PSU Magazine Winter 2005

Richard Mundy STRIVED FOR MEANING My undergraduate education was interrupted by elective Service (1942). I was a member of the Baptist Church at that time, but my mother's family were Quakers. I had an uncle who was a non-combatant in World War l. His three brothers all stayed out of the army As far as 1 knew at the time l was the only consciellli ous objector in Bloomington. l also refused to take compulsory ROTC training at Indiana Unive rsity. l think I was the first male studelll to take that stand and that cre– ated quite a bit of stir at the university. lt took some doing [to rece ive con– scientious objector status] ; it was a Churches supplied the food cooked by camp residents. fairly compli– cated and lengthy process. 1 had to submit statements and testimo– nials. I did not have to have a per– sonal hea ring in frolll of the draft board as many guys did. l fin ally left for camp in 1943 [going to] Lyndhurst, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Na ti onal Park. l voluntee red to go west for the fir season [to colllrol burns], so that's how I wound up at Waldport. I felt that was somewhat more urgent than construct– ing the parkway [at the Lyndhurst camp! . We were drafted , to quote it, "To do work of national significance in alternative Civili an ervice." And for some of us that was not a holl ow phrase . l arri ved there in April of 1944 and l was in th e bas camp of Waldport for no mo re than nine o r ten wee ks. Then I went to a side camp at Mount Hebo, which was 30 or 40 miles from Wald- 8 P U MAGAZINE WI TER 2005 port in the coastal range. We !ea red snags and also planted fresh trees. Sho rtly after I started working, there was a need for somebody to be on a fire tower, and 1 got that job. Then the oppo rtunity opened up to do something that was really relevant to the wo rld crisis in the semi – starvation study [in Minneapolis]. lt was as close as I could get to doing something to help reli eve the suffering in the war without contributing to it. An individual weight loss curve was set up fo r each of us so that by the encl of six months of semi -starvation we would arrive at a body weight approxi– mately between 60 to 65 percent of our no rmal we ight. The diet we got was a replication of the diet of Western Europeans during the famin e. So it was a lot of root food and legumes and a lot of potatoes. The purpose of our study was to learn the most effective and efficient way to rehabilitate starved populations. The European war ended May 7, 1945 , and we had been starving since the 15th of January. We were finally released in May or June of 1946. Selec– ti e Service tended to keep us to make sure that we we re not released ahead of the guys in uniform. l lc ft the base camp a little early because there was an opportunity to voluntee r for United Nations Relief and Rehab il itation Administrati on (UNRRA) a a sea– going cowboy. The Church of the Brethren and the Mennonites had started a project of sending shi ploads of pregnant heifers to first Poland , then oth er areas, as the army of occupation took ove r. lt was such a successful pro– gram th at the United Nations picked it up [using] old Libe rty ships. As it turned out , l was onl y able to make one trip. l went to Greece with a load of mares th at had been rounded up in th e "wilds" of Texas. Being a conscienti ous objector, I must say, was my equiva lent to go ing off to co ll ege. Some of the older men were kind of bitter about being iso– lated . l could never full y share those feelings because for me it was mo re of a liberating experience. [Mundy we nt on to ea rn a bachelo r's degree in p hi – losophy and a master's in social wo rk at Indiana Uni versity.] FOLLOWED HIS FATHER I was born in what I would call a reli– gious Christian home [Church of Brethren in North Carolina]. My daddy was a CO m W\Vl. He was treated a little rougher than l was. I wasn 't per– secuted too much. They would take them out in the First World War like they were gomg to shoot them. l don 't think 1 ever got too scared. I never thought they would [shoot us]. l registered . Some of the COs didn't register. They went to prison. But l registered and l had to see a judge in Greensboro. I was living in Spana, North Carolina, then, so the pastor of the church went with me down there and he pleaded my case. They sent me to Waldport, Oregon. It was a church camp. We did fire fight– ing during fire season. lt was on the Oregon coast and it rained six months out of the year-horizontally. Then they moved me to Bedford, Virginia, between Lynchburg and Roanoke . I was working for the park. When the war was over they closed it down and sent me to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. That was a government operated camp, and I worked in the Great Smoky Mountains. I really enjoyed Camp Angell. We had all kinds of people. Some were doctors, some lawyers, some nur es or preachers. Some weren't religious at all. Some were. There were more Jehovah's Witnesses in CPS than any– body. That's not a peace church . Most of the Jehovah' Witnesses went to prison because they didn't register. l played guitar since I was a kid . We really had some good musicians. ne in Oregon was a violin player, a staff musician for a radio station in New York. They had a side camp, toward Florence, Oregon. There was a black fellow, he was from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He was really into the boogie-woog1e back then on the piano. He told them he'd be a cook up there, if he could take his piano. He'd prac- ti e five hours a day. He would play piano and I would play the guitar. I was a grunt, the one fellow to go out by himself and climb the trees. In the rainy sea on we would plant trees