Kevin Trainor oral history interview

The Scope and Contents note of this oral history was originally generated by feeding the electronic transcript into OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4o on 2024 August 26. It was then reviewed and edited by a human.

Oral history interview with Kevin Trainor, Dartmouth Class of 1966, for the Dartmouth Vietnam Project. Trainor recounts his early life growing up in a military family in a suburb of Washington, D.C. in northern Virginia. He describes his time at Dartmouth, where he faced academic and social challenges, played rugby, and joined the Navy ROTC program and Chi Phi fraternity. Trainor discusses his decision to pursue a Marine Corps commission and reflects on significant events that occurred while he was at Dartmouth, including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Gulf of Tonkin incident. He