Draft Dodging...

Grandpa always had strong opinions about political issues and was never shy about expressing them. The Hutterites' desire to distance themselves from the concerns of civil government had faded out by the time it reached Grandpa, at least when it came to expressing political opinions. I remember, however, two subjects that Grandpa kept relatively quiet about. One was the 1972 presidential election. Grandpa was surprisingly silent when Richard Nixon won reelection. Two years later, when Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Grandpa broke his silence, saying how he was so glad he had voted for George McGovern and had not voted for that crook Nixon. We were stunned - we had all assumed he had voted for Nixon - though we really shouldn't have been surprised. Grandpa always liked to be on the winning side of things and had probably been deeply disappointed with McGovern's poor showing at the voting booths and didn't want it to be known that he had voted for such a big loser. Nixon's resignation gave Grandpa the chance to justify his vote two years earlier. Better to be associated with a noble loser than a crooked winner...

The other political issue I don't remember Grandpa expressing his opinion on was the number of young Americans during the Vietnam war era who left the country rather than serve in the military. This was a hot topic in the 1960s and early 1970s. The numbers vary wildly, but it is estimated that 30,000 – 100,000 Americans moved to Canada rather than face the possibility of combat in Southeast Asia. I don't remember Grandpa, very pro-American in most of his opinions, commenting on this, though he may have to Mom and Grandma. I think he may have felt a camaraderie with the draft dodgers. He was one himself. It was how he came to be an American.

According to Mom's memoir of Grandma and Grandpa, when Grandpa was twenty years old, he was required to report for four years of military training in the then Austria-Hungary army. “...instead, he jumped the border and ran away to America.” This was a decision with serious repercussions. It meant he could never return to his home country without facing the real possibility of being arrested. Mom doesn't state it in her book, but I remember being told as a child that Grandpa's mother felt very strongly that her son should have nothing to do with the army and facilitated her son's leaving. At the time I remember thinking, of course, no mother would want her son to have to go in the army and potentially fight in a war. * Now, however, knowing about the strong Hutterite prohibition against bearing arms, I think Grandpa's Haban mother was just living out her Hutterite pacifist heritage, encouraging her son to do so as well. Grandpa came to America, met Grandma, and became an American citizen in 1915. By the time of the first World War, Grandpa was thirty years old with two small children, so again was able to avoid military service. He spent the war happily building ships in the New York City shipyards. According to Mom, he was quite proud of these ships, taking his two daughters to see their launches. Most likely these ships were used in the first World War, so though Grandpa didn't technically “bear arms”, his work, in fact, did support the war effort, a very un-Hutterite thing to do.

Grandpa's Mother, Julianna Kubina Cederle

After World War I, Austria-Hungary ceased to exist, as did the military Grandpa had jumped the border to escape. Czechoslovakia was now the country Grandpa's town of Svätý Ján resided in. In 1921 Grandpa returned to his hometown with his wife and three daughters without fear of any repercussions from his draft dodging. He lived there for a year, spending part of that time under his parent's roof, with the Haban mother who had encouraged him to leave all those years before.

*I, personally, have always admitted to pacifist tendencies. I thought it was because I was a child of the 1960s, the “Give peace a chance” mentality seeping into my psyche, and later, that I was a woman and mother, and war and fighting just didn't make sense to me. I now wonder if maybe I am truly my great grandmother's great granddaughter, with full-blown Hutterite pacifism somewhere in my heart...