When several days later the White House requested that I be detailed to the Presidential Clemency Board from my position at the Veterans Administration, the VA balked at letting me go. I thought for a while that I was not going to be allowed to join the board; but Chairman Goodell then made his request more emphatically, and by mid-October I was ensconced in an office in the Old Executive Office Building and taking an active role in the board's formative work. For the first several months we decided very few cases, concentrating instead on the development of policies and procedures and laying the groundwork for the hectic months ahead. By Christmas I had begun presenting cases to the board, and I had gained enough of an overview to see the hugeness of our task and to appreciate the divergent perspectives of the nine board members.

They had been chosen as much for their prominence as for their ability to evaluate cases. Their individual philosophies covered the political spectrum. Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame University, and Vernon E. Jordan, executive director of the National Urban League, were widely regarded as the liberal board members, and General Lewis W. Walt, former assistant conmiandant of the Marine Corps, and Dr. Ralph Adams, president of Troy State University in Alabama, were considered conservatives. The viewpoints of the other members generally fell somewhere between, but it was not uncommon to see board members struggling to divorce themselves from their own perspectives and decide the cases impartially. I knew by the time I had presented several cases that I wanted to be deciding cases rather than working them up for the board's evaluation, and by late winter I had begun to see a way toward my objective.

As word of the Clemency Board spread to the American public and to potential apphcants, the board suddenly found itself flooded with applications. The controversy over the board's work created by a liberal element that thought we were offering too little and by a conservative element that took the opposite view, while discomfiting, was good for business because it increased our visibility among the potential beneficiaries we were trying to reach. We did our

best to increase that visibility even further by taking our program to the people through radio interviews and television appearances by board members in major cities across the country. We also sent tapes to radio and television stations and mailed informational literature to organizations that we thought could reach potential participants. In January 1975 alone we received three thousand applications for clemency, and by mid-April 1975 the number had grown to about twenty thousand cases. What had begun as a trickle back in September, when the program was first announced, had become a torrent, and the staff had to be increased by a factor of ten and the board size doubled to handle the work load.

When I realized that the board was going to be doubled, I started my own campaign to have senior staff members lobby for a position for me. I was proud of the work that the board was doing, and with one or two exceptions, the members were dedicated, hardworking men and women who had the best interests of the country and the applicants at heart. On the other hand, there was not a single board member who had paid the price that I had or who was more entitled to have a say in the fate of the veterans we were judging, and I was not going to be denied a position on the board when it was expanded.

I asked for and got an interview with Chairman Goodell, and when I explained to him that I was prepared to resign my position on the staff rather than continue to work for new members who were less deserving and less competent than I, he puffed on his pipe and regarded me soberly for several seconds. He then grinned broadly, came out from behind the desk, and placed his hand on my shoulder and told me that he had already sent my name over to the White House with his unqualified endorsement. I suddenly felt very foolish that I had taken a stand when none was needed, but after I had thanked him and backed out of his office, my whoops of joy brought several curious office workers out into the cavernous halls of the solemn Old Executive Office Building to see who was making such a spectacle.

In late April 1975 the Ford administration selected the

new members of the Presidential Clemency Board, and we were invited to the White House for an orientation session. The meeting was convened at noon in the Roosevelt Room on the second floor of the White House, and as I took my place, I felt humbled to be part of such an important endeavor but a little light-headed to be meeting in such a grand setting. Despite my good fortune and the surroundings, however, I also was saddened over the news coming out of South Vietnam.

In March the Communists had begun a major offensive in Vietnam's central highlands, and on March 11 the key city of Bau Me Thuot was captured. President Nguyen Van Thieu responded by ordering his army to abandon the north-em two-thirds of South Vietnam, and as his troops retreated, the operation turned into a rout. By the end of March cities where American marines and soldiers had fought and died were toppling like dominoes, and Pleiku, Quang Tri, Hue, and Da Nang all were overtaken by the advancing North Vietnamese Army. In addition to our having to witness the personal tragedy of uprooted refugee families being deprived of their homes and possessions, it was now crystal clear to me that America's involvement in Vietnam and my own sacrifice had been for naught.

President Thieu resigned on April 21, and a week later the remaining Americans in Saigon, with the North Vietnamese Communists closing the loop around the capital, were evacuated by helicopter. On April 30 Saigon surrendered without a fight, and for the first time in three decades there was no fighting in Indochina. The American war effort had cost us in excess of $140 billion, had produced more than two hundred thousand American military casualties, including more than fifty thousand deaths, and it had created a grotesque scar on the American people that was as palpable and would be as long-lasting as the scars that I would carry to my grave. The cost to Vietnam was, of course, immeasurable, and although the Ford administration attempted to accommodate the Vietnamese refugees who poured out of their ravaged country in the six months following the end of the war, such measures could never atone for the consequences of our misadventure or set right a fifteen-year rec-

ord of a tragic involvement that was as ineffective as it was ill conceived.

With the unraveling of the war in Vietnam as background for the Clemency Board's initial meeting in the White House, I was beginning to find it unconscionable that so many of the young men on whom we were going to be sitting in judgment should continue to be penalized for their actions. President Ford had established the clemency program with the best of motives and in the spirit of forgiveness, but it was unsettling to me that the individuals most directly affected by the war should now require forgiveness while the architects of the war bore no stigma at all.

Having been promoted from a staff position on the board, I was far more familiar with the profiles of our ap-pUcants than were most of the new board members, and I wondered how they would approach their task as our briefing began. Of our eighteen members, only four were Vietnam veterans, and when it came time for the new members to introduce themselves, it was difficult to get a reading on any of them. When it came my turn to speak, I dispensed with the biographical format most of my predecessors had used and simply said that my name was Lew Puller and that we all would know each other much better all too soon.

Over the course of the next five months I reviewed the case histories of more than five thousand military deserters and draft evaders. The program was structured so that staff attorneys prepared case sunmiaries on the applicants, which then were furnished to the board members prior to our deliberations. We read the summaries ahead of time and then met in three-member panels to make case dispositions. If the panel recommendation was not unanimous, the dissenting member could refer the case to the full board, where it would be considered anew, but overall the panels were able to reach agreement most of the time. Usually the only issues to be decided were whether the applicant should be granted clemency and, if so, whether a period of alternative service should be required as a condition of receiving clemency. As a result of our deliberations we granted clemency in almost 95 percent of the cases we evaluated, and in those cases where we required a period of alternative service, the aver-

age length stipulated was a little less than six months. In exceptional cases we recommended that veterans' benefits be restored to some of our applicants, but those cases were extremely rare and usually involved individuals who had been decorated for heroism in Vietnam and then gotten into trouble after returning to the United States.

Once the board became fully operational with a staff of more than six hundred employees borrowed from other a-gencies, there was tremendous pressure on it to complete its work by September 15, 1975, the deadline imposed by President Ford. During the spring and sunmier months we made nearly fifteen thousand case recommendations, which meant that the individual panels were collectively processing almost a thousand cases per week at the peak of our productive phase. Because we worked at breakneck speed and because the board members had such divergent political views, tempers sometimes became frayed, and a few of our sessions were explosive.

After I had reviewed cases for several weeks, I began to realize that the majority of our military applicants were the by-products of both a terribly unfair conscription system and a tragic war that never should have been fought. Out of the general population of draft-age men during the Vietnam era, fewer than one in ten ever served in Vietnam, yet many of those same Americans whom chance and coincidence had conspired against to require the heaviest sacrifice were now doubly burdened by stigmatizing military records that would follow them for the remainder of their lives. Unlike the civilian applicants, who made up less than 15 percent of our eligibles, the average military case fitted a profile that was all too often heartbreaking. Generally, he was from a broken home, had not completed high school when he joined the service, and had personal and family problems that severely limited his ability to perform his military duties in a productive manner. There were, of course, gross examples of applicants, both military and civilian, whose behavior was manipulative, cowardly, and without any redeeming features, but by and large, the men on whom I sat in judgment were the unlucky detritus of a flawed system and in many cases were truly spoils of war.

I gradually came to the conclusion that it was better to err on the side of leniency than to take a hard line with most cases, and my attitude did not sit well with some of the less forgiving of our members. Among them was General Walt, who had served in the Second World War, Korea, and Vietnam and who had been a protege of my father's for much of his distinguished career. General Walt had driven down to Saluda to comfort my family immediately after I was wounded, 2uid his close relationship with my father made our differences of opinion on Clemency Board matters doubly painful for both of us. The first few times we were assigned to the same panel, we each made an effort to accommodate the other's views, but our differences were so profound that eventually the chairman made certain that we were kept apart when sessions were scheduled.

General Walt, like many of the board members, was hardest on the applicants from whom he expected the most, in his case marines, and the higher standard to which he held them drove me up the wall. In one case, at the end of a session on which we had gone head to head for several hours, he voted "No clemency" for a marine because the man had in his record a nonjudicial punishment for going to sleep at his duty post in a rear area of Vietnam. When I moved to have the case forwarded to the full board, he stormed out of the room, leaving a dozen startled lawyers waiting to present cases, and paused only long enough to let me know that with my liberal tendencies I was never going to make it very far in Washington, D.C. After that episode all pretense of civility between us was destroyed, altfiough I took a callow satisfaction from then on at full board proceedings when my views prevailed over his. To this day I believe that General Walt was deeply hurt that he could not bring the son of his lifelong hero around to his own views, but I think he also understood and admired me for standing up for my own convictions.

Although we made most of our case dispositions on the basis of abstracts prepared by staff attorneys, applicants were afforded the opportunity to make personal appearances before the board, and in those rare cases when applicants chose to exercise that option, the sessions were always

highly charged. In one particularly memorable case a conscientious objector who had fled to Canada during the war came back to appear in person, and sitting in the audience at the hearing were his mother, who had not seen him in several years, and another woman, whose son had been killed in Vietnam. After we had decided to grant the applicant clemency, the two mothers embraced, and as their tears intermingled, I was overcome with emotion that they could be so bonded by the common pains of their sons' divergent experiences.

Unfortunately such understanding was all too rare. In retrospect I am dubious that our effort went very far toward healing the scars of the Vietnam War. Although the staff and board members were for the most part conscientious, hardworking men and women who brought skill and focus to a difficult assignment, toward the end of my tenure I began to see that our work bore political ramifications that were given far more consideration than the welfare of our applicants. I continue to believe that the primary purpose of the i president and his advisers in setting up the Clemency Board was to quiet some of the political controversy over the Vietnam War and that anything we might have done for our applicants was secondary. That realization, in the last weeks of my service, gave me an uneasy feeling again that I was being used and turned much of the pride I had taken in my work on the board to ashes.

In the weeks just prior to the disbanding of the Clemency Board, we were given some paybacks for our time and effort. The first was a river cruise and cocktail party aboard the presidential yacht. Sequoia. On a sultry afternoon in early August the board members and senior staff and their spouses gathered at the Washington Navy Yard, where we , were welcomed on board by a crew of naval officers and enlisted men. For the next three hours we cruised up and down the Potomac River, pretending that we were important dignitaries and availing ourselves of the president's mess and well-stocked bar. While we cruised, four navy speedboats, two fore and two aft, kept curious river traffickers from approaching us, and by the time the party ended, I could see clearly, despite the Pouilly Fuisse and elegant fm-

ger food that I had consumed, that all was not sacrifice and hard labor at the upper echelons of government service.

A week later we journeyed to Camp David in the Ca-toctin Mountains to spend a working weekend putting the finishing touches on a report to the president. Again we were wined and dined, this time amid the majestic pines and gorgeous foliage of the Maryland mountaintop. We were housed two by two in rustic green clapboard cabins, but our working sessions and meals took place in the lodge, with high-vaulted ceilings and an unobstructed and breathtaking view of the mountains. For diversion there were skeet shooting, swinmiing, bowling, and horseback riding and at night first-run movies.

Amid such luxury it was tempting to take a charitable attitude toward the administration that hosted our weekend, and the report that emerged as a result of our labors on Sunday afternoon was considerably more sanitized than the working version that the staff had forwarded to us on Friday evening. Most of the board members present had been picked, among other factors, for their loyalty and allegiance to the Republican party, and as had been the case so many times in our deliberations of the last several months, party loyalty and a desire not to embarrass the administration were as strong a motivation as our search for an objective and truthful rendering of our experience.

One chapter that was highly critical of the inequities in the draft that had persisted for much of the Vietnam War was deleted in its entirety, and as we debated its removal, I was again seized by a strong feeling of being manipulated. Nevertheless, I could see some merit to the argument that it was not within our charter to pass judgment on the Selective Service System, and I acquiesced in the majority vote and continued to accept the bountiful food and drink of our hosts.

After we had completed our work on the Clemency Board and turned over to the Department of Justice the remaining cases on which we did not have enough information to proceed, the board members were invited to the White House Cabinet Room to be personally thanked by President Ford for the work we had done. Special parking

was arranged for me near the White House, and as I entered the room, most of the members were already seated in the leather chairs around the polished antique conference table. Each chair at the table bore a brass plaque that identified the cabinet secretary for whom it was normally reserved, and as the board members waited nervously for the president to make his entrance, I parked my wheelchair next to the door at the head of the table and read as many of the plaques as were within my view. Five minutes later, when President Ford was announced, he strode through the door beside me, and startled by my appearance, he locked his eyes on my lap before they rose to meet my own curious stare. The moment was over in a split second, and he quickly regained his composure and went to his seat, where he gave us an impromptu talk on the fine work we had performed on his and the nation's behalf, but I found it amusing that the president of the United States had been more taken aback by me than I by him.

