down at the Army Surplus Center. A couple of my roommates, you know, it was kind of funny actually. But actually, 01:00:00it was very useful because of all the tear gas and pepper spray that was being used when the police were trying to control the, the marches and so on, that we actually used these gas masks because we knew what was going to happen. So it was kind of funny, but at the same time, it was very useful.

And we weren't the only ones. Um, by this time, many, many, many, I mean, there were thousands of students attending. Many of them were just wearing like handkerchiefs over their faces, to, you know, to disguise themselves so that, because the police were shooting, um, video, trying to identify either leaders or trying to identify illegal action. Um, I remember too that there was, by that time, more evidence, direct evidence of undercover police on campus.

Now a couple of times, I remember being approached after rallies or after things 01:01:00had settled down, and someone would come up to me, and adult, and say, do you know who is in charge of this? Or do you know who this person is or that? And the guy was obviously not a student. He looked the part of someone that was a police officer even in plain clothes. And I just got the hell out of there. But, um, so there was more, like I say, with students wearing, say, handkerchiefs over their face.

I remember carrying along a wet handkerchief with me because after the tear gas was thrown or used, it was a good way to not be affected by it was to put a wet handkerchief over my nose. And then, ultimately, I was using the gas mask. I also remember buying a night club from the Army Surplus Store and just carrying it around with me in the event I was, um, attacked or police came after me. I was going to use it to defend myself.

RL: -- concludes Side 2 of Tape 2.

RL: This is Tape #3, Side 1 of the ongoing Oral History interview with UW 01:02:00alumnus, Jim Huberty, April 2nd, 2007. Jim we were currently on the spring semester of the '69-'70 academic year, and you're talking about being contacted by undercover police following various rallies and demonstrations. I'm assuming there was quite terrific outrage on campus that spring following the killing at Kent State.

JH: That was it. That was probably the, um, I mean, by that time, the National Guard had, in my recollection, had been on campus I want to say four times, and so right after, immediately, the day after Kent State, we knew that, um, well, actually as soon as we, the Kent State killings, shootings happened as a result 01:03:00following a demonstration there. And the UW-Madison here, we were also demonstrating.

So it was just a further response to the Kent State shootings, and the rallies were that all of, I mean, immediately, the National Guard was sent to this campus, immediately, I mean, they, the violence on the campus, and then by extension even into the city with, um, firebombings and the rhetoric was definitely accelerated. It was like there were rumors of students arming themselves. There were rumors of students, I mean, we were given, students were, you know, in some of the leaflets that were being handed out, there were directions on which buildings to bomb and how to most effectively do it, and what to do if you were, um, confronted or if you were caught and the grand jury instructions.

And there was clear direction yet, this just was kind of a, the game has 01:04:00changed. It's gone from, you know, there's levels of violence that were going on and so on, but no one had actually, in other [word unclear] students had been killed at Jackson State, and there were students killed in Augusta, Georgia, another university. But that was far, I mean, Kent State was literally in our back yard. And so, um, the atmosphere on this was so damn tense. And the University knew, and that was the first time they shut down classes.

But it was only after, a day or so after Kent State because of the, um, the violence was getting to be so extreme on the campus. And particularly, I remember this, I think it was May, that the students were shot on May 4th at Kent State. I think it was May 5th that I was on the library mall doing one of the, one of the many, many, many, many protests going on that day and 01:05:00demonstrations going on that day. And the tear gas is going off, the police are trying to contain the students. The students are trying to shut down the campus, block the streets, just chaos, extraordinary chaos going on. And it's just anarchy situation it seemed like.

And happened to have a camera with me, and I was just taking a few pictures, isolated here and there, but I had probably nine of ten flashbulbs in my pocket from one of these old brownie cameras. So I'd take a picture. Then I would run, and I'd try to stay with the students, with the crowd, or I'd be running away from the police with the students and so on. And I was running across the library mall toward Park Street when the police were showing up again. And this was the day after Kent State. And all of a sudden, I felt a sharp burn in my right leg.

And, of course, tear gas grenades are going off, there's all this yelling and 01:06:00screaming and squad cars screaming and just seems like crashing and all this. And all of a sudden I felt this sharp pain in my right leg. And I didn't know. I ran into the Humanities Building, and I thought I had been shot. And I ripped off my pants, and went inside the Humanities Building into the nearest bathroom. And I ripped down my pants to see if I'd been shot. And I hadn't.

But what had happened was, I was running across the mall, and the pressure from my pants on my leg had set off one of these flashbulbs, and which set off the other flashbulbs, so what I was, what I had felt in my leg was the flash bulb going off, which felt like the burning pain, I had been shot. So again, talking about the now, it all seems kind of bit silly, but at the same time, in the what was going on at the time, it was the first thing that occurred to me.

RL: Yes.

JH: Yeah, we had seen the, I mean, the National Guard was on campus, um, for 01:07:00what seemed like the umpteenth time. They had rifles. The police were armed. There was a jeep parked up behind Bascom Hall with an M60 machine gun, I think it was, mounted on the back of it. Um, nobody knew if the bullets in those rifles were live rounds or whether they were blanks, because four students had been shot at Kent State. So we didn't know.

We weren't told anything, and it was just like a guessing game, that's, you know, so anyway, that's the context of what had happened when I had been running, and I felt this sharp burning in my leg. So I settled down immediately and went back out and, um, continued to participate in what was going on. And, um, that was just, the National Guard really had, I think it was two helicopters that were flying over the campus, and I clearly remember, they were, had these hoses coming out of the bay doors, that were just kind of hosing the campus down with tear gas and then I think some pepper gas too.

