Deborah/Robert Shurtlieff Sampson Was the Continental Soldier in Drag

 

The portrait of Deborah Sampson from the front piece of a 1797 biography is the only reliable image of her appearance.

After a year and a half of active service in a regular regiment of the Continental Line, Corporal Robert Shurtlieff Sampson was discovered to be a woman—Deborah Sampson, and was honorably discharged on October 25, 1783 by a somewhat astonished and amused General Henry Knox who even kindly gave her money for her long trip home.

There have been a handful of documented cases of women posing as men to serve in the armed forces in American history.  The Civil War saw such enlistments in both the Union and Confederate armies, the most famous being Sarah Emma Edmonds who served with the Union disguised as Frank Flint Thompson.  She served first as a male nurse and later as a spy until she contracted malaria and abandoned the Army rather than be discovered in a military hospital.  Edmonds was eventually granted a pension for her service and was the only woman admitted as a full member of the Grand Army of the Republic. 

But long before Edmonds was Deborah Sampson who joined the Continental Army under the name of her dead brother, Robert Shurtlieff Sampson and served for a year and a half, much of the time as an infantryman of the Massachusetts Line.

Sampson was born the oldest of seven children on December 17, 1760 in Plympton, Massachusetts into an old colonial family.  Through her mother she was a direct descendent of William Bradford, first Governor of Plymouth Colony.  Despite the distinguished lineage, the family fell on hard times when Deborah was about seven years old when her father was lost at sea.  Her struggling mother soon had to break up the family and send the children to foster with others.  Deborah was shuttled between households until she turned 10 years old and was bound and indentured to Deacon Benjamin Thomas, a farmer and Baptist elder in Middleborough who had a large family.  There she toiled as a domestic servant and farm laborer until her bondage ended on her 18th Birthday.  It was a hard life, but she managed to teach herself to read and write by caging free moments to peruse Deacon Thomas’s small religious library.

There was something else she found on Thomas’s shelves—a militia musters manual with instructions for the complicated use of military muskets, an already antiquated manual of arms, and descriptions of field marching orders.  The Revolution was on, although the main theaters of the war had moved on from New England.  Amid the drudgery of her life, Deborah longed for the excitement and adventure of a life as a soldier.

After leaving bondage Sampson began teaching school in the summer and weaving in the winter for a meager income.  Her mother, with whom she had never lost contact, schemed to rescue both of them from poverty by trying to match Deborah up with a well-to-do landowner.  She began to worry that he mother might succeed before she could live the life she wanted.

In 1780 Sampson first disguised herself as a man and enlisted Massachusetts Militia Forces in Middleborough under the name Timothy Thayer.  She was soon recognized in the town where she had grown up, was discovered, and forced to return her enlistment bounty.   She became an object of scandal and ridicule in town and was expelled from her Baptist congregation for “un-Christian like action.”

Undeterred, Sampson tried again, walking to Uxbridge, a town in Worcester County, on the Connecticut River far enough away from home so that she would not be recognized.  At 5 foot, 7 inches tall, Sampson was not only taller than most women of her time, she was not much shorter than the average height of men.  She was strong and robust from a life of labor.  With her hair cut shorter and tied at the neck in a queue and her breast bound, she had no difficulty in convincing Muster Master Noah Taft that she was Robert Shurtlieff Sampson, her dead brother.  It probably also helped, if the rude portraits of her made after the war are any indication, that she was not a delicate beauty, but had a gaunt face and a long, sharp, pointed nose.  Sampson’s signature on the muster role is preserved in Massachusetts.

This contemporary illustration accurately depicts the blue, buff, and red uniform with plumed cap of the 4th Massachusetts.  The regiment also wore a tri-corn hat when the fancy caps were not available.

Sampson was assigned to the Light Infantry Company of the 4th Massachusetts Regiment under the command of Captain George Webb.  The sixty-man company was the elite assault unit of the Continental Army regiment of the line.  In other words, Sampson was a Regular.  Her unit was first posted to Bellingham and then to Worcester where the regiment’s companies consolidated under the command of Col. William Shepard. 

