Catherine Brown hated coming home to an empty house. Especially on Sunday—the loneliest day of the week if one was leading the “single married life” of a soldier’s wife. So she’d turned on her portable TV when she got back from that student teacher’s weekend seminar, more to keep her company while she went through her mail and scrounged up something to eat than because she was interested in the news. After all, the news never changed. If the networks weren’t showing “peaceniks” like her younger brother burning their draft cards in public or marching on the White House chanting “Hey, hey, L.B.J., how many kids did you kill today?” they were broadcasting footage of soldiers fighting and dying in Vietnam. But now, still in shock, she was sitting on the sofa with Johnny’s letter in her hand, staring vacantly at the black-and-white screen. “Tonight,” the President said in his slow Texas drawl, “I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia . . .”
