Rhode Island News

I suspect a lot of us gave a small, quiet cheer for Frank Williams last week.
For, in the midst of all the good feelings that came with the Rhode Island Senate's confirmation of him as the state's new chief justice, Williams reached back over a lot of years to reconfirm his connection to a time and a place that teach him still.

He had the state's attention, and he used it in a way that probably wasn't traditional at all. But it was good. Some people think it was unique.

"The people I know who were at Ban Me Thuot, Pleiku, Dalat, or Nha Trang didn't kill helpless women and children, or anyone else, either — there, or when they got home," said Williams.

"It is about time that the myths that have tainted America's view of Vietnam veterans are put to rest."

Williams hadn't been sure about using the moment last week as he did, he said in a conversation yesterday. He'd wondered if it was the right time and the right place. He'd wondered if it would have any impact.

But he talks often of his debt, his obligation, to those who shared Vietnam with him. And he admits, as many of us do, that he is still trying to figure it out, after decades of trying.

So as he stepped up to the top of his profession last week, he looked back at one of the things that had helped to shape him. And he made sure it was part of what Rhode Island learned it would be getting at the top of its court system.

"I've always said I don't think I could be half the judge I am without that experience."

He places his time in Vietnam among such things as family, the law, and, of course, Abraham Lincoln as the major influences in his life. Being an officer, getting along with his men, dealing with the confusing, often maddening aftermath of the war — all of it played a part in the making of the next Rhode Island chief justice.

Sometimes, while on the Superior Court bench, he has seen Vietnam veterans come before him. He says he has seen a look in their eyes that appears in no one else's. Those cases hit him hard.

He was an Army officer in the armored cavalry on the East-West German border in 1966 when he was transferred, without any special training in jungle warfare, to be an infantry adviser in Vietnam.

And 35 years later he claims the experience, with all its loose ends and nagging contradictions, as a rock-solid piece of his résumé.

It's a credential. Vietnam was the defining experience of a whole generation, and those who were there share a wisdom that those who were not do not. It's as simple as that.

The guy who ended up in prison after Vietnam has it. So does the guy who ended up in the U.S. Senate. It allows a person to know ahead of time when a huge load of horse waste is on the way.

Bill Clinton doesn't have it. George W. Bush doesn't have it. They avoided Vietnam in their chosen ways. They don't understand.

For Americans, there will probably not be another experience like Vietnam. Our national innocence is too beaten up already to be that badly beaten up again.

So Vietnam's lessons are left for those like Frank Williams to pass along — to work into the fabric of the jobs they do and the community they serve.

"There were 3.3 million people who served 'in country,'" says Williams of all his fellow veterans. "We are a group. I may be the only Vietnam veteran who is the chief justice of a state supreme court. What an honor that is for our people. I owe our veterans this — I don't want us forgotten."

On that day last week when it became clear that he would become chief justice, he lifted up with him a lot of people with whom he shared common ground.

His decision to remember Vietnam at a time when he might have simply basked in the glow of Rhode Island's approval will not be forgotten.

Bob Kerr can be reached by e-mail at bkerr@projo.com.