Not sure what caught my eye about this story, which appeared under a two-column headline on an inside page of the Minneapolis Star. Maybe it was the year: 1966 seemed early for a Vietnam-era draft protest. Or maybe it was the reference to “two buckets of human excrement” in the first paragraph.

	Barry Bondhus’ senior high school photo, 1964.

Barry Bondhus, the youth arrested in connection with the protest 42 years ago, is now a toolmaker/machinist living in Princeton, Minn. I called him last month to ask if he had time for a phone interview about this period in his life. Yes, he said, but added that the event was probably bigger than I realized and that I’d likely need more than a phone call to capture the full story. He mentioned that his father had declared war on the United States and that the government, in effect, surrendered. And without elaborating he said that excrement was chosen as a protest tool for a specific reason.

He mailed me several documents about his protest, arrest and conviction. An update follows the original news story.

‘FLAG-DRAPED CASKETS’

Youth, 20, Arrested
After Draft Protest

A 20-year-old Big Lake youth was being held in Hennepin County Jail under $10,000 bond today on a charge that he dumped two buckets of human excrement into the files of the Sherburne County draft board [in Elk River].

Held is Barry Bondhus, who was arrested by FBI agents Thursday night at his home.

He is one of 12 children of Thomas Bondhus, 43, who operates machine shops at Big Lake, Monticello and Orrock in Sherburne County.

Sidney Abramson, assistant U.S. district attorney, said the youth would be given a hearing today before U.S. Commissioner Bernard Zimpfer in Minneapolis Federal Court.

The arrest of the youth apparently climaxed a series of difficulties he and his father have had with the draft board.

The elder Bondhus said he has told the board repeatedly that he is opposed to any of his sons serving in the armed forces.

“If you draft Barry I have nothing to look forward to for the next 24 years but flag-draped caskets,” he said.

Barry is the second oldest of 10 Bondhus boys.

After a board hearing Feb. 15, the youth was classified 1-A and ordered to take a pre-induction physical examination in Minneapolis.

The FBI said the youth refused to cooperate.

Wednesday, the complain charged, young Bondhus walked into the board’s office and dumped the substance into six draft board file cases. His draft board status still is pending.

The Bondhus house in Big Lake, Minn., in the 1980s.

MARCH 2008 UPDATE: A fat manila envelope filled my mail slot at work about a week after Barry Bondhus and I spoke on the phone. It contained a cover letter detailing his protest, arrest and conviction; a term paper about the event written by his youngest daughter while she was in high school; his father’s “declaration of war” against the United States; a one-page explanation of why human excrement was used in the protest; and a copy of a song about him that was part of an antiwar play performed in England.

Here’s what I’ve pieced together about “the Big Lake One,” as Barry Bondhus came to be known:

Soon after Barry received his draft notice in 1965, his father, Tom, composed the fiery declaration of war. He showed the missive to friends and family but apparently didn’t intend it for a wider audience. Perhaps he was blowing off steam or outlining his arguments for a later meeting with the draft board. At any rate, Tom Bondhus’ mother mailed the two-page, single-spaced document to the government without her son’s knowledge. “His mother was a little bit strange about things,” Barry recalled. “They used to argue about the Bible.”

A few key passages from Tom’s declaration:

• “Most people agree that war accomplishes nothing. I have asked myself from the beginning; Why go to war? When I was of draft age in the … second world war, I was constantly afraid of being forced into the army; not because I was afraid to die, but because I would refuse to kill others that were no more guilty than myself. The boys don’t deserve to die for the bungling of the politicians.”

• “My opinion is that since our constitution guarantees: Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness; and because the army denies all three; the draft is not lawful.”
• “God is not with us, we will never win another war, the trend is over for us. Our Boys fought valiantly in Korea with many men and much material, against a very small, weak adversary, and after a long struggle it was a draw. We attacked Cuba and were driven off.”
• “You are like filthy swine that eat the flesh of your own children. You worship false gods. You have sunk to the lowest form of life as described in the Bible.”

Then it gets, well, intense:

“I therefore state my terms: My boy will not be available for the draft, on my orders as his father. He is a ‘MINOR’ and responsible to me, and me for him, and he is obligated to obey me. His orders are not to come, so your quarrel is with me. If anyone comes to take my boy, you must be prepared to Kill Me. I will meet whoever comes on my front door step with a single shot, shot gun, and will attempt to kill the first man that gets in my house. I will have only one shot in the gun, and after I kill the man I will surrender, AS A PRISONER OF WAR. You will have a chance to kill me anytime before I kill your man as I will use No. 6 shot with a killing range of less than 50 feet.”

