Feeling Patriotic in an Anti-American Atmosphere

Being a soldier or a soldier’s wife during the Vietnam War was not easy. The war was not popular and many looked down on soldiers as easy scapegoats. No one knows why the soldiers became so unpopular, but from the war being unpopular, the soldiers soon became disliked and then called baby-killers. Before long soldiers were being advised to change into civilian clothes before flying home so they wouldn’t be targets of protests.

Was became the short-haired military men stood out so much from the usual long-haired hippies who weren’t in the military, that it was obvious that they were in the army? Even the non-hippies wore hair much longer than the military men. Everyone who watched the Vietnam War on TV saw the atrocities and they blamed the soldiers they saw nearby because they couldn’t accuse the ones they saw on TV. 

While Ed was in Vietnam the first time, I stayed home in Bountiful expecting our first child in 1967. I went to the University of Utah for one quarter, and I felt the anti-war animosity indirectly. Everyone seemed friendly until they found out my husband was serving in Vietnam. Then the hostility about the war came out. The Tet Offensive occurred early in 1968 which was a military success, but a propaganda failure. That was when the anti-war sentiment changed from just the college campuses and hippies to other Americans.  I had never felt totally “apart” from the rest of society, but after that it was obvious that I was different. I can’t explain it; I can’t describe it; but I felt it. The only time I felt accepted was when I met with the “Waiting Wives Club” a group of women whose husbands were serving in Vietnam. 

It was worse the second time Ed served in Vietnam in 1970-71 and I was alone with three children under three years. I remember the apartment complex I was in having a summer party and I was the only one not invited, because as one of the neighbors explained, “You just wouldn’t fit in.” I was in a ward of mostly older families and I felt like every sound my three little ones made in church brought a lot of censure because they were the only children there.  So I spent most Sundays in the Church hallway trying to wrestle three little ones, feeling as though we were nuisances in the ward. I’ll never forget one older lady (her son was my age), who saw me in the hall and put her arms around me. “I had six children and my husband was in the bishopric and the stake presidency. I spent many years walking these halls with little ones. My heart goes out to you.” I’ve never forgotten her kindness and compassion. 

The war was even more unpopular, and protests were much more vocal by then. The war had spread unofficially into Laos and Cambodia, and everyone kept hoping the war would end “soon,” but it didn’t look like it ever would.  I felt everyone hated the war—and the soldiers and their families who were reminders of the war.

Halfway through Ed’s year’s second tour, I was able to meet him for an “Rest and Recovery” in Hawaii--a week-long vacation from war. While we were on Waikiki Beach, “The Smothers’ Brothers,” our favorite musical group gave a free concert, especially for all the military that were there on "Rest and Recovery." We were excited to go it. 

It was my first live concert; I was so thrilled to see the Smothers’ Brothers and hear them sing. It was an open concert on the grass and we went early to get close seats. I had a really nice camera that Ed had bought while he was in Vietnam, and I used it to take good pictures of them performing. We enjoyed their performance and the music so much.

The Smothers’ Brothers were very popular, but their show had been controversial. Some of the satirical jokes on their show on race, religion, censorship and the war had been considered to be anti-government and disturbed CBS, their network. Their show was cancelled.  However on that summer day on Waikiki where their music and jokes rang out to thousands of military members and their wives and girlfriends, none of that was apparent. The Smothers Brothers kept telling the military how much they appreciated the work they were doing. They said their father had been in the military and they had been military brats until their father had been killed as a Japanese POW in World War II. 

How ironic that some performers who had been blackballed because of anti-war jokes entertained and praised the soldiers who most Americans reviled and spat upon! Young men the same age as the soldiers in their audience sang and joked to them and made the soldiers feel at home in an America that rejected them! Other performers like Bob Hope performed in Vietnam, and lifted their spirit during the war; that was important! The Smothers' Brothers performed to soldiers on R & R with their wives and made them feel proud to be soldiers; and that was just as important.

Smothers' Brothers performing on Waikiki Beach

  

It was one of the few times during the Vietnam War that I felt proud to be a military spouse; one of the few times that I sensed Ed’s service, and my support was valuable. I never forgot the concert—or the feeling the Smothers’ Brothers gave me during years when I felt America resented my husband’s service.  God Bless the Smothers’ Brothers.