The regiment was posted to the area around Westchester County, New York, north of New York City where it screened George Washington’s forces along the Hudson from probing attacks by the Red Coats based in the city.  She engaged in several sharp skirmishes with English patrols and acquitted herself well under fire.  On July 3, 1782, in a particularly sharp engagement near Tarrytown, Sampson was wounded three times, suffered a saber gash to the head and two musket balls to the thigh.

Afraid that medical assistance might expose her secret, Sampson tried to refuse treatment begging to be allowed to die on the battlefield.  He comrades would have none of it.  They commandeered a horse and carried her six miles to a crude Army hospital.  A surgeon treated her head wound but Sampson managed to slip away before her breeches could be cut away to remove the balls.  In hiding she tried to do the job herself, probing with a pen knife.  She got one ball out, but the other was too deep and she carried it the rest of her life.  The stubborn ball also caused her a permanent disability—she walked with a limp ever after.  But almost miraculously the wounds did not become infected and Sampson survived.

When she rejoined her unit she was promoted to corporal.  She returned to field duty and saw a dust up or two more, but the main action of the War had shifted to Virginia.  With little to do in the field and her leg obviously bothering her, she was honored as wounded veteran soldier to be the personal waiter to General John Paterson.

The war was virtually over in June of 1783.  The Treaty of Paris was under negotiations and everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the remaining English armies sailed away.  But at home, deprived of an active enemy, there was unrest.  Unpaid officers and troops mutinied and threatened Congress in Philadelphia.  Washington ordered the 4th Massachusetts to sail for the capital and protect Congress.

That summer Sampson fell desperately ill with what was diagnosed as malignant fever.  She was treated by Dr. Barnabas Binney who discovered her bound breasts while he tried to treat her.  The sympathetic doctor decided not to reveal her secret.  Instead, he took Sampson into his own household where she was slowly nursed by to health by his wife and daughter.

As soon as word arrived that the Treaty had finally been signed, word came that her regiment, like most Continental Regiments would be mustered out in November.  By late October Sampson was better.  Dr. Binney decided to send to her back to the Army carrying a personal sealed letter to General Paterson.  Sampson was sure that it revealed her secret and that she would be cashiered, stripped of pay and rank, and possibly even imprisoned.   But she dutifully delivered the letter, never opening it or never sure of its contents.

Corporal Sampson delivers the sealed letter from her doctor to General John Patterson, who she had served as a personal waiter while disabled, which revealed her sex and true identity.

Whatever the Dr. said in the letter, it impressed General Paterson who forwarded it to General Henry Knox at West Point who summoned her to report.  Paterson was surprised to find that the General was sympathetic.  After more than 17 months of active service, Knox granted Sampson an honorable discharge, gave her some fatherly advice, and personally gave her money for her return home.

Once again in women’s attire and traveling under her own name, but carrying her precious Continental Army uniform, Sampson boarded a costal sloop in New York City and sailed to Providence, Rhode Island.  From there she walked home.

In 1785 Sampson married Benjamin Gannett and settled on his farm in Sharon, Norfolk County.  It was the kind of New England stone field farm that yielded a slender living, and the growing family was always on the verge of poverty.  She gave birth to three children, Earl in 1786, Mary in 1788, Patience in 1790, and adopted orphan Susanna Baker.  As years went on Sampson began pursuing various veteran benefits to supplement her family income.

Her story became well known locally and she became something of a minor celebrity.

In January 1792, Sampson petitioned the Massachusetts State Legislature for back pay owed her which withheld because she was a woman. The petition passed the Senate and was signed by Governor John Hancock. The General Court of Massachusetts verified her service and cited her for exhibiting “an extraordinary instance of female heroism by discharging the duties of a faithful gallant soldier, and at the same time preserving the virtue and chastity of her sex, unsuspected and unblemished.” She was awarded the tidy sum of £34.