RL: Oh.

JH: So it was a very indiscriminate use of that. And that's also the time when just, just prior to the University shutting down, um, every effort was going to be made to shut the classes down. One way or the other, there were classes couldn't continue anymore. Classes couldn't continue anymore. So a few days after Kent State, when the University then reopened the school, I went to my English literature class that was being taught by Frank Battaglia, and we were meeting in the Student Union in the Rathskeller, and this was actually the first class after school had reopened.

And we were waiting in the Rathskeller, and Professor Battaglia shows up, and he says, that's it. He says, and this was after Kent State, of course. He said, that's it. We're not teaching any more classes until the war is over. So no more 01:09:00classes, don't bother showing up. This was, I think, a four- or a five-credit English literature class. And one of the, it wasn't me, but one of the students asked him, well, what do we do about our grades for the semester because we're in May of 1970, which is the end of spring semester. And Professor Battaglia said, he said, I don't care.

You can grade yourself. Whatever grade you think you get, that's the grade you tell me, and I'll put it on your transcript. So what I had been getting roughly a C, maybe a C+, and I thought it over very shortly, and I took an A. It was a dishonest A, but it was an A that, what the heck, you know. Grade yourself. The thing of integrity would've been to take the C. But I don't think I was the only one. So I took an, when he came to the, he said, you know, call me up or send me a note with your grade on it that you got, that's what I did. I took the A. So I got a, for a four- or five-credit A, I recall.

And so that was, um, it occurred to me that that was a really great way to 01:10:00grade, you know, to get grades for the spring. So that aft, I think it was either that afternoon or the following afternoon, I had a French class. And I went into the French class, and I was really bold about it. I raised my hand, and I told this teacher, I said, look, no more classes until the war is over, and we ought to be able to grade ourselves. And the French teacher looked me right in the eye and said, no. She had no sympathy for the protest marches, the rallies, the demonstrations. She just wanted to teach French.

RL: Who was it, do you remember?

JH: I don't remember her name, but I know she was actually from France. But she made it very, very, very clear she was not going to --

RL: Was this Yvonne [Ozell?]?

JH: No. No, I can probably find her name for you, but she made it very clear that there was not going to be any grading yourself, and that I was going to get the grade I deserved in the class and that she was not interested in any of the politics or any of the other stuff going. All she wanted to do was teach French, 01:11:00and that was it. And that's not unusual. Again, during this time, it was like I happened to be in Letters and, L&S, Letters & Sciences, and political science and history and those courses.

And there were other parts of campus that tried to remain unaffected by all this stuff, like some of the, some of the business school, or some of the med school or certainly some of the foreign languages or engineering and so on. It wasn't like every student out there, like lots of students out there, lots of professors and TAs sympathetic, but not all of them. So it's kind of situational and too, you couldn't just say, well, it worked here. It's going to work there. So some of the professors were very clear about they weren't sympathetic, and they certainly weren't going to be involved in it. So but by this time also, it's very clear that something is, something, I mean, things are escalating.

They've gotten to this point where something is going to happen, and you can 01:12:00just feel it, that the continuing pressure on the University to with the Army Math and the Army Math Center and the campus recruiting maybe or with this or with that, the Land Tenure Center, I come back to that. But something was going to happen. The Red Gym had been firebombed by this time. Um, it was just like absolutely every protest, absolutely at every rally, absolutely at every march, that started out with thousands and thousands of people would end up with these groups of 30 or 40 or 500 or 1,000 that would just splinter off into the city or into the campus area and the violence that would happen and the confrontation with the police. And the escalating tactics that this is all heading somewhere and the continued the message of shut the University down. Overthrow the government. Kill the police. I mean, this messaging, messaging, messaging, 01:13:00messaging, it was all building towards something. And after all, four students were, had been killed at Kent State, so in reflection, and actually in actually living at the time, it was like it's obvious something was going to happen. But nobody --

RL: Was it obvious, Jim?

JH: It was obvious to me that something was going to happen because this is, I mean, where could it go? It wasn't going anywhere, it wasn't getting less tense or less violent or less anything. It was getting more and more and more. And what's going to happen? What's going to happen? Well, the four students who were shot at Kent State, what's the response going to be? You know, somebody is going to do something. There was stuff being said, you know. I mean, I didn't personally hear anything at all from anybody, but it was just that sense of, you know, it's, you know, it's going to happen. Something's going to happen.

RL: Jim, did you know, uh, any of the four guys who were later indicted for later blowing up the Research Center?

JH: I just have a vague, vague recollection of Leo Burt.

RL: Uh-huh.

JH: The one who was never caught, a very vague recollection of him coming through the dorms, and I was a sophomore at Sellery Hall, I think. I know he was on the rowing, on the crew team or something like that, and, um, just have a vague recollection of him, did not know the Armstrong brothers, did not know David Fine, and like I say, none of them, there's a vague recollection of Leo Burt, had no, no knowledge of them or existence of them. Um, they also, they were actually the ones that firebombed the old Red Gym, but I didn't know that. They were actually the ones that had stolen an airplane, tried to firebomb the Army Munitions Plant up in Baraboo --

RL: Baraboo.

JH: -- at the New Year's Gang, and I didn't know [words unclear], but I didn't know they were connected. I didn't know them. I didn't, you know, nobody knew anybody except the people, I mean, there were, you know, kind of contained little groups or contained people and so on. It was not like they were advertising themselves. It's not like they were recruiting anybody. It was just, 01:15:00you know, people making decisions.

