How the Moultons Made Peace with the War

As students at Brown University in the late 1960s, Lynn and Tom opposed the Vietnam War. During her senior year, Lynn joined students at campuses across the country who, as an act of protest, refused to take their final exams. Later, as a law school student at Boston University, Tom marched in an antiwar demonstration. After marrying and starting a family, they wanted to raise Seth and his younger siblings, Cyrus and Eliza, to be independent thinkers. "They had a teacher who preached leftist values," says Lynn, a gregarious woman who wears glasses and her hair cropped short. "I wanted to say, ‘I agree with you, but I don't want you to tell them what to think.'"

As parents, Lynn and Tom's own open-mindedness had its limits. While the children were growing up, Lynn prohibited them from playing with toy weapons, even squirt guns. ("I gave them plastic fish to squirt at one another," she says.) When Seth informed his parents that he planned to enlist in the Marines, Lynn says, her first thought was: "There was no career choice he could have made that would have made me more unhappy, except if he had chosen a life of crime."

Seth made his decision during the spring of his final term, but because the fall Officer Candidate School class was already full, he did not officially sign on until October. At that time, it was clear the U.S. would be going to war in Afghanistan. Though his parents—whose attitudes, they admit, are colored by Vietnam—were unhappy with his decision, Seth was unswayable. "I think he realized the dangers," says Tom, who is soft-spoken and has a sparse fringe of gray hair. "But he believed the potential good outweighed the potential danger. I have a different view." The depth of the couple's opposition to Seth's choice only intensified when the U.S. declared war on Iraq, a move they were vehemently against politically, and then even more so personally as it became evident he would be among the first wave of U.S. troops into the country.

Thus for almost four years now, the Moultons have struggled over how to support Seth while standing against the conflict. How to honor their love for their child while opposing the cause for which he has, time and again, decided to risk his life. How to experience the pride others feel in him despite their own misgivings. It's a challenge further complicated by the presence of Mohammed, whose opinion on the war stands in stark contrast to their own. Though Tom and Lynn clearly adore him, and are thankful for the vitality he brings into their family, Mohammed is also a reminder that while he cannot return home, their own son, by choice, will not.