South Bend or South Korea

It was 1952. It was a tense conflict of wills between father and son.

The father, a firm supporter of Robert Taft who still hoped Taft could could manage to take the Republican nomination away from that interloper Ike, had discovered forbidden literature in his home. Pamphlets expounding on the wonderful qualities of ... Adlai Stevenson! Gasp.

The son, who owned up to having acquired those materials non-accidentally, was expressing the usual adolescent boy's rebellion against Dad, and a belief acquired somehow as a fairly typical high school student, that the New Deal has started something great 19 years before and that the great work ought to be continued, not derailed because people like his father were grouchy.

The father, a graduate of Notre Dame University, decided that a drastic measure was necessary. His boy would graduate from Nyack High in May. He must be told sternly that he would then attend Notre Dane, where the perfectly reliable faculty would straighten out his Commie-inflected ideas.

Days later, his rebellious son enlisted in the US Army. It would get him away from Dad. It would mean he would be supporting himself, and would have no reason to go to South Bend.

Of course, there was a war on. He might be sent there. Still: better, he thought, South Korea than South Bend. All things considered.

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