He concluded:

“None of my children has ever troubled the law because, I have taught them to obey the law, I have also taught them to love God, and hate the military. … The reason my children love me is because I love them, and will fight and die for them if necessary. … My terms are not unreasonable: the government must not take my children. If you want money or property, take it, but you cannot use my children to do your fighting. Fight your own war You Cowards.”

The declaration mentions “the Law of Moses” and “God’s law” and cites Jeremiah 10:21. What role did religion play in the family? “My dad tried a lot of religions and never did get along with any of them,” Barry said. “He actually started his own church before all this. I was ordained a minister. Church of the Morning Star, we called it,” after seeing a bright star in the sky during the trial.

Barry said that his dad, a machinist, admired guns and “owned lots” of them. He didn’t hunt much as an adult but had a pistol range in the basement.

Dec. 2, 1966: Tom Bondhus outside the federal courthouse in Minneapolis, with a book open to Washington’s farewell address. (Photo by Dwight Miller, Minneapolis Tribune)

The declaration’s threat of force explains why we need to go on the record at this point with a belated correction. Bondhus was arrested at the Sherburne County attorney’s office, not at his Big Lake home as reported in the Star. Government agents weren’t exactly eager to appear at the Bondhuses’ front door. Here’s what happened:

“Almost a week after I dumped the residue in the files … my dad received a phone call from the Sherburne County Attorney stating there were two men from the government in his office that would like to talk with us. My father and I went to his office in Elk River to meet with them. After talking to them for about an hour they told us they were from the FBI and showed us they were armed and at that time they arrested me. The county attorney told my dad that the FBI told him that the reason they had not arrested me earlier was because of my father’s Declaration Of War (copy enclosed). No one from the FBI was willing to go to Big Lake.”

Barry Bondhus was charged with destruction of government property and interfering with the Selective Service Administration. He was tried and convicted in December 1966. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail and fined $2,500. He served 14 months in a series of jails and prisons, from Madison, Wis, to Milan, Mich., to Peoria, Ill., to Leavenworth, Kan., and finally Sandstone, Minn. With time off for good behavior, he was released in March 1968.

What about the excrement? Let’s back up to February 1966, when Barry Bondhus and his parents visited the local draft board to discuss his classification. Tom Bondhus explained that, as the father of 10 sons, he “naturally would be more concerned and more emotional about losing his boys to the army” than a person with only one boy. The chairman of the draft board responded with a kind of wisecrack: “You have 10 boys, do you. Where’s the rest of them?”

That didn’t sit well with Tom Bondhus, who seethed over the next few days, considering responses that ranged from “cutting open a certain Pig to see if he had a heart,” to “moving to a peace loving country where the boys wouldn’t be forced to serve in an army of aggression.”

Barry Bondhus is listed as an inventor on U.S. patent No. 6,128,981, a folding allen wrench set, one that allows you to pull out a single wrench without its neighbors gumming up the works.

“Finally,” Barry Bondhus wrote, “an old sage in the family pointed out that when an ass hole makes a statement, it must have been shit he was talking about; so we concluded that by the rest of the Bondhus boys, he meant the residue. … Therefore it was decided that no one could be so [foul] as to ask for all of the boys themselves; he must have meant [their residue].”

So the Bondhus boys began collecting their waste in a stainless steel cream can in the bathroom “for a week or so,” Barry recalled. “It was starting to get a little rank by the end.” The residue was then transferred to two “dirty old tar buckets” for a one-way trip to Elk River.

Daughter Sandi, in her high school paper, picks up the story from there:

“He took the two buckets to the draft board office in Elk River … and set them on the secretary’s desk. He then asked, ‘Here’s the rest of my brothers[;] what do you want me to do with them?’ She was so scared she just kept repeating, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ My dad then commented, ‘Well, if you don’t know what to do with them I’ll put them in here.’ He opened up the top drawer of the draft filing cabinets and poured the two buckets in them. Then he quickly shut each one so the residue would run down and ruin all of the draft papers in that office.” Damage was estimated at $500.

“While I was in jail,” Barry Bondhus wrote in his letter to me, “my father met with Miles Lord [a freshly minted U.S. district judge at the time]. On behalf of the U.S. Government he promised my father that they would never draft any of his sons. This is the kind of thing you wouldn’t expect them to put in writing … but … the government has never tried to draft any of his sons. We interpret this as a victory in the war he declared on the government. My father was never charged with any crime.”

Barry Bondhus met his future wife, Linda, soon after he was released from jail. They will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary in October. They have 12 children – seven sons and five daughters – and will soon welcome their 30th grandchild.

Dec. 2, 1966: Tom and Barry Bondhus paused for a photo after Barry was found guilty of damaging government property and obstructing enforcement of the draft system. (Photo by Pete Hohn, Minneapolis Tribune)

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