RL: Um, Jim, at this time, from an academic perspective, the history professors, George Mosse and Harvey Goldberg had huge followings on campus, particularly in those years. Did you ever study with either of them?

JH: I had, uh, a course with Professor Mosse. I didn't have one with Harvey Goldberg, but I had one with Professor Mosse. But I was still primarily following Gene Boardman and Ed Friedman around through history and political science. And so I was, oh, and I was also, um, there was [words unclear] even, who had, wasn't very expressive of his politics that I remember at the time, but I was more, I was more interested in, um, the history aspects of it. I was up in the upper level, like the 500's the 400's in terms of the course, the course numbers, the course levels. So I just had that one course with George Mosse, and 01:16:00then none that I remember with Harvey Goldberg at all. So, again, I was affected mostly by, um, by Professor Friedman and Professor Boardman.

RL: And, uh, during this spring semester, you're continuing to pick up alternative newspapers, posters, fliers --

JH: Yep, just collecting everything, um, again, I'm drawn, just drawn to this stuff. And I don't know why I'm collecting it. I really don't, never have really come to that place of knowing the why of it. I mean, I'm, complete understanding of my interests in that stuff, but as to why I saved it and hung onto it, I don't really quite know, except that that was that connection piece that I talked about when I first saw the, um, the Dow, the demonstration at the Commerce Building and the eventual clash between the police and the students on that day. You know, there's that kind of, that connection piece.

So I kind of maybe felt that these posters and that were fitting into that connection, that emotional intellectual connection. Also knowing that it was kind of like, it was history was being made. Um, for some reason, I felt like this was a historical piece. And I had this history through this background in my, you know, going back to paper route, going back to my debate years, forensics, all that stuff, I had always collected for my performances in forensics. And so just a natural extension of that to continue, I was collecting because it interested me.

There's probably a little bit of a historian in me that way. And probably even a piece of packrat in me, but anyway, I was virtually picking everything up I could on it. I still don't have a complete understanding of why I did it or a complete understanding of why I saved it.

RL: Uh, so the semester ends, and what do you do that summer?

JH: That summer, I stay, I stay the heck away from Kiel, made that determination a long time ago, and I don't visit Kiel at all. But what I do do is work partially in the summertime, do a lot of hanging around in Madison.

RL: Oh, you stay in Madison.

JH: Stay in Madison, yeah, for, for the summer and get myself, you know, kind of ready for the fall semester. I'm, you know, doing a lot of just what students do in the summer is, you know, it's actually a vacation from school, which is what it's meant to be. But it was also a vacation from the end of the violence, you know, the way the campus closed the year, the chaos, almost the anarchy feel of it all just, you know, okay, this has been, you know, you need a vacation.

You know, and so it's kind of a vacation from all that because in the summertime, there really wasn't much going on on the campus. I mean, people were 01:19:00gone or they were enjoying or whatever they were doing. But there certainly wasn't a lot of, that I remember, a lot of protests or demonstration activity on the campuses during, on the campus during the summers.

RL: So you're working again. You're trying to make some money.

JH: Just making some money, getting ready for the fall, you know, paying rent, hanging out with my buddies, you know, and just stuff like that so, um, just like most other students were doing, certainly nothing political.

RL: So are you in town when the bombing happened?

JH: Yeah, yeah, I'm living up on Pinckney Street, which is right off the Capitol Square, and actually, I moved in with my, my future wife. We had met that summer, and I moved in with her in the late part of, um, was it, middle, middle to late part of August, you know, so we're living up on Pinckney Street.

RL: Uh-huh, and do you have not a, you were saying earlier that this movement was headed towards some sort of, something was going to happen. Did you think that there might be some sort, if, not the bombing, that there might be something at the Army Math Research Center?

JH: You know, I really didn't know. I really didn't know, and it was just a sense, a personal sense. I won't speak for anybody else, but my personal feeling was, you know, after the Kent State business and after, um, the shutting down of the University and the continuing pressure, the just relentless violence on the campus, that something was building, I mean, there was so much being said. You know, I didn't know it was Army Math.

It could've been maybe something where it was some other event related to the war. Maybe it had been the Army recruiting, could've been the ROTC buildings on campus, maybe it'd been this, you know, no idea. So when the, when Sterling Hall 01:21:00was bombed, um, I mean, I literally heard it. I was sleeping, but I was woke up by it.

RL: Did you know immediately what it was?

JH: I had a sense that it wasn't good. That's all I had, but I didn't know what it was, no. Then this, I mean, I went back to sleep. I went back to sleep. I didn't think anything of it. The next morning, I heard it on the news, and I was, I immediately went down to campus. I didn't have plans to go down to campus that day. But the news came on that Sterling Hall had been bombed, and I went down there. So it was probably midmorning the day after it was bombed. But I, you know, it wasn't, I really didn't understand it as much, you know, at the time. I think it was just a bombing. Students were involved. There was, they were looking for some guys that had bombed it.

RL: How soon did you know that someone had been killed in that?

JH: Oh, it was about the very next day, the very next day, um, it was the 01:22:00University researcher, Robert Fassnacht, one of those names, I'll never forget. And, um, some other people were hurt in it, and it was just like, it looked like, just like the picture showed in the paper. It was [word unclear] the way it looked, and I went down there, and you couldn't get close to it because they had it all yellow-taped off, and the police and the FBI and so on were down there.

