Another Perspective on the Antiwar Activities of the ‘60s and ‘70s

Vietnam War photo by Larry Burrows, Life Magazine, Vietnam 1966, from “The 100 Greatest Military Photographs,” Number 4 on the list.

Imagine for a moment you are Wilbur Shirey, Clearfield Area High School Class of 1959.

Capt. Wilbur C. Shirey, U.S. Army, serving in Vietnam. Despite all that is around you, despite being away from your wife and family at Christmas time, despite feeling the sadness and loneliness within yourself, you continue to have enduring faith in your country and its system of government.

And then, in January 1967, a member of your family sends a full-page clipping from your hometown newspaper, The Progress, touting the antiwar activities of classmate Neil Buckley leading the antiwar protests and demonstrations on the Penn State campus.

The article is written by Daily Collegian Editor William F. Lee, another Clearfield High alumnus. The lengthy article states, in part:

What I would like to do,” Buckley was saying, “is to be able to sit down and read and write poetry and listen to good music and go for long walks by the sea. Unfortunately, there are things in this society which I see as wrong. In good conscience, I cannot allow these things to continue. I feel it is my moral duty to change them…

Buckley currently finds himself in the leadership of the Penn State chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. SDS is a five-year-old national student group which is at the apex of the New Left and which has led a successful community organization project in the Negro Ghetto of Newark, N.J. (and other less successful projects) and which is the primary student protest voice against the multiversity, the draft and the War in Vietnam (SDS sent a representative to Hanoi last year to get a first-hand look at the “other side” of the war).

From Bill Lee’s viewpoint, and perhaps the editors at The Progress, who chose to give the story full-page treatment, it all seems so romantic. So benign. In reality, so far removed from the military action in Vietnam.

What do you do? What do you feel? How do you respond?

Capt. Shirey pens a response, which is published by The Progress on Feb. 6, 1967.

Capt. Shirey Responds to Article on Neil Buckley

Yankee Papa 13, by Larry Burrows, Life Magazine, April 1965

Vietnam Veteran Voices Opinion on ‘New Campus Spirit’
(The Progress, February 6, 1967)

I write tonight (Jan. 18) from Vietnam after reading page three of The Progress (Postscript) dated Jan. 7, 1967, the subject of which was “A New Spirit on Campus.

I congratulate Bill Lee on the display of his prowess as a journalist. However, I criticize you for the use of an entire page of newsprint dedicated solely to the activities of an old high school classmate of mine, Neil Buckley, with the rather dubious distinction of “Leader of the Penn State chapter of Students for a Democratic Society.”

I am afraid that most newspapers give their readers a rather slanted view of college students by publishing the questionable actions of an extreme minority, but then that is what your readers enjoy, as I certainly did the above article.

My basic disagreement with the article probably stems from the fact that I fall into that category of people who would walk a mile carrying a can of gasoline and a carton of matches for gratuitous issue to all demonstrators.

I still have enough faith in my generation to think that Neil could more effectively voice his opinion through a more reputable organization than the Students for a Democratic Society.

Capt. Wilbur C. Shirey
278th Supply and Service Bn.
Vietnam

P.S. -- I also believe that if Neil would relinquish some of his extra-curricular activities, he could learn as much on the trimester system as he did on the semester system

41 Years Later, Wilbur Reflects on the Article, His Response and His Current Feelings

Photo by Brad Markel , Andrews AFB, 1991 - from “The 100 Greatest Military Photographs,” Number 89 on the list.

I should make it clear that I was a logistician, not a war fighter. The only shots I heard fired were by soldiers committing suicide at Christmas, 1966. That had a profound impact on me. I came home as I've said in November 1967, before Tet '68. I basically spent the rest of my career trying to repair the "hollow Army."

Repairing it with people and equipment. I went back to Vietnam for a year in 1970, but by then everyone knew we were just hanging on until Kissinger or someone could negotiate a peace and we could leave with some dignity.

I reread my letter a couple times, and I believe it represents my attitude and opinions at the time. My only regret on my letter is that I probably overstated my willingness to provide free gas and matches to the demonstrators who, at the time, were getting a lot of free press. I guess they were entitled to do that, I'm not sure.