After his little speech he shook hands all around, and we then proceeded to the Rose Garden, where he made the same type of speech for the benefit of the press and the Clemency Board staff members who had been invited to the outside ceremony. Before he began, however. Chairman Goodell, without asking my permission, moved my wheelchair to the dais from which President Ford addressed the crowd, and although his intentions were probably honorable, I felt taken advantage of and not unlike a trophy placed on display for the press. I said nothing; but I was resentful that I was being used as a prop for a presidential photo session, and my resentment did not abate when we were politely but quickly hustled out of the Rose Garden by the Secret Service after the ceremony to make room for whatever delegation the president was going to address next.

Looking back, I think we may have done some good for the applicants whose cases we heard, but that good was insignificant when weighed against the irreparable haiTn caused by the four administrations that mired us in Vietnam and then refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing or culpability. To this day I think we, as board members, were in the

business of determining the guilt of the wrong people, and it was for me as shattering an experience as the loss of my legs and a dozen good friends in Vietnam to discover face-to-face the arrogance and the blindness that so often passed for leadership during the Vietnam era.

Eiglii

When the Clemency Board was disbanded in the summer of 1975, I returned to my old job at the Office of General Counsel of the Veterans Administration, but I was restless and out of tune with the bureaucratic regimen of mid-level government lawyers. At the Clemency Board I had been a player in an exciting venture, but after having been back at the VA for a few months, I began to feel like a pawn in a game over which I had no control. To make matters worse, many of the old-line veterans who had been working for the VA since coming out of the service at the end of World War II or the Korean War were suspicious of and hostile toward anyone who favored clemency for Vietnam deserters or draft evaders.

On a few occasions I allowed myself to be drawn into arguments with some of the more vocal critics of President Ford's program, but eventually I got to the point where I ' simply fixed my antagonists with a stare and reminded them that until they had experienced combat, they would do well to keep their mouths shut. My approach usually ended the arguments, but it did not win me many hearts and minds, and after having experienced several such confrontations, I knew for certain that I did not want to spend the rest of my life working for the Veterans Administration.

Sometime after the first of the year Tom Downing, the congressman from Virginia's First Congressional District, unexpectedly announced that he would not be seeking reelection. I had been keeping an eye on Congressman Downing's seat since Tiny Mutton's surprise visit, but his announcement in early 1976 caught me, most of the political junkies around the state, and even Tiny Hutton himself totally unprepared.

I knew that if I quit my job and moved back to the district in response to Tom's announcement, I would be viewed as an upstart who had not paid his dues and that in all likelihood I would never be able to wrest the Democratic nomination from whomever the First District party regulars decided to put up. For several weeks I vacillated, talking late into the night with Toddy and making phone calls to people back home. Their advice was almost uniformly to sit out 1976, see how the race turned out, and, if I was still interested, move back to the district in anticipation of running in 1978. It was maddening to realize that I had no way to get into a race for an open seat and would have to wait two years to challenge an incumbent, but I finally saw the wisdom of the advice I was being offered.

As I had anticipated, the Democrats nominated a good old boy from one of the two most populous cities in the district who had been active in political and community affairs for many years. Bob Quinn was a decent and honorable gentleman; but he totally lacked the killer instinct, and he made the mistake of assuming that his nomination was tantamount to victory because the district had elected his predecessor, a Democrat, for nine consecutive terms. His opponent was an ambitious young commonwealth attorney from rural Essex County who would use every opportunity to parlay his first elected office into a seat in the House of Representatives. His quest for the Republican party nomination was not difficult because most political observers initially shared Bob Quinn's view that the Democrats would continue to hold the seat. Nevertheless, as the campaign developed, it quickly became apparent that Paul Trible, the

fair-haired young prosecutor who had come out of nowhere, was going to be a force to be reckoned with by election day.

Tappahannock, Virginia, the seat of Essex County, was only thirty miles up the road from Saluda, yet I had never heard of Paul Trible when I was growing up. Curious about this brash young newcomer, who in the course of his campaign proudly proclaimed himself a son of Essex County, I watched him closely as he covered the seventeen counties and several cities in the district.

In the course of my research I soon discovered that he had not lived in my district until two years previously, when he had been appointed Essex County commonwealth attorney. Prior to that he had worked as an assistant district attorney in northern Virginia and in the Nixon administration on the Conmiittee to Re-elect the President. I also discovered that Trible, who was one year younger than I, had obtained a medical deferment from his local draft board that insulated him from any of the fallout of the Vietnam War.

According to the accounts of his medical condition that I read in the newspapers, he had reported for his draft physical after receiving his notice from the Selective Service System, at which time it was discovered that he lacked full range of motion in one of his arms, a condition of which he had been unaware until the physical. After reading the account, I had no doubt that Paul Trible, who was now loudly proclaiming the necessity of a national defense second to none and a hard line toward communism, had engineered a questionable deferment to avoid the war that had killed a dozen of my friends. I despised him for having been spared the most catastrophic episode of our generation, and I vowed that if he were to be elected, I would oppose him in his bid for reelection.

In early August 1976, as my frustration at the VA increased along with my feelings of impotence over political developments in the Tidewater, I received a phone call from Jim Maye, the executive director of the Paralyzed Veterans of America. Jim had been a fellow Clemency Board member, and I had developed an enormous respect for his judgment and for the way he handled the devastating paralysis with which he had returned from Vietnam. We met for lunch

the following day with several of his colleagues from PVA. After a round or two of drinks and some good-natured chitchat about our time together at the Clemency Board, the conversation took a more serious turn, and before I knew what was happening, Jim had offered me a job at almost twice what I was making as an attorney with the VA.

Jim wanted me to take over as national service director of PVA. When he explained to me that it was one of PVA's top two or three paid positions and that I would be reporting directly to him, the job began to sound more and more attractive. His only stipulation was that I agree to work for him at least one full year. I told him that I would need a few days to consider his offer. Jim knew that I was interested in running for Congress, and he had added the one-year requirement to protect his organization. Over the weekend I decided that I could do more for my fellow veterans as a critic of the Veterans Administration than as an entry-level attorney, and with Toddy's blessings I called Jim and told him that I would come work for him for one year. On Monday I gave my notice at the VA, and within two weeks I was immersing myself in the problems of a group of veterans whose injuries made the loss of my legs appear almost inconsequential.

In November Paul Trible defeated Bob Quinn by a razor-thin margin in a come-from-behind victory. He achieved his success by garnering most of the votes of his core Republican constituency and by building a coalition of urban black and rural white voters who usually voted Democratic. In winning his election, he was the only Republican congressional candidate in the South who was able to wrest a seat from the Democrats, and despite Jimmy Carter's successful presidential race, I felt as if a part of my heritage had been purloined. On the day after the election an ebullient Paul Trible, flush with victory, was at the main gate of the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company for the morning shift change, and in the months succeeding his oath taking, he took every possible step to solidify his hold on his seat.

By virtue of his association with the shipbuilding company, one of the nation's largest producers of military ves-

sels, he was able to gain a seat on the prestigious House Armed Services Committee. It did not go unnoticed in the local press that his predecessor had been unable to achieve such an assignment during a nine-term career. Trible also wasted no time in extending the olive branch to most of the political brokers who had opposed his candidacy, often calling or writing them personally to solicit their support and asking them to serve on his finance committee. Finally, in the year following his successful bid, he spent virtually every free weekend in the district, holding a town meeting at a different location each Saturday morning and making certain that the media were supplied with press releases.

While Trible was busy with his new position, I smoldered on the sidelines at his success and threw myself into my work on behalf of the Paralyzed Veterans of America. It seemed incredible to me that a man who had avoided military service by virtue of what I considered a spurious medical condition could now occupy a seat on the committee that directed policy and conducted oversight for the military services. As I reflected on the irony of the situation, I was grateful for the distraction of my new job.

In the year and three months that I worked for PYA, I gained a new perspective on the enormous personal sacrifice that is demanded by war. Older and more mature than I had been in the hospital, I was able to step back and survey more critically the spoils of war in a dozen different spinal cord injury units in Veterans Administration hospitals across the United States. Like the victims of catastrophic injury anywhere, the patients I encountered handled their disabilities with a range of behavior varying from the pitiful and pitiable to the most dignified and courageous imaginable.

On one ward I encountered a young man who had been blinded and paralyzed from the neck down in Vietnam five years earlier. The enormity of his injuries had so defeated him that for years he had lain in his bed and lashed out bitterly at anyone who attempted to draw him out. His only solace appeared to be the pint bottles of bourbon with which his fellow patients kept him supplied. When I had left his bedside after attempting futilely to make contact, I felt anew and uncomfortably the old bitterness toward the architects

of our Vietnam policy that until then I thought I was successfully keeping at bay. On the other hand, I also met patients who were pursuing careers, raising families, and attending school without any apparent concessions to their disabilities, and I tried to concentrate on the successes and downplay the failures as, in the course of my employment, I visited and revisited the wake of destruction left by the Vietnam War.

After a while I began to feel more strongly than ever that individuals who shared my experiences and perspectives were needed in Washington, and on more than one occasion when I saw Paul Trible wave the flag and call for increased defense spending, I wondered where the boy wonder had developed his perspectives. If he indeed had the remotest idea of the dangerous potential of drumbeating and Red-baiting I was not able to ascertain it, although it was clear to me that he fully appreciated the vote-getting potential of a patriotic speech. Shortly after he was elected, he donned a fighter pilot's suit and helmet and went for a test ride in an air force fighter jet at the invitation of the commanding general at Langley Air Force Base in nearby Hampton, Virginia. The next day his picture appeared in all the local papers with an article attesting to his patriotic achievements. As I studied the photograph of a smiling young congressman sitting at the controls of a jet and giving the thumbs-up sign, I wondered how many readers had noticed in the accompanying article that he did not know his own boot size when he was being outfitted for the flight.

In Virginia there is an election every year, the state and local elections coming in the odd years and the national elections taking place in the even years. After I had been at PVA for a year, I realized that if ever I was going to become more than a bystander in my political dreams, I was going to need an entry into First District pohtics. Charles S. Robb, son-in-law of President Lyndon Johnson and himself an aspiring politician, provided the opening I needed.

Chuck had decided to begin his political career by running for lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1977, and the Democrats had obligingly nominated him. By the late summer he had opened an office in almost every district in the

state, and although most were staffed by part-time volunteers, he needed more help. Because he had been an officer in the Marine Corps and had served a tour in Vietnam, there was already a bond between us, and when I called him to ask if he would like my help in his campaign, he invited me out to his home in McLean, Virginia, the following Sunday to discuss my offer.

He and Lynda were holding a fund-raising party, and it was not until tfie end of the evening that we could repair to his study. After I explained to him that I wanted to test the political waters for the run against Paul Trible—about which he already knew—and that I thought by helping him I could help myself, he nodded his consent. He agreed to give me office space and to cover my expenses if I would move into the district for the six weeks prior to the election. I would be working without pay, but I knew that in representing Chuck Robb, I would gain some valuable speaking experience and I would get to know who the political operatives were in the district where I intended to stake out my own claim.

Back at PVA, Jim Maye was less than exuberant about giving me a six-week leave of absence, but I had kept my end of the bargain, having given him a year of honest work. I had also trained a deputy who could fill in for me, and in September I gave my colleagues at PVA a phone number where I could be reached on a daily basis, bade farewell to my wife and children, and headed to the Tidewater and an exciting new venture about which I knew almost nothing.

For the six weeks that I worked on the Robb campaign, I lived with Toddy's parents in Williamsburg and commuted daily to a makeshift campaign headquarters in nearby Newport News. The headquarters was shared by volunteers for several local candidates as well as the statewide office seekers, and I was given a desk, a telephone, and a firee hand to conduct my affairs as I saw fit. For the first couple of weeks I tried to visit as many local politicians and community leaders as I could, to introduce myself and get a feel for the lay of the land, and to assess Robb's popularity. If by chance the conversation shifted over to Trible and the job he was doing, I also had a place to file that information, but for

the most part I tried to present myself as a Chuck Robb true believer and nothing more. As I became more familiar with my candidate and his platform, I also began standing in for him at high school assemblies and civic group meetings when he was unable to be present.

After speaking for Robb a few times, I began to realize that the campaign stump had a powerful attraction for me, and by the end of the campaign I often wished that I could speak for myself rather than as a surrogate. Midway through the campaign I also did a newspaper interview that gave the impression that in addition to assisting Robb, I was conducting a dry run for a future unspecified candidacy of my own. After the article appeared, my access to the local politicians improved, and I could sense that I was being judged for myself as well as for what I was doing for the Robb campaign.

On election day in November Chuck Robb handily carried Virginia's First Congressional District as well as most of the state, and I no longer had an excuse to gad about the district on his behalf. I had all but made up my mind that I was going to try to challenge Paul Trible in just a year. Although I returned to PVA for the remainder of the year, my heart and mind were really elsewhere, and over Thanksgiving and Christmas I spent most of my time preparing myself for the ordeal ahead. I had returned home with a yellow pad full of names and phone numbers of prominent men and women I had been unable to reach while I campaigned for Robb, and when I was not huddling with friends and acquaintances whose judgment I respected, I was frequently making phone calls back to the district to introduce myself and sohcit support for my candidacy.

