In the 1960s Viola Staley was on a first-name basis with every Allen County male on or shortly after his 18th birthday. Staley held sway at the draft board in a second-floor office on the west of Washington Avenue in downtown Iola.
I remember trudging up the stairs, not knowing what to expect. The process turned out to be easy and quick, with me leaving minutes later and knowing for the time-being I was classified 1-A. A bit of paperwork gave me a deferment when I enrolled in college.
In 1965, about a year after I started work at the Register and a few months before Beverly and I married, I received a letter telling me to report for my induction physical and testing on such and such a date in Kansas City.
Eleven of us — as I remember I was the oldest, just short of my 22nd birthday — boarded the old Santa Fe Streamliner one morning and zipped north.
On arrival we were met by a grizzled old sergeant — at least 35 — who looked at us with obvious disdain. When he came to me he eschewed political correctness.
“No point in you even testing, fat boy,” he said, after surveying my girth. “You’re not going to pass.”
Then, several months before we dramatically expanded our role with ground forces in Vietnam, the Army had, according to the sergeant, “more men then we need.” Fact is, eight of the 11 who went to KC from Iola were sent home, not having measured up for one reason or another.
Had I been inducted, I would have served and very possibly would have spent some time in Southeast Asia.
Today several Allen Countians who served during the Vietnam era will be recognized with state medals during ceremonies at the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall in Chanute.
While war in Vietnam eventually became unpopular with many Americans, those who served were patriots of the first order and deserve recognition bestowed upon them. They stepped up when called and during the lengthy engagement more than 58,000 died.
Names of those who sacrificed their lives are on the permanent Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., and are replicated on the traveling wall.
If you missed the wall when it was in Iola a few years ago, you’ve another chance at Chanute’s Santa Fe Park. It’s there through Sunday.
Armed services take only the best
