Lives lived and lost

I read with both pleasure and regret the memorial article on Franklin Dorman ’48. In the mid-1960s I was ­master-director of the Southwest Residential College at UMass Amherst. Frank was a friend and a colleague — steady, wise, and deeply committed. He headed the Pioneer Valley’s first men’s center, which was part of the residential college.

Frank and I both engaged in public witness against the Vietnam War through those years. I helped to coordinate the mass civil-disobedience campaign at Westover Air Force Base in nearby Chicopee, where some 1,600 were arrested over 10 weeks protesting the B-52 bombers that were based there when not bombing in Southeast Asia. Frank and I both served 10 days in the ancient prison in Springfield for our Westover actions. Frank led the singing in the bus on the way to the jail.