I have a totally different attitude about war now than I did then. In summary, it's a good thing that the fighting Army is young. They are going to get this thing right, once and for all, and that's a laudable objective! God bless 'em!I was in a pretty structured environment at the time and had little tolerance for those who wanted to be free to do whatever they wanted to do which seemed to be what Neil was advocating. I thought you should join a commune if you wanted to do that but that a course of instruction should be just that.

It seemed to me that what Neil was advocating was a set up where the student leaders incurred no risk. If it worked, fine. If it didn't work, blame it on the establishment.

Having spent two years of my life away from my family in Vietnam with the suicides at Christmas time and then having dealt with all the drugs, divorces, child and spouse abuses that follow, to say nothing of the wounded and emotional casualties that left the Army that I never saw again, and the lack of funds to rebuild the "hollow Army," I have a totally different attitude about war now than I did then.

I think about this often, and with these latest wars, we are a victim of our own success. We save many more wounded than we did in Korea or Vietnam, but at a great cost. I hope our country is prepared to spend the resources it's going to take to care for these injured soldiers for the rest of their lives. It seems to be so easy and heroic for politicians to say we're going to war, but many or most have not a clue what that means! Maybe that's a good thing, I'm not sure

Neil Buckley and the antiwar demonstrators of the world do cross my mind occasionally. But every time, and instead of my heated emotions of that time, I thank God that we have Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press, otherwise we're just Third World.

- Col. Wilbur C. Shirey, U.S. Army, Ret.

An In-Depth Look at the Life and Times of Neil Buckley

Neil Buckley, Tom Trout and Amos Hixon at our senior Downbeat extravaganza. - Bison Photo by Orvis Kline

We’ve been down this road before. But like all things Neil Buckley, it’s worth another trip.

Suzy Sherkel Nagle rekindled the memories recently when she wrote in response to a question from Joyce Moody Fletcher as to whether Neil attended any of our class reunions:

Unless he was at the 5th (the only one I missed), Neil did not attend any class reunions. (Editor’s note: He didn’t show for the 5th, either.) He showed up on our doorstep once when we were living in Springfield, Ohio - in 1963, most likely. He was "on the lam" from the law (FBI, maybe) at the time, because he was very active in the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). I guess that means we were aiding and abetting a "criminal", huh?

He DID come to Clearfield every once in a while; and we'd manage to get together for a few hours. He even deigned to come to dinner once when we were living in Hillsdale. He wanted to listen to my dad's old jazz records. That's when he gave us the tape of his band "The Neil Buckley Octet", which we still have and cherish...I'd particularly like to know to whom I gave the original cassette tape that Neil gave us (of his octet). It had the titles and arrangers (listing Neil as such on many of the tracks) of the pieces. The one that we have is just a copy that we made (minus that info). I'm thinking that I "lent" it to some classmate at a reunion - maybe '79, '84 or '89. Perhaps you should start posting lost-and-found ads....

As far as I can recollect, since he refused to fly (or was unable to fly because of his lung condition), he didn't even come home for his mother's funeral! He was certainly one of a kind. Any other memories, anyone?

Dennis Mollura:

Yes, Suzy, lots of them.

I first met Neil Buckley in the Sixth Grade at Leonard Grade School in the fall of 1952 and in Boy Scout Troop 7 at the Trinity Methodist Church. At that time, my perception was that he was just another of the happy-go-lucky, prepubescent boys.

By the Ninth Grade, his personality began to present itself – at least to me.

Neil was a serious student. Late one Friday morning, for example, Mr. Eldon Nelson gave us an assignment to write a thousand-word term paper on some aspect of Pennsylvania History. It was due in two weeks. By Monday morning, Neil’s was complete. I hadn’t even begun to think of mine.

He was an Eagle Scout and a patriot. He and I usually sat together at the Clearfield High football games at the Driving Park and always stood to sing, loud and clear, the Alma Mater. We also stood to sing the National Anthem, home and away.

He worked at a part-time job after school sweeping up, I believe, at Rhine’s Tobacco Store or maybe Hembold and Stewart Insurance or Moore Wilson & Eshelman Insurance.(Someone please verify or correct me on this.) With his earnings he bought, among other things, a jalopy which he painted a weird purple and decorated (as I recall) with yellow flowers or some paisley-like designs - perhaps portending a Neil Buckley to come.

