Oops Thomas M Parsons

13. Oops!

I did not graduate on time. I started Wayne State University in September of 1959, which means I should have graduated in May of 1963. That would have been the standard four years. But that is not the way it happened. As I have mentioned, I had to earn the money to pay the college bills. This meant that sometimes I did not take a full load of classes. And even though I sometimes took summer classes in an attempt to remain on track, I still did not complete the requirements for graduation until December of 1964, five and a half years after I began college. Often I have said I crammed four years of college into five and a half years.

Graduation from WSU was a major event for my family, and for me, but it was not quite as personal as graduation from LPHS had been in June of 1959. Wayne’s graduating class — even the winter one that I graduated in — was huge. The number of students was in four digits.

Graduation consisted of walking across a stage and accepting a diploma — not the real one — from some school official I did not know. The names were not read; there were too many of them. Instead we all simply paraded in single file across the stage. Our real diploma was mailed to us — if we passed all our classes. I knew about mailing diplomas. That had been one of my jobs at Central Records. Another student assistant (a girl) and I spent about a week sorting, stuffing and preparing the mailing of the diplomas. We had computer printed labels we had to affix to the cardboard boxes that would contain the diplomas, and we had to make certain that the person had actually graduated, and then we had to make certain the right diploma got in the right box to be mailed. We also had to sort the boxes by zip codes and bundle them for mailing. It was a major task. It sounds simpler than it was. It would have been simpler if the number of diplomas had not been so high.

The girl, whose name I have forgotten, and I did a lot of talking during those days we were working on the mailings. I was never romantically interested in the young lady, but I always enjoyed talking to people, and she was no exception.

My parents were excited about graduation. After all, I was the only one of their six children to earn a college degree. They wanted to attend the ceremony. I told them they would be fortunate if they could even see me. I was thinking I might just not attend. Many students did not attend. But for my family’s sake, I went and walked across the stage and took the fake diploma from the school official I had never met before and walked off the stage into oblivion. Somewhere up in the audience I could imagine my family was silently cheering. I say silently because I am certain they had no idea which one of the black-robed graduates striding single file across that stage was me.

Several days later, my diploma arrived. It stated that I had earned the Bachelor of Arts degree. I now had done something my father had not done, my brother had not done, my sisters had not done.

It was easy to be proud of that accomplishment. And proud I was. But in my heart I knew that I really had nothing to be proud of. After all, I was only one of hundreds of young people who walked across that stage that night. Many others had made the same or greater accomplishments. Some received their masters degrees that night. I really had no reason to be proud.

I also knew that getting that degree was something God gave me to do. He had prepared a life for me, a life in which He wanted me to have that degree. It was not my strength, intelligence or perseverance that attained that goal. God did it. He gave me the strength to continue when I grew tired or bored or just plain lazy. He held before me the prospect of doors that degree might open for me. But there was something else God used to spur me to get that degree.

My brother, Ron, was a Navy man. The three and a half years of his life he spent with the Navy in the South Pacific were probably the best years he had of the twenty-one years he lived. He enjoyed sports; he enjoyed physical activity. He did not like studying. He did not like school. I was just the opposite. I hated sports. I did not enjoy physical activities. But I loved reading, writing and studying. If God gave my brother the means of enjoying a life of physical accomplishments, he gave me the means of enjoying academic accomplishments. My brother bragged about being able to throw a 170 pound man on his back after the Navy taught him ju-jit-su. I would brag about reading a classic piece of literature or writing a major term paper.

The United States had a draft at that time, and any young man not in college faced required military service. But I did not wish to have that experience. During my five and a half years at WSU, the draft board classified me as 2-S. This meant that I was a college student pursuing a degree, and my two years of military service were deferred until I had reached that goal.

It is not that I thought military service was in any way wrong, or shameful or disgusting. In fact, I believed then, as now, that those who serve in the military are worthy of praise and honor. They do a difficult task and help insure our free way of life survives. It is just that I was not interested in military life. I did not believe I was cut out for it. I was not one who could handle it. I felt there were other ways for me to make a contribution to my country.

Each quarter at WSU, I simply had to make certain that I had at least the minimum number of class hours required to maintain my deferment. The university kept the draft board informed of my status. I had to do nothing else. When I graduated from WSU in December of 1964, I was 23 years old. I had had a growing conviction that God had called me into His service. I had decided to enroll at Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary, and had been accepted there before I graduated from Wayne. The only thing was, classes at Grand Rapids did not begin until September of 1965, nine months following my graduation from WSU. There would be no more reports from WSU to my draft board that I was a registered student at the university.

Thus, on a snowy Friday in February of 1965, I received a letter that began with the dreaded words, “Greetings from the President of the United States.” Why would President Johnson be writing to me? It seems he, or at least his representatives, the local draft board, were inviting me — no, that doesn’t seem to be the right word — were ordering me to report to them. That is the word the letter used. You are hereby ordered to report to... I was being ordered to report for a physical examination so that I might be inducted into the United States Army!

That I did not want to do. That was not in the plan I had for my life. I was not going to risk my life in Vietnam or any other place! That was not what God called me to do. The Army was not the way I would serve my country. “Wait a minute,” I thought to myself. “This is not my country! I was born in Canada. They can’t draft me; I am not a U.S. citizen.”

But I was a U.S. citizen. I had voted in the last presidential election. I was the son of a United States citizen. I might flee to Canada as others had done, but it would be as a United States citizen fleeing military service in his own country.

What would I do? What could I do? Maybe I could get Dad to talk to the draft board the way he had talked to the gym teacher at LPHS. Maybe he could get me into some kind of Army cage where I could hold the other guys’ valuables while they went off to fight the war.

