Deep Springs College - David Mossner Memorial (1946-1970) June 1, 2010 скачать в хорошем качестве

Deep Springs College - David Mossner Memorial (1946-1970) June 1, 2010

This video is about the brief life of an exceptional young man "who loved life and everything about it" (1), dealing with the moral conflicts of "the war for his generation of young men coming of age" (2), and about a small, isolated college in California that is "for a few of the most promising students entering college each year" (3), remembering one of its own, one of its best. David Mossner (1946-1970) was a student at Deep Springs College from the summer of 1963 to the spring of 1966. Dave transferred to Cornell University in the fall of 1966 and graduated in June, 1968, with an honors degree in English; his thesis was on the political essays of Henry David Thoreau. For reasons explained during this memorial, Dave later enlisted in the Army and began his tour of duty as a Staff Sergeant in Vietnam on January 12, 1970, and was killed by a land mine there in Quang Tri Province on June 1, 1970. Forty years later his friends gathered at Deep Springs College on June 1, 2010, for a memorial celebration of Dave's life, a short life well lived. This video is a condensed version of that memorial to remember a Deep Springs College alumnus who was best described in this announcement sent to alumni by then Deep Springs College Dean Randall Reid in June, 1970: "Word has just been received that David Mossner, Deep Springs '63, was killed in Vietnam on June 1. The feeling of shock and loss in all those who knew him is inescapable. He was one of our best." Forty years later, friends and fellow students remember Dave at this memorial at the college organized by alumnus Dan Ihara and reflect on Dave's brief life lived in a time of difficult moral choices for young men of his age and of his time. James Matlack, one of Dave's professors at Cornell, wrote in the "Christian Science Monitor" on June 21, 2000, some thirty years after Dave's passing, in a memoir "A Graduates Postscript" : "Upon graduation from Cornell, David was committed to a life based upon moral principle and to a career that would in some way advance the cause of peace and justice in the world. With his deferment gone, he also faced the grim reality of a draft call. As he sought a clear way forward, apparently David reconsidered the option of refusal to serve in Vietnam. Perhaps he was influenced by being from Texas, where conscientious objection to military service was less known and much less tolerated. In any event, as I was told, David felt his future work for peace would lack credibility if he declined to enter and take the risks of Vietnam - the war for his generation of young men coming of age. However paradoxical, he decided his principles and dedication to peace could better be advanced if he advocated for them as a Vietnam veteran." (1) http://www.vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces/354... (2) http://www.csmonitor.com/2000/0621/p9... (3) http://www.deepsprings.edu/home .