So I kind of kept a little bit of a distance from it because I was, you know, I was very, um, you know, just very kind of like just awestruck by the devastation of it. And certainly the, the killing, the unintended killing of that researcher was very, very much head shaking, you know, what? You know, okay, this is what happened? You know, it's what happened? This is the way things work. And so I was kind of like, um, just shocked by it, shocked by the devastation.

RL: Uh, and that happened pretty close to the start of fall semester, didn't it?

JH: Yeah, yeah.

RL: Can you talk, Jim, a little bit about what it was like returning to school that semester?

JH: Yeah, there was a couple of things going on there, that I clearly remember and that is, I went to one of the first rallies or one of the first protests of the fall of 1970, one of the first things I went to. And it was like where is everybody? Like where is everybody? And what occurred to me, you know, not just like it was, it occurred to me then, but I kind of, oh, okay, this is what happens is that that event, the bombing of Sterling Hall and certainly the killing of that researcher just was like taking a pin and pricking a balloon, and all of the built-up energies from all the rallies and demonstrations and all the student involvement and participation was just reduced to a few hundred people because no one wanted to be associated with that bombing where someone 01:24:00had died.

And it was like all the air had been let out of this giant balloon. And from then on, the rallies, the protests, the demonstrations and marches were just a small, um, they were just much, much smaller than they'd ever been because, I think, people had, had never thought someone would die. And language is always used, you know, of overthrow the government, kill the police, and, you know, all the rhetoric was used. But to have someone actually die, I don't think it ever entered anybody's real consciousness, this is actually what happened, and so it's like, you know, people just got turned off to it, I guess. I don't know.

The funny thing being that at Kent State, the students were killed, and that just energized -- not funny thing, but the curious thing, at Kent State, 01:25:00students were energized and rallies and protests, blah, blah, blah, and then this incidence where this researcher was killed at Sterling Hall just kind of took the opposite effect. People said they walked away from it. It's like I walk away from it. And I don't know. Um, certainly, it took a long time, I mean, ultimately, the protests and the rallies and that grew again a bit, but they were never the same.

They were never the same. I think the Sterling Hall bombing and the death of Robert Fassnacht, um, made a, a giant difference in the campus. And again, no one ever thought anybody would die. It was kind of, it almost felt like, you know, and I remember, it almost felt at the time like people were playing at revolution. People were playing at this. It was like a play. But then to have something happen, in a real, you know, loss of life kind of thing. And this 01:26:00wasn't Kent State anymore. This was UW-Madison. It was like, oh, my God, you know, nobody -- it would've been nice if we could have, everybody could have kept playing though, and nobody would've died.

RL: So what did you do, Jim? Did you go back to school?

JH: So, yeah, this is my senior semester, senior, uh, year, 1970 fall, and I had come back to class as again, with the backdrop of the Sterling Hall bombing, and I'm focusing as much as ever on my 2-S deferment, making sure I keep that, and I'm enrolled, and I'm, you know, getting my classes taken care of, and I'm going to the, you know, continuing protests and demonstrations, which aren't, you know, quite as large as they used to be. They're still active, lots of activism because the war is still going on. You know, and it's not the same. Um, and so I'm, but I'm getting a sense of the, that my graduation is impending. It's coming up, you know.

This is my senior year, and I'll be losing my deferments, so I'm starting to 01:27:00consider what I'm going do. What are my options? You know, I've thought about becoming a conscientious objector. I've thought about, I'd read about the guys that go to Canada or the guys that go to this, do this or do that to avoid being drafted, and I'm kind of working this stuff through my mind. And I'm eliminating things one by one and just coming to the conclusion that I don't have many options, that I'm going to graduate, and I'm going to be subject to the draft.

So because I'm not willing to do some of the other stuff, I'm not willing to go to jail, I'm really not going to go to Canada because I just don't think, I'm not sure, I just don't know. I've never come to, um, place of comfort with that. Um, I've still got a family connection, I guess. I don't know. I'm not, I know, I know guys hurt themselves, I know guys even, you know, try to claim that they're, have a mental health condition or this or that, and I'm, you know, 01:28:00trying to get down to what I can do for me. And it doesn't seem to me many options.

It's kind of like I'm stuck. I'm the only one that doesn't have a plan after I graduate. So that's kind of where I'm going in that step, that fall semester. And so it doesn't have a very good outlook to it.

RL: Uh, and are you hearing anything from your family?

JH: Not much, no. I mean, I visit them, but it's very much a, um, very much on edge the whole time. And my, my dad and I are like, you know, miles apart. We don't talk. I'm very much, um, there's a lot of unspoken friction going on, like I'm just waiting for him to let loose. I'm kind of counting the hours when I can leave. It's a very uncomfortable situation there. I don't do much in the town. There's not much for me. I don't have my even, um, I mean, I've got friends. I've got classmates that have gone to Vietnam, so I, I have a different kind of 01:29:00relationship with this town than I've had before.

I'm seen as this person who's had his picture in the paper and know what my dad has said about me probably and that he even had to defend me or either my mom has, maybe my brothers and sisters have had to defend me. Maybe they've had to just agree with the people who are saying, you know, your brother is this, or your son is that. So I don't know because we're not talking about it. All I know is that there is just a lot of tension that I feel, and so I don't go home unless I absolutely have to, like for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

And I just kind of get away as soon as I can and get back to, you know, I want to get back to Madison. It's kind of I've made my choice. And that which once was is now in my past. And that which now is is my present and future.

RL: This concludes Side 1 of Tape 3.

