by Terry 24 Replies latest jw friends
Terry,
your story is so much like so many of my former jws friends and almost my hubby. He got his deferment by becoming a father. I know how my best friend's husband felt. They waited to be married until he was released, about 1 year after your release. A lot of folks were at Huntsville. I knew a lot of brothers from the ww2 era. Some seemed to do OK but many dropped out of org after this experience.
This reminds me of the movie, "Girl Interpreted" , life interrupted by very heavy things.
Huntsville? That is a state prison here in Texas.
I didn't know any state prisons were used by Federal Authorities.
I guess there was an overflow crowd during the Viet Nam era :)
Out of all the brothers I knew in prison at that time all of them or either now dead or disfellowshipped.
Astounding.
yes, the prison experience seemed to really take a toll. It reminded me of the brothers who came back from bethel- so many were so disgusted with the Borg they just stopped attending.
I think this prison experience is one someone like you could explore on- write about. I mentioned this to Lady Lee before and I still think it is worthy of a book. It seems that there were some life long friends made from the prison experience or life long enemies. Not everyone got through prison with their faith intact and some even left jws during or b/c of of the prison experience- became apostate.
I have been so hoping someone would take on writing the stories of the brothers who went to prison, the sequela that followed.
I think you could do it.
yes Huntsville, both ww2 and Vietnam.
I have mentioned this before but we had 2 visits from the FBI . My hubby was 20 and could not get a ministers deferment due to having to work, not being able to pioneer. The FBI were very helpful to us, they were very OK with the CO stance and could not understand why we could not accept it. We did explain to them that doing so would mean DF and what they would do to our lives. They said they knew that-- and jw's felt many of jws were being coerced but had not been able to prove it. After I became pg they said to just write a letter to draft board with doctors certification I was pg, and when the baby was born alive another. that is how we got our deferment, but we just bungled into it. no one told us that was a way out of the draft.
v
I did write a book (I wept by the waters of Babylon) but never published it.
I did not want to write it in the first person voice, so, I fictionalized the main character (me) to distance
myself from the emotions.
Looking back on it, it doesn't work well that way.
I guess rewriting the whole damned thing is necessary!
I added to my post , but I hope you do write it. It would be cathartic for you and you might just make an impact you never imagined.
