Covering the business of education and training

  It was on a pleasantly warm fall day in 1967 that I learned to hate. I wore my Sunday best even though it was a weekday and I stood on a gently rolling hill with my family and several hundred friends. The grass was still deep green, but the leaves on the trees had already begun to change to dark oranges, brilliant yellows, reds, maroons and yet unnamed shades of green. There were reminders placed throughout the hillside of others who had stood there before us to  perform the same kind of ritual for which we had gathered in that dedicated space behind the St. Vincent Church. The park was well groomed and we heard small tractor mowers off in the distance. My dad told me once that each time one of us six children was born, his heart grew another size to accommodate enough love for all of them. If love causes a heart to grow, I concluded that hatred must make it shrink. My heart was reduced in size that fall day for I began to hate a whole nation.

     Communism was on the move in the '60s. Specifically, the Commies or Reds, as we referred to them, had moved into North Vietnam. After that they were expected to move south, then into Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and onward until they took over the world. It was the peak of the Vietnam war.