Dozens of ridiculous thoughts flitted erratically through my mind about how I might get out of this. I thought that maybe they would find some deficiency in me in the medical exam that would get me a 4-F deferment for health reasons. But I didn’t know of anything. I was not as physically strong as others my age, and I did not have much endurance. But probably the Army would figure they could beef me up and build me up.

I fretted and sweated it for several days. The date of the medical exam was still about two weeks away when a new thought struck me. I had already been accepted at Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary. It seemed clear that God’s will

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for me was to go there, not to Vietnam or any other place. God was certainly more powerful than the draft board. So I began to pray. It was not easy for me to pray that God would put me in the Army if He wanted to, but that is what I prayed.

Sometimes when I have not known as clearly as I would like what God’s will was, I have had to pray that He would do what He wanted to do with me, and that I would be willing to do whatever it is He wanted me to do. That was my prayer then. Grand Rapids or Vietnam, it was God’s call.

Romans 8 was a great comfort to me then, and many times since then. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Even if I did go into the Army, God was not condemning me for anything. He already condemned His Son for my sin, what else was there to do? For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. If I fought to stay out of the Army, and it was God’s will that I go into it, then I would be carnally minded and dead as far as service for the Lord was concerned. But if I were spiritually minded, then even the Army could not rob me of life and peace.

So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. I couldn’t please God by walking according to the flesh and doing my will. I had to do His will, whatever it was.

But I still was afraid of the Army. It was not my way, my lifestyle. My brother enjoyed the military life; I would not. I was afraid to go into the Army. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.

Oh, but the Army would cause me great suffering. And my family, too. Hadn’t Mother been through enough? Wasn’t Ron’s death enough for her? Would she have to go through losing her only remaining son as well? For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

I prayed. I asked God to have His way, whatever it was. I would do His will. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. And then there were a series of powerful words I read in the passage: foreknow, predestinate, firstborn among many brethren, called, justified, glorified. No matter what might happen, I was called, justified and ultimately glorified in Jesus Christ. Not in doing my will, but in doing His. If God be for us, who can be against us? The Viet Cong? The U.S. Army? The local draft board? None of them were more powerful than my God. In His will I could not lose. He that spared not His own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? God had already given me His Son and salvation. He would give me everything else I needed as well.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation? No. or distress? No. persecution? No. famine? No. nakedness? No. peril? No. sword? No. The next verse at first was not very comforting. For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Well, Lord, that is exactly why I don’t want to go into the Army or to Vietnam!

But the next verse turned my heart to the Lord again. In all these things we are more than conquerors. More than conquerors. Not just conquerors, but more than conquerors.

I could not lose with the Lord. Vietnam. Or Grand Rapids. It did not really matter. I would be more than a conqueror through Him that loved me.

So I prayed and committed it to the Lord. And I decided to visit the local draft board and have the clerk review my file to see if there might be some mistake. God does not make mistakes. But draft boards do. With some fear (hey, I am not perfect yet in my trusting the Lord) and much peace, I headed for the draft board in Melvindale, Michigan one Friday afternoon. The sun was shining brightly and the winter day was growing warm. And I was driving with the Lord’s protective hand around me. I was safe in the center of His will, whatever might happen today or any day.

Before long I was sitting in a chair opposite the clerk of the draft board, Mary something or other, a pleasant enough lady in her late 40's or early 50's who did all the paper and P.R. work for the draft board. She listened as I explained my situation.

“I just graduated from Wayne State,” I explained, “and I have been accepted at Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary for the fall. I am sure you have a letter to that effect in your file.”

All the while I was explaining Mary something or other was shifting papers in the manilla folder that had my name on a narrow slip of label on a tab that stuck up above the body of the folder. With each few words I spoke, she moved a sheet of paper or two, letting her eyes quickly glance over the words and markings on each sheet.

“I can’t start seminary until fall because that is when the next classes begin,” I said. "I am working between now and then to help meet expenses, but I will be definitely going to the seminary in the fall.” I hoped my certainty of that fact would help Mary something or other to see my sincerity and determination. She just kept on shifting papers, not saying a word.

I really don’t know how many papers were in that file. It seemed like several hundred, but it probably wasn’t that many. Mary never spoke a word until she got to the very last paper. Then she spoke just one word. “Oops,” she said.

My heart skipped a beat. That sounded good. Oops meant that there was something she didn’t expect to find, something that might indicate a change in the draft board’s plans for my life. In that one little word rode my future and my happiness.

“Oops,” she said, “there is a letter here from the seminary, and it does say you are enrolled for the next classes which begin in September. You are right,” she said. Then Mary said something I will never forget. She said something I never expected to hear from the clerk of a draft board.

“We owe you an apology,” she said.

I received an apology from the clerk of a draft board! How many men can make that claim? And it gets better. Mary told me to go home and she would send a new letter. She said the appointment for me to report for a physical would be canceled, and as long as I stayed in school I would be classified as 4D, a divinity student. A few days later I received another letter from the draft board. Your order to report for a physical is hereby canceled. I read that sentence several times. Wonderful. It doesn’t get any better than this! Actually, it does, of course. The Lord never stops doing wonderful things for those who trust Him. The letter said I was also reclassified as 4D. And the letter closed with an apology from Mary something or other and an expression of “good luck” to me. But I don’t believe in luck. It was not luck that got me out of the draft on that Friday afternoon. It was the Lord.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not to thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.

Thank you, Lord. His plan was not for me to go to Viet Nam. His plan was for me to go to Grand Rapids. That is where the remainder of my education, my future ministry and a girl who loved horses would find me.

But it was His will for my friend Ron to go to Viet Nam.