In 1802 at the age of 42 Sampson began to supplement her family income by lecturing about her Revolutionary War experiences.  In the first half of the lecture dresses as a respectable farm wife she would tell the story of her experience.  She would return in her old Revolutionary uniform—blue and buff with red facing and the distinctive feathered cap worn by her regiment—and execute the complex manual of arms with her heavy musket.  Her lectures naturally took her to Boston where she became friendly with fellow patriot Paul Revere who became a patron of sorts often lending her small sums of money.

In 1804 Revere wrote to Massachusetts Representative William Eustis requesting that Congress grant her a military pension, the first such petition ever made on behalf of a woman.  Revere’s prestige no doubt helped the case.  Revere wrote,

I have been induced to enquire her situation, and character, since she quit the male habit, and soldiers uniform; for the more decent apparel of her own gender...humanity and justice obliges me to say, that every person with whom I have conversed about her, and it is not a few, speak of her as a woman with handsome talents, good morals, a dutiful wife, and an affectionate parent.

The next year Congress granted a pension of $4 a month and instructed that she be put on the Massachusetts Invalid Pension Roll.

One of several accounts of Sampson's service published for young adults and children.

Her health declining and still in desperate circumstance in 1808 Sampson petitioned Congress to make her Invalid pension retroactive to the date of her discharge in 1783 since she had suffered from her leg wound the entire time.  The petition was denied and resubmitted to every new Congress until finally in 1816 approved payment equal to $76 for each year.  With that money she was able to pay all of her debts, including those to her aging benefactor Revere and live out her days in relative comfort.

Sampson died on April 29, 1827, at the age of 66 of yellow fever and was buried in Rock Ridge Cemetery in Sharon.  Her husband survived her by ten years.

The Deborah Sampson statue in Sharon, Massachusetts, her post-war home.

Deborah Sampson has become a minor folk hero and has been the subject of both an adult biography and books aimed at inspiring young women.  Her farm home in Sharon is a historic site, and her life-size statue stands outside the Sharon Public Library.

Walking the Walk and Compassion for Campers Update for October 23 2026

Look for new opportunities for action, education, community, and solidarity in and around McHenry County here every week.  

Walking the Walk

Congratulations to all those who were able to participate in any of the activities of the No Kings: Vote Early events held in or around McHenry County and to all who were inspired to take heed and secure their ballots.  The thousands in these parts we part of a record nine million plus who hit the streets in almost every county in the  U.S.

Urgent notice--Vote by Mail alert.  Changes in regulations and uncertainty about possible Postal Service actions means to use caution before dropping your Illinois ballot into a USPS collection box.  If possible, place your ballot in secure drop boxes in McHenry County at 12 sites to cast their ballots early, regardless of where in the county you live. early voting officially opened Sept. 24 at the McHenry County Election Center, 410 S. Eastwood Drive, Woodstock. You can find a complete list of locations and hours of operation on the McHenry County Clerk’s Office website by visiting www.mchenrycountyclerkil.gov then clicking on “Elections” and “Voter Information.” Early voting will be available until 7 p.m. the night before the election at seven of the locations.

Compassion for Campers

Thanks to our partners at harm reduction program Live4Lali, Compassion for Campers is able to resume serving the unhoused and housing insecure in McHenry County with distributions on the First and Third Fridays of the month.  Our next distribution will be this Friday, November 6 from 10 am to Noon at their offices at 665 W. Jackson Unit C2 in Woodstock and then on November 20. We will be able to use the space until at least the end of 2026 or until a search to find a new location for the whole McHenry County Resource Center program to find a new location.  

