Portland State Magazine Fall 2021

FALL 2021 // 29 I did not view the Vietnam War as a looming danger when I registered for the draft in 1966 at age 18. I saw the Air Force as a good way to get career training. At my first duty station in Maine, I worked in a supply warehouse, taught ski lessons on the weekends, and took my first college classes at the University of Maine. It was a positive experience.Then my base closed, and I got orders to go to Vietnam. I was 20 and running a civil engineering supply point at a remote air base with millions of dollars of supplies. I worked with a team of six to eight Vietnamese men for my yearlong tour. When I left, they gave me two brass vases made out of spent shells and a card that I still have.Then they took a hold of my legs and wept. I came back to Portland in 1970. I lived in an apartment on the east side, took classes at PSU in the morning, and unloaded freight on Swan Island at night. I didn’t participate in any war protests. I wasn’t hostile to anyone. I knew there were serious problems with what we were doing in Vietnam. I was not one of those people who always knew I wanted to be a lawyer. I started working at 16 to help my mother pay the mortgage. No one in my family had gone to college, and I wasn’t about to get any academic scholarships with my high school grades. But I kept my head down at PSU, then went to law school, became a lawyer and an appellate judge. As I look back, the things I learned in the military really helped guide me through my career. For me, it was a life-shaping experience, although I did not understand it at the time. You learn in the military to practice and prepare, so that you don’t get confused when it all starts to go bad. Trial work is like that. Prepare. Prepare. Prepare. So when you’re in the courtroom, you know what you’re going to do. You’re not making it up. Looking back, Vietnam seems so unsettling and dangerous. I am proud of my service, and I have a great admiration for those who have served. U.S. AIR FORCE, 1966-1970 Paul DeMuniz Paul De Muniz ’72 with his portrait in the Oregon Supreme Court Building in Salem. He served as Oregon’s first Hispanic chief justice from 2006-12. You learn in the military to practice and prepare, so that you don’t get confused when it all starts to go bad.