Page 49 - MN

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Tim quit college and boom, got drafted. By then the Vietnam protests were going strong and people were questioning the war. Tim thought the war was wrong and with the help of Quakers, refused to go. He didn't bail out to Canada, he just said no, I won't go. They put him in prison for six months, at a minimum security prison in Oregon where they planted trees. It doesn't sound too bad but it was still prison and one of the other inmates was nicknamed "Walking Death". Scary.
A few years before I'd spent two years in the army. At the time I thought it was the right thing to do. But as time went on, and I met people who'd actually been in Vietnam, I came to realize how wrong that war was. I also have to admit I might've been the last person to figure that out. So there I was, an ex-soldier with a brother who was a draft resistor.
I was so proud of him. He was dead right. Tim is the kind of guy who makes up his mind and that's it. He won't back down. And he won't go sideways. I'm not sure, if I'd had that choice, that I would've faced prison with that kind of courage.
When he got out, I was living in Ketchum when I wasn't on the road, and skiing at Sun Valley. He had to go on probation and work a public service job, so I helped get him a janitor's job at the Sun Valley Hospital.
Tim wrote me his recollection of that process:
The guy that hired me at the hospital was named Ackerman--I'm glad I remember shit like that but struggle with my kids' names! Somehow you met him-- probably through the Ram Bar--because you must have told him that I needed a job "in the interest of the nation" and he hired me right on the spot, then, a few days later he interviewed me. I told him my choices were to be the best janitor they ever had or I got to go back to prison. He cracked up and I started the next day. I also remember my probation officer drove up from Boise for a surprise visit. He came by the house and was appalled that I was living with Bev and had bought a house. That's against the rules! Then he went to the hospital & talked to Ackerman who must have given me a pretty good recommendation. I went to work and he was there and said he better not hear anything about me. He didn't and I never saw or heard from him again.
Tim would work at night and ski all day, probably not what the probation people had in mind. Mount Baldy was the ski mountain and some days I would look up and see tracks way off the groomed runs, through trees and places no one else had gone. I knew they were Tim's. He was never a racer, he hated moguls, but he was a wild back-country skier.