Keeping the peace: A conscientious objector reflects

By F. Josephine Arrowood
Sun contributor

Memorial Day traditionally signals the start of summer, festively launching Leelanau County’s flotilla of villages into waves of visitors, family gatherings, beach outings and more. Some folks still recall the holiday’s original purpose, begun after the Civil War. Veterans offer paper poppies, civic groups lower the flag, and communities tidy the graves of their fallen warriors, who “gave their last full measure of devotion” to the nation.

Yet other citizens reflect on their own acts of courage in wartime, in the face of family censure, social ostracism, and even institutional violence. Conscientious objectors (COs) choose to say no to war, and more important, to say yes to other means of resolving conflict.

Pottery artist John Huston of Interlochen (and manager of the Glen Lake Artists Gallery in Glen Arbor) confronted the choices of going to war as a youngster during the Vietnam War. As the son of a career Navy officer, his family was firmly rooted in the armed forces tradition. John grew up all around the country, living on or near bases and attending school with kids in the close-knit military community.

“My older brother and I just assumed that we would go into the military. It was kind of glamorous and exciting, and of course, we lived that life; it was really a part of the culture,” he recalls. His brother did join the Navy as a bomber pilot, and served three tours of duty in Vietnam.

However, John began to reassess his outlook. “As a teenager, I was exposed to different thinking. We were inundated by what was happening over there, the murky situation … they showed people being killed, the bodies being unloaded. I eventually became antiwar.”

John decided to study political science at Quaker-based Earlham College in Indiana, where one of his faculty mentors was a former fighter pilot.

“He helped me decide to get my conscientious objector status. It was really hard; it had to be based on religion,” or an individual’s well-documented ethical and moral beliefs.” Clearly, his family’s history was far from the pacifist traditions of the Amish, Mennonites or Quakers.

With the end of student conscription deferments, John received his selective service number, and waited to be called up. “If your number was lower than 100, there was a good chance you’d be drafted. My number was twelve!”

He notes wryly, “I wasn’t a ‘dodger,’ because I actually got drafted. I had to take the physical, all the tests.” He appeared before the draft board in Findlay, Ohio, where he had attended high school. “They were all the fathers of my friends, and knew my father. They asked questions like, ‘So you think what we did in World War II was wrong?’ They really appealed to your patriotism, and what your father had done. My dad went into the Navy in the 1930s because he wanted to fly.” Surprisingly, he supported his son’s decision with a letter supporting John’s CO status.

“What struck me was that people didn’t even know they had other choices. They hadn’t thought through whether to go as an instrument of your government to kill other people. Once you look at it from that perspective, your outlook about everything changes. It’s a lifelong commitment. I saw the CO experience as very positive.”

He notes that much of the antiwar protest was “violent in its own way. I thought of going to Canada. But my attitude was, this is my country: go through the system, accept the consequences, and do my alternative service.” As a hospital orderly in Dayton, Ohio for two years, he “did everything from changing bedpans to taking vital signs and prepping patients for surgery.”

After finishing his antiwar service, John tried his hand at wheel-thrown pottery, and discovered an aptitude for the medium, which he likens to a spiritual discipline. “You have to ‘center’ the clay, your being, enter that quiet space.”

Years later, the artist discovered northern Michigan with his wife, Amy Stevens, who teaches English at Interlochen. In the summer, the couple manages the cooperative Glen Lake Artist Gallery in Glen Arbor, and John teaches pottery through the gallery’s Glen Arbor Art Association, motivating others to “contemplate the big questions,” through creative action.