Cori Connors: Vietnam lottery

If you could hear her, my mother-in-law Helen would likely tell you herself that she was glad to have died before the creation of smart phones. She almost refused to use answering machines back in the day. She was one for one-on-one communication. It would have appalled her to watch the Olympics this year and see the athletes in the “podium waiting area” with their eyes fixated on their cell phones. Those palm sized machines are the great neutralizer these days. They numb all our profound and unique experiences by taking our focus from the moment.

Helen Connors (right) with Dave's sister, Jill

Helen Roy Connors was a liberated woman before being liberated was cool. But she was also a nurturing mother, a responsible citizen and a loving friend. She was a child of the Great Depression and had deep respect for our freedoms and the every-day gifts so many of us take for granted now. Her parents had made a a good living in world terms, by her father’s creativity and work ethic and her mother’s devotion and tenacity. Still, when Helen and Don married in 1950, her parents gave them two 50 pound sacks of Michigan Navy beans as a wedding gift. She had been raised with a good solid foundation of Christian values.

I’m not sure Helen would have been a fan of social media in any form. Trump would have totally done her in with his Tweets! I’m afraid it would have been much more than his Tweets that would have stirred her up.

Helen preferred to communicate by voice, or through lovely hand written cards with paintings by the great Impressionist artists printed on the front. She did tell me once, however, that she sent one telegram in her life.

It was in the early 1970’s, just after the draft lottery was published. Her two sons were of age for being drafted. On one fateful day of the year the Selective Service drew little blue capsules out of a box. Each capsule contained a birthdate, 366 in total. Young men gathered in their college dorms and friend’s houses to listen to live TV and radio broadcasts, telling them what their draft number would be. Parents sat solemnly in their living rooms, their hearts pounding, repeating their children’s’ birthdates in the back of their heads. Young men were sent to Vietnam as randomly as little balls rolled out of a bingo cage. The teenager who would one day be my husband, born on March 30, 1952, drew the number 191. His older brother, Mark, had his number drawn the year before, but chose to bypass the lottery and enlist. Helen and Don had lived through wars before. Awful ones, that altered their lives. It wasn’t that she was not patriotic. She just did not see any divine purpose for the Vietnam war, and she certainly was not a fan of the man in the White House.

I like to imagine the day Helen got into her car, drove to town, and marched into the telegraph office, determined to make herself heard. At least determined to speak, even if no one listened. I imagine her giving the information to the clerk: Her address, and the address of the recipient, and the message.

The recipient was Richard Millhouse Nixon, President of the United States.

The message was four words.

STOP THIS DAMN WAR.

You can say a whole lot more with 4 words than with a lengthy diatribe.

I need to teach myself to write as concisely as my mother-in-law.