No one, it seemed, ever gave him anything. He worked hard for everything he earned. And earned everything he had.

Comedian, Musician and Athlete

- Bison Photo by Orvis Kline

Neil was a comedian, a musician and an athlete. Who can forget his hilarious Downbeat duos with Denny Boal?

He loved jazz and played the xylophone and saxophone in small groups and in the Downbeat. There’s an Orvis Kline photo in the 1959 Bison of Neil in beatnik garb (see photo above, at the top of this Neil Buckley posting) on a huge saxophone (believe it’s called the contrabass sax) with Tom Trout and Amos Hixon. Hilarious.

At various times, he ran track and played JV football, basketball, and baseball. He didn’t particularly excel at any of them, but at least he was on the field. In the 1959 Bison, he was voted the "wittiest male" by his classmates.

A bit of his rebellious personality also began to emerge. He called his mother “Helen - not Mom or Mother. Helen. For most of us, such “disrespect” would have warranted a good slap on the back of the head. But Helen, being Helen, simply rode with it. Or maybe even encouraged it.

Neil's Undergraduate Years at Penn State

In his undergraduate years at Penn State, Neil again was a serious student and showman. I recall walking between classes during the two-week freshman hazing period and, almost without fail, seeing him standing high on an exterior stairway or park bench being taunted by a group of upperclassmen. And Neil, again being Neil, always could be counted upon to make a speech:

"As everyone knows, this class of freshmen has the highest I.Q. of any class before us!”

For whatever that was worth, Neil made it known. And a substantial number of Penn State students were thus informed. Finally, it occurred to me. These were not random events. They were set-ups. Neil was hazing them!

Neil and I roomed close by in the West Hall dorms through much of our undergraduate years. He always seemed an earnest, high-achieving student. His assignments were always completed in advance. Mine sometimes lagged. I remember that at the end of our senior year, I was wholly unprepared for our final open-book exam in English Literature. He loaned me his paper to copy and crib. Believe he got an A or B. I got a D, and was grateful for it - needing every single credit to graduate early.

We graduated on the same day in March 1963. I never saw him again.

- Dennis Mollura

Some Memories of a Changed Neil Buckley from Suzy Sherkel Nagle

During high school - summers, mostly - Neil and John Berthot (who was two or three years ahead of us) used to come to my house to listen to my dad's jazz records. My mother always told me that she had known Neil's father was a jazz musician somewhere in the Pittsburgh area. Neil, among others, also used to come and sit around our dining room table when it was time to get our U.S. History notebooks up to snuff for Harold Wisor's scrutiny or to study for tests.

I think it was at the very beginning of the summer after our sophomore year at Wittenberg that my roommate, Marilyn Bitler, came home with me on the way to her home in New Jersey. Neil came to visit and was "smitten" (Marl was a stunner!) with her. Then, later that year, when we were back in school, he and Jim Stewart came to Springfield, OH to spend a weekend.

I also remember one summer (late 60's or early 70's), when I was "home" with our kids spending time with my folks, my mom told me that Helen Lantz (Neil’s mother) had called to tell her that Neil was in town. So I went to Helen and Dick's house on West Market St. and had a really weird visit. At that time everything Neil said had to do with the "coming revolution", and he never used the personal pronoun "I". It was all "we". I chided him about that, and he accused me of "selling out" to the establishment! Helen later apologized for that. (She was the truant officer for the school district, and I used to see her a lot in the high school office.)

Neil Buckley Leads "Campus Wars" Against Vietnam War

- Clipping from The Progress, Clearfield, PA - January 7, 1967

Following are excerpts from the book “Campus Wars – The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam Era” by Kenneth J. Heineman, published in 1993.

Publishing these excerpts is intended neither to glamorize nor disparage Neil Buckley’s participation and leadership in the movement. It is simply an effort to illuminate Neil’s activities, ideas and writings at the time.

