Paul Cox
Paul Cox lives in Berkeley, CA, and is a civil engineer. He is a veteran of the Vietnam War. He spent eighteen months in country as a Marine infantryman in 1969 and half of 1970, going to Vietnam as a supporter of the war and leaving Vietnam opposed to the war. In the remaining two years of his four-year enlistment, he was active in publishing an underground newspaper at Camp Lejeune. An inveterate veteran joiner, he has served on the board of Veterans for Peace and is currently a board member of Swords to Plowshares Veterans Rights Organization in San Francisco. He is a life member of the VFW, and is a member of the American Legion, Vietnam Veterans of America, and AmVets.
Ray Eurquhart
A Durham native, Ray is an African American union and community activist, a veteran (USAF) who served during the Vietnam War Era. Spent most of my USAF time in Europe (England) where I was a participant in the anti-war movement as a conscious anti-war G.I. and member of P.E.A.C.E. and, a base organizer and distributor of our anti-war newsletter. My anti-war activities led me to participate and join the Black Liberation Movement in London (BPM). A Retiree of the City of Durham where he was a member and Secretary Treasurer of Durham City Workers Union, UE Local 150; A father to a wonderful daughter and grandparent to a wonderful grandson. Ray is also an elected Durham County Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor, since 1994.
John Grant
John Grant is a veteran, a writer and a photographer. At age 19, he was a radio direction finder in Vietnam, working in the mountains west of Pleiku to locate enemy radio operators. He returned to the US and, then, read and learned what the war was really about; he has been a member of Veterans For Peace since 1985. He did documentary photography in Central America during the wars there and has traveled twice to the war zone in Iraq, as well as to numerous other places around the world. He has taught creative writing in a Philadelphia prison for ten years.
John Heuer, Ordinary Seaman
“My grandfathers both served in uniform during WW I. Grandfather Lockerby, a volunteer with the Canadian Highland Infantry was shot in France in 1915. He survived. Grandfather Heuer was drafted into the US Army. He died during boot camp in New Jersey 1918, a victim of the “Spanish Flu.” My father survived his service in the Army during WW II, although he suffered severe psychological and spiritual wounds. Both of my Lockerby uncles, Gordon and Earl, were killed in Europe in 1944. Vietnam was my generation’s war. When I began to suspect that my government was not telling the truth about Vietnam, I decided to have a look for myself. I signed on a merchant marine vessel bound from San Francisco to the Vietnamese port of Qui Nhon. My experience in Viet Nam shattered my faith in my country’s goodness. I refused induction into the US Army in 1970, and was a fugitive until I surrendered to the US Attorney in Detroit in 1975. My 2 years of public service restored my “good citizenship,” and my federal indictment was dismissed. Since retiring from UNC Chapel Hill Architectural & Engineering Services in 2006, I have been working with NC Peace Action and Veterans For Peace.”
Suel Jones
“Born 8 April, 1943 with a globe and anchor along with USMC already tattooed on my arm. I attended Univ of Houston, but that was after being in Vietnam from May ’68 to ‘June 69. I spent a year as a grunt along the DMZ with Delta Co., 3rd Marines. Being a child of WWII, I Was a “believer” so I went to war without asking why. Since returning that question as always haunted me. I bounced around Texas for a few years working as a journalist or a millwright. I then moved to Alaska in 1980 where I worked in the oil fields as a millwright. I lived in Glacierview, a rural area 100 miles east of Anchorage. After finally receiving therapy concerning PTSD I first returned to Vietnam in 1998, then in the year 2000 I moved to Hanoi where I worked with the Friendship Village for ten years. I traveled back and forth during that time. While in Alaska I raised money and spoke about Friendship and the work to help children affected by Agent Orange. In 2010 I relocated to Da Nang where I met others vets. Three of us worked to establish the first international Vet For Peace. I am presently president of VFP Chapter 160 in Vietnam. We create an annual through VFP to tour of Vietnam to study the present day problems AO and UXOs issue. I still return to Vietnam annually.”
Becky Luening
Becky Luening is a community organizer, peace activist and artist. Since 1996, she has served on the board of Vietnam Friendship Village Project USA, a small nonprofit that raises funds in the United States, in collaboration with partner organizations in Germany, France, Japan, Canada and Vietnam, to support a residential center in Hanoi that provides medical care, rehabilitative services and education to Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange. Becky has traveled to Vietnam on five separate occasions between 2002 and 2012. Involvement with the Friendship Village led Becky to join Veterans For Peace, and she has been an associate (non-veteran) member of that group since 1997. She is also founder of the Humboldt Branch of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Becky is married to Vietnam veteran and renowned peace activist, S. Brian Willson.
Staughton Lynd
“During the Korean war I sought and received 1-A-O classification as a conscientious objector who would serve in the military as an unarmed medic. I realized what a mistake I had made when we were told, during Basic Training, that when confronted with a seriously and a lightly wounded soldier, we should assist the lightly wounded man first because he could get back into combat sooner. I was saved from the necessity of doing anything about this when at the height of the McCarthy hysteria I received an Undesirable discharge: according to the anonymous allegations, my mother was a “hyper modern educator,” my undergraduate papers revealed the influence of Marxism, and I was a dangerous radical unlikely to be faithful to my country. The discharge was later changed to Honorable by the United States Supreme Court.”
Mac MacDevitt
Mac MacDevitt is an artist, storyteller and educator who came of age and was forever changed during the Vietnam War. After much soul searching I fought with my draft board and received a 1-A-O classification as a conscientious objector which would allow me to be drafted as a non-combatant medic. My opposition to the war, a deep desire to stay alive and my membership in Students for a Democratic Society (I had signed up for a trip to Cuba) gummed up the induction process long enough for me to get into graduate school. Was radicalized by witnessing the wounded protesters, beaten by US Marshals as night fell after the March on the Pentagon in 1967. Later that year fired (along with 26 other graduate teaching interns) from the Green County, Ohio school system for invoking “academic freedom” and refusing to follow administrative guidelines. In 1981 did a social work internship at the VA Hospital in White River Junction, Vermont in the psych department where I experienced vets dealing with ghosts from Vietnam and earlier wars. Currently an Associate Member of Chicago Veterans for Peace and Committee Chair of the My Lai Memorial Project – a proposed traveling exhibit which will expose participants to the hidden, almost forbidden history of the American War’s tragic impact on the people of Viet Nam. The project will use interactive art experiences to engage participants in a “memory to action” process leading to a deeper commitment to social justice. More information on the project is at mylaimemorial.org.
Howard Machtinger
Representative of Students for Democratic Society (SDS) at the second session of the Bertrand Russell International War Crimes Tribunal in Copenhagen in 1967, which included testimony (including from US soldiers) about the use of torture by American personnel in Viet Nam and the uses and dangers of Agent Orange. Helped organize an alternate ‘Viet Nam graduation’ at the University of Chicago in 1968. After the war, helped found the Viet Nam Support Committee in Seattle in the hope that Americans would not abandon postwar Viet Nam. Longtime antiwar and racial justice activist. Made the first of many visits to Viet Nam in 2002 and continues to help develop connections between Vietnamese and Americans.
Doug Rawlings – Board of Directors – Veterans For Peace
Doug Rawlings is a Vietnam War veteran (7/15th artillery, II Corps, 1969-1970) who is one of five founders of Veterans For Peace. He has taught high school English and spent the last 27 years teaching at the University of Maine at Farmington. He is currently retired. He has two children and two grandchildren. He and his wife live in central Maine.
Susan M. Schnall
Adjunct assistant professor, New York University, School of Continuing Professional Studies, teaching Health Care Policy and Planning for the past 15 years. Core Member, Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign, Veterans for Peace, Vietnam Veterans Against the War. For 31 years, worked in executive administration in public hospitals in New York City, retiring from Bellevue Hospital in 2006. From 1967-1969 I was a nurse in the US Navy, caring for the soldiers wounded in Vietnam. Courtmartialed for anti war activities in 1969.
Daniel Shea
Daniel Shea, is a Viet Nam veteran, former VFP Board of Directors, serves on the Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign core committee and is an active member of Portland Oregon VFP chapter 72.
Dan joined FICO Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba to End the US Embargo in 1994 and in 2006 was an invited to the World Social Forum in Venezuela representing PCASC and VFP 72 in connecting the dots of the U.S. occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq and our meddling in the affairs of Latin America and to paint a mural. That same year Dan was a VFP delegates to the March 2006 Veterans Agent Orange Conference in Hanoi, Viet Nam.
Dan currently hosts the monthly TV program Veterans for Peace Forum and keeps a blog sharing his poetry, art and essays at http://dsheavfp72.wordpress.com/
Michael Uhl
Michael Uhl led a combat intelligence team in Vietnam with the 11th Infantry Brigade. On coming home he joined the antiwar movement, and organized fellow war veterans to publicly reveal the extent of atrocities committed by U.S. forces against Vietnamese civilians. His war memoir, Vietnam Awakening, tells that story. Uhl is a charter member of Veterans For Peace who has served on the VFP board; he is co-founder of the GI/Veteran advocacy group Citizen Solder. A writer by trade, Michael Uhl’s work has appeared in numerous national publications from the Nation to Forbes. Samples of Michael Uhl’s writing, including a political memoir-in-progress, can be seen on his website www.veteranscholar.com.
Gerry Werhan
Gerry Werhan retired from the Army National Guard in 1995, having served in Operation Desert Storm, and having been crazy and naive enough to enlist in the USMC in 1971. Also retired from a civilian career, he lives in Asheville, NC and serves in the local chapter of Veterans For Peace as the administration chairperson on the steering committee for the VFP 2014 Annual Convention to be held there in July.