Many of the people with whom I conversed were unequivocal in their belief that Paul Trible was making all the right political moves and, as an incumbent, would be difficult to beat. Nevertheless, I was undaunted in my enthusiasm to take him on, and Uke many political novices, I paid more attention to the encouraging words I heard than to the discouraging ones. I knew in my heart that I could not get an accurate reading of my own chances until I entered the

race, and in the meantime, I was tantalized by the thin margin that had carried Trible into office.

Following President Carter's inauguration, I decided that if ever I was going to make my move, this was the time, and I gave Jim Maye notice of my intention to leave PVA. The office had a little going-away party for me, and at the conclusion of the festivities the hat was passed and eighty dollars was collected for my campaign. The Puller for Congress Committee, which technically was not yet in existence, had its first donation, and I no longer had a job.

In January 1978 Vu-ginia's First Congressional EHstrict consisted of seventeen more or less rural counties extending from just below Fredericksburg south to the border of Norfolk. The district also included two counties on the Eastern Shore and, back on the mainland, the cities of Hampton, Newport News, and Williamsburg. With two-thirds of the voting population concentrated in the Hampton-Newport News area, I knew that campaigning in the rural counties was not going to be the best use of my time and energy, but as an underdog I could not afford to write off any area of the district. Trible had established a domicile in Newport News when he ran the fu^t time, and I now decided to make my residence in Hampton.

While I was looking for a place to move my family and making my first forays onto Trible's turf. Toddy stayed in Alexandria to let Maggie and Lewpy finish their first semester of first and third grades. In February a law school buddy, Ed Hubbard, found us a furnished beach cottage in Hampton overlooking the Chesapeake Bay that a client of his let us have gratis until summer. Toddy did her best to make the cottage look homey, to help Lewpy and Maggie with their adjustment to a new school, and to try to accommodate the insane conditions under which we were laboring. Despite her efforts, the early months of 1978 were an ordeal for all of us, and had I not been so single-minded in my pursuit of the political brass ring, I would have realized more fully what an enormous sacrifice I was asking of my family.

I now picked up where I had left off with the Robb campaign. In February and March I kept up a ceaseless round of appointments, meeting with civic, religious, and political leaders and trying to lay the groundwork for a campaign. There was one other local politician who was interested in the nomination, and because he was an established local Democrat, I was frustrated in my efforts to get commitments from party regulars until early April, when he dropped out. More disturbing, however, than the delay his vacillation had caused was the number of supposedly loyal Democrats who had pledged their support to Paul Trible. Time and time again I set up an appointment with an influential businessman or civic leader only to be told that Congressman Trible had already visited and a commitment had been made.

One of the first visits that I made was to the owner of the Daily Press, the only daily morning newspaper in the district. Mrs. Bottom was an elderly widow who had run her domain for years without fear of competition. Unfortunately for me, she had a niece who had gone to school with Trible's wife, Rosemary, and Trible had skillfully used that connection to gain and then solidify the paper's support. When I met with Mrs. Bottom, she offered me sherry and macadamia nuts, and when we chatted in her spacious office on the second floor of the Daily Press building, she was effusive in her praise of Paul Trible and his family. Sensing that I was not going to be able to obtain her support under any conditions, I tried to steer her toward a neutral stance at least until the closing stages of the campaign. When our meeting was concluded, she rose from the couch and saw me to the elevator.

As I prepared to leave, she took me by the arm, and in what I am sure she meant to be encouragement, said, "You are a nice young man, Mr. Puller, and there will be time for you later."

I thanked her for the macadamia nuts and sherry and left her building shocked, in my naivete, by what I had just heard but sadly wiser about small-town journalism.

With my Democratic opposition out of the way and an unimpeded route to the nomination in sight, Toddy and I began to assemble a staff, to formulate a campaign plan, and to begin raising seed money. I hired a campaign manager who, though active in Democratic politics and possessed of an impressive resume, proved to be an unmitigated disaster. He was incapable of offending anyone and consequently could never make a decision, which in the pressure cooker atmosphere of a campaign could not have been a worse shortcoming. Fortunately the rest of the staff was all top rate and after a fashion capable of covering for Gary's inadequacy.

Dennis Lieberson, a senior at nearby William and Mary, had planned to run the campaign of my Democratic rival, and when that possibility evaporated, he came over to work part-time for me. He was as arrogant as Gary was conciliatory, but he was also remarkably self-possessed for a college student. Toddy recognized his value inmiediately, and by the time of his graduation she had talked me into firing Gary and giving Dennis the top job. His acceptance of the position meant that he had to postpone graduate school for a year, a considerable personal sacrifice on his part, but for the campaign it meant that we had an exceptional leader who could not be intimidated. Despite an occasionally abrasive manner, Dennis was fiercely loyal and never failed to do what he thought was best for me and for the campaign.

By then we had also hired a fund-raiser, a researcher, a driver, and an office manager-secretary, Margaret Thompson. She had impressed me when I was working for Chuck Robb, and she proved to be the hardest worker and least complaining person on board despite the fact that her job was one of the most difficult and least glamorous of positions. Tom Rastetter, my driver, was another William and Mary senior, but unlike Dennis and Margaret, he had no intention of burning himself out over my candidacy. He was, however, a handsome young man with an excellent sense of humor, and in the last months of the campaign I spent far more time with him than I did with Toddy. In fact, we even got to the point where we used a specialized vocabulary complete with inside jokes and arcane references that was

gibberish to outsiders but easily understandable to the two of us.

In addition to the paid staff, the treasurer of the city of Newport News agreed to be my treasurer, and a law professor from William and Mary, Dick Williamson, filed our Federal Election Commission reports and helped out with legal questions involving finances. Another law professor and fellow Vietnam veteran, Tim Sullivan, served as an adviser to the campaign and was invaluable in helping me write speeches and articulate issues.

As is the case with most high-intensity ventures, the political campaign in its early stages had its share of ups and downs. Virginia's First District, with its naval and military installations, is highly dependent on defense spending. I had decided to accentuate my military background and commitment in an effort to demonstrate that I could continue to serve my country as a civilian as I had while in uniform. I also thought that the contrast between Paul Trible's background and my own would speak for itself in terms of our respective sacrifices.

He, however, proved far more adept than I at wrapping himself in the American flag, and the local media never once in the course of the campaign made any reference to the circumstances surrounding his draft deferment. In addition, in the spring and summer of 1978 the country was still too close to the war itself for much appreciation of its returning veterans.

If anything, my service was viewed with hostility in many quarters. It was also apparent to me that many young businessmen who were spared my war experience felt guilty about it. Early in the campaign I visited an old family friend who had been commonwealth attorney in Gloucester County and whose views as a patriot and as a conservative were well known.

"Don't try to run on your war record, Lewis," Catesby Jones had advised me, "because it will probably wind up hurting you more than helping you."

I was astounded when I first heard his words, and I fingered the mint in my julep cup and gazed out at the riverfront view from our vantage point on his front lawn. I said

nothing then in response to his advice, but my mind was churning with the thought that if I could not run on my war record, my service had been in vain. On the up side, however, my first mail solicitation, a patriotic appeal to fifteen hundred political donors from around the country that stressed my military background, quickly pulled in over twelve thousand dollars. Even if the donors were outside the district, I knew that I had a significant source of funds for my campaign.

I came face-to-face with Paul Trible for the first time in the early spring of 1978, before I had been selected to be the party's candidate. In honor of the founding of Yorktown, Virginia, there was a series of events culminating in a luncheon for several hundred dignitaries at Nick's Seafood Pavilion in Yorktown. The owner of the restaurant, Nick Matthews, was a Greek immigrant who had made a fortune in his restaurant by serving only fresh seafood and by being willing to work eighty-hour weeks. He had never forgotten what the land of opportunity had made possible for him, and now in his seventies, he was a generous backer of patriotic and philanthropic causes. He was also a great admirer of my father, and for years my family had limited its visits to Nick's Seafood Pavilion to one or two trips a year because it was embarrassing always to have Nick refuse to accept payment for our meal.

On this occasion he was picking up the tab for the entire party, and the governor of Virginia, the French ambassador, and virtually every local politician had gathered to feast on seafood shishkebobs and Greek wine. Congressman Trible was seated at the head table, and although he did not speak along with the governor and the ambassador I watched him far more closely than I watched either of them.

In his early thirties, with blond hair, a light complexion, and almost delicate features, Trible appeared even younger, although he and his wife worked the tables around them like seasoned professionals. I could see no evidence of any disability in either of his arms, and from the way he

was shaking the hands and slapping the backs of the diners around him, he had apparently rehabilitated himself quite well. When the meal was over, the Tribles made a beeline to the restaurant's main door, where almost on cue a member of his staff suddenly materialized from a side door with their infant child. I watched in amazement as Paul Trible accepted the child from her caretaker, placed her against his shoulder, and continued shaking hands until the room had almost emptied. I wondered for a moment if I could use my own children in such a fashion and if, indeed, I was up to playing the political game the way I had just seen my opponent play it.

On a hot and humid Saturday morning in May, the delegates to the First District convention assembled at Gloucester High School to place my name in nomination as their congressional candidate. Since there were no other candidates, the outcome was foreordained, but we had nevertheless tried to orchestrate the agenda as carefully as possible to set the proper tone for our kickoff. Gloucester had been picked as the convention site because it was the geographic center of the district with easy access to Hampton, Williamsburg, and Newport News as well as the more remote rural counties.

Bob Quinn, the Hampton attorney defeated earlier by Trible, had agreed to nominate me, and Jessie Rattley, the vice-mayor of Newport News, and Tayloe Murphy, a member of the General Assembly from Westmoreland County, were going to second the nomination. Rattley was an imposing black woman who controlled much of die black vote in the east end of Newport News, but she had acquired that control by making a career of taking on the white establishment that ran the other end of town. Murphy, on the other hand, was a Virginia blueblood and the scion of a wealthy family that had owned a vast homestead since before the Revolutionary War. In an earlier era his family probably would have owned the family of Jessie Rattley, and as I watched them sitting side by side in the auditorium of Gloucester High School, I had to smile.

The convention was an hour late getting started, and Dennis spent his time placating disgruntled delegates who

could not understand why some of their colleagues were late arriving. He also busied himself with the last-minute details of setting up the dais and positioning the camera crews. I used the time to rehearse my speech. I had worked hard on my acceptance speech because I wanted people to understand what motivated me to run.

Vietnam and its personal costs had not only bred skepticism but also taught me that even the most revered of leaders is human, and with that simple revelation came a growing awareness that young men like me, who had so scrupulously followed the mandate of older politicians, could seek to provide that mandate. My decision to run was but a logical extension of those premises, and now at the moment of my acceptance I burned with a passion to lead not where I had been led but toward some safer haven. When the seconding speeches were concluded, there was perfunctory applause, and Dennis gave me a good-luck pat on the back and a push toward the dais that he had purposely lowered to acconmiodate my wheelchair.

As I took the stand and the microphone, an unnatural calmness replaced the butterflies I had been feeling all morning, and I knew instinctively that the speech was going to go well. Looking out at my audience, I asked my mother. Toddy, and her parents to rise briefly, and I acknowledged the contributions they had made to my life and the influence they had exerted in bringing me to this point. I then thanked the people on the dais, began an explanation of how the troubled era of Vietnam had modified my strongly held conservative views, and concluded by reaffirming my faith in a country that, despite Vietnam and the troubles of our recent past, still held liie promise of a blessed future.

When I finished, I realized for the first time that my arms were extended above my head, and I brought them back to my sides in some confusion. For five seconds my audience sat in stony silence while I wondered what had gone wrong, and then the crowd in the auditorium at Gloucester High School erupted with shouting, whistles, and applause as the delegates rose to their feet in unison. I did not know what the rewards of pohtical service might be in the future, but as I allowed myself to bask for a moment in the

crowd's adulation, I doubted if it could get much better than this. When I brought myself back to reality, Toddy was suddenly beside me, squeezing my hand, and on the periphery of the crowd I could see my mother dabbing at her face with a crumpled piece of tissue. Even Dennis had an animated look on his face tiiat I had never seen before, and I grinned and wondered where all this might lead.

The next day the Daily Press, in a short statement with no pictures, reported that a strangely subdued crowd had nominated me to oppose Paul Trible. At the same time there was a laudatory description, complete with picture, of my opponent's convention, and Dennis and I fumed at the unfairness of the coverage. When Dennis called the paper to complain, he was told that Trible got the coverage b^ause he was the congressman and I was just the challenger. The explanation did nothing to assuage our irritation, but at least we knew from the start how the game was going to be played.

Following our respective nominations, interest in the race began to build, although Trible and I both knew that the pace would not really quicken until after Labor Day. In the meantime, it was necessary to raise funds to be able to finance a media campaign in the fall, and in June I was spending at least halSf of each day trying to buttonhole big givers, courting labor unions and political action conmiit-tees, and attending small fund-raisers. As soon as I had the nomination in hand, we also commissioned a poll that not surprisingly showed that my name recognition was only modest and, more ominously, that Trible's support was greater and more solid.

