At Holy Spirit School in St. Paul Minnesota in 1962, I listened along with my 8th grade classmates as Sister Victoria stood in front of her desk and told us that there were Russian missiles pointed at the United States from a base on the island of Cuba, just across the water from Florida.
We had been trained since first grade to duck under our desks in case The Bomb suddenly dropped out of a blue sky – but this was a specific threat from a specific launch pad – whose missiles could land any minute.
Sister V had recently organized a Debate Club, requiring us to select “news worthy” issues to argue for or against. Now, in the face of the unthinkable, she offered a distraction. In a frightening present, we would debate the future. (Assuming that there was one.) We would debate, she said, which crisis was a more lasting threat -- the missile crisis of the moment -- versus another crisis ongoing at our exact moment in history.
I remember watching as she presented the Debate Topic – we all kept our eyes on her to see if she betrayed agitation or fear, but she appeared calm. So many decades later, I can no longer visualize her - but I recall the sense of strength emanating from her – as she stood there half-veiled in her black habit.
Here was our debate topic: “Which is more threatening: the Cuban missile crisis – or the war in Vietnam?”
.
Considering the question now, and its dizzying leap into enormity for eighth graders– it is eclipsed by the realization of what must have been a lightbulb going off, a Hail Mary pass of pure wild inspiration -- from a teacher faced with helplessness and terror: she countered chaos by giving her students “agency”. We were armed with what we’d been taught. And because we were enthusiastic readers, we were used to finding lessons in literature and questions in civics, questions in history, as we accepted assignments.
Unlike the nuns who taught hard-line classes in The Catechism, (where the first proof of God was that “He” existed) - this nun believed in testing for the knowledge we gained from reading -- back in those days when libraries radiated power and intrigue – beckoning us into knowledge.
We squared off, we chose sides. At home, on our small television screens, President Kennedy appeared, looking worried, seated in the Oval Office addressing the nation.
I thought about Cuba, the warheads moving automatically into position. I thought about Krushchev beating his shoe on a podium at the U.N.
I considered each impossible threat: I chose the war in Vietnam.
For years I preserved a sturdy folio containing my “argument” for the debate, my remarks typed up for me by a secretary in my dad’s office. I remember the secretary, Betty Hartel, her kindness to me.
The folio disappeared after years and there’s no reconstructing the details of my argument. But I have kept an exact image of that debate folder and the startling visual authority of my words, typewritten.
I do remember that when it was my turn to speak, standing at the makeshift classroom podium, I floated the premise that (attempting gallows humor?) the missile crisis was less threatening because it would be over soon, one way or another – either resolved through diplomacy – or via Armegeddon, the world exploding. (!) Did the other kids laugh at my dark joke?
Somehow, despite the limits of my twelve or thirteen year old mind on informed speculation, I sensed that the Vietnam War was going to last a long time. I did my research in the great room of the St. Paul public library, pulling out the full card catalogs, one by one, which (when each book whose title I wrote on a “call slip” was brought to me) revealed that the French, who had kept Vietnam in their colonial grip since the 19th century, could not win a war against people fighting for their homes and families. I flipped through the cards reading “Viet Cong, Ho Chi Minh, Dien Bien Phu.
Very soon the great U.S. anti-war movement would begin, the student protests, the draft card burnings, guerilla resistance, the Tet Offensive, the Gulf of Tonkin, the My Lai massacre, the plight of the boat people fleeing the war.
I have no memory about which side won the debate in our classroom. It may be that I don’t recall because Sister V. had set things up to prove that the point was not winning itself, but the exchange of ideas and information. A distraction, yes, but also a nun’s smart move, a sustained revelation, from which we learned.
Also, like clouds parting, and the sun’s return, Krushchev blinked and backed down. The missiles were withdrawn and Kennedy smiled from the Oval Office. And we went back to being eighth graders – with one difference.
The world was still a frightening place but we were eighth graders who learned something about how to think and how to debate, even as a distraction from world annihilation.
Beautiful. I want that for students now. Alas.