Jeffrey L. Rogers oral history interview

Jeffrey L. Rogers, Dartmouth College Class of 1966. Oral history interview documenting his military service during the Vietnam War. Rogers describes growing up in Bethesda, Maryland, outside of Washington, DC, during the Cold War. He discusses his father, William P. Rogers, and his father’s career in government, which included service as Attorney General in the Eisenhower administration and Secretary of State in the Nixon administration. Rogers recalls his experiences as a student at Dartmouth, describing the campus culture and some of the events that defined his years on campus, including the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights Movement. He discusses his experience as a medical student at Harvard Medical School and his decision to leave the program, then to join the Navy and attend Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. He recalls his time in Vietnam, where he served as a navigator, an officer of the deck, and a landing signals officer aboard the USS Repose, a hospital ship. He describes further active duty at the Pentagon and earning a degree from Yale Law School in 1973. Rogers discusses his career, including three decades in law, retirement, a master’s degree in counseling, and his current work as a counselor to combat veterans with a focus on PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder].