A Wrinkle in the Long Gray Line: When Conscience and Convention Collided

On August 6, 1970, a New York Times front page headline read: ＂West Pointer Seeks Discharge as a Conscientious Objector.＂ A Wrinkle in the Long Gray Line is the story of that West Pointer, Cary E. Donham, who after three successful years at the military academy, chose to follow his religious and moral beliefs despite the overwhelming odds against him from the military establishment. This memoir is well sourced from a range of materials including news articles, numerous contemporaneous letters to his parents, data obtained through Freedom of Information requests and of course his own experiences.

Born in 1949, I grew up in small towns in downstate Illinois the oldest of four children. After my parents settled in the small town of New Baden, 30 miles east of St. Louis, I excelled in academics and athletics, and in 1967 received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. There, after completing three years and despite being in the top ten percent of my class academically, my religious upbringing and beliefs led me to apply for discharge from the Army as a conscientious objector. To date, I am the only cadet to do so.

After prevailing in a federal court lawsuit, and receiving an honorable discharge, I worked in a Greenwich Village Church, then moved back to Illinois where I finished my undergraduate degree. In 1978, I moved to Chicago where I made a living for five years as a musician and as an over-the-transom writer for the Chicago Reader. I applied to law school in 1984, was accepted, and attended law school at night while working full time, finishing fifth in my class, and being published in the Chicago Kent Law Review.

I clerked in federal court for two years after graduating from law school in 1988, then worked at the Chicago law firm of Shefsky & Froelich Ltd. Until 2012, when it merged with the Midwest firm of Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP. During my career as a litigator, I successfully defended the City of Chicago’s minority preference program in construction, and represented the Chicago Board of Education in class action race discrimination law suits. After retiring, my wife of many years and I moved to Kentucky. We have one son, who works as a mental health counselor.