One way to support our mission is to participate in the Tree of Life UU Congregation (TOLUUC) Service Auction: Serving Looks & Raising Funds on Saturday, November 14 at 5 pm at our shared space at Ridgefield/Crystal Lake Presbyterian Church (RCLPC), 8505 Church Street in Ridgefield and online starting Sunday, November 1.  The Live and Silent Auction supports the staff and mission of TOLUUC and four great community partners including C4C, Crystal Lake Pride, Family Health Partnership Clinic, and Veterans Path to Hope.  "November 14 will be huge fun! Ron Relic will return as our very entertaining and experienced auctioneer, we will have fun, family-friendly drag performers bringing lots of energy to the evening, hors d'oeuvres will be circulating the room while you check out the silent auction baskets and other offerings."  Admission donation is $20.  Reserve a spot at https://2026-Tree-of-Life-UU-Service-Auction.auctria.events or pay at the door.

Financial support remains critical to fulfilling our mission. The best thing you can do is offer your critically needed financial support. Money donations are always welcome at     https://tinyurl.com/3bz96axe.   Look for updates here.  Email compassionforcampers@treeoflifeuu.org .

From the Murfin Verse Archives--Accidental Idaho

 

A view from Lolo pass in a smoke haze.

Note—From fourteen years ago.

Yesterday morning my old Shimer friend Teri Loeb casually wrote in a Facebook status entry, “On my way home from Idaho. Didn’t realize that it was a real place. LOL” More than a little groggy from an overnight shift, I posted a reply.

Later, I looked at it and realized it was a poem in hiding.  Here it is, all dressed up in line breaks and poetic form without an altered word.

 

A Nez Percé warrior on one of the tribe's treasured Appaloosa horses.  The tribe was the first to adopt the Plains nations' horse and hunting culture west of the Great Divide in the northern Rocky Mountains.

Accidental Idaho

Some of it is imaginary.

Break the crest of the Lolo trail

on one of the few summer days

when it is clear of snow

where Lewis and Clark labored heavily

over the Divide and look out over

the blue-green world by a wandering creek

and off in the distance you swear

you can see the smoke of a Nez Percé fire.

And in rustling wind you think you may dimly hear

the hoof beats of their Appaloosas.

—Patrick Murfin

It Wasn't the End of the World After All--It Was the Great Disapointment

 

William Miller's End of the World prophesy got a lot of ink around the world.  This was from an English illustrated newspaper.

Baptist preacher William Miller developed a large following based on his interpretations of the prophecies in the Book of Daniel 8:14 “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.”  Millerite congregations sprang up after Miller began to preach his doctrine of the Earth scourged by fire and the Second Advent of Christ come to save believers in 1831.  He calculated that Jesus Christ would return to earth and appear to the saved some time in 1843-44.  The movement spread over northern states which had previously been gripped the religious frenzy of the Second Great Awakening. 

William Miller looked like a small town school master in this popular etching.  More idealized portraits sans spectacles followed making him look more masterful and handsome.  The movement knew how to use media.

Although Miller never set a precise date, he argued that the Advent would occur during the Jewish Year 5604, between March 21, 1843 and March 20, 1844.  Many of his followers gave up all their possessions to await the end.  When March 20, 1844 came and went without either Fire or Jesus, many of his disciples were discouraged.  But many kept the faith, even when Miller admitted that he had been in error and sought explanations.

One of the widely circulated versions of Miller's Prophetic Chart explaining the meanings of the visions reported in the Book of Daniel and in the New Testament Book of Revelations.

At a Millerite camp meeting in Exeter, New Hampshire in August Samuel S. Snow, announced that he had discovered the error in Miller’s original calculation, which were based on one day=one year from 457 B.C. when Artaxerxes I of Persia granted permission for the Jews to rebuild their Temple in Jerusalem. Using the calendar of the Karaite Jews instead of the Rabbinic calendar consulted my Miller, Snow determined that “The tenth day of the seventh month [Jewish] of the present year, 1844” as the true date.  He equated that with October 22, 1844.

Aided by sensationalized press accounts, Snow’s prediction spread like wildfire.  Not only was it accepted by—with Miller’s approval—by the sect, but it spread to other Evangelicals. 