My "Little Women" Doll

I was named after Little Women’s “Beth.” As many of you know, she was the very good, self-sacrificing third daughter of the March family in Louise May Alcott’s civil war book. In 1949, my parents gave me a Madame Alexander “Beth” doll for Christmas. I can remember how excited I was that Christmas we spent at my Grandmother Hansen’s house in Monroe, Utah, and I saw that big doll (15 inches high) under the Christmas tree. I thought it was the most heavenly present I could ever get. 

The years prior to that had been very hard financially for my family; however, things had looked up and I think my family splurged that Christmas. I know that doll must have cost a lot more than any other gift I ever got for Christmas before or after that year. 

1949 Madame Alexander "Beth" doll

I loved that doll. It was special to me because it had my name, and as I got older, my mother told me about the story of Little Women and their life so long ago. I always took very good care of my doll. I never got her dirty, or acted like she was a baby doll. I knew she was special. As I became older and read the story, I identified, not with “Beth,” but with her sister, Jo, the author of the story. 

That doll was very precious, and as our family grew to seven children, that doll became a symbol of a time when I got a very valuable and expensive present.

When I was nine-years-old my mother had her first bout with breast cancer, and money became very tight. I shared a room with my two younger sisters and had very little privacy, but my doll was a symbol of something precious that was my own. I adored that doll and took very good care of her. I didn’t play with her a lot, but always made sure her clothes were clean, neat and that she looked very nice. She sat on a special place on my bed.

As I grew, I didn’t play with the “Beth” doll, but I always made sure she was in her special place. I always made sure her hair was neat and the little hair net kept it from being messy. I never lost her shoes or socks, and never let my younger sisters play with her. I told them she was not a “play doll” but a “collectible” doll—one you just looked at. 

When I was 14-years-old my mother had her second bout with breast cancer, and she was never really well again. As the oldest girl in the family, I had to take over a lot of the housework, and the care of the younger children, including my youngest sister, (I was 13-years-old when she was born). 

I worked part time after school my senior year to earn enough money to go away to college. I finally had my own bedroom, and my “Beth” doll said in a place of honor on my hope chest, as I dreamed of what I would become in the future. More and more I knew I wanted to write like Jo in Little Women. I also was very rebellious as a senior in high school, and as I looked at the “Beth” doll, I thought how I couldn’t be like her. I felt like I was letting my mother down, not being her ideal “Beth” as she’d dreamed I would be; but I also knew I had to be myself.

I went to Utah State University the fall after I graduated from high school; I left my bedroom to younger siblings, and all my belongings, too. I was so excited about my new adventures; I never wondered what would happen to my precious “Beth” doll.

When I finished my first year of college and moved back home, no one knew where my “Beth” doll was. It was gone. My youngest sister remembered playing with it, but nothing more than that. No one knew what had happened to it. My mother was dying, and the house was in turmoil. I became engaged the summer after I moved home, and got married that fall. I never did find my “Beth” doll or what had happened to it. 

My first Danish doll

I began collecting dolls after I got married, when my brother was serving a mission in Denmark and sent me a Danish doll. Since then I’ve bought many dolls from many countries, including a complete set of eight inch Madame Alexander “Little Women” dolls. I even have dolls from all over the world showing women doing different work. 

But I’ve always told my children about my conflict about being named Beth, but feeling like Jo. (Although, in the book Beth catches scarlet fever, and dies; in Hawaii, I caught scarlet fever and was very sick, especially when I developed glomerular nephritis. However, unlike the fictional Beth, I recovered.) I recently took four of my granddaughters to see the musical “Little Women” at Centerpoint Theater and told them the story of my name. 

Several years ago, my oldest son in Seattle had twins, a boy and a girl. He told me they’d named the girl after me. They’d named her Josephine—but planned on calling her Jo—my alter-ego. We had a good laugh because I know that’s the closest I’ll come to having any grandchildren named after me. 

My current "Jo" Doll

My current "Beth" doll