David Vaught - Re-Making the American Dream

RE-MAKING THE
AMERICAN
DREAM

DAVID VAUGHT

AuthorHouse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: 1 (800) 839-8640

Copyright 2019 David Vaught. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/13/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-2663-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-2664-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-2309-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019913874

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,
and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

This book is dedicated to the memory of my father, Harry Vaught, Jr., a leader in the Greatest Genera tion.

Contents

Living on the Hudson River in a refurbished railroad barge while studying law at New York University School of Law, my roommate, Lucian Truscott IV began to write about our experiences at West Point. We had been roommates there too in 1968 and had begun an administrative challenge to the requirement that all cadets attend compulsory chapel services every Sunday.

Our main protagonist there, then Colonel Alexander Haig, the Deputy Commandant, counseled us against making such a challenge. As we persisted, Haig did his best to bring the full panoply of unpleasantness West Point and the Army had to offer down on us to deter, dissuade and stop us.

After our graduation, other midshipmen at the U S Naval Academy challenged the compulsory chapel requirement in federal court. As a direct witness to the futility of any administrative remedy within West Point and on the merits of religious freedom, I testified twice in that litigation in Washington, D. C.

Out of the Army and a reporter in New York, Lucian had succeeded in gaining a book contract and financial advance to tell this non-fiction story. He wrote at night, while I studied law books and prepared for classes the next day at NYU. We discussed this controversy and our role in it exhaustively over dinners we prepared on the barge where we lived that winter.

Such a direct and obvious violation of the First Amendment by Army officers sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States troubled us no end. Their use of their own power to prevent any challenge being raised in the first place, to tamp it down as the challenge arose, and to mislead the court considering the legal challenge disturbed us. If this was how our countrys ideals played out in real life, to us it spelled big trouble.

After weeks of writing every night and putting words to paper on over 100 pages, Lucian wasnt ready to finish his book. It was too painful and too soon. He returned the financial advance and re-considered. A few years later, he took it up again and wrote the novel and TV mini-series, Dress Gray , based indirectly on our challenge at West Point. Spelling out the big trouble in a different way, his novel was banned at the West Point book store but was a best seller nationwide.

Decades later, I now put my story down in non-fiction, as a memoir and part essay on what drove us in 1968 to mount such a successful challenge. The successful legal challenge lasted until 1972. How a country boy from southern Illinois, raised in the Liberty Baptist Church in Burnt Prairie, Illinois, confronted entering the required doors of the Cadet Chapel at West Point is a longer story.

I found the answer to that question in the American Dream itself, that often misunderstood aggregation of ideals that both influences our culture, while it morphs forward to re-define itself. Its core idea is based in the freedom of religion, whose broader implications create and foster freedom of thought.

In this book, I trace those roots through my own father, a World War II veteran, farmer, and deacon in the Liberty Baptist Church while also exploring in greater detail the history and legal foundation of not just religious toleration but true religious freedom as our founding fathers implemented it.

As the American Dream endures over time, its ideals weather storms of change, while inspiring new approaches to its core. That process changes us as well as we stand for its principles and seek their implementation and improvement going forward.

This book traces those changes from the initial challenges of 1968 into the follow-on through my participation in the reform campaign for Governor of Dan Walker and through his term of office that ended in 1976.

The conflicts of reform and change in a political system still dominated by an older generation of power seekers led to an exploration of disagreement within the key political advisors of Governor Walker. Those who sought political alliances with the aspiring Speaker of the Illinois House, Clyde Choate, had to face the logical and progressive follow on steps to their successful campaign ideals of reform. The book ends there at the conclusion of the successful defeat of the Clyde Choate speakership.

The walk through these events is personal, but the issues of Re-Making the American Dream run deeper. They are steeped in the transmission of values from generation to generation as new experiences and thoughts challenge us to move forward. How we do that creates an American Dream anew.

Those who encouraged me to write are many. While we were cadets at West Point, Lucian Truscott encouraged me to write letters to the editor. Later, Diane Fisher, the Riffs column editor at the Village Voice, encouraged me to write about country music and its culture. Governor Dan Walker, in the practice of law, encouraged me to refine and sharpen my legal brief writing. Larry McMurtry wrote that those who read must also write to answer back. Governor Pat Quinn, long before he became Governor, encouraged me to write and edit constitutional amendment drafts and legislative proposals. Mary Roberts, as a fellow school board member, encouraged me to write and explain proposals to improve our schools and helped inspire writing this book through her own book writing. Kelly Kraft, as my co-worker as Director of the Governors Office of Management and Budget in Illinois, helped show me how a professional reporter writes with clarity and with the understanding of the reader in mind. One by one, these people contributed to my desire to write and bolstered my own confidence in doing so.

As I undertook to write this book, many more family and friends stepped forward with encouragement and help, including Taylor Pensoneau and Kathy Wright. All those who are characters in this story remain an inspiration because they too stood up and were counted to remake the American Dream.

Introduction

From the Winter of 1944 to Burnt Prairie

The Saverne Gap reminded me of the Delaware Water Gap, without the water. Not quite as high as the Appalachians, the Vosges Mountains were green, impressive and steep. I was driving through the gap from Strasbourg to Luneville to retrace my fathers footsteps in World War II. The 7 th Army used this gap to break through to the plains of Strasbourg and become the first Allied army to reach the Rhine in November, 1944.

I wanted to see the actual terrain, as it is called in the military, and consider what it was actually like for my fathers unit, the 44 th Infantry Division, to take on the German Army in these mountains. Hitler believed his Army could defend the Vosges until the spring of 1945, before falling back to their next strong defensive positions along the Rhine. German generals knew that no army in history had successfully attacked through the Vosges. Since Roman times, they always just went around. Hitler was wrong, and 7 th Army went straight through in a month.