After the Great Disappointment, the Millerites were widely mocked but many clung to their faith although they splintered on explanations for the failure of the prophesy.  

On October 22 tens of thousands gathered, on high ground if possible, surrounded by their families.  Many, taking a cue from Scripture wore white robes for the Rapture.    When nothing happened, they drifted off faced with rebuilding their lives.  October 23 was called the Great Disappointment.

Many, if not most of the Millerites abandoned their faith and returned to the conventional and orthodox denominations from which they had come.  Those who had not been committed Millerites, but accepted the prophesy were especially bitter.  Millerite churches in several towns and cities were attacked or burned and adherents violently assaulted.  Miller himself commented on the cruel mockery of small children.

But a core group remained true believers.  However, they soon split into three factions.  The first faction, initially the largest, believed that Oct. 22 had shut the door to salvation to all but the Wise Virgins—those who believed in the message.  This group awaited daily rapture.

The second group soon eclipsed the first.  It held that the Oct. 22 date was in err.  Led by Joshua Hines who eventually recruited Miller himself, argued that since the door was not shut, people newly coming to the faith might also be saved in an imminent, if unknowable, Second Coming.  This group eventually founded the Advent Christian Church. 

The third group was the most successful of all.   The believed that Oct. 22 was a correct and significant date, but that it had been misinterpreted.  The sanctuary cleansed that day was not on Earth but in Heaven.  Eventually a “light would be given and their disappointment explained.”  Out of this group arose the Seventh Day Adventist Church   and all of its many splinters, each with its own interpretation. 

A splinter of one of those splinters was the Branch Davidians, whose Waco, Texas compound was famously assaulted by Federal Agents which killed 82 of them on April 19, 1993.  The tragically bungled operation was truly the End of the World for them.

The Seventh Day Adventists are the largest of the sects or denominations inspired by Miller's vision.   This is from a contemporary tract.

Oddly, the Baha’i incorporated Miller’s prophesy and identified the return of Christ with their avatar the Báb who proclaimed himself in Persia in 1844.

Miller, the founder of all of this excitement, died in 1849 still waiting daily for the End.

There were other reported “ends of the world” in American history.  Notably the Jehovah’s Witnesses predicted the end in 1914, 1918, 1925, and 1942.  They were wrong, too.  As were Chuck Smith and Edgar Whisenant in the ‘80s and ‘90s and radio evangelist Harold Camping as recently as 2011.

It is apparently a game anyone can play.  Anybody up for an End of the World pool?  Winner takes the pot and has eternity to spend it. 

Marching to a Different Drum and Plugging Rifle Barrels With Flowers

   

The most enduring image of the Pentagon March--young people putting flowers in the barrels of Army M-15 rifles.  

Note—It is instructive to note the Johnson administration’s massive deployment in defense of the Pentagon during the 1967 anti-war March on the Pentagon and the feeble protection of the Capitol during the January 6, 2021 siege and attempted insurrection.

There were other big marches in Washington in opposition to the Vietnam War.  Starting in 1965 they had practically become semi-annual events.  There would be more—and larger—ones later.  But the March to Confront the War Makers on October 21, 1967, was different.  It signaled a new phase in the anti-war movement that incorporated the rising youth counter culture on a large scale for the first time and willingness for more aggressive confrontation of authority.  It also introduced onto a national stage some figures who would become household names within a year.

The march was organized, as were previous ones, by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam—universally referred to simply as the Mobe—a shaky coalition of more than 150 organizations including traditional pacifists, Ban the Bomb groups, liberals, the Old Left, the New Left, Viet Cong sympathizers, a sliver of the Civil Rights Movement, student groups like the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and anti-war veteran groups.  It was united only in opposition to the war.

 

A Mobe flyer promoting the march had a distinctly traditional, Old Left look.  With the infusion of the youth culture into the previously mostly middle class anti-war movement, such calls would soon look far different.

