Vero Beach dropout reflects on IRSC career, having had life 'scared into him' in Vietnam
After skipping school for the umpteenth time junior year, Harvey Arnold found himself in Principal James T. Kirkland’s office at Vero Beach High School.
“After a period of silence, in a tone of disdain and total exasperation, he told me if I didn't change my life, I was headed straight for the state penitentiary,” Arnold said.
The conversation sparked Arnold’s decades-long journey from high school dropout to campus president of Indian River State College in Port St. Lucie.
On this Memorial Day weekend, he remembers, in an essay elsewhere in this publication, four classmates, fellow Vietnam veterans, who came home to quiet burials in the city’s Crestlawn Cemetery.
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They died between late 1967 and 1969, never having grown into middle age with families and careers. They all had brighter futures than Arnold envisioned for himself, he said.
In January 1965, much to the dismay of his father, Carl — a World War II veteran with a fourth-grade education who became foreman in Vero Beach's utilities department ― Arnold was a frequent flyer to Kirkland’s office.
“I was bored in high school and my interest was elsewhere,” he said, noting he’d rather make money delivering the Miami Herald, mowing lawns or doing chores than study. “I wasn't challenged (in school).”
So, the day after Kirkland’s warning, Arnold played hooky again and visited the military recruiting office. Arnold, 17 and held back in sixth grade, enlisted in the Army only because the Marines recruiter wasn’t around.
Arnold said his father, a Coast Guard veteran, wasn’t happy, but was persuaded by Arnold’s stepmother to let him serve. As a soldier, Arnold was so successful, earning an assignment in Germany on the Soviet border, he envisioned a military career.
Sniper, hospital spark major change
By late 1966, Arnold was an acting sergeant, guarding about 1.5 miles of perimeter of a U.S. base in Long Dinh, South Vietnam.
In July 1967, Arnold was checking a field phone in a bunker when a sniper's errant round shattered a wooden beam above his head, landing him in the base hospital. Not seriously hurt, he assisted nurses treating men maimed, dismembered, disfigured and burned.
"There wasn't anything left to the imagination about the horrors of war," he said, adding he was so disturbed he sought a higher power.
“In the wee hours of the morning on the last day before I returned to my unit, God and I had a conversation,” Arnold told me. “I promised God that if he would allow me to go home, I would take this life as far as I could.”
Three months later, Arnold traveled home. Returning from the Orlando airport on a desolate Florida Turnpike, he told his father he wanted to make something of his life.
“There's only one way,” his father told him. “You've got to go to college.”
The thought of more educational failure was overwhelming, even if Arnold had received a GED in the military.
“The thought of going to college (created) more fear in me than going to Vietnam,” said Arnold, noting he made numerous excuses why he couldn’t enroll.
His father insisted Arnold speak with Eugene Lyon, a former Vero Beach city manager teaching at what was then Indian River Junior College.
“He starts telling me that the college is designed for students just like me who aren't college ready,” Arnold said, recalling he got defensive with Lyon. “But he never wavered in his conviction that I could be successful.”
On the way home that night, Arnold’s dad was persuasive: If Arnold completed college, he could become an officer in the Marines.
Hooked on economics
Arnold enrolled at what’s now Indian River State College, catching up in English and algebra, thanks, respectively, to professor Helen Keller and Doug Carlson, Arnold’s high school neighbor.
While Arnold stopped talking about Vietnam, his classmates began coming home: James Ellis Loudermilk was killed in action Dec. 27, 1967; Franklin Clovis, Feb. 8, 1968; Stephan Max Wiggins, March 30, 1968; Mark Jackson, Oct. 28, 1969.
After the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive in early 1968, the war became unpopular in the United States, with protesters disrespecting veterans.
Meantime, Arnold got hooked on economics. His professor, Gerald M. Jenkins, suggested he seek a bachelor’s degree in economics with a scholarship to the University of West Florida.
Arnold, surprised the Americans pulled out of Vietnam in 1973, ended up with a master’s in economics before graduating from officer candidate school and becoming a lieutenant in the Marines the next year.
By that time, the only job he wanted in civilian life was to someday replace Jenkins, who in 1976 became a college administrator. College President Herman Heise held the economics job open for Arnold until January 1977, when he completed his military service in Okinawa, Japan.
“There will never be a feeling of accomplishment like I felt at that first faculty member meeting,” said Arnold, who, against all odds, sat next to colleagues, including some who had inspired and educated him.
In 1986, Arnold earned a doctorate in economics from Florida State University.
Still, he remained haunted by his and his classmates’ Vietnam experiences.
“I came home from the war so early that nobody spit on me. Nobody accosted me,” he said. “But as I went through the university system, the antiwar sentiment just grew and grew and gained momentum. And I was rebuked and accosted a few times trying to defend our position. So, I became a closet Vietnam veteran.”
Things changed following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he moderated the first of what would become annual panel discussions with veterans of multiple wars at the college.
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“For the first time, I was able to speak openly to a respectful and appreciative audience,” Arnold said, noting the panel was just one of several initiatives at IRSC that helps veterans. “That was a very cathartic and therapeutic process.”
Arnold helped secure a grant to create the Veterans Center of Excellence on its Port St. Lucie campus in 2022. It offers services and has a wall of honor, including Arnold’s VBHS classmates.
Now 76 and living in Tallahassee, Arnold reflected on a career that saw him become provost in 2004 and campus president before retiring in 2021.
“You look back on your career, and I realized that I've lived this incredible, improbable life,” he said, linking it to the abbreviated lives of his fallen classmates and his desire to ensure they are remembered.
“When the funeral procession left the airport, there wasn't a column of police motorcycles and cruisers and firetrucks with lights flashing and a motorcade following them all the way to the cemetery with flag-waving patriots on the roadside,” he said. “They got nothing.”
“I got a lucky break,” he said of returning home before the Tet Offensive. His other break was having IRSC in his backyard.
Arnold spoke of how, when he was young, he thought there were “unlimited grains of sand” in the hourglass of life.
“Vietnam just really made me realize how short life can be, and I try to make every grain of sand count,” he said. “Most people, if they get scared, they'll tell you that they had the life scared out of them. I had the life scared into me.”
And not just by Principal Kirkland.
This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.
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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: 'Nam, IRSC helped make Vero Beach dropout a professor, St. Lucie leader
