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Sunday, November 14, 2010

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Postcard from Fort Jackson

4/1/67

The back of the postcard is addressed to Michael's parents. It states:

"All is well as can be expected. The Mental Hygiene Clinic is run by

inmates in disguise, so I fit right in. It isn't Vietnam so it must be where

I belong for the time being.

Love,

Michael

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PROLOGUE

Thomas Hunt : San Francisco – March 2011

In January 2007, as I was cleaning out my Aunt Denise's attic, I came across a suitcase. It contained three thick journals and some scribbled poems and lyrics.

The journals chronicled the life and, as I was later to discover, extraordinary times of a man named Michael Murphy.
When I asked my aunt about the suitcase, she chuckled cryptically, admitting that Murphy had given her the contents of the suitcase during a drunken escapade in the mid-nineties, with specific instructions to maintain his privacy until he was deceased. She added that Murphy was a longtime friend and a person who guarded his privacy. Although the public found him somewhat fascinating, Murphy had generally kept most of his personal business out of the public eye.

“We were very close in another life,” she mumbled, blushing. “I was the lucky runner-up.”

I was embarrassed to ask what she meant, and promised to put the suitcase back where I had found it. After closing up the attic, I googled Murphy and found no meaningful personal information. Enormously successful in the music business, he’d resided in L.A. Wikipedia listed hit songs he had written, and I heard of a few, but held none in my own collection.

So Michael Murphy was soon forgotten.
Aunt Denise passed away in September 2009. As her only heir, I took possession of her estate. The suitcase and its unread contents remained in the attic, untouched. I felt a renewed eagerness to review my inheritance, as now there was no one to deny me.

I spent the next three months reading and digesting Murphy’s memoirs. I was especially fascinated by his experiences as a draftee during the Vietnam War, experiences painted against socially tumultuous events in our country. I spent evenings lost in dark comedy, romance, social upheaval, and even murder. I wondered how those times affected the rest of his adult life, and how he must have felt living in today’s soullessly acceptant USA.

I sadly put the suitcase away, keeping my dead aunt’s promise of privacy, and thought little about it. That changed in June 2010, when I read in the newspaper that Murphy had disappeared. Dead or alive somewhere, he became a momentary celebrity. The media loves these kinds of events, and Murphy held the evening news throne for three days, until the latest outburst of tornadoes in Arkansas ousted him. I returned to the suitcase and made a decision that I hope is the right one.

I contacted a writer friend of mine in Southern California, and he spent a couple of weeks poring over the journals. In the end, he asked permission to write Michael Murphy’s tale.

He reasoned that a compelling story appeared in the historical and military parallels between Murphy’s experience working in a Mental Hygiene Clinic at Ft. Jackson in 1967-68, and events like the tragedy at Fort Hood in 2009, where 13 were killed and 29 wounded by an Army psychiatrist. That, coupled with current weekly national news accounts about the high rate of PTSD and suicide among returning troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and the military’s inability to cope with the situation, felt like cultural deja vu. In over forty years, nothing had really changed.

I gave my blessing to my writer friend to write the first, unknown part of Michael Murphy’s odyssey. And as Murphy might add, “Nobody gets away unscathed.”

Spc 4 Michael Murphy - Draftee

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