After this poll Dennis and I hired a media consultant from Boston, who flew down for a week and designed a ten-page insert about me to be circulated with the district's newspapers. The brochure contained at least a dozen pictures of me, my family, and local supporters, and in large bold print tried to develop the theme that I had served my country on the battiefield and was now trying to continue

that service in peacetime. It also contained laudatory quotations from Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford about my service and concluded by pointing out that these customary opponents agreed on me. The piece cost twenty thousand dollars, but it made hardly a dent in the results of a poll we ran afterward. It did prove useful in our fund-raising efforts and gave an early indication that we were dead serious about winning our race.

Though in the course of the summer's effort I occasionally became frustrated and despondent from encountering so many Trible supporters, there were moments of pure exhilaration. At an NAACP banquet at the venerable old Chamberlain Hotel in Hampton one night, a black minister of high local reputation got up to say a few extemporaneous words. I had visited with him earlier in his church office, as I had with most of the black church leaders in Hampton and Newport News, but he had remained noncommittal about my candidacy. Now I suddenly perked up when I heard the Reverend W. W. Brown say that despite the fact that the NAACP was supposed to be nonpartisan, he wanted to go on record personally as supporting the "young man in the wheelchair at the back of the room" in the upcoming election and that he would appreciate it if I would share some of the thoughts with tonight's guests that I had shared earlier with him.

I had not prepared a speech, and my ears were burning from the unexpected support; but when I was handed a microphone, I again felt the calmness that conviction brings. I began by alluding to the strongly conservative heritage with which I had been nurtured and then spoke briefly of my baptism by fire in Vietnam and how the war and its aftermath had so irrevocably altered the underpinnings of my political philosophy. When I began to speak of the young men, both black and white but all poor and uneducated, who made up the bulk of the infantry and who took a disproportionately high percentage of casualties, the room became silent and the atmosphere heavy with expectation.

"Those same young men," I said, "who were called upon to sacrifice so much in the name of freedom then returned home to be locked out of the institutions and citadels

of privilege that they had ostensibly been fighting to preserve. I vow here tonight that if elected, I will devote my career and my energies to opening those doors of opportunity, to making certain that if, God forbid, another war takes place, its burdens will be shared equally and that once in the corridors of power, I shall never forget my brothers-in-arms, who, though many died doing so, taught me the meaning of social responsibility and commitment without expectation of personal reward."

I concluded by stating that though I did not have the perspective of growing up black, I knew what it meant to be a member of a minority and to be judged on the basis of personal appearance rather than intrinsic worth.

"It has been a hard lesson," I finished, "but it has made me a more compassionate and more caring person, and because of that, I am now better able to serve you."

When I finished and handed back the microphone. Reverend Brown led the applause, which began at the head table and, picking up steam, rippled backward throughout the room, accompanied by shouts of "Amen, amen." Rough and callused hands reached out for mine later when, after the benediction, the crowd began to disperse.

"You hit a home run tonight," said one of the other black ministers as he shook my hand before departing.

I acknowledged his compliment, and while I did not disagree, I also knew that my speech would not play so well with the white establishment that was going to decide this election. It hurt me to realize that I now had more in common in some ways with people I had never really known than with people of whom I had heretofore always been a part. Paul Trible had sent his wife as a surrogate to this banquet, and I hoped that my reception at least caused him some consternation when she described it to him later.

My wheelchair proved to be a huge drawback to my candidacy, as I knew it would be. In the protected environment of the hospital, law school, and my earlier jobs, people dealt with me on a more or less regular basis, and I had a chance

to teach them to look past my chair and torso and to judge me on my own merits. But in the rush of a campaign, where so many judgments are formed on first impressions, I remained subject to the prejudices and misconceptions that many people have about the disabled.

Time after time, as I prepared to leave an appointment, the person with whom I was meeting would ask who had brought me to the meeting. A look of incredulity invariably followed my explanation that I had driven myself, and I realized quickly that the chasm separating me from the able-bodied was often unbridgeable. In addition, because I could not walk or perform some functions normally taken for granted, many were convinced I was unqualified to hold high public office. Finally, there were some people who, because of my disability, considered me inferior, and I could sense that they found it exceedingly galling that I would presume to present myself as a person who could lead them. Dennis realized the extent of the problem also, and he was as finstrated as I because having gotten to know me, he felt that though there were traits that might prevent me from being a good congressman, the loss of my legs was not one of them.

We devised some unusual stratagems to counter the wall of prejudice that we faced almost every day, and though they were often ingenious in concept, they had little overall effect on public perception. Every candidate for office needs a driver so that his time between campaign stops is free for studying issues or for resting, and Tom Rastetter did a capable job of chauffeuring me around the district. When people saw the two of us emerge from my jeep, however, they often decided that Tom was my attendant and that without him I could not get around. To put a stop to that foolishness, early in the campaign Tom and I started exchanging places in the front seat just before arriving at a campaign stop. In that way I was always at the wheel when we were first noticed.

One day Dennis decided that I should campaign door to door with a camera crew in an accessible neighborhood to demonstrate my mobility. After much searching he finally found a subdivision of houses built on slabs that I could ne-

gotiate. At the appointed hour a camera crew from one of the local television stations met us, and as the cameras began to roll, I opened the front gate of an appropriate house and rolled toward the front door. Before I had gotten ten feet, the door burst open, and a little old lady emerged and ran toward me with her hands outstretched, motioning me to go back.

When we met in the middle of her walkway, she cocked her head, looked straight into the camera, and as if on cue said, "He's in a fucking wheelchair, he's in a fucking wheelchair."

She then turned and ran back toward her house as if my condition were contagious, and as Dennis, the camera crew, and I dissolved into laughter, she slammed the door and drew her blinds. We never got a clip that was used on television, but for weeks I was referred to as the man in the fucking wheelchair.

In the lull before the storm that preceded Labor Day, we tried to make an appearance at any occasion that generated a decent crowd. I pressed the flesh at assorted bull roasts, fish fries, shad plankings, barbecues, and other outdoor gatherings. Tom and I tried to arrive just as the chow lines were forming so that I could pick a vantage point and shake as many hands as possible while he passed out campaign literature and bumper stickers. Our standard operating procedure was to get in and out as quickly as possible so that we could get on to the next event and also so that we appeared to have momentum.

In the less populated counties it was difficult to cover more than two or three events in a day, but in urban areas we could usually take in half a dozen or more gatherings. If there was a radio station nearby we also tried for interviews, and if the event proved to be a total bust, we could usually salvage some of our effort by shaking hands in neighboring supermarkets, plants, or office buildings. I accepted all invitations to speak, and by the end of the summer I had honed my skills in enough chambers of conmierce, Kiwanis clubs,

veterans' organizations, and philanthropic groups that I was comfortable on the stump no matter what the makeup of the audience.

At an early press conference I issued the usual challenge to my opponent to come forth and debate me on the issues, and none of us was surprised when Trible countered with a press release indicating that his duties in Washington precluded acceptance of my offer. At that point he was so far ahead in the polls that it would have been foolish to give me an opening, but I wondered about the transparency of his excuse. For the previous two years he had spent almost every Saturday campaigning in the district, but now with an opponent for the first time and an election only three or four months away, he was too busy in Washington to accept my challenge.

As the campaign developed, a confrontation arose in the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company that, in the Ught of my newfound populism, pointed up a major difference between me and my opponent. For years there had been unrest in the yard over wages and fringe benefits. In the summer of 1978 a bitter battle was in progress between the Peninsula Shipbuilder's Association and the United Steelworkers. The PSA, which billed itself as the South's largest independent union, was in effect a management pawn. For as long as I could remember it had done nothing for its members, and in response the Steelworkers sought to take over representation. By early summer they had won an election, and as I began my campaign, they were waiting for certification from Washington as the official union of the shipyard. Trible had the support of the shipyard management and the PSA, and I had the Steelworkers' endorsement. However, it appeared that their support was not going to be of much value if they could not get certified before the November election.

As the economy of the shipyard went, so went the economy of most of the businesses in the community, and in the summer of 1978 business was almost at a standstill. Faced with a lack of work, the shipyard had been laying off its employees in increments of several thousand, and while morale was understandably low among the remaining work-

ers, business and community leaders were scrambling to try to attract new shipyard business.

Trible had been touting his membership on the House Armed Services Committee as a position from which he could help channel defense contracts into the yard. It naturally followed that to deliver on his promises, he should be returned to office. I, on the other hand, in my standard stump speech was trying to hammer home the point that Paul Trible, as a freshman Republican congressman in a Democratic administration, was a political lightweight who could not possibly bring work into the yard. I, on the other hand, had paid my dues to the military, and when decisions that affected my constituents were made, mine was a voice that would be listened to by the brass in Washington.

One morning just before Labor Day I arrived at the office to find Dennis jumping up and down and pounding a folded copy of the local newspaper on his desktop. He was smiling from ear to ear, and as he handed me the paper and I saw the headlines, I realized that we had the makings of a real bread-and-butter campaign issue. In its commitment to a strong navy, the administration had developed a program called the Service Life Extension Program (SLEP), under which four ships were going to be overhauled at a cost of five hundred million dollars each. Each ship would provide enough work to keep our shipyard running for many months, and Newport News was the prime candidate for the job. In addition, the yard that received the contract for the first job would probably get all four of them. The morning paper's lead story and Dennis's reason for exultation was a report that Vice President Mondale had just announced that the first ship, the USS Saratoga, was going to be refurbished in Philadelphia. The story went on to report that he had announced it as a payback for the closing of the Frankford Arsenal, and Congressman Trible was already screaming political payoff and demanding an investigation.

For once I was in agreement with my opponent regarding the political aspect of the situation; but that was the point I had been trying to make for months, and Dennis and I quickly scheduled a press conference to condemn Congressman Trible's lack of clout and to bemoan the loss of

the Saratoga. I began the press conference by stating that it was a black Monday for Virginia's First Congressional District when enough work to keep five hundred people employed for two years slipped through our hands with the loss of the Saratoga contract. I went on to demonstrate how a congressman who could work with rather than against the Carter administration would be in a better position to steer the remaining three contracts back to our shipyard, and I concluded by saying that "Remember the Saratoga'' had unnecessarily become a slogan that would haunt those who had the best interests of the First District at heart. For all our effort we got one paragraph on a back page of the Daily Press, while Trible got a front-page story stating that he had made a personal trip to the White House to protest the Saratoga situation.

When we called the White House to verify his story, we were told that he had made a courtesy visit to the White House with several dozen congressmen on a completely unrelated matter and that the Saratoga had not even been discussed, but the paper that had printed his version of the story refused to do a follow-up when we brought the misstatement to its attention. Finally, because I had described the date of the Saratoga's loss as a "black Monday," a letter appearing in the paper implied that I was a racist for using the word black in a pejorative way.

Dennis was furious that the other side could get away with such distortions of the truth, but he admired the way Trible played hardball. He immediately began a letter-writing campaign of his own, and we bombarded the Daily Press with so many letters written by our staff but signed by volunteers that three weeks before the election the paper took the unprecedented step of announcing that it would print no more letters to the editor of a political namre until after election day.

Because commerce in the shipyard had such a visible and vital effect on the local economy, we tried to keep the Saratoga issue in the forefront as long as possible, but without coverage from the Daily Press we were fighting a losing battle from the start. The shipyard itself remained an area of concern, however, for Democrats and Republicans alike.

and by the time Labor Day arrived, I had worked shift changes at all of the yard's entrances and exits countless times. Even in a wheelchair, I had, by my third or fourth shift change, learned how to shake as many hands as possible in the frenetic fifteen or twenty minutes when the workers entered and left the yard, and I also got my political patter down so that I could handle friendly, hostile, or indifferent employees with equal alacrity. As expected, the yard bosses and management types greeted me much more coolly than the rank and file, but I even took a perverse pleasure in forcing the obvious Trible supporters to acknowledge my presence. So important was the yard that Trible had tried to put a district congressional office inside the plant itself, but even the yard's management viewed this as a political ploy too blatant to be allowed.

For our first televised political advertisement and my first effort at acting on camera, we decided to do a spot on the banks of the James River with the shipyard's main dry dock as a backdrop and the welfare of the yard's employees as our theme. Our media firm in Boston had written the spot that I was supposed to have rehearsed and memorized, and on the day of its filming Dennis and I and a film crew from nearby Norfolk assembled at the river to make the commercial. My spiel, consisting of only three sentences that had to be delivered in twenty-five to twenty-seven seconds, ended, "Who speaks for the pipe fitter and the welder and the other little men who get the job done? I'm Lew Puller, and in Congress I will speak for them."

It was designed mainly to let the voters get familiar with me, but it also gave the bland and nonthreatening message that I intended to represent all my constituency. I had thought that the making of the commercial would be a snap, but when the director cued me to look into the camera and begin my delivery, my lines headed for the hinterlands, while I sat looking helplessly into a rolling camera.

After half a dozen takes that showed only marginal improvement, the director wrote out my message on a piece of poster board and held it directly above the camera. We then spent another twenty minutes trying to get the rhythm down, and by the time we had an acceptable piece, my shirt was

soaking wet and I felt as if I had just completed a day of hard labor. Dennis rolled his eyes and mumbled something on the way back to the office about my not being any Robert Redford. I was flabbergasted that something I had thought would be so simple had proved to be so difficult, and from that day forward I had a new appreciation for actors and actresses who made their living doing commercials.

