Dem doesn’t wear politics on her sleeve
By RON SELAK JR. Tribune ChronicleMECCA - It was 1968.
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed, so was U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
U.S. participation in the Vietnam War was peaking, and Eileen Dyett had just graduated from John F. Kennedy High School.
It was about then the momentum surrounding POW-MIA bracelets was starting to increase, and Dyett (who supported the troops more than the war) shelled out the few bucks for one - it was her way to show support for American soldiers being held as prisoners of war in southeast Asia.
Her brothers Terry and Mart had served in the Navy, ''so I said give me a Navy guy.'' The engraved bracelet sent to her bore the name John McCain, shot down and captured over Hanoi the previous year.
That's funny now to Dyett, a Democrat, considering McCain has become the Republican presidential candidate.
Dyett, born to a father who was blackballed from the Pennsylvania coal mines because of his attempts to unionize the workers and a mother who leaned to the left politically, began her life 58 years ago as a Democrat. She's always been a Democrat, and probably always will be.
''I used to say he (John McCain) would be the only Republican I would vote for president,'' said Dyett, of Mecca.
She wore the bracelet, an aluminum wrist band with McCain's name engraved on the topside, until McCain stepped off the plane that returned him to the United States. That was the commitment, she said, wear it until the soldier returned, dead or alive.
She says now she would have worn it at her wedding if McCain was still a prisoner of war when she married her husband in October 1973.
''I took it off when I saw him getting off the plane. That was the deal,'' Dyett said.
The bracelets officially launched in 1970 and were available in various finishes. The organization behind the effort, Voices Vital in America, distributed nearly 5 million bracelets after a meager beginning exploded into a frenzy that had the organization receiving 12,000 requests daily.
The organization is now defunct, and information regarding the number of bracelets distributed bearing McCain's name was unavailable.
Despite her conservative life - married, two kids, a dog, volunteer - Dyett says she supports liberal thinking and laughs off the notion that Democrats are tax and spenders. ''Everyone taxes, everyone spends. It's just a matter of what you spend the money on,'' she said.
She supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and now fully backs Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama. She says she likes that he worked for social causes, taking care of people in the United States.
''In my way of thinking, we should make sure people at home are taken care of,'' Dyett said.
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smokey
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10-04-08 5:28 AM
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uh taking the war over there and not attack us here. if our troops are over there how are they going to protect us here???
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gpandas
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10-03-08 3:49 PM
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pandora, will you ever get it? the people and leaders of iraq have never attacked our country. osama is still out there.
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Pandora
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10-03-08 12:51 PM
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The Republicans are taking care of home by taking the war over there, to insure those idiots don't continue to attack us here.
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BLKPNTHR67
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10-03-08 11:55 AM
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TAKE CARE OF HOME FIRST.
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