Too Young to Vote

I graduated from high school in Bloomington, MN, in 1965. I had classmates who went to Vietnam; some did not return.

During 1967-1968, I moved to Los Angeles and worked as a flight attendant for a major airline. Several of the passengers on my flights were young men from all parts of the country, leaving home for the first time on their way to staging areas on the west coast, where they would eventually be shipped out to Vietnam. It seemed so ironic to me that these young men were old enough to be sent into battle, but too young to vote or even to order an alcoholic drink on their flight.

I couldn't do anything about the voting age (21 at the time), but I felt it my civic duty to let them order whatever they wanted to drink. As they left the plane when we landed, I told each one to come back safe, and I always wondered how many of them would.