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The Military Draft
By Congressman Dennis Kucinich
kucinich.us
Apr. 24, 2004
Congressman Dennis Kucinich was in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania on April 24 talking with the members of the community about the draft. Dennis shared this story about his early impressions of the impact the Vietnam draft had on American families.
Watch the video, listen to the audio, or read the text transcript below.
I'll tell you about the first job I ever had out of high school. I worked for the Cleveland Plain Dealer as a copy boy. One of the things I had to do as a copy boy was they sent me in occasionally to pick up pictures in people's homes. So I'll take you with me on one of these moments when I had to pick up a picture.
I'd drive up to a house and the houses always seem to look pretty much the same. They were single-story wooden frame homes where the paint was kind of chipped. And I'd walk up the stairs and the stairs would creak, and the boards on the porch were kind of bowed, and when I looked in the picture window there's a curtain that was kind of yellowed, and a little blue star in the window, so I went to the front door, I knocked on the door, people let me inside and the minute I walked inside I saw this carpet that was threadbare, you could almost see through it. And as soon as I walked in, the next thing I saw on the wall—this was the mid-60's—was a picture of Kennedy and a picture of Jesus, side-by-side. You know what I'm talking about.
And so people were sitting on the couch looking through albums trying to find a picture I could take back to the Plain Dealer so it would be in the next day's paper. Couldn't find one. Finally, they walked over to a television set, and on top of this television set, was a beautiful picture of this handsome young man, and he was in his service dress. Did he look handsome in his uniform! And they took the picture off the TV and they turned around and put it in my hands and said "Look, this is the best picture we have of our son. We want you to bring it back right away because when his body comes back from Vietnam we're going to put it on his casket.
I went to too many houses like that, I picked up too many pictures like that. I could look into the eyes of our children today, you know when you're 18, 19, you don't think you're a kid. You're a grownup, and in so many ways you are. But when you're in your 40's or 50's and you look at someone who's 18 or 19, you see them in a different way. I look into the eyes of our young people today, and they are starting to ask, "Am I going to be drafted?"
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