Heineman writes:

"Neil Buckley, a 'Hollywood version of a campus radical,' his critics claimed, had an enormous ego as well as ambitions to become a national New Left figure. Jealous of (another’s) influence in the chapter, Buckley at one point had to be restrained from beating up his rival. When Buckley and Creegan were not fighting each other, they were locking horns with Pam Farley, who was increasingly disgusted with the male SDSers’ sexism. In December 1965, at a national SDS conference in Illinois, Farley had encouraged the women delegates to meet separately in the ladies’ restroom…

"The winter of 1967 began miserably for SDS and then worsened. SDS’s unpopularity on campus mounted throughout the winter. At a SDS dormitory forum in January, a student argued that if SDSers did not like the university, they should drop out of school. Buckley replied that such an action would be like “committing suicide if one does not like the world rather than trying to change it. The audience then urged Buckley to commit suicide...

"Following that incident, the chapter learned that it lacked even minimal student support… Even though a number of SDSers, including Buckley… had grown weary of campus organizing and decided to drop out of school, they enthusiastically laid plans for a serious of spring actions against the war...

"A number of PSUers that summer eschewed street protest for their own version of community organizing, establishing a commune in nearby Bellefonte. Initially Buckley, who had announced with much fanfare his intention to leave school in order to work for revolution, sought to create a communal environment which would serve to radicalize the working poor. However, the SDS commune quickly became a magnet for juvenile revelers. None of those teenagers were interested in SDS diatribes on revolution. Indeed, the often drunken street kids physically intimidated the middle class SDSers.

"By autumn, the commune had disbanded, succeeding only in convincing the locals that SDS wished to corrupt the mores of those children."

Non-Believers Need Not Apply

More from "Campus Wars.." by Kenneth J. Heineman, 1993:

"SDS leader Neil Buckley did not welcome doves and libertarians into the movement unless they first recanted their political errors. Thus, with just sixty determined members, SDS claimed the (Penn State) campus antiwar movement as its own, and fraternizing with…the enemy, became unthinkable….

In one of his letters to another antiwar leader, Buckley said: … "the more I think about your suggestion for a coalition between the New Left and the libertarian right I get cramps in my brain…simply allowing the concept of civil liberties as defined by the Constitution –- which we see for what it is—to be perpetuated within our movement is detrimental, both because it allows people to take out frustrations through a system which in no way changes the basic tenents of capitalism and because it is internally inconsistent to base any of our analysis on the civil libertarian analysis which is several centuries out of date. Honest to Christ, Carl, sometimes I can’t figure out your politics."

Neil Outlines His Objectives for SDS

Again, from "Campus Wars..." by Kenneth J. Heineman, Neil outlined his objectives or game plan for revolution around the time of a major antiwar gathering at Michigan State University:

"First that this movement in general and SDS in particular is ultimately committed to the destruction of imperialism and the recommitment to the requisto (sic) destruction of capitalism;

"second, that our movement is an element of the revolutionary vanguard painfully forming from the innards of America;

"third, that the object conditions for revolution are not with us, but are coming up (relatively) fast, and that our revolutionary conditions must be condition for the coming struggle;

"fourth, that by the time the revolution is upon us, we will have transformed from the movement as we know it today into a revolutionary political party;

"fifth that that we have not fulfilled our potential as a political movement in the past and, if we continue to follow our past course, that we will suffer deeply as a total movement;

sixth, that our failure, while in part a result of personal contradictions, is ultimately solvable in term of organizational restructuring;

"and seventh, that now is the time to change our subjective conditions to meet new objective conditions realizing that simultaneously, we must develop still newer forms of organization which will supplant those we now form when the former shall have outlived their political relevance."

Neil's Message (His Last) to CAHS Classmates Prior to 40th-Year Class Reunion in 1999

(Note - Click on the message to enlarge.)

What More Can You Say...?

.
In the end, Neil Buckley traveled full circle:

- From Eagle Scout, high-achieving student, comedian, musician, athlete and “patriot” singing his high school alma mater and National Anthem loud and clear;

- To antiwar leader actively advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. In this respect, he most certainly considered himself a "patriot";

- To PhD student and graduate, musician, big band sideman and band leader, pharmaceutical chemist, editor of scientific publications, and grower of heirloom tomatoes (26 varieties), peppers (20 varieties) and housecats (from a high of 6 to a low of 1).

One thing you can say: In whatever direction Neil chose to travel, he was earnest. Earnest beyond description.

Neil Buckley died of a lung ailment on December 14, 2003, in his adopted hometown of Sebastopol, CA .

I loved Neil Buckley. I always will.

- Dennis Mollura