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of course, didn’t end six months after Nixon took office. It got bigger. We invaded another country (Cambodia), antiwar groups and journalists were spied on, and to celebrate Christmas of 1972 we dropped more bombs on North Vietnam than we dropped during any campaign of the war. In all, we would end up killing over three million southeast Asians, and over fifty-eight thousand of our troops would never come back alive. The bishop knew this, and I later would realize he had me over not to clean a pool but to clean my head. The following spring Bishop Hickey was sent to Rome and then later became the bishop of Cleveland, and finally, the cardinal of the archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Two women missionaries he dispatched to El Salvador were brutally murdered along with two other religious women by the American-backed government there. He became outspoken while in D.C., opposing the U.S. wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

A year later, after leaving the seminary, I made a pact with myself never to reveal to anyone that I had campaigned for Richard Milhous Nixon.

ACT II: Horses on the Ellipse

“You’re not taking your sister to Washington,” my father said, sitting at the dinner table. “No, you are not,” my mother chimed in.

I was eighteen and an adult and could do what I wanted, but my sister Anne was seventeen and still in high school. I had announced that I was going with friends on a trip to Washington, D.C, to participate in a massive antiwar demonstration on the day Nixon was to be inaugurated for his second term. The car was to contain myself; our church’s youth leaders, Gary Wood and Phyllis Valdez, and their friend Peter Case; my buddy Jeff Gibbs; and my sister Anne.

The fight at the dinner table for Anne to go became more intense. All subjects were now open to debate: the war, the long hair, the guitar Mass, John Sinclair (who grew up down the street), the Weathermen gathering in Flint, the peace signs we painted on the walls in the basement, the effect all this was having on our younger sister, Veronica, etc., etc.

In the end, Anne said she was going and there would be no further discussion. Silence. End of dinner.

We got to my cousin Pat’s house outside D.C. before midnight. We crashed there, and when we awoke, we made our plans for the day. There was a teach-in, and Leonard Bernstein was going to conduct a “Concert as a Plea for Peace” at the National Cathedral, with Senators Edward Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy speaking.

When we got to the cathedral the following evening, we were shocked at the size of the crowd trying to get in. The line stretched for what seemed like a mile. There was no way we were going to get inside—until Peter said he had an idea.

“Just keep your eye on me,” he said, “and one by one come up and join me.”

Peter broke out a bag of peanuts and went up toward the front of the line, found someone who looked like he had a friendly face, and offered him some of his nuts. A jovial conversation ensued, making it seem like Peter knew the guy who was “obviously” holding a place for him. Now five more of us had to make this look casual enough to walk up and appear as if we belonged there. And one by one we did. This apparently was too much for one guy in line who was watching the whole ruse unfold. He left his place in the line and walked up to us.

“I’m wondering how your conscience is handling this right now,” he said in a voice that sounded remarkably similar to my conscience. “Do you think it’s right to make cuts like this and deny people who’ve been here before you a chance to go inside?”

None of us said anything. No one made eye contact with him. It’s as if he wasn’t there. But we were.

“Amazing,” he remarked, shaking his head. “Nothing to say for yourselves? And at a church, no less.”

None of us felt very good about ourselves. What we had done was wrong. We’d also driven six hundred miles and didn’t really give a shit. Or at least tried to pretend we didn’t. Everyone around us heard the scolding and all eyes were on us. We couldn’t wait to get inside the church and be taken off the