When sunmier ended and the pace of the campaign accelerated, Toddy and I and the children took an apartment in town. We enrolled Lewis and Maggie in the Hampton public schools and found a sitter for after school, but both Toddy and I felt guilty that for the first time our children were being neglected. I tried to justify it by reasoning that the campaign would be over in a couple of months and that in the meantime they seemed to be adjusting well, but my rationalizations had a hollow ring. For days at a time I saw my children only after they had gone to sleep at night, and when I realized that I was finding out about milestones in their lives, if at all, only after they had passed, I told myself that I was going to do a reassessment when I had time. For the last three months of my campaign our family had only two or three dinners alone together, and although Toddy never complained, I could sense that the family disruptions bore heavily on her.

If I had misgivings about the way my political pursuit was affecting my family, I developed even more serious doubts about where I was headed as the daylight hours shortened and election day approached. Virginia's First District, with its dependency on government spending and its military heritage, was a bastion of conservatism. Paul Trible had learned how to wave the flag and embrace that heritage with a fervor that left his audiences clamoring for more, but I, despite my military background, was uncomfortable appealing to jingoism. Ironically, I, who had been raised in the Marine Corps and had fought a war and seen firsthand the death and destruction that cheap rhetoric can engender, was made to appear less patriotic than my opponent, who could fire up the most zealous flag-wavers, without ever having worn a uniform or heard a short fired in anger.

One night Tom and I traveled to the Eastern Shore to

address an American Legion post, people who should have been a natural part of my constituency, and I decided to give them what they wanted to hear. I began by recalling Nikita Khrushchev's banging his shoe on the table at the United Nations and later saying, "We will bury you," and I went on to outline our need for a defense second to none and a blue-water navy to support our forces anywhere in the world.

It was an impassioned but simplistic performance that had the post membership stamping its feet, and even Tom wondered aloud after it was over where my uncharacteristic zeal had come from. The roar of the crowd had felt good and energized me while I was speaking, but driving back to Hampton, I realized that I only halfheartedly believed what I was saying and that a generation of young Americans lay dead partly because for far too long politicians had been free to mouth patriotic platitudes without any regard for the consequences of their words. Early in the campaign a Trible supporter had told me that after one of his jingoistic speeches he had asked Trible if he really believed everything he'd said. The congressman's alleged response was that it did not really matter, in light of the speech's effect on his audience. After Vietnam I grew to feel that politics was too important for grandstanding, and it made me very uncomfortable to see how close I was getting to courting votes by slanting my opinions.

At one end of the city of Hampton is Fort Monroe, which has been pumping money into the local community since before the Civil War. As I began my campaign, rumors had circulated that the administration had Fort Monroe on a short list for the chop. As far as I could see, the base had some historical significance as the site where Jefferson Davis was imprisoned after the Civil War, but other than provide graveyard tours for army officers about to retire, it contributed very little. It was indeed an obvious selection for termination, but for the fact that any politician who endorsed that view in the Hampton area would also be selected for termination.

I tried to finesse the situation by remaining silent but Trible released a statement saying that the fort was vital to the defense of the Chesapeake Bay and that as a member of the House Armed Services Committee, he intended to see that it was maintained. I did not know that the Chesapeake Bay was so severely threatened by the Red Menace that some overweight army colonels at the end of their careers were needed to buttress its defense. When I made my observations known to Dennis, he reminded me that I did not have Congressman Trible's perspective as a member of the House Armed Services Committee. In any case. Fon Monroe was my introduction to pork-barrel politics, and I was beginning to see that if I had to make a career out of defending the indefensible, I was going to lose a part of myself.

In September I had my fu*st face-to-face encounter with my opponent on the campaign trail. A debate had been scheduled at one of the local high schools in Newport News, and I was to participate along with the two candidates for the United States Senate, John Warner and Andrew Miller. Both Miller and Warner sent surrogates, and our campaign had been informed that a stand-in would be representing Congressman Trible. A few seconds before the debate began, with the rest of us seated on the stage of the school auditorium, Trible appeared at the back of the room and began making his way through the smdents who were still milling in the aisles.

I was already apprehensive about my first debate, and my unease was increased by the unexpected appearance of my opponent. I tried to appear nonchalant as he passed me to take his seat. The format was standard, with a moderator asking each candidate a question, to which his opponent could then respond. The order of questioning was then rearranged so that the initial answerer could respond last, and finally there were a few questions from the audience. Trible began each answer with the preface "When this issue was addressed in the House of Representatives," and ten minutes

into the debate it had become obvious that he was contrasting his legislative experience with my inexperience. In addition, I flubbed a couple of early answers on the Alaska pipeline and the future of the snail darter, although I finished more strongly.

After it was over, Dennis was livid because he felt that we had been set up, and he set about devising a strategy where we could return the favor. We both knew that from that day forward Trible would diffuse the issue of not being willing to debate me by pointing out that he had already done so, and as the challenger I needed to make a strong showing each time we appeared together. I had failed to do so in our first debate, and I resolved never again to be caught unprepared. I also learned as our first debate wore on that in rough-and-tumble political debating, where the rules are not rigidly applied, you can avoid answering a question that is not to your liking by simply rephrasing it or using it as a springboard to put your opponent back on the defensive.

In the weeks ahead I rarely saw Congressman Trible, although I learned a great deal about him and his campaign style. He seemed to run on the premise that his constituency was solid and that there was more to be gained by trying to make inroads into my natural constituency than by stroking his own supporters. To that end, he courted heavily the black voters who had provided the winning margin in his first race but whose legislative goals he had never advanced once elected.

Naturally he also tried to stress his agenda for a strong national defense and his role as a member of the House Armed Services Conunittee in an effort to win over the veteran community that should have been solidly behind me. In so doing, he obtained endorsements from several local veterans' organizations, and he used them to make it appear that their parent organizations on the national level supported him. On one occasion a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post gave him its man-of-the-year award, and I was invited to the banquet where he was to be honored. I accepted on the condition that I would be recognized and al-

lowed to speak, but after I arrived, it appeared that there had been a misunderstanding.

Trible, who was seated at the head table, was the center of attention throughout the evening while I was seated at a back table. After the meal was concluded, he gave his standard speech on national defense and then had his picture taken for the newspapers as he accepted a plaque from the post commander. My recognition consisted of having my name read from an alphabetical listing of the invited guests in the room, and I was not permitted to do anything more than raise my hand when named. After it was over, I forced myself to wheel over and congratulate the congressman on a fine speech, but what I really wanted to do was strangle him, the post leadership, and Dennis for putting me in such a humiliating position.

In a roomful of summer soldiers and sunshine patriots, I was probably the only man who had ever experienced combat or shed blood for his country, and they gave their highest award to a boy who did not even meet their own lax requirements for membership. Once again the facile politician had stolen the limelight while I was forced to sit and watch, and the next morning's newspapers would feature a beaming Paul Trible accepting the bounty of a grateful community of veterans.

After Trible and I had completed our first joint appearance, the pace of the campaign quickened. I addressed at least a dozen high school assemblies, and at each of them I began my presentation by describing how the Vietnam War had shaped my political views and kindled my desire to seek public office. After describing the affinity that the war had given me for the workingman's point of view and the tragic result of accepting unquestioningly the mandate of our leadership in Washington, I described how I had come to the realization that I was so qualified to lead as, if not more so than, those in whom I had so naively placed my trust.

The high school students whom I addressed, without any trace of the mixed feelings of guilt of the Rotarians, Lions, and Kiwanians to whom I also spoke, made wonderful audiences. At the same time it sometimes seemed to me

that their lack of knowledge of events taking place less than ten years earlier made them dangerously susceptible to what I had experienced. After some of the assemblies there were mock elections, and it was gratifying to beat my opponent, even in a straw vote by students not old enough to vote. I realized, of course, that Trible was also winning mock elections at high schools I was not able to cover, but there was a thrill in trying to shape young minds.

I had three more joint appearances with Paul Trible before the election, and ttie first of these fulfilled Dennis's ambition to ambush the opposition. In the early fall we got a call at our campaign headquarters advising us that on the following Sunday afternoon Congressman Trible would be addressing an NAACP meeting in Williamsburg and that if we cared to participate, we would be given equal time to speak.

Our research into Trible's voting record for his first term in office had revealed that of twenty-odd legislative initiatives that the Congressional Black Caucus had picked as being of primary importance to them, Trible had not voted favorably on one. Despite that record, he had the audacity to campaign in black churches and before black audiences as a friend. Dennis and I were almost drooling at the thought of confronting Trible with the results of our research before a black audience.

When we arrived for the meeting, it was obvious from his look that Trible had not been advised of our invitation, and when he saw me, he asked lamely if the format was going to be changed to a debate. His apprehension was allayed only mildly when he was told that he would be given the promised opportunity to speak, but that out of courtesy I would then be allowed to speak. After he had given a recitation of the programs in Washington that he had supported that were favorable to blacks and that he intended to continue to support despite the political fallout, I was given my chance.

"My name is Lew Puller," I said softly, "and I have come here today to set the record straight with regard to my opponent's stands on issues of importance to blacks."

There were scattered nods of agreement and mumbles

of "Amen" as I listed Trible's no votes on which I would have voted yes, but when I finished, the principal reaction was lukewarm applause. The crowd was confused and skeptical about the information I had just given it, and in light of Trible's high visibility and favorable impression in the black community during the previous two years, it was not inclined to take my words as gospel.

Trible left the meeting as quickly as possible, taking the microphone briefly on his way out to say that future debates would clarify the distortions I had made in his record, but that for now his duties in Washington required his return. I knew that we had wounded him, if only by planting a seed of doubt with a group of voters I had learned to value highly, and Dennis was elated that Trible was visibly upset when he left the confrontation. Politics could be gratifying, I thought, but I, too, was angry that my opponent was going to continue to gamer black support that I thought was totally undeserved.

Before our next meeting, we began a flurry of activity that included speaking engagements and appearances of a diversity I would not have thought possible three months earlier. In just a matter of weeks I spoke to senior citizens' groups, philanthropic organizations of every sort, church groups, unions, veterans' organizations, and fraternal orders. I spoke in church and parish halls, from the steps and greens of county courthouses, in high school auditoriums, and at outdoor rallies, fish fries, barbecues, and picnics, and on one occasion from the back of a flatbed truck in a newly mowed hayfield. I shook hands at plant gates during shift changes, at high school football games and bingo games, and at grand openings of newly established businesses. In the mornings there were breakfasts to attend, followed by coffees, luncheons, teas, and dinners, and whenever there were lapses in the schedule, Dennis had me shaking hands at grocery stores or going from desk to desk in corporate buildings and industrial parks.

Toddy and the children rode with me in parades, and we passed out literature and bumper stickers to anyone who would accept our offerings. I appeared on television talk shows during interviews and panel discussions until the en-

tire array of activity began to blur together like the scenery from a train. After being bombarded for so long with such intense stimuli, I began to block out all but the most unusual experiences, moving through them rather than lingering on any one event.

An episode that caught me totally off guard and moved me almost to tears took place in a warehouse in Newport News. The building had been converted into a tailoring es-tabhshment, and I had been told only that I was going to spend a few minutes shaking hands with the women who were doing piecework for an independent contractor. When I entered the building, I saw row after row of sewing machines, each of which appeared to be operated by a Vietnamese woman. When they saw me, all work suddenly stopped, and the familiar high-pitched cadence of Vietnamese women, excited by the interruption of their schedule, replaced the sound of the sewing machines and carried me back to my time in Southeast Asia.

The women had been told that I was coming, and as I wheeled down the rows between them, I was greeted by outstretched hands and smiling and sometimes weeping faces. A spokesperson for the group, the only one who appeared to be able to communicate in English, told me that they all were refugees who had come to Newport News from a relocation camp. They wanted me to know how much my sacrifice meant to them and how it would always be remembered. As I took her hand to acknowledge her words, I had trouble speaking, and I finally gave up and just nodded my head. For once I felt uplifted rather than degraded by the reactions of strangers to my service in Vietnam, and I spent the next half hour trying to shake the hand of every woman in the shop. Later I realized that none of them could vote, but the experience, far more enriching than a mere campaign event, helped me focus on why I was trying to become a congressman and kept my spirits buoyed for days.

Sometime during the final weeks of the campaign a gradual sense of calm began to replace the apprehension I had felt

early in the effort. Although I was dog tired most of the time and frustrated by the demands of conflicting constituencies, I began to sense that I was in command and that I could operate effectively no matter what the occasion. The feeling was not unlike the confidence I had gained in Vietnam after I had gotten used to my platoon.

I also saw that I really wanted to be a congressman, to go to Washington and try to make a difference, and not just to serve so that I could call myself a congressman. In the beginning I had been motivated by a strong desire to unseat my opponent, who I did not feel was worthy of his position; but that motivation had waned, and I came to see that I desperately wanted to fulfill my potential and give meaning to my being spared on the battlefield in Vietnam. Ironically, as I became comfortable with my status as an aspiring politician and as my thirst for office increased, I also began to realize that the odds were prohibitive.

