As for funds, he had saved several thousand dollars in Vietnam and he could seek further help under the terms of the GI Bill.
There are few ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ about the GI Bill; if an American soldier leaving the army for reasons other than dishonourable discharge wishes to apply, then his government will pay to put him through university to degree level. The allowance paid, rising over the past thirty years, can be spent by the student any way he wants, so long as the college confirms he is in full-time studentship.
Dexter reckoned that a rural college would probably be cheaper but he wanted a university with its own law school as well, and if he was ever going to practise law, then there would be more opportunities in the far bigger New York State than in New Jersey. After scouring fifty brochures, he applied for Fordham University, New York City.
He sent in his papers in the late spring, along with the vital Discharge Document, the DD214 with which every GI left the army. He was just in time.
In the spring of 1971, though the sentiment against the Vietnam war was already high, and nowhere higher than in academia, the GIs were not seen as being to blame; rather as victims.
After the chaotic and undignified pullout of 1973, sometimes referred to as a scuttle, the mood changed. Though Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger sought to put the best spin on things that they could, and though a disengagement from the unwinnable disaster that Vietnam had become was almost universally welcomed, it was still seen as a defeat.
If there is one thing the average American does not want to be associated with too often, it is defeat. The very concept is un-American, even on the liberal Left. The GIs coming home post-1973 thought they would be welcomed, as they had done their best, they had suffered, they had lost good friends; they met a blank wall of indifference, even hostility. The Left was more concerned with My Lai.
That summer of 1971, Dexter’s papers were considered, along with all other applicants, and he was accepted for a four-year degree course in political history. In the category of ‘life experience’ his three years in the Big Red One were considered a positive, which would not have happened twenty-four months later.
The young veteran found a cheap, one-room walk-up in the Bronx, not far from campus, for back then Fordham was housed in a cluster of unglamorous redbrick buildings in that borough. He calculated that if he walked or used public transport, ate frugally and used the long summer vacation to go back to the construction industry he could make enough to survive until graduation. Among the construction sites on which he worked over the next three years was the new wonder of the world, the slowly rising World Trade Center.
The year 1974 was marked by two events that were to change his life. He met and fell in love with Angela Marozzi, a beautiful, vital, life-loving Italian-American girl working in a flower shop on Bathgate Avenue. They married that summer and with their joint income moved to a larger apartment.
That autumn, still one year from graduation, he applied for admission to the Fordham Law School, a faculty within the university, but separate in its location and administration, across the river in Manhattan. It was far harder to get into, having few places and being much sought after.
Law School would mean three more years of study after graduation in 1975 to the law degree, then the Bar Exam and finally the right to practise as an attorney-at-law in the State of New York.
There was no personal interview involved, just a mass of papers to be submitted to the Admissions Committee for their perusal and judgement. These included school records right back to grade school, which were awful, more recent grades for political history, a self-written assessment and references from present advisors, which were excellent. Hidden in this mass of paperwork was his old DD214.
He made the shortlist and the Admissions Committee met to make the final selection. There were six of them, headed by Professor Howard Kell, at seventy-seven well past retirement age, bright as a button, an emeritus profes
sor and the patriarch of them all.
It came to one of two for the last available place. The papers marked Dexter as one of those. There was a heated debate. Professor Kell rose from his chair at the head of the table and wandered to the window. He stared out at the blue summer sky. A colleague came over to join him at the window.
‘Tough one, eh, Howard? Whom do you favour?’
The old man tapped a paper in his hand and showed it to the senior tutor. The tutor read the list of medals and gave a low whistle.
‘He was awarded those before his twenty-first birthday.’
‘What the hell did he do?’
‘He earned the right to be given a chance in this faculty, that’s what he did,’ said the professor.
The two men returned to the table and voted. It would have been three against three but the chairman’s vote counted double in such a contingency. He explained why. They all looked at the DD214.
‘He could be violent,’ objected the politically correct Dean of Studies.
‘Oh, I hope so,’ said Professor Kell. ‘I’d hate to think we were giving these away for nothing nowadays.’
Cal Dexter received the news two days later. He and Angela lay on their bed; he stroked her growing belly and talked of the day he would be a wealthy lawyer and they would have a fine house out at Westchester or Fairfield County.
Their daughter Amanda Jane was born in the early spring of 1975 but there were complications. The surgeons did their best but the outcome was unanimous. The couple could adopt, of course, but there would be no more natural pregnancies. Angela’s family priest told her it was the will of God and she must accept His will.
Cal Dexter graduated in the top five of his class that summer and in the autumn began the three year course in Law. It was tough, but the Marozzi family rallied around; Mama baby-sat Amanda Jane so that Angela could wait tables. Cal wanted to remain a day student rather than revert to night school, which would extend the law course by an extra year.
He laboured through the summer vacations in the first two years but in the third managed to find work with the highly respectable Manhattan law firm of Honeyman Fleischer.
Fordham has always had a vigorous alumni network and Honeyman Fleischer had three senior partners who had graduated at Fordham Law School. Through a personal intervention by his tutor, Dexter secured vacation work as a legal assistant.
That summer of 1978 his father died. They had not been close after his return from Vietnam, for the parent had never understood why his son could not return to the construction sites and be content with a hard hat for the rest of his life.