RL: This is Side 2 of Tape 3 of the ongoing interview with UW alumnus Jim Huberty. Today is April 3rd, 2007. Jim, when we stopped yesterday, we were in 01:30:00your senior year at the UW. Uh, it was the fall of 1970, post the Sterling Hall bombing. And the protest of the war, although still ongoing, was much quieter. And this is your senior year as well. So if you would talk about what that year was like and as you grappled with what you would do, post-graduation.

JH: Well, in my recollection, my senior year, the fall of, um, 1970, leading into the spring of '71, it was certainly a, a shift in the energy at the demonstrations and the protests. What I noticed as I mentioned before, was that participation was somewhat less than it had been previously. Although, as more time distanced itself from the Sterling Hall bombing, then some more activities 01:31:00and more participation did pick up again, but certainly not at the levels previous to the Sterling Hall bombing. And additionally, there was a large discussion, debate, about the actual Sterling Hall bombing.

Those are acts, I mean, it was just in my recollection, a discussion about the rightness or the wrongness of the whole thing, a violence in what was portrayed as a nonviolent, historically nonviolent, no one had ever been really, you know, seriously hurt. There were always, uh, incidents of people being injured or policemen being injured at these protests and rallies, and sometimes, they turned into what they were characterized as riots. But no one had actually ever been killed despite all the rhetoric.

So as there was this, um, dialogue about what the rhetoric means, there was this dialogue about the, somewhat of a justification or the rationale for the 01:32:00Sterling Hall bombing. What, a goal that it achieved, what, how could it be justified? And certainly, in much of the information that I was receiving was portraying, let's say, the Armstrong brothers and their, and their associates as being some sort of revolutionaries. That was being discussed. There was also the whole notion of is any death ever justifiable, so there was, it was a real turbulence in terms of the discussion of it and additionally, what to do now, what to do next.

After all, someone had died, what to do next, what does all this rhetoric mean? And then also, there were just a variety, a variety of campus protest organizations. I mean, it wasn't just one leading group. It was competing groups with competing agendas. There were some very radical groups on campus, including elements of the Weather Underground, who advocated violence to overthrow the 01:33:00government or whatever it was they were trying to accomplish. So there were competing agendas, competing tactics, strategies.

And so there was a more splintering of what had been an antiwar umbrella now became sort of these offshoots, these splinters. And also what was noticeable for many of the, at least in my experience with many of the students, was some of them were just tired. They were tired of all of the, uh, disruption. They were tired of the constant protests and rallies, which, you know, almost always ended up in, in conflict on the streets between the students and the, and the citizens of Madison sometimes and certainly the police. So and then --

RL: Were you tired?

JH: I was, I was not so much tired as I was, I was, I suppose growing a little bit in the sense that I was aware that I was going to be graduating this school 01:34:00year. And some of my focus was in that direction of, what now? But at the same time, I left room for the, the protests and the demonstrations and the rallies and so on. So I kept very active with that. But at the same time, I knew there was something else I was going to have to deal with, and that was my graduation. But I think that, um, at some level too, I was a little bit tired, but maybe that was more like frustrated because all this activity had done was -- and not to minimize it, but, you know, the death at Sterling Hall affected most people.

And so what did all this mean? What was the meaning of all of this? The war in Vietnam was still being fought. There was still domestic issues that weren't being resolved. Nixon was, you know, still in office despite all the efforts to, uh, I guess, to change this, change the system, change the system. That was part 01:35:00of the, part of the rhetoric at the time, and so the more things, we thought, were changed, actually, the more they stayed the same. So that was kind of the, kind of the energy that was going on on -- at least in my experience at the time.

RL: Uh-huh. So I think you had said yesterday, toward the end of the interview, that you were also reviewing the range of options for yourself, post-graduation, and there didn't seem to be a lot.

JH: No, I was, and I was talking to my friends because, we, you know, we were all in some sort of the same boat. Um, there was this business of the lottery that was coming in the spring of '71. But nobody had, I don't believe, had their numbers quite at the time in the fall of '70 yet. But in any case, talking to friends, I know that I remember some of them just saying they were going to go to Canada and that stuff. They were talking about that. Or they were talking about some other, um, becoming a conscientious objector, so there was 01:36:00discussion, uh, you know, in this group of people I was, my friends and so on about what we would do.

And I'm going, rehearsing this through myself, and so I know I looked at very briefly at the idea of becoming a conscientious objector. But I remember this quite clearly. It seemed like too much work. So I just set it aside because I wasn't really set up for it, and have a real history of it, and it looked like a lot of work. So real honestly, I just wasn't prepared for all of the homework that it would take to, to become considered for that. Plus, I knew that the draft board I would have to appear in front of was back in my hometown, that county, Manitowoc County.

And the head of the Draft Board there, I knew him from high school. He was a high school teacher. And his name was Kelly Cramer, and he had a reputation for rejecting all conscientious object, objection applications. And that's that Manitowoc County area, where everyone was expected to enlist. And if they didn't 01:37:00enlist, they were at minimally expected to accepted being drafted. So there really wasn't a lot of room for such things as, say, conscientious objection.

I also knew I didn't, really didn't have this thing about going to Canada, I wasn't comfortable with that idea at any, uh, at any time. I just felt I, I couldn't do that. I knew I wouldn't go to jail. I could not accept going to jail and that form of draft resistance. Um, so I really got down to it was I kind of didn't have a plan. I didn't have a plan heading into the spring of '71. I was just saying, okay, something is going to happen. But I don't quite know what it is.

