LBJ . . .

Lyndon Johnson became president when John Kennedy was assassinated.  Then he beat Barry Goldwater for his own term in 1964.  In March of 1968, when it seemed like Vietnam would never end and the bodies continued to pile up, Johnson announced that he would not be seeking re-election. 

I was in Fire Control Technician A School when that happened.  Milwaukee, Wisconsin was just an hour away on the train, and I found another LaSalette alumnus who was attending Marquette University.  And I started hanging out at college on the weekends, where I met and talked with numerous individuals who had many opinions about the legality and morality of the United States presence in Vietnam.  Which got me to thinking . . .

And while I was mulling this over, President Johnson made the announcement that he wouldn't be running again, and he did it in such a way that I felt compelled to write to him, and thank him for putting the good of the country above his own personal ambitions.  Or something like that. 

And I got a response!


I still have it.  It was typewritten, not mass-produced, and personally signed by Mr. Whitney Shoemaker, not a facsimile stamp.  I felt pretty special.  I found out recently that Whitney's office answered some 30,000 letters related to that one event . . .



But the coolest thing was the envelope.



One day, during mail call, after all the other mail had been passed out, I was invited to report to the FT A School office to pick up my mail.



When I got there, the chief petty officer on duty handed me this letter, but of course, since it wasn't opened, he couldn't tell what was inside. 


He had no idea who I was , or why I would be that important, or even if I was that important, but he was decidedly curious, since all he saw was this:

He looked at the return address, and asked me, "so what's this about?"

"It's a letter, chief," I replied.

"I can see that, you moron," he answered, "but why are you getting mail from the White House?"

"I don't know, chief, I haven't opened it yet . . ." I answered, and went back to class.

My navy track would have eventually had me working on Polaris Submarines, in guided missile fire-control radar.  And it occurred to me, I could be sitting some day on my submarine at my fire-control station when the order came to fire, and I could be the one whose duty would be to push the button that would initiate global thermonuclear war (that's a great phrase, isn't it?).  And I knew that I didn't want to ever get to that point, because I knew that I wouldn't push the button.  Shortly after the letter, I requested a change of status to "conscientious objector" and reassignment as a Hospital Corpsman . . . which I eventually got, but not before I spent a year at sea washing dishes (trays) and cleaning bathrooms (heads, we called them in the U.S.N.)