The organization was so shaky that after the tumultuous events of this demonstration it fell apart.  It was re-assembled, minus its less militant components as the New Mobe the following year in time to organize protests at the Democratic National Convention.

The Mobe was led by veteran radical pacifist Dave Dellinger, the fifty-something editor of Liberation magazine.  In order to reach out to more young people—earlier marches, in retrospect seem like the sedate affairs of the middle class—Dellinger recruited California activist Jerry Rubin to be project coordinator for the march.  It was Rubin’s idea to add a March on the Pentagon after the main rally on the National Mall broke up.

 

Three central figures of the Chicago Democratic Convention protests of 1968, Abbie Hoffman, Dave Dellinger, and Jerry Rubin, first came together for the Marches on Washington Washington and the Pentagon. 

The rally and March were just part of a series of actions in and around Washington.  A day earlier a march of hundreds on the Justice Department organized by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and other anti-draft groups presented more than 1,000 returned Draft Cards to a reluctant Assistant Attorney General.  Other small demonstrations and picketing were organized by various component groups in the Mobe around Washington.

Among those who came to Washington, many in rented school buses, was a carload organized by Chicago Seed editor Abe Peck

A highlight of the Rally on the Mall was to be the arrival of the Peace Torch, first lit in Hiroshima on August 6.  It was carried across country from San Francisco in a highly publicized relay reminiscent of the journeys of the Olympic Torch.

Although several Blacks spoke from the podium of the Mall Rally—mostly long-time members of Old Left parties—most African Americans boycotted the main demonstration where President Lyndon B. Johnson was sure to come under attack.  Many were grateful for his steadfast support of major Civil Rights legislation.  A related rally was held at Howard University where opposition to the war was largely separated from opposition to the President.  The most important Black leader to come out strongly against the war, Rev. Martin Luther King, was absent from both events. 

The huge rally was typical of others of its type—a parade of speakers representing the component organizations interspersed with brief entertainment.  Dellinger hinted at a shift in anti-war strategy by saying that it was time to “to go from protest to resistance.”  Norman Mailer, then the most celebrated novelist in America, famously spoke.  His role in the Rally and later events was celebrated in his book Armies of the Night, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. 

 

Noam Chomsky, Norman Mailer, poet Robert Lowell, Old Left leader Sydney Lens, Dagmar Wilson, and Dr. Benjamin Spock link arms with other luminaries and speakers as they set off from the main rally on the National Mall to head to the Pentagon.

The main speaker was Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose baby care book was the Bible by which most of the young members of the crowd had been raised.  Spock supported Johnson in 1964 and felt betrayed by his escalation of the war.  The kindly Spock was one of the last nods at getting the parents of Baby Boomers on board the anti-war movement.  But the days when he and organizations like Another Mother for Peace could be the face of the movement were ending.

When the main Rally broke up, a large portion of the crowd began the two-and-a-half-mile march to the Pentagon.  By some estimates as many at 50,000 began the long walk, which took them across the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac and up a long service road to the Defense Department headquarters.  Many did not finish the trip.  The line strung out so that it took well over an hour for everyone to get into the site.

When marchers got there, they were confronted with a building encircled by 2,500 Federal troops and 200 U.S. Marshals.  A rope line was set up in advance of the security forces and authorities announced that anyone crossing the line would be arrested.

Marchers also encountered a smaller group already at the Pentagon.  Organized by Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, festooned in an American flag shirt and Uncle Sam hat, the newly formed Youth International Party—the Yippies, an organization that hardly existed except in flyers circulated on college campuses and in big city youth culture enclaves, were there to supposedly levitate the Pentagon.

Many of those first on the scene peacefully approached the defense line.  Images of young people putting flowers in the barrels of Army M-15s became iconic.  But soon more militant demonstrators were challenging the line.  Arrests began.  Small groups managed to get partially up the steps of the building.  Others found an unguarded access ramp and charged in.  They were met with rifle butts and particularly by the aggressive batons of Federal Marshals who busted several heads. Tear gas was used on the crowd and there was some chaos and panic.

