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Blogs by Jean Sheldon
One Man’s Peace is Another Man’s War 6/5/2007 6:09:39 AM
In 1968, along with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, my older brother died. He was serving in Viet Nam. I was seventeen at the time and numb. I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand the war, I didn’t understand death, but mostly I couldn’t get my mind around the fact that my brother wasn’t coming home. Who was going to pick on me? Who was going to grab me by the collar and pull me out of my latest mess?
Many of the guys in our area went to Viet Nam. Some came back, some didn’t. We lived in a working class neighborhood. Poor and working class are traditionally the backbone of the war machine. There weren’t many Rolexes in the trenches.
A few years later, I ran into a woman on the street that I knew only through others. There was a protest march preparing to start, one thing led to another and I mentioned my brother’s death.
“You must be furious with what’s going on.” She said.
“I am.” I answered.
“These protestors should spend the rest of their lives in prison.”
I stared at her, until I finally understood what she meant. She thought, because my brother died I would support the war and hate the people fighting against it. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather, as they say. I picked up the sign I had been carrying earlier.
“What does that say?” She asked.
“This says what my brother died for.” I turned the sign so she could read the three words I’d painted in bright red letters. ‘Stop the War’.