RL: And you knew you would graduate. You had enough credits to graduate.

JH: I knew I had enough credits to graduate, but then it occurred to me, and I don't quite remember how it occurred to me. But it occurred to me that perhaps I didn't have to graduate.

I could drop a course and intentionally not graduate. And that, again, I don't 01:38:00remember how that occurred to me. But in the spring of '71, I had my required 120 credits, but I chose to drop a 3 credit course. That left me with 117 credits, which means I couldn't graduate.

So I wrote a letter to my Draft Board, and there was no guarantee they would approve it. But I wrote a letter to them and told them I needed an additional three credits to graduate. And I was applying to extend my 2-S deferment from the draft until the end of the summer of '71 so I could take three credits to graduate, and that would get me three more months, two and a half more months of time with the 2-S deferment. So what, it occurs to me, in reflection on that, and I remember this clearly too. My parents were expecting me to graduate.

RL: In May?

JH: In May, and they actually had asked me when it was, and they were going to come down and so on and so on for the graduation. So what normally would be a 01:39:00somewhat of a happy event, looking forward to graduation, looking forward to that whole ritual, became to me, an avoidance thing. I avoided the graduation. It was not going to be a happy day for me to graduate because when I graduated, my deferment would change, and I would become a classified 1-A for the draft. So it was a very, um, difficult time for me.

And I have a clear recollection of that because, again, I wasn't looking forward to graduation. I was, I didn't, because of what it, what it meant to me personally, I mean, that I was at risk to be drafted. And also, it was about that time, I don't remember exactly, but I think it was this, in the spring of '71, that lottery numbers were issued. And my lottery number was 113, and we had all this figured out. All my friends and I had talked about this, and we, we all knew where our risk was.

And certainly 113 for me was not good news because I think they were talking 01:40:00about using the lottery numbers up, up into the 200's at the time yet to fill out the, to fill out their quotas. So my number was not a good number. I had friends that got good numbers, and I was really rather angry about the whole, what I thought was unfairness because of my number. And I'm sure they saw it as being very fair because they had some higher numbers. But there was also just the fact that I didn't have any control over that. I was just handed a number.

And I remember, um, and not all my friends got good numbers. Some of them got, uh, terrible numbers too. But I remember going into a couple of bars the night that we got those lottery numbers when they were pulled, and we actually had these old deer, deer tags that deer hunters wear. And those of who had bad numbers, of course, we were displaying those in those, we had those pinned to our backs. So it was --

RL: This is called morbid humor.

JH: Morbid humor, you know, so I remember in the bar, in some of the bars that night, and we would, it was a mixed, lot of mixed emotions going on. There was 01:41:00celebration by the guys, students who had the good numbers, the higher numbers, and there was like a lot of sadness and so on --

RL: Jim, I've forgotten, were all the numbers drawn at one time?

JH: It was, it was my recollection they were. It was that one, that one night then, and again, I don't remember exactly when that was. So again, it was just a time of mixed emotions, what's going on, so, so the other thing that occurred to me was to get into the National Guard. And so I made an application to get into the National Guard in the Madison area in the spring of '71, but I really didn't have any, the National Guard units were pretty full, very full actually. And there was somewhat of a waiting list to get into them.

And it was just kind of I was just going through the motions. I didn't have any expectation of being in the National Guard, of getting into it. But it was just another option as opposed to being drafted or enlisting, anything like that, so --

RL: Jim, what did you hear from your Draft Board about delaying graduation through the summer?

JH: So, yeah, they sent me a letter, and they approved my application, which I was really surprised. They approved my application to defer my graduation for the summer, which allowed me to take the additional three credits to graduate. And I really don't know why they did approve it or what discussion was had. I just received a letter that said be approve it. In fact, I still have that, my letter of application and my letter of acceptance for that. So at least, I knew I had another summer of student deferment before then I would, then be eligible to be drafted.

And I was hoping again that something would happen to either have the war in Vietnam ended, in Southeast Asia ended, or some other circumstance happened that would then allow me not to be drafted because that was the [word unclear] was to 01:43:00buy time, buy time. So again, of this week, I knew that I would be graduating in August of '71, somewhat reluctantly.

RL: And you, and I assume, once you got that letter, you told your parents that you would not graduate in May.

JH: That's correct, yeah. They, well, actually, I told my parents that I didn't, that I was, they didn't know what I was doing. They didn't know my, um, my game plan. All they knew was I had told them I wouldn't be graduating in May of '71 because I didn't have enough credits. They didn't know that I had actually intended not to graduate. They didn't, I don't think they would have approved, and I'm certain they would've not approved in my, knowing them, certainly my dad wouldn't have. But in any case, they just knew, I just told them enough. But I didn't tell them all the reasons and so on.

RL: So then what do you do, Jim? Do you stay here, do you take your course in the summer?

JH: So I took, I don't, I don't recall exactly what the course was, but I spent 01:44:00the summer worrying, worrying a lot because I didn't know what I was going to do. I knew what I was not going to do, and that was enlist. I knew I was not going to Canada. I couldn't qualify to become a conscientious objector anymore, and I was just, I had just very, it was a time of uncertainty for me and really not knowing. And knowing actually, I didn't have any, much control over it, the things I, things I could do to control the situation, I wasn't prepared to do. So I was, um, just going along and just letting things happen.