  

 White helmeted U.S. Marshals with heavy batons were particularly aggressive against demonstrators and inflicted several cracked skulls.

But the majority of the demonstrators continued to stand by.  Many sang America the Beautiful and other patriotic and anti-war songs as the battle raged.  By 7 pm things had settled down.  Authorities announced that the permit for the demonstration had expired.  Most of the remaining demonstrators drifted away, but about 7,000 chose to stay.  No move was made to dislodge them, but as overnight temperatures dropped, many more left.

At dawn a few hundred left to march to the White House to “wake up LBJ.”  There were more arrests there, including those charged with picking flowers in Lafayette Park.  A few hundred others stayed behind to keep a vigil at the Pentagon.  At midnight the remaining 200 were rousted or arrested.

In all 681, including Hoffman and Mailer, were arrested over the two days.  Many demonstrators were bloodied or overcome by tear gas.  Over 100 demonstrators were documented to have been treated for injuries.  Many more were undoubtedly hurt.  In addition, some soldiers, marshals, and police sustained minor injuries, mostly from objects thrown at them during the confrontation at the Pentagon or scuffles during arrests.

The events in Washington that weekend set the stage for even more tumultuous and confrontational protests around the country in the next few years.

 

                                         Chicago Seed editor Abe Peck with Abbie Hoffman.

In Chicago, the Seed offices became the unofficial headquarters for the Yippie’s next big project, the counter cultural Festival of Life during the 1968 Democratic Convention.  But Abe Peck had a warning for flower-power hippies who expected bands and dope shrouded festivities in the park—“If you come, be sure to wear some armor in your hair.”

A Murfin Memoir of My Own Private Missile Crisis

Dad and I listened on the car radio when President Kennedy addressed the nation about the Cuban Missile Crisis and his eyeball to eyeball showdown with the Soviets.

Note—63 years ago the Cuban Missile Crisis riveted and terrified the American public, including a 13-year-old in Cheyenne. This is my recycled memoir of that.

I was in my father’s car.  I believe it was his official State of Wyoming 1962 Chevrolet station wagon.  We had the radio on.  Dad was doing me a favor.  He was a man of infinite patience that way.  We had just visited the Quonset hut that served as the official headquarters of Wyoming Civil Defense.  I had in my lap a box stuffed full of literature on how to build a bomb shelter, plan an emergency evacuation, explanations of the public shelter program, blue tri-fold brochures emblazoned with the triangle-in-a-circle logo of Your Civil Defense!

The literature was destined for the Civil Defense office that I had set up on folding tables outside my basement bedroom.  Ever since the election in 1960 when John Kennedy kept talking about the missile gap I had been obsessed with what seemed like an inevitable nuclear war. 

In Cheyenne, where America’s first ICBM base had been built at Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, it was hard to avoid.  It was a matter of some civic pride that the missile base made us “one of the top ten nuclear targets.”  Students at Eastwood Elementary School regularly conducted air raid drills.  Sometimes we were instructed to duck under our desks and cover our heads with a thick textbook.  Other times we were taken out to the empty field across the street and told to lie face down with our hands interlaced behind our heads.  This was so the atomic blast could “roll over us.” We were also told not to look up lest the flash of the exploding bomb burn our eyeballs out.

Other kids might have shrugged it off.  But I was a patriot.  I wanted to do something for my country, just like President Kennedy had said.  I was informed.  I read both the Wyoming Eagle and the Tribune and got my own copy of Time every week in the mail.  Ok, it may have been a little unusual for a thirteen year old boy, but that’s the way I was.  

                                            The Rockefeller civil defense report helped set off the fallout shelter craze of the early '60's.  I read it avidly and took it to heart.

