Remembering Roger Allen LaPorte

In the early morning hours of Nov. 9, 1965, a young man named Roger Allen LaPorte completed his trip to the UN carrying a container of gasoline. He sat down on the pavement, poured the gasoline over his body and ignited himself in flames. This self immolation was Roger's protest against the war in Vietnam. Roger was taken to Bellevue Hospital with burns over most of his body. He identified himself as a Catholic Worker and indicated that he was against war, all war and that he did this as a religious act.

Roger was 22 years old, a former seminarian and someone who volunteered at the Catholic Worker's House of Hospitality close to the Bowery in NYC. I knew Roger and worked with him. I was 21 and was in the middle of my own protest against the war. There were many other people who knew and worked with Roger. We were living in a somewhat surreal time. We worked with the poor and the marginalized. We cooked soup, gave out cloths to those who needed them. We sat up at night singing songs, drinking beer and arguing with each other about war, peace and our actions and reactions to the politics of the time. The times were intense. People were making decisions about their lives and about their futures.

Roger was quiet and thoughtful. He watched what was happening around him. A week earlier, another young man, a Quaker named Norman Morrison, had set himself aflame in front of the Pentagon and the office of the Secretary of Defense.

A few days before Roger's action he had attended a draft card burning demonstration at Union Square. He stood in the crowd and listened to hecklers telling the young men on the platform to burn themselves, not their draft cards.

Roger made a choice. He didn't tell any of us of his plan. He went to the UN early, before people would see him and intervene. He sat down and acted.

At 5:16 pm that evening, NYC and much of the northeast went black with a large power outage. Traffic lights, elevators, and lights throughout the city stopped working. At the Catholic Worker, the evening meal was being served. We were lit by candles and the light from a bicycle turned on its handle bars and seat with people taking turns turning the pedals. After dinner a small group walked the streets in wonder at how everyone was helping each other out. Pedestrians were directing traffic, people were helping each other cross streets. We sat together in an apartment talking about, praying about Roger. Wondering, thinking in silence and sometimes breaking into a song.

Roger died the next morning. There are those who spent and continue to spend time analyzing Roger's action. Was it this or was it that? It was what it was, a young man seriously frustrated and angry about a war that seemed to have no end.

Roger was a good young man and he should be remembered as such. That's the way I remember Roger LaPorte fifty years after his death.