And so when I graduated in August of '71, just almost immediately after I graduated, I got a letter from my Draft Board ordering me to take my physical in Milwaukee. And a couple of my friends who were graduating also and other people had gotten that same notice. And so we all ended up, you know, a number of us were scheduled for our physicals in Milwaukee. And we all went down on a couple 01:45:00of buses from Madison, on a Badger Bus to Milwaukee, to the, um, have our physicals taken.

And my experience with that was that there was just a lot of stuff going on. Guys were talking about what guys were doing, like either, um, taking drugs to alter their systems or to, um, physically bring up all this like football injuries, anything to get a 4-F deferment or some childhood thing or, in other words, all these strategies that were going on and talks being had because almost everyone on the bus and at the induction, at the place we took our physicals, almost every one was totally in a mindset where they were looking for every reason not to pass the physical. I didn't run into anyone who was saying this is a good day. Everyone I was talking to was saying, this is a bad day.

And so when we got down there, we went through the process of having our physicals taken, and, um, it was a very, it wasn't a good experience for me. I 01:46:00just not, I was just totally despondent about the whole thing. And then, of course, they had the, the really bad lunch for us down there, kind of a bologna sandwich kind of thing. So the whole day was just not good for me. And at the end of the day, I was told I had passed my physical. I was 1-A. I was going to be classified 1-A, which means I was physically able to be drafted.

And on the way back on the bus, it seemed to me, it seemed, I'm sure it wasn't true. But it seemed to me like everybody else had gotten some sort of a, had not passed their physical, had either gotten a 4-F, or they had gotten some sort of other deferment that they had not passed their physical. I know others had, but it seemed to me that was the, the mood, and it was, seemed that I was the only one on the bus who had passed the physical. And I was a very depressing ride back because, again, it was another step in the process.

Well, I graduated. I'd been ordered to take my physical. I had passed it. And now it was just a matter of time. It wasn't if I was going to be drafted, but how soon. And that's how I came back to Madison, a very, um, just very, I was very despondent about the whole thing.

RL: Uh-huh. So then, what happened?

JH: So then what happened was, I have no idea how it happened actually, but I was waiting for my induction notice to report for the draft, report to be inducted and sworn to the military. I was waiting for that. I was just hoping against hope it wouldn't happen. And I got a call from a National Guard unit in Madison, the 13th Evacuation Hospital in Madison, and they said they had an opening, and that I could, I could join the National Guard. And that was my, that was my salvation at the moment. It was an absolute moment of salvation because it meant, I didn't know anything about the National Guard. I didn't know 01:48:00anything about the process.

I didn't know anything about anything. All I knew was I wasn't going to be drafted. And I wasn't going to be sent in ultimately to Vietnam, which is what I think would've happened if I had been drafted. So it's like somebody handed me this gift. And it was called the National Guard. I had no idea what it meant, but my necessarily my obligations were, what the process was. All I knew it was a piece of good news and that was dropped on me.

So I eagerly accepted that, and right after I got the notice, within a couple of weeks, they ordered me to, uh, basic training. And I was sent to Fort Polk, Louisiana for my basic training, uh, in the National Guard. Again, this was an Army, Army unit, but it was a medical unit, and my training was going to be in X-rays. And the National Guard at the time was filled with people that were trying to get out of the draft. There was also, had like officers and NCOs that 01:49:00were either full-time military or had been. Some of them even had served in Vietnam.

But at the same time, all the enlisted guys were basically draft evaders, draft dodgers, draft, um, not draft resistors so much, but people that were avoiding the draft. So there was this, and I felt that same thing in basic training. It was just filled up with people who had been drafted, National Guard, Army Reserve, which many of them were just college graduates, so that the whole basic training thing was just an incredibly eye-opening experience because of the mix of people that were there, the people that wanted to be there because they had enlisted.

There were people there who were drafted, who were forced in, that they didn't want to be. There were National Guard and Army Reserve guys like me, who knew that once we got done with basic training, we'd be sent back home. But we were also in with the guys who knew they were going to be sent to Vietnam. So it was 01:50:00a very unsettling kind of experience, um, from the standpoint of going through it. I disliked it intensely, but I also, in reflection, knew it helped grow me up because it provided incredible structure and training and discipline, some of the things I probably had been lacking when I was a student or even growing up. So I use that in reflection, but at the time, it was just a bad, a bad experience for me.

RL: How long was basic?

JH: Eight weeks of basic training, and throughout the process, they were, um, the guys in base, the officers at, at Fort Polk and the sergeants and so on, NCOs were very, they had a very bad view of the National Guard guys, like me, and the Army Reserve guys. In fact, the initials for National Guard are N G, and they made us say the words no good because if they knew what we were, they knew 01:51:00we were draft dodgers, most of us in the National Guard and Army Reserve.

So they made up these words for us, and, you know, we took a little bit of hazing, if you will, from them. But that was acceptable because at least we knew we weren't going to Vietnam. Although, they threatened us that if we didn't perform the way they wanted us to or if we didn't, if we didn't behave ourselves, that they could activate us. So there was this little threat going on in the background, that if you don't perform or if you don't do this or that, we can activate you and make you regular Army, and that was kind of another bad piece of basic training.

So again, it was something I had no control over. I was just thrown into the mix with all these guys who were getting the same treatment. And we also were in with guys who we knew were going to go to Vietnam, who had been drafted, and they were, there's no question of where they were going to end up because Fort Polk was a basic training for infantry. So all the training we received there 01:52:00was for infantry that was, you know, used in Vietnam, whether it's rifles or grenades or evade, evasion tactics or whatever, all the training that was involved down there.