At some point I had gotten a hold of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s report on Civil Defense and actually read it.  It was meant to shore up a proposal that the state of New York build public shelters, but it had become the inspiration for the fall-out shelter craze that was sweeping the nation.  I was among those swept.  For some months I had been visiting the CD Quonset hut and gathering literature.   I obtained a nice Civil Defense decal which I put on the glass of our front storm door.  I even found a real white Civil Defense helmet from World War II at an Army surplus store.  I buttonholed everyone I could think of to promote preparedness.

And my Dad took in stride.  Maybe he knew that I just felt better thinking that there was something that I could do.  He drove me on my trips to the Quonset hut and probably used his clout as a member of the Wyoming cabinet to get them to give me all the literature I wanted.  They had plenty.  

Despite his tolerance of my obsession, Dad refused to build a backyard fallout shelter.

But despite my pleas, Dad would not build us our own shelter.  Not for him the trouble and expense of digging a big hole in the backyard, lining it with re-enforced concrete, installing a blast proof steal door and an efficient ventilation system, stocking it with food and water for our family of four for at least six months, and, yes keeping a good rifle on hand to shoot the improvident neighbors who had not planned ahead.  No, he just wouldn’t do it.  Looking back on it, I suspect that he knew an atomic explosion in the neighborhood with either not survivable or not worth surviving.

Anyway, that’s what we were doing at 5 pm Mountain Standard Time on October 21, 1962 when Kissin’ KIMN out of Denver, Colorado interrupted their regular broadcast of top 40 rock & roll “to bring you the President of the United States.”  We drove home in silence listening to details of our confrontation the Communist Russia over those missiles in Cuba. 

Except for school time, I was glued to the TV set for the next two weeks eager to hear any glimmer of news.  Late at night I used Dad’s old Atwater Kent table radio which could pick up short wave broadcasts from just about anywhere, including the BBC and even English language broadcasts from Radio Havana.  We all breathed easier when we got the word that the Ruskies had folded and were shipping their rockets back home.

I found a World War II Civil Defense helmet like this at the Army surplus store.

But what about next time?  There was sure to be a next time.  I got to thinking about those school drills and decided that they were not enough.  The school needed a real Civil Defense plan.  So, I started writing one.  I typed copies out on my new Sterling Smith-Corona portable with several sheets of onion skin and carbon paper.  Each homeroom, I proposed, should have an elected student Warden to help the teacher with evacuation plans and keep order.  The Wardens should be equipped with helmets, webbed belts with a water canteen and first aid kit, and police night stick just in case there was panic.  I went down to the Army surplus store and priced helmets and clubs.  In addition, each classroom was to have a box containing emergency supplies, which students would be required to bring from home—things like toilet paper and bags for excrement, bandages and first aid supplies, a flashlight, a transistor radio, and plenty of batteries.  In case of an attack the Warden and teacher were to scoop up the box and guide the class in an orderly manner to a designated shelter, which would adequately be stocked with K-rations and drums of water.

One morning I took my bundle of papers and presented them to the Principal, who solemnly accepted them.  He told me he would take the matter up with the School Board.  And he actually did!  A few weeks later I was told that my plan had been approved not just for Eastridge, but for the entire school system.  Of course, they made some changes.  The helmets and night sticks were out, but they would allow the student Wardens to have nice official looking arm bands.  They had students in the Junior High shop classes make boxes from galvanized sheet metal.  Every homeroom got one and kids got lists of what to bring from home to fill them.

These signs were ubiquitous in public buildings, schools, large office and commercial structures, and other places.  You could occasionally find them well into the current century long after the shelters they marked were abandoned or forgotten.

Sometime the next spring there were elections for student Wardens.  Everyone in the school knew that the whole thing was my idea.  But in my homeroom, I was not even nominated.  One of the popular kids, one of the guys who were always picked first in gym class, was elected unanimously. 

The next week when the student Wardens had their first meeting to organize and learn about the program after school, I just went home.  The principal asked me why I had not come to explain my plan.  I told him that I wasn’t elected and didn’t feel I should.  He shrugged and went about his business.