The next audience Trible and I faced together was solidly in his camp. Sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, the debate took place at a Newport News hotel. The conference room was so crowded with white middle-class businessmen and their carefully coiffed wives that Dennis had to run interference in order to let me wheel to the front of the room. As planned for the first debate, the two candidates for the United States Senate, Paul Trible and I, and several candidates for local office were featured, eight of us in all. We were seated at a long table to the right of the moderator on a dais. Since the debate was to last only an hour, no one was going to dominate the scene if we all got equal billing.

John Warner, the Republican candidate for the Senate and husband of Elizabeth Taylor, set the tone for the evening when he, as the first candidate questioned, addressed an issue that had not been asked by the moderator. After that it became a free-for-all, with each of us using our allotted time to try to draw a reaction from the crowd. After Trible and I had each answered several questions, it became clear that neither of us was going to be able to lay a glove on the other, and I decided to ignore him and engage Warner in a good-natured discussion of the relative attractiveness of our respective wives. Just before the debate

ended, Dennis passed me a note that read, "You're doing great, but straighten your tie," and I acknowledged his encouragement with a nod before making my closing remarks.

When the final speeches were over, Dennis drove me home, and as usual he critiqued my performance. By way of encouragement he told me that he thought I had grown to the point where I could more than hold my own against Paul Trible. That, however, we both knew was not going to be enough to turn the election, especially since we had only one more joint appearance scheduled. What was truly alarming about the evening, we both realized, was the size of the crowd that had showed up to support its fair-haired congressman. The people had come to see him, not me, there was little I could do to change their minds, and they ail would be voting come election day.

Because we had succeeded in selling our candidacy to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Virginia's First Congressional District race was targeted as a possible upset. That meant that we got some extra union money, but more important, it meant that we got cooperation from Washington. Dennis had commissioned a beautifully done prospectus that laid out our campaign strategy and convinced a lot of people that we were professionals who had a real chance of winning. He also developed contacts in the White House and on Capitol Hill, and in early October we scheduled a two-day trip to Washington to reap the fruits of his effort and to try to get some much-needed publicity.

On the morning of the first day we journeyed to the White House, where I was to meet with President Carter and Vice President Mondale. The White House staff had told our campaign that we would be permitted to bring one news reporter with us to chronicle the meetings, but when we extended the offer to the Daily Press, it declined, saying that the meetings were not newsworthy. I was incredulous, and while Dennis did the second best thing by finding a reporter from the Richmond paper who would accompany us, I cursed the Newport News paper and swore that if elected, I would someday get even.

When we arrived at the White House, there were four

or five other invited congressional candidates, and we all were ushered into a conference room, welcomed to the White House, and given a briefing by a team of young staffers. After an hour of being taught how best to take advantage of the Carter connection and how to handle difficult questions that might surface while campaigning, we were moved to an anteroom adjacent to the Oval Office and given the order in which we would go in to meet individually with the president.

When my turn came, I wheeled nervously through the heavy door onto the plush carpeting, and a smiling President Carter came across the room to greet me. As we shook hands and he directed me to a sitting area, he told me that he had heard good things about what I was doing for the state of Virginia from Lieutenant Governor Chuck Robb and how much he enjoyed getting to meet me. I had prepared absolutely nothing to say in response to his introduction. While I wanted to discuss the USS Saratoga decision, I knew that that topic was not appropriate for the occasion. Instead I grinned like an idiot and mumbled something inane about what an honor it was to meet him. As we sat side by side in the Oval Office and posed for a photograph, I felt as stiff and unnatural as I had ever felt in my life. The president, with his legs crossed confidently in the chair next to me, was obviously much better at this than I was, and for some odd reason I could not stop staring at the thick rubber sole of one of his shoes, which seemed oddly out of place with his expensively tailored suit. Five minutes later the meeting ended and the president showed me to the door and told me that he hoped he would have the opportunity to work with me in the next Congress.

Outside, there was a twenty-minute wait while the president met with the rest of the candidates, and we were then led down a hall to the vice president's office. Instead of meeting with him individually, as we had with President Carter, we were taken into Vice President Mondale's office as a group and given seats in ft^ont of his desk. He made a brief welcoming speech in which he offered to provide whatever assistance he could to our campaigns, and then he

asked us to introduce ourselves and come forward to his desk for a photo opportunity.

I had resolved, after having squandered my opportunity for meaningful dialogue with President Carter, to say something of substance to Vice President Mondale. Again I wanted to bring up the matter of the USS Saratoga. When my turn to speak came, I wheeled forward to his desk, told him that I was Lew Puller and that I was trying to become the congressman from the district that should have been awarded the Saratoga contract. Vice President Mondale had earlier made the announcement that the Saratoga was to go to Philadelphia rather than to Newport News, and when he heard my words, he good-naturedly offered to get under his desk while the picture was being taken. Again the meeting was adjourned before there was any opportunity for meaningful discussion; but I felt much better that I had at least mentioned the incident, and our reporter from the Richmond paper had witnessed the exchange and was taking notes as furiously as if the fate of the free world were under discussion.

Before we left the White House, Dennis called the Daily Press to let it know that the Democratic candidate for the First District had just met with the president and vice president of the United States and that it should seriously consider doing a story about the visit. The response was that the paper had no reason to believe we were even calling from the White House, and it dismissed Dennis and his offer of corroboration. The next day a picture of me shaking hands with Vice President Mondale appeared on the front page of the Richmond paper, but there was never any coverage whatsoever from the newsp^)ers in my own congressional district. Dennis suggested that if I wanted free press at home, I was probably going to have to murder someone.

During the remainder of our trip to Washington we also met with Speaker Tip O'Neill and House Majority Leader Jim Wright. Having learned my lesson at the White House, I let each of them know that if elected, I expected and deserved a seat on the House Armed Services Committee. That night we capped our stay in Washington by holding a fund-raising reception at a downtown hotel, and Congress-

man Wright attended and gave Dennis a sizable check for my campaign. He also indicated that he did not foresee any problem with my getting the committee assignments that I wanted, and he offered to woric vigorously on my behalf. After the reception I was dead tired from such a momentous day, and as I reviewed our schedule, it was obvious that Dennis had performed splendidly in orchestrating the events. It was also clear that if elected, I was going to get the kind of assistance that is not generally available to a freshman congressman. I had paid my dues in blood, and after all these years it was gratifying to know that there could be some payback for my sacrifice. It was also obvious that we were still a long shot, but to contemplate defeat after having worked so hard required an acceptance of reality that would have stopped my campaign in its tracks.

Our third and last joint appearance took place at York High School a couple of v/oeks before the election. This time Trible and I were the only debaters, and the give-and-take was sharp. The audience consisted of government students at the high school as well as members of the senior class, and my staff had been tipped off that Trible had agreed to the debate only because the head of the government department at the school was a Trible supporter. Supposedly she was going to see to it that we were asked some questions that were to Trible*s liking, and when Dennis heard the rumor of another potential ambush, he started working. By pure coincidence, one of our best campaign volunteers had children who were friends of some of the York High School seniors, and by the time of the debate we had several students sitting in the audience armed with questions that my campaign manager had written.

The debate began innocuously enough: the congressman and I were introduced, shook hands, and then took our positions at the front of the auditorium while the rules of the debate were explained and several cameramen from local television stations positioned their equipment. After a few preliminary questions, during which neither of us was able

to gain an edge, a young man with glasses, a slender build, and an otherwise unremarkable appearance rose from his seat in the audience and addressed a question to Paul Trible.

"Mr. Trible," he began in a quiet and almost monotonous voice, "we have been told that during the Watergate scandal you worked as a lawyer to keep President Nixon from going to jail. Would you care to defend your actions during that time?"

Within seconds the crowd, which until then had been only halfheartedly following the proceedings, became hushed, and in anticipation of Trible's response, many of the students leaned forward in their seats. Caught off guard by the question, Trible fumbled badly, and his explanation that in a democracy every man is entitled to legal representation and that he was proud of his service to the president elicited more boos and snickers than applause. When I was given the opportunity for rebuttal, I decided to attack by appearing to defend my opponent since he was already on the ropes.

"I remember Watergate," I said. "It and Vietnam were the main reasons I decided to enter politics, but I can assure you that Paul Trible had no impact on either. He experienced the war from the sidelines, and as an inexperienced attorney only two years out of law school during Watergate, his role in Nixon's defense was negligible."

If Trible's response to the question had cost him his audience, mine had made him look like a liar. Undone by Dennis's strategy, my opponent spent the rest of the debate in a futile attempt at damage control. When I made my closing statement, I emphasized to the York students that my opponent favored a minimum wage differential that would mean that in his mind their work was worth less than that of older workers. I also pointed out that although he had been spared military service, he now favored a universal draft for all the young men in the audience.

The debate ended with a crowd of students gathered around my wheelchair, Dennis and Tom clapping each other on the back as if we had just won the election, and Paul Trible making a quick getaway. I had finally drawn blood, and even if no one else ever heard about our skirmish at York High School, I at least had a sense of vindication.

One night during the last week of the campaign I stopped by our headquarters to pick up some literature on my way home and found Dennis working late at his desk. When I wheeled into the office, he looked up from the figures he was examining and beckoned me over. I knew that he had been doing an end-of-campaign poll, and from the worried look on his face, I knew the results were not good.

"Trible's ahead with solid support in every area of the district," he said, pointing helplessly at the tangle of papers on his desk. "I'm going to run a negative ad attacking him for taking so much political action committee money, but at this point it looks pretty hopeless."

I nodded my understanding, and for an awkward moment neither of us said a word. Finally I put my hand on his arm and told him that it was important that we ride out the remainder of the campaign with the dignity that we had aimed for so far. As I prepared to leave, he handed me a letter from a contributor and told me that he had been saving it for an appropriate occasion. Instinctively I glanced first at the upper comer of the envelope and noted that the figure $100 had been penciled into the comer by Margaret to keep track of the amount of the enclosed contribution.

The letter, which had been mailed in Florida, was from a doctor who had treated me when I was brought in from the battlefield in Vietnam. He had by chance received one of my campaign solicitation letters, and he wrote to tell me that for a year he had treated battlefield casualties in Vietnam.

"Never," he wrote, "had I seen more severe traumatic injuries in a patient who had lived, and I wondered at the time if I was doing the right thing by allowing you to live." Continuing, he wrote, "Your survival had seemed to me a miracle of dubious value which severely tested the moral imperative of my Hippocratic oath." He concluded, "Your mnning for the House of Representatives ten years after our meeting in Vietnam reaffirmed the worth of my service there and is a source of great personal satisfaction to me."

When I finished the letter, I retumed it to Dennis, who

rose from his chair and told me that it should be some consolation that there were thousands more like the good doctor who had been inspired by my campaign. As I drove back to Toddy and my sleeping children, I was buoyed by the realization that the doctor had had his Vietnam service validated by my current effort, and I wished that the same held true for me. I was saddened, however, that I could do no more to justify the faith of the majority of my supporters, including Dennis, who of late seemed to be much more human.

Election day was a clear, unusually warm November Tuesday, a good sign because traditionally Democrats are viewed as being more inclined than Republicans to stay at home when the weather is bad. Dennis had laid out for me an ambitious campaign schedule that basically involved shaking hands with voters at two dozen polling places throughout Hampton and Newport News.

I voted for myself and the Democratic slate at six in the morning, when the polls opened, and then with Tom began crisscrossing Hampton and Newport News in a frenzied effort to greet as many voters as possible. At each stop I first thanked those who were busy trying to make last-minute converts for me outside the polling places and then positioned my wheelchair so that I would have the best access to incoming voters. As Tom handed out sample ballots, I tried to concentrate on the voters who appeared undecided and to thank those who indicated that I had their support, and by noon my right hand had begun to ache from pumping so many outstretched hands.

In virtually all the black precincts in Newport News and Hampton, there were black women wearing straw boaters with Trible bumper stickers wrapped around them, who were being paid to campaign for the congressman. Throughout the day at least a dozen of these women apologized to me for what they were doing but told me that their families needed the money they were being paid. In fact, it became so commonplace to hear them greet voters with the expression "Ignore my hat and vote your conscience" that I won-

dered if this was standard parlance in the district at election time.

By the time the polls closed at seven o'clock I was so wound up from the day's pace that though physically exhausted, I was not certain I would ever sleep again. At the last polling place we visited in Hampton, I reached out mechanically to shake hands with a voter and then realized that he was an old law school classmate who had volunteered to work the polls on my behalf. I also realized that my right hand had begun to bleed from overuse, and for a moment I could not decide whether I was glad the handshaking was over or I wanted time suspended so that I could go on greeting voters into infinity.

By my nose count, the vast majority of voters I had encountered in the previous thirteen hours had favored my opponent, but there had been exchanges with some of my supporters that were achingly poignant. In addition to the law school classmate I had just encountered, there were friends along the circuit who had remained loyal despite the overwhelming odds against me. Paul Barents, my old roommate from the hospital, had driven down from Pennsylvania to pass out literature for me, and several other Vietnam veteran friends, seemingly undaunted by the sting of our defeat in Vietnam, had now taken on another losing effort for a comrade. Strangers also provided much-needed encouragement on the last day of my foray into politics. I will always remember one particular incident.