So I was in basic training from I want to say October is my recollection, October through December of 1971. And, um, we also received, some of this stuff was actually comical. We received civil defense training, which meant that if we were in a riot situation, we would be, this is how we were going to control the rioting. And it was basically, wait a minute, um, wait a minute. I'm being trained to control students who are rioting maybe. Wait a minute.

I'm training to control them. I'm, I want to, and it was comical, the training they were doing, but more, what was occurring to me was, whoa, wait a minute. I'm a, I want to be on the other side. I don't want to be on this side with the 01:53:00rifles and these ridiculous uniforms. I want to, I belong on the other side. So that's the first, one of the first times it occurred to me the irony of all of what is happening here was I'd spent four years at the University, and I'd been involved in all the protests and demonstrations and rallies and marches and on the street disruption and all this and that.

And the National Guard had been called to our campus, to the campus to control, help control things. And now I'm in this situation of being in the National Guard where I could be called up and sent to the campus to control protests and rallies and demonstrations and marches on, and it's like I'm flipping sides. And it was a very, very unsettling feeling. I was hugely, I can, I can still feel the irony of it all. I don't want to be where I am. But the situation is I'm here, and I could be sent to campus to control students that I used to be part 01:54:00of, so it was a very, a very different feeling, very ironic.

RL: Ironic to the max.

JH: Yeah, I was just like, I didn't have it sorted out. I didn't have it sorted out. I really didn't have it sorted out what I was going to do if I was called up, if I was going to try to create a reason not to go, like say I was sick, or if I would allow myself to get called up into the, you know, if the National Guard was called up, I'd go to campus, but then I'd go hide behind a tree, or I'd go, I mean, I really didn't have all this sorted out. All I knew was it was, like, oh, this is so weird, you know.

RL: Jim, what is so valuable about your interview is your conveying so well the really intent and desperate nature of those days.

JH: And that's exactly the, that exactly fits the feeling was there's desperation, there was -- lack of control was huge. I mean, you just had no 01:55:00control. My experience, and so many of the guys that I was with and talking to and met and became friends with or just had passing, um, hellos with, we were all like just in this craziness, just a craziness, and just, you didn't have control of it directly. We were put in these spots.

There were choices being made for us and we're left with the results. And we didn't have, we didn't have to think about the future because it didn't seem that we didn't have any future or necessarily any control over the future because it was all, it was all being created for us, and we were just marching along to the, to the decisions that were being made for us or that we had some small part of. Like [word unclear] accepting the National Guard. I could've enlisted. I could've allowed myself to be drafted. I could have done, gone to Canada or all these other things, but I chose, sort of chose, I guess I did choose, and then I'm left with some of this other stuff, like what if, what if, 01:56:00what if.

RL: So, Jim, you finished basic training in December of '71. What happens then?

JH: And then, um, right after that, I'm sent to what's called advance, advanced training, AIT, in San Antonio, Texas at Brooke Army Medical Center, and then I end up getting my training to become an X-ray specialist, which is my MOS, military occupation specialty. So that was 13 weeks, I believe, in San Antonio, which was kind of a country clubbish kind of training center. Again, we're being trained to be medics, and the key is I took basic medic training. I took advanced X-ray specialist training, so that when I was completely done, I was allowed, I was given this status as an X-ray specialist, and that was fine.

I mean, it was certainly better than being handed a rifle. It's certainly better 01:57:00than being in a tank unit, even in the National Guard. Um, my recollection again was that we, the whole time I was in basic training and the whole time I was in advanced training was that we were dealing with, I was dealing with certainly, with officers, with NCOs, even with other guys, who were being, going to be sent to Vietnam or guys who were going to be sent back to their home units in the National Guard or Army Reserve. So there was this sort of frictions going on.

There were sorts of emotional stuff going on because it's like we're all thrown into this giant pot, and we're trying to get along with each other, maybe, or they were trying to comply with rules. We're being maybe threatened a little bit. I was just trying to get through it. That's all I wanted to do was get through it. I wanted to achieve the best I could achieve so they had no reason to threaten me with activation, with being activated and sent, sent to Vietnam 01:58:00in my case. So like the whole time [word unclear] achievement, behaving myself, flying under the radar.

I don't want to be noticed. I don't want to be too good at anything. I don't want to, certainly don't want to fail at anything, but I want to achieve the best I can so that I just get through it. I want to get through it and get it done. So I finished my advanced training in San Antonio, I believe it was in, um, I want to say early April, 1971.

RL: Two.

JH: Excuse me, '72, thank you, April of '72, and then my next stop was for my, um, final piece of the training, which was an on-the-job training. It's called OJT, and depending on how we, how we had done in X-ray school, we could then get first, the guys who did the best could get the best assignments. And, for example, every, many people wanted to go to Indianapolis to the hospital there because it was close to Madison. Others wanted to go to Letterman Hospital in 01:59:00San Francisco or Walter Reed in Washington because they were like in these kind of big-city places. The guys like me, who were homesick wanted to get close to the home.

Or we had girl, I had a, my fiancé was living in Madison. So I wanted to get as close to Madison as I could. So I finished in the top ten in the class, but not number one. So by the time it was my time to choose, Indianapolis had already been taken. So the best I could do was Fitzsimmons Hospital in Denver, Colorado. So I ended up at Fitzsimmons for my OJT for a period, I want to say, of eight weeks. And this whole time, whether it's basic or whether it's advanced training or whether it's the on-the-job assignment at Denver, I'm just counting on the days and the weeks. I'm just trying to get through it all.

RL: This concludes Side 2 of Tape 3.