I applaud the three young women at South Portland High (“South Portland students make pledge policy plea to faculty leaders,” March 20) who have sought to make clear that the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the school day should be optional, not mandatory. Rote recitation drains words of their meaning.

In 1952, I was granted a teaching fellowship at Penn State University, only to discover on arrival that all teachers and staff were required to swear that they were not and never had been a member of the Communist Party.

I felt that taking such an oath was no way to start a career in teaching, only in teaching conformity.

I discussed the matter with members of the local Friends (Quaker) Meeting, who said that, along with other members of the faculty, they had signed, confident that the university’s president, Milton Eisenhower, Dwight’s brother, would succeed in his effort to repeal the law imposed that year on all institutions receiving federal support.

My advisers said they knew of only one person who had refused to sign the oath. I went to visit him at his home.

I asked him on what grounds he had refused. He said that he had taken an oath to uphold the Constitution when he joined the Marines and that to take a second oath would deprive the first oath of its meaning.

He had a family to support. I did not, and I hitchhiked out of town to look for employment elsewhere.

I admired the former Marine for his willingness to risk his security for the sake of a principle. I hope the three young women at South Portland High will be accorded the respect their conscientious stand deserves.

Jon Swan

Yarmouth

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