Jan Barry

Life Lessons

Long ago,
when I was 19
and hot to trot –
three-sport, national
honor society,
“most likely to succeed”
high school grad
bored to death in
droning college classrooms –
I whirled off campus
one day in a fitful itch
of impatience
and joined the army.
In no time, I landed in Vietnam.
I was never bored again.

Thirty years later,
my kamikaze course
of education was capped
by tasseled cap and gown,
recipient of a degree
(summa cum laude)
for lessons learned
in Vietnamese villages,
West Point parades,
peace marches
and public debates
after I discovered the gumption
to say “No, sir!”
to a military career,
shucking that chic
killer combat gear
and joining civilians
building bridges
across
battle lines.

B.A. (summa cum laude), School of American and International Studies, Ramapo College of New Jersey

US Military Academy (resigned)

Graduate, US Military Academy Preparatory School

Graduate, Interlaken (NY) Central School

Vietnam, class of ' 63

Jan Barry is a poet, author and retired newspaper reporter. He lives in New Jersey. He recently moved from Montclair--where he and his late wife, Paula, raised two sons in a high volume household of numerous dogs and cats, piano-playing mother-in-law, house guests who often stayed for years, and tons of visitors--to a riverbank spot on the Delaware & Raritan Canal so he can kayak to quiet nooks from the back door.

Born Jan Barry Crumb on Jan. 26, 1943 in Ithaca, NY, he is no relation to the famous comic artist R. Crumb, as far as anyone knows. However, there was another guy named Crumb in basic training at Fort Jackson. But that's another story. This one wanted a pen name but couldn't come up with anything creative. So hence, Jan Barry.

Before getting hooked on poetry, he was a typical red-blooded American boy who played war and wanted to wage one. After graduating from Interlaken (NY) Central School, he dropped out of the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University to join the Army.

Appointed to the US Military Academy after a stint in Vietnam, he resigned from West Point to become a writer and peace activist. A founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he was duly investigated by the FBI, CIA, military intelligence, military counter-intelligence, and Nixon's Watergate crew. He stumped all these hyperactive sleuths by writing poetry so plain-spoken they couldn't figure it out.

Jan Barry's poems on the war appeared in diverse publications, from the Chicago Tribune and New York Times to A People and A Nation: A History of the United States. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including three that he coedited and published because he didn't have time to wait around to be discovered by whoever it is that decides on such things.

His antiwar verses first appeared in Winning Hearts and Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans, published by 1st Casualty Press, founded by Jan Barry and fellow veterans Larry Rottmann and Basil T. Paquet. With W.D. Ehrhart, he compiled a sequel, Demilitarized Zones: Veterans After Vietnam. Marshaling writers and artists confronting the threat of nuclear war, he also edited Peace Is Our Profession: Poems and Passages of War Protest.

Facing the prospect of becoming a certified senior citizen without having expounded on the meaning of life, he is the author, most recently, of Earth Songs: New & Selected Poems, A Citizen's Guide to Grassroots Campaigns, and numerous essays and commentaries published on various Internet web sites.

Profiled in Choosing Sides: I Remember Vietnam (Cronkite Productions, 1998), aired on The History Channel, he has given talks and poetry readings at numerous colleges, high schools, elementary schools and community forums.

After developing an incurable habit of trying to untangle convoluted government affairs, navigate through thickets of bureaucratic reports and uncover devious backroom dealings, he's shared newshound tips at journalists' workshops and in journalism courses at Rutgers and NYU, as well as in guest appearances at many other college classrooms.

He is a recipient of several journalism awards, mainly for persistence, including the 2003 Community Service Award from the Society of the Silurians, the oldest press club in the United States. He was a member of an investigative project team at The Record (Bergen Co. NJ) that received the 2006 Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment; the 2005 IRE Medal, the Investigative Reporters and Editors' top award; the Society of Professional Journalists' 2005 Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative reporting; and the New Jersey Press Association's 2005 public service award.

Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by 33 American Soldiers Who Fought It (Random House, 1981)

Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans— Neither Victims nor Executioners (Simon and Schuster, 1973)

Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement (Crown, 2001)

The Legacy: The Vietnam War in the American Imagination (Beacon Press, 1990)

The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent During the Vietnam Era (Rutgers University Press, 1996)

No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971)

The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (New York University Press, 1999)

The War Within: America's Battle over Vietnam (University of California Press, 1994)

Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (Twayne, 1997).