Paul Wisovaty
Transcript:
Paul Wisovaty: My name is Paul Wisovaty. I am 68. I’ve lived in Tuscola, Illinois for 30 years, and I was a radio operator when I was in Vietnam.
Amanda Wijangco: What was it like coming back home?
Paul Wisovaty: What really struck me was going from a place that was very tumultuous and very dangerous and very noisy. I’d be walking down the quad, and all the students would be playing Frisbee with their dog. I wanted to grab them and say, “Don’t you realize there’s a damn war going on?” Even when we had some anti-war activity on campus, and we did have some, to my recollection it was a minority of the students who actually seemed to care about it, which rather disappointed me.
Amanda Wijangco: You said there was some anti-war activity at the University of Illinois campus. Can you describe some of that?
Paul Wisovaty: Yeah, there was some. I know we had the entire Illinois National Guard here about six weeks before Kent State which I believe was in 1970. But to indicate how conservative this campus was, I later joined an organization called Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In speaking with a friend of mine who is a national officer, I said, “I’m kind of embarrassed I never joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War when I was in school at the University of Illinois.” His response was, “We didn’t have a chapter here, Paul.” This wasn’t Berkeley or Madison. It was a pretty conservative school.
Amanda Wijangco: Just to go back to that anti-war activity that was here, what exactly was going on? How would you describe that?
Paul Wisovaty: Oh we got to march in the July 4th parade. Of course, the police were walking on either side of us to make sure we didn’t do anything illegal or disruptive. A lot of it was probably like Kent State except nobody got killed. We’d have the National Guard here. To tell you the truth Amanda, it’s been so long I don’t remember a lot of the specifics, but I know we had some demonstrations and some speakers who would come and talk about the war and why we should not be in the war. It’s been a long time.
Stretch Ledford: Can you just explain the parade?
Paul Wisovaty: Well, actually I’m sorry, that was not during the Vietnam War. That was during the Iraq War. I’m sorry. You’re right, thank you. There was an Iraq War Veterans Against the War chapter here, and then us old guys in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War chapter. We did march in the parade. I remember the mayor, whose name I don’t want to recall, was walking around next to us wearing a helmet and carrying a Billy club in case one of us said something inappropriate I guess. That was during the Iraq War. I’m sorry.
Stretch Ledford: What was the anti-war movement like back in the day after you came back to college? Can you just say again where you ended up in college?
Paul Wisovaty: I got back from Vietnam on June 2, 1968, and two weeks later I enrolled in college here at the University of Illinois. Most of the anti-war activity was probably the three times or so when I went out to Washington D.C. where there were obviously a lot more people. Those events were very well attended, especially as we got into the 70s. What you saw as the war became less popular and more people got involved in the anti-war movement, it wasn’t just the so-called hippies. There were a lot like middle-aged housewives. People who several years earlier or a few years earlier would have never even considered doing something like that. That’s when I think we knew that we were going to win because we were getting the broad spectrum or much of the broad spectrum of the American public involved with those antiwar sentiments. Of course, most importantly we got Walter Cronkite on our side. LBJ admitted he’d lost when that happened.