Comment

The Bob Cesca Show: Cruel Whimsy

336
mmmirele12/06/2017 8:00:27 am PST

re: #325 HappyWarrior

The Romney mission thing always rubbed me the wrong way. My grandfather served with LDS guys, they weren’t as connected as Mitt’s family though. He liked them. I joked that maybe it was because he could bum cigarettes off them in their rations more easily but as I recall, he said even they needed a smoke sometimes. That’s America for you though, Slovene immigrant’s kid from a coal town in the East serving with Mormons from the West. It’s actually that principle that has my dad supportive of national service requirements- doesn’t have to be military.

I can tell you why that is. Back during the 1960s, the Mormon church had an unwritten policy that only a few young men in each ward were to be allowed to serve missions and thus, get an exemption from military service. Romney was one of the lucky young men; many others got drafted into the Vietnam meat grinder and some never came home.

One of my friends, Mormon in Utah, well, his parents were (unusually for Utah) antiwar and they were going to ship him off to relatives in Canada to avoid the draft. He, however, had come up with a solution on his own. He was going to literally shoot himself in the foot. Thankfully for all concerned, the war started winding down and the draft was discontinued. But he was dead serious about the shooting himself in the foot part. He was not going to Vietnam.