While I was soliciting votes that afternoon outside an elementary school in Newport News, a cab pulled up to the curb and the driver assisted an elderly, well-dressed lady out of the backseat. Leaning heavily on a walker, she gave me a peremptory smile and then began making her way toward the voting booths inside the school. While she was voting, the cabby told me that he often helped her on those rare occasions when she ventured outside her apartment and that for weeks she had been talking about going out on election day to vote for Lew Puller. When she returned, I wheeled over to shake her hand and to thank her for supporting me. As our eyes locked, she drew herself up grandly and admonished me to get back to my campaigning rather than

waste so much time on a foolish old lady. I never got her name, but I will be moved by her for the rest of my life.

When the polls closed, Tom and I packed our remaining literature into the jeep and headed for the Best Western motel in Newport News, where we were to meet Toddy, the children, and the rest of the staff. The motel owner had contributed a private room for my family and a party room for my supporters, and I had planned to spend some time alone with Toddy, Lewis, and Maggie before venturing out to make my statement. When I arrived. Toddy, who had been on her own campaign schedule all day, was waiting in the room with the children. For a few moments we exchanged small talk about the way the day had progressed, but as always we avoided any discussion of impending defeat. We both were exhausted, and beneath my wife's cheerful exterior I could sense that she was just as relieved as I that the madness of the last year was drawing to a close. Lewis and Maggie, with barely eighteen years of life between them, seemed to sense that the occasion was important, and they tried to appear nonchalant under bewildering circumstances.

After a few more minutes the phone began ringing, and a steady stream of visiting well-wishers, staff, and media types started to appear at the door. For once I was pleased that the commotion made intimacy impossible, and while Dennis did his best to fend off the onslaught at the door, someone turned the television on to catch the first returns. With one precinct reporting, I was in the lead, and for an instant a flicker of hope stirred inside me. Trible quickly took the lead as other precincts began reporting, and I watched in fascination as my slim lead became a rout. After another twenty minutes Dennis put his arm around my shoulder and awoke me from my reverie with a gentle reminder that I needed to thank my supporters and concede defeat.

With Toddy at my side and the children in tow, we made an agonizing trip from our room to the meeting room at the other side of the motel to face a subdued and somber crowd.

"By now," I said, "you know that our reach for the brass ring has fallen short. I want to thank all of you for your dedicated support in the face of almost insurmountable odds and to let you know that I will always cherish and remember you. Even in defeat I am proud of what we have accomplished together. I do not know if I will seek political office again, but I do know that if I had this race to run again, I would not do very many things differently. I am leaving you now," I concluded, "to drive over and congratulate the Trible campaign on its victory, but I want you to remember that while Pullers have been beaten, we have never been bowed, and I am going to hold my head high when I concede defeat."

When I had finished, the crowd applauded, and a dozen well-wishers gathered at the front of the room to offer condolences and encouragement. I shook as many hands as were within my reach while Tom pushed my wheelchair toward the exit and Dennis ran interference for the rest of us.

When we were seated in the car on our way to the Trible victory celebration, Dennis insisted that I limit my remarks to congratulating the Trible campaign and not say anything that could be taken as complimentary toward the congressman personally. I was in no mood to quibble over a choice of words that, however carefully chosen, were going to stick in my throat, so I nodded my assent. The rest of the car was silent for the fifteen-minute drive, although I noticed at one point that Maggie had her face buried in her mother's side and was crying quietly.

At the Holiday hin, where the Trible party was being held, so many cars were packed into the parking lot that the overflow extended up and down the street for half a mile to accommodate the crowd. Dennis parked illegally, and we fought our way through the lobby and into the room where Trible was scheduled to make his victory speech. So many people were milling about that it took us ten minutes to get to the platform at the front of the room on which he and his wife were accepting congratulations. When they spotted us, they beckoned to us to join them on the stage, and I shook hands with each of them and resisted the urge to punch my adversary in the mouth when he kissed my wife on the

cheek, I made a brief statement along the lines Dennis had suggested, and as quickly as we could, we left the stage and the laurels to the mam who had bested us.

Unlike our entrance, the crowd now parted to allow our departure, and as we reached the blessedly cool air of the parking lot, I could tell by the roar of the people inside that their candidate had begun his speech and was giving them what they wanted. Toddy pressed my hand to her side and managed one of the tight little smiles that hid more than it revealed and had for years endeared her to me. We were going home, and Paul Trible would have the luxury of working the morning shift change at the Newport News shipyard without having to look over his shoulder to see if I was gaining on him.

Ni

me

The morning after election night I awoke with a hangover, having stayed up half the night drowning my sorrows. We had invited a few key supporters over; but the gathering had been awkward, and I had been in no frame of mind to be a good host. When the party broke up. Toddy went to bed, leaving me alone with my misery and my scotch bottle. Because I was badly out of shape for drinking, the overindulgence cost me dearly, and now, even after the luxury of six hours of uninterrupted sleep, my temples throbbed. I knew that it would take a week or two to close down the campaign, but once that task was over, I had no job, no prospects, and an as yet undetermined campaign debt.

For the first time in months I was thinking past election day; but the process was frightening, and I welcomed the distractions of the telephone, which began ringing in late morning and by the end of the day seemed to have taken on a life of its own. Most of the callers, including Lieutenant Governor Robb, offered their condolences and a few words of encouragement and then sought a polite way to end the conversation. A few, however, wanted to know what was next on my agenda, and I could sense that my lack of focus was disturbing to supporters who had admired me for decisiveness. Unhappily I did not have a clue to what was next,

other than to Hck my wounds for a while and get reac-quainted with my family.

On the second or third day of my moping around the apartment. Toddy decided that she had to get me moving again, and we went grocery shopping together. Because I had programmed myself to look for voters with whom to shake hands whenever I entered a crowded building, it was a strange sensation to be looking only for food in a supermarket, and I had to force myself to concentrate on the items on Toddy's list. At each of our stops I could tell that strangers around me were pointing me out and talking about me, and while the attention had not bothered me as a candidate during my campaign, it irritated me now that I had lost my race. On our way back to the apartment we talked about our situation and decided that it would be best for us and for the children to return as quickly as possible to our home in northern Virginia, where I could begin job hunting and we could try to restore some stability to our lives.

T

en

Over the niext few days we closed down the campaign office, returned all the rented and loaned office equipment and furnishings, and laid off most of the paid staff. Margaret agreed to stay on at a nominal salary to handle unfinished business, and we retained our post office mailing address so that creditors could contact us and supporters could send checks to help retire our debt. Toddy also made arrangements to cancel the lease on our apartment and have our belongings moved back to Alexandria.

Although I drafted a letter to our supporters during this time asking that they help us with the twenty-five-thousand-dollar campaign debt, Toddy and Margaret took care of most of the other loose ends. I was still stunned at having been beaten by better than two to one, and hurt and disillusioned, I was able to do very little to come to terms with a disaster that I felt was largely of my own making. Toddy recognized that I was going through a grieving process in many ways similar to that which we experienced when I returned from Vietnam, and while remaining available, she wisely gave me a wide berth. Until the movers came, I slept late each morning, often drank my lunch with friends for whom I finally had some time, and ended my days by

brooding alone in the darkness of our living room with a half-empty scotch bottle.

Our return to our old home just before Thanksgiving after an absence of almost a year provided each of us a new set of tasks and should have been especially beneficial for me because the move took me out of the arena of my political humiliation. While Toddy worked to undo the mess a couple of bachelor friends had made of the house and to reestablish contacts in the community, I concentrated on retiring my campaign debt, and I began making plans to start a job search after the first of the year. Lewis and Maggie were delighted to be back in their own home and with friends with whom they had grown up, but my readjustment was less successful.

I was able to pay off all the creditors and to reduce the debt by fifteen thousand dollars, but because I had not worked in well over a year, had maintained two homes for much of that time, and had incurred a personal loss of ten thousand dollars. Toddy and I were financially strapped for the first time in our marriage. When I began looking for a job, the process was laborious, and with no concrete prospects in sight, my depression over the campaign was compounded.

I felt worthless because I was not working, and with time on my hands, I brooded over the meaning of my political defeat and drank heavily most nights. As I looked back at my run for Congress, it seemed to me that my reward for having served was that I was forced to challenge an incumbent who, because he had been spared military service, was able to enter the political arena well ahead of me and to stack the deck against any political success on my part. In my depressed state I began to despise Paul Trible and his victory with an intensity I had never felt toward any other man, and my contempt for him expanded to encompass most of the young men of my generation who had found ways to avoid the war experience.

To make matters worse. Toddy came home from running errands one day shortly after our return and breathlessly announced that the Tribles had bought a house just around the comer from us. At first I thought she was mak-

ing a joke, but when I realized she was serious, my incredulity gave way to indignation. It was bad enough, I thought, that I had been beaten by a draft dodger, but now he was going to rub my nose in my defeat. In all the vast-ness of northern Virginia's many suburbs, Paul Trible had chosen a home whose backyard was just a stone's throw from my own, and the cruel irony of having to watch him drive around the neighborhood with his congressional license plates was almost more than I could bear. On one occasion my wife even found his car parked in the handicapped parking section that I used at the local Safeway, and while I did not find it surprising that he would use a restricted parking space, I devoutly wished that I could make his use of the space legitimate.

I now began to isolate myself from meaningful contact with all but my immediate family. I avoided social occasions and seized on any pretext to maintain my self-imposed exile. I also became more obsessed with the Vietnam War, and I dwelt endlessly on the unfair treatment and lack of respect that my fellow veterans and I received from the media, from society, and from our government.

By late winter it was not an uncommon experience for me to open a new bottle of scotch every other day, and while my drinking did nothing to improve my melancholy, I continued to search for the blessed oblivion I seemed to be able to find only at the bottom of a bottle. I could see that the pace of my drinking was accelerating, and on numerous occasions I told myself that I was going to have to give up my crutch before my children realized that their father was becoming a lush, but I always found some excuse to continue drinking. In the spring, still jobless, I contracted hepatitis and pneumonia, and for six weeks I could not have worked even if I had been employed. The doctor who treated me ordered me to admit myself to the hospital; but I knew that once admitted, I would be deprived of my favorite medication, and I unwisely stayed at home while my illness ran its course.

Warmer weather brought recovery, and finally, much to Toddy's relief, I began looking for a job in earnest. One day on Capitol Hill I ran into Pete McCloskey, a former marine and old family friend, who was a Republican congressman from San Francisco. Pete had been awarded a Navy Cross while serving under my father in Korea, but I most admired him for the way he had challenged President Nixon on the Vietnam War years earlier, a stand that left him a pariah in his own party but a hero to many others. When he heard that I was looking for a job, he told me that he had a slot for an attorney on the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee and he would like to see me take it. He went on to explain that since Paul Trible was a member of the committee, his blessings for my appointment would have to be obtained, but Pete saw no particular problem with such a formality.

After our conversation I rushed home to tell Toddy the good news, and excited about something for the firsi time in months, I babbled on about how perfect the job would be for me. For starters, the job would give me Capitol Hill experience, and in addition, it would be highly marketable if I should decide to parlay the expertise I gained into a private-sector job. More important, it would allow me to remain in Washington yet keep my hand in business affairs in my old district, a perfect situation if I should decide to position myself for another political race.

Three days later Pete called with the news that Trible had vetoed the appointment and that out of professional courtesy there was no more he could do to help me secure the job. Pete refrained from expressing any judgments about Trible's decision in the matter, but after I thanked him for his help and hung up the phone, I began to wonder if I was going to be saddled with Trible's vindictiveness for the rest of my life.

At the end of the summer of 1979 I was offered, with some help from the White House, a position as an attorney in the Office of the General Counsel at the Department of De-

fense, and at the beginning of October I took the offer and once more became a Washington bureaucrat. It had been almost two years since I had held a paying job, and while Toddy was relieved to have me out from under and earning a living, I had mixed feelings about the new job. On the one hand, I was dealing with challenging legal issues on a regular basis, but on the other, I had few illusions about changing the world as a faceless lawyer in the Pentagon. I was also drinking heavily almost every night, and my dependence on alcohol had become so fixed that my primary goal on rising in the morning was to make it home in the evening so that I could begin anesthetizing myself. For important meetings or projects that required a clear head, I was able, through force of will, to refrain from drinking altogether for up to a few days at a time, but when I drank, I always drank to excess. After six months on the job I could tell that I was becoming powerless over my ability to control my drinking, and though terrified by my situation in a way I had not felt since Vietnam, I dared not reveal my dark secret to anyone.

For years I had used alcohol to numb the pain of my Vietnam experience and the loss of my legs, and now in what I regarded as a cruel irony, alcohol was failing to bring the relief of oblivion. Angered by the realization that my old companion was turning against me, I drank more heavily and became even more depressed and withdrawn. Toddy sensed that something was severely wrong, but since she did not realize the extent of my dependence on alcohol, she attributed my darkening moods to depression and waited for me to pull myself out of it.

Within six months of beginning the new job, I had reached such a state of despair that an especially difficult work assignment precipitated a crisis. Unable to complete the task on my own and too isolated to ask for help, I decided that I was a failure as a lawyer, a husband, and a father, and I began contemplating suicide. One morning, when Toddy was away from the house for several hours with the chil-

dren, I began drinking straight shots of vodka to get the courage to take my own life.

After half a dozen shots I wrote Toddy a brief note telling her that I loved her and the children and that what I was about to do was not her fault. I then drank another half dozen shots and called a prominent Vietnam veteran in New York whom I barely knew to tell him what a rotten deal we veterans had gotten from our country. After the phone call I had one more drink, went out to my car, and tightly closed the garage and kitchen doors. I put the key in the ignition. For what seemed like an eternity I sat behind the wheel with my hand on the ignition key and tears streaming down my face and thought about never seeing my family again. Unable to turn the key and suddenly feeling the effects of so much vodka, I decided to put my head down on the seat for a few minutes before getting on with my plan. When I came to several hours later, Toddy was standing over me, screaming and slapping my face, and all I could think was that my suicide gesture, like my life, had been a failure.

After being sedated in the psychiatric ward of the nearest hospital, I was paired with a one-legged roommate named Jimmy Carter and poured into bed. When I awakened sometime late the next afternoon, I had missed most of a day and Carter was gone. A staff doctor interviewed me and told me that the next day I was being transferred to the psychiatric unit of Bethesda Naval Hospital for a period of rest and recuperation.

At Bethesda I was stabilized, diagnosed as clinically depressed, and introduced to a regimen of individual and group psychotherapy for the next week while strangers plotted the course of my future. Initially I felt humiliated and shamed to have so lost control of my life that professional help was needed to piece me back together; but as the week wore on, my flagging spirits revived, and I became more hopeful. With the alcohol out of my system, I was less depressed, and I even came to enjoy the give-and-take of therapy. Most of the other patients were young enlisted men and women, and without much education or life experience, they were easy to manipulate in group therapy. Unfortunately the

verbal jousting in which we engaged was so facile that I gained no real understanding of my own problem.

For six months after my hospitalization, as a therapy outpatient, I saw Dr. Walter Kearney for one hour each Thursday evening for individual psychotherapy. At the end of my workday I drove directly to his office, where after an initial exchange of pleasantries, he sat quietiy and I vented whatever was on my mind. I took our sessions seriously because I knew that suicidal depression was a serious matter, and I felt that I had been spared. However, since my gesture and subsequent hospitalization had resulted in so few adverse consequences, the two events did not convince me that any radical alterations in my life-style were necessary, and I thought I was doing enough by spending one hour a week with a psychiatrist.

After I had told him all I thought he needed to know about my childhood, parentage, and deepest inner secrets, I began to tire of our sessions and grew increasingly frustrated because I could never draw him into conversation. I began to feel better after a few months, but psychotherapy was hard work when half the team was putting out all the effort and I wanted my doctor to tell me that I was healing. On a few occasions I brought up the Vietoam War; but that topic, too, did not provoke any response from Dr. Kearney, and I decided that there was no point in pursuing it witii him since he, like most young men, had never served and had no reference point for my feelings.

In the months just prior to my hospitalization, I had begun to hear about a veteran named Jan Scruggs, who had been wounded while serving as an army corporal in Vietnam. Scruggs had been to see the Vietnam movie The Deer Hunter in the spring of 1979, and the film had rekindled dormant feelings for those of his fellows who had died in Vietnam. He now wanted to build a monument to honor their memory, and while his ambitious project moved me, I had become too cynical to think it had any possibility of success. Nevertheless, I stored his name in the recesses of my mind, and in subsequent months, as I heard more about him and his mission, I began to hope that his effort would prove my judgment wrong. Dr. Kearney, I felt, could never

share my growing excitement over the prospect of a monument in our nation's capital Hsting the names of every man and woman who had died in Vietnam, but I knew that there were miUions Uke me who had been changed by the war and were desperately in need of some affirmation of our sacrifices and those of our lost brothers and sisters.

On Memorial Day 1980 there was the usual ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. I had attended the event on occasion in the past, but I had always returned home discomfited by the seeming emphasis on the two world wars and Korea and by the lack of participation by Vietnam veterans. This year I missed the observance, but on the evening news I was surprised to see that a group of Vietnam veterans had held their own memorial service across the Potomac River on the Constitution Gardens site where Scruggs and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund wanted to build their memorial. The event was subdued and had none of the pageantry or cast of national figures as was gathered at the Tomb of the Unknowns, but it was a beginning. The next morning I eagerly read the news reports of Jan Scruggs and the cathartic quest he had begun, if too late, at least in pursuit of a worthy objective.

A short time later, on May 30, Toddy and I were invited to the White House by President Carter for a ceremony in honor of the first Vietnam Veterans Week. Several hundred Vietnam veterans, among them Jan Scruggs, were in attendance, and the president made a little speech acknowledging the nation's debt to us. He then unveiled a blowup of a stamp that the Postal Service was about to issue in honor of Vietnam veterans, and I began to wonder why and if, after all the years of neglect and outright hostility, my country was finally reaching out to acknowledge the Vietnam experience.

A month later Jim Crotty, my old roommate from the Philadelphia Naval Hospital, got married in Philadelphia, and Toddy and I decided to drive up for the ceremony. It was to be a reunion of sorts since Bob Kerrey would also be there.

and the following day we were going to drive over and spend a night with Paul and Kathy Barents, who lived a short distance west of the city. I had, in an unusual experiment for me, not had a drink for several weeks prior to the wedding weekend, and when I mentioned the upcoming events to my psychiatrist, we discussed whether I should break my abstinence. He shocked me by saying that I had been working hard in therapy and deserved the reward of being able to drink at the wedding.

As soon as we arrived at the Crotty home, I fixed myself a double scotch, and since I had my doctor's approval for a weekend of indulgence, I had finished off several more drinks by the time of the reception and dinner at a posh suburban country club. My dinner partner was a young woman who made no effort to hide her revulsion at either my physical appearance or my drunken state, I could not tell which, and I increased her disgust by getting even drunker as the night wore on. I remember bits and pieces of the early part of the evening, but after Jim and his bride had the first after-dinner dance, I blacked out for the rest of the evening.

When I awoke the next morning, I was back at the Crotty house with no idea how I had gotten there, an indignant wife, and a pounding hangover. Toddy told me that after dinner I had stationed myself by the coat closet near the entrance to the club and profanely reviled the departing guests until she and Bob Kerrey managed to dump me into the car and carry me away. I was chagrined that I had behaved so badly and alarmed to have no recall of the event, but not so alarmed that I refrained from sitting up half the next night drinking a bottle of expensive liquor with Paul Barents.

When we returned from Philadelphia, I decided that six months of therapy with Dr. Kearney was more than enough, and I broke off our relationship. I felt that he had been of some value in helping me overcome my depression, but I also thought that I had reached a point where our time together was yielding fewer returns.

Over the Fourth of July holiday Toddy and I were invited to the White House for a reception and an evening of

patriotic music and fireworks, and I again drank to excess and behaved badly. Fortunately Toddy saw the warning signs as I began to lose control, and after I had engaged the secretary of defense and Kirk Douglas in inappropriate conversation, she took me home early and put me to bed. My drinking seemed to be reaching a point where I would sporadically become unpredictable and then black out. I would then resolve to moderate my consumption, and after going a few weeks without a repeat incident, I would feel I had overcome the problem. Inevitably, however, I always returned to the point of excess.

Over the course of the next fall and winter I drank myself into near oblivion almost every night, and while there were no obvious signs of my dark secret at work, I was becoming moody and withdrawn. I would awaken in the morning, shaky from overindulgence and badly in need of a drink. Once again my main goal on rising was to make it to the end of the day so that I could resume drinking. Ashamed of myself, I walled out my friends and family, and alone and isolated, I became increasingly bitter at the injustice I thought life had dealt me.

At a law school cocktail party in Williamsburg in November, I again lost control, and when Toddy brought me a plate of food to try to sober me up, I threw it across the room and created a scene. Again, I had no recollection of the event until my mortified wife described it to me the next day. Toddy did her best to maintain appearances and keep the family and our relationship going, but I was far too self-absorbed to grasp the heroism involved in her effort. When lovemaking became an impossibility during the nighttime, she accommodated me by accepting my advances after I had awakened in the morning, but there was no joy and no tenderness in my desperate attempts to prove myself still functional. On those rare occasions when my head was clear enough for self-reflection, my conscience reminded me that Lewis and Maggie were getting old enough to realize what was wrong with their father, but while I did not want them to remember me as a hopeless drunk, I was powerless to alter my self-destructive course.

In January 1981 Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president, and the American hostages who had been captured in the American Embassy in Teheran more than a year earlier were released. Tired of seeing our fellow Americans degraded at the hands of fundamentalist fanatics, the country embarked on an orgy of rejoicing and patriotic fervor. The attention, which lasted for months, was remarkable for its intensity. In short order the hostages were accorded heroic status and showered with free airline passes, admission tickets to athletic events, and gifts from corporate donors. A grateful nation held testimonial dinners and ticker-tape parades, there were invitations to the White House, and special legislation was introduced in the Congress to try to compensate the hostages for their ordeal. Suddenly thrust into the limelight, some of them embarked on speaking tours and considered running for political office.

Throughout it all I held my emotions in check and tried to appear approving of the catharsis that was being played out. Inside, however, I was beset by guilt over my inability to view the hostages as truly heroic and by my anger at the painful contrast between their confetti-strewn homecoming and the starkness of my own return. Confused and out of touch with the mainstream of America, I took my usual course of action by remaining silent, stifling my rage, and going to the bottle.

Later in the winter I awoke one morning at two, having passed out in my bed earlier in the evening. Sitting bolt upright, I felt as if I were going to come apart at the seams if I didn't have a drink, and I quietly transferred into my wheelchair so as not to awaken Toddy and went out to the kitchen. I then filled a highball glass three-quarters to the top from the jug of wine I kept in the refrigerator and finished it off in three or four frantic gulps. As I waited for the wine to take effect, I thought how insane my behavior was and how I was going to have to work harder to discipline

myself. Several nights later I repeated the pattern, and within six or eight weeks I was fixing myself a large glass of wine in the middle of the night almost every night.

By spring I was fast on my way toward needing alcohol in my system at all times just to feel normal, and I fre-quendy had to resort to the wine bottle an hour or so before I shaved each morning in order to steady my hands. Once at work, I tried to do all my paperwork and take care of everything that needed my signature in the mornings before the tremors returned. I then spent the rest of the day fixated on the thought of that first drink after I got home in the evening and in terror that I was going to be found out.

In May the design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was completed, and a panel of jurors selected what became a controversial submission from among the almost fifteen hundred entries. As I read about the winning entry, designed by a woman undergraduate at Yale named Maya Lin, I pictured the two black walls containing the names of all those killed in Vietnam. The walls were going to form a V shape and be built into a hillside on the Mall with one arm pointing toward the Lincoln Memorial and the other toward the Washington Monument. It seemed like a perfectly appropriate, albeit unconventional, design to me, although I would have preferred that it had been submitted by a Vietnam veteran. Little did I realize that a major battle would take place before the memorial became a reality, or that while the controversy raged, I would be engaged in a life-or-death struggle with some demons of my own.

I briefly considered calling the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund to offer my help several times that spring and summer and, in fact, was often chided by Toddy to do so, but I was too incapacitated to offer anything more than token support from the sidelines. Nevertheless, in moments of lucidity I realized that something important was taking place for all of us who had served, and as if it were a lifeline thrown a drowning man, I was buoyed by the effort that others were making on my behalf.

By summer I had exhausted my defenses against the encroachments of alcohol. I knew that I was in serious trouble and that despite my best efforts, I could not stop drinking on my own. I had tried switching brands, drinking only beer or wine, drinking only after a certain time of day or no later than a certain time of day, or not drinking at all. No matter what new and feeble approach I seized on, I always seemed to wind up drunk and out of control, and my self-esteem plunged to such depths that I no longer considered myself fit company for friends or family. Toddy knew that I drank too much; but she had no idea of the extent of my drinking, and she tried to hold on to the illusion that my problem was a depression out of which I would eventually emerge.

One day during the summer we drove Maggie to a weeklong camp in the western part of Virginia. On the Saturday morning that we left I was so drunk that I slept in the baclcseat for the five-hour trip, and when we got back home, I was so ashamed that I decided not to drink until Maggie's camp was completed. For the first three nights I lay awake on the sofa all night, my clothes soaked in perspiration and my nervous system screaming for a drink. By the end of the week I had detoxified myself, and I proudly made a point of driving the entire trip when we set out to retrieve our daughter. On the night that we got home I decided to reward myself with two glasses of wine, and I again drank myself into oblivion and undid all of the sacrifice of the previous week.

A few weeks later I was asked to do a Vietnam veterans' segment to be used on the "Tomorrow" show, and I knew that in order to perform well, I would have to do the taping without alcohol in my system. I again detoxified myself, and again I spent several nights tossing and mming on the den sofa. The television piece went very well, and 1 resumed drinking as soon as it was completed; but I could now see that alcohol had such a grip on me that it was causing more pain than pleasure. I was drinking at a maintenance pace in order to keep an acceptable blood alcohol

level in my system, and that meant that there were many times when I had to drink even though I did not want to.

For some reason, at about the time that I thought alcohol had betrayed me, I became even more obsessed with the Vietnam War. Perhaps, I was using it as an excuse to justify my drinking, but in my blackest moods I always turned to the war. I felt that if I could only find some meaning in it or some positive consequences of my involvement, I could put my life back on course and get my drinking under control. When not a shred of solace resulted from my obsession, I became even more bitter and withdrawn. There were times when I felt as if I had fought the war all by myself, and no one could understand my pain, and that I was going to spend the remainder of my life, like the tragic Texas boy in the bubble, in near-total isolation.