Enemies List

Here we are again

In 1967 I went from Akron, Ohio, to the March on the Pentagon. I was the junior member on the staff of St. Paul’s Church… sometimes called St. Harvey’s in the polo field, because, when the church was moved from center city to the affluent western suburbs, it was built on land Harvey Firestone gave to the parish. It was, indeed, on the site of his old polo field.

Because I was young, naïve, and a relatively innocuous, inconsequential, curate, I was unaware that I was able to carry on my protests because I was under the protection of my boss, the rector.

Several of the parish leaders were executives of the rubber companies that were all in Akron then, who supplied the vast amounts of rubber on which our military rode to war in Vietnam.

On the Sunday of the march, Dick Trelease, the rector, stood before the congregation and announced that I was in Washington for the march, and that I represented him.

How little I understood, or appreciated, what it cost him to portray me, in front of that largely conservative congregation, as if I had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

***

Two years later I went to be part of the staff of St. John’s, Lafayette Square, in Washington, DC, across the street from the White House.

Sometimes, when something big was happening, the parish lent space for a news conference.

During one of these, the CBS White House correspondent, Daniel Schorr, held force.

I went up to him afterward and introduced myself.

“Blayney Colmore…hmm. Have we met?”

“No, I’m sure not.”

“Why is you name familiar?” He wondered. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then said,

“Do you know you’re on Nixon’s enemies list?”

It had just become known that there was such a list.

My mouth must have dropped open.

He laughed.

“Not to get too worked up about it,” he said, “it’s a long list and you’re nowhere near the top, where I found my name when I looked over the list last night. I wonder how your name got there?”

For the first time in my life, I felt at risk, in ways I never had. I was like a teenager cut loose from family. It was just simply fun to flaunt authority.

“Have you ever written a letter to the President?” he asked.

I thought about it.

“Once, before I came to the March on the Pentagon, I sent a letter saying, as a good American, I was using my free speech to protest a war I knew the president wanted to end. I knew he would need the support of people to do that.

“I was surprised when, several weeks later, I got a response saying the ‘President has taken note of your views.’”

What surprised me most was that it wasn’t on White House stationary, it was on Justice Department letterhead.

Daniel Schorr laughed.

“There are White House staffers who do nothing all day long, but scan every source they can locate, to find anyone opposing this paranoid President. He’s now got more enemies that Carter’s got Little Liver pills. And, congratulations, you’re one of them.”

Mind you, that was before any internet or AI.

What stays with me all these years later, is how suddenly vulnerable I felt, from this innocuous, harmless incident.

When I read about ordinary people in Germany in the 1930s, choosing to remain ignorant, or at least apart from, the horrors that the world later tried and executed their leaders for, I remember that feeling when I was told I was on the President’s enemies list.

The Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire told his clergy to get their wills and affairs in order, for what could be a moment that called on them to offer themselves as martyrs.

Makes me wonder if I’m ready, now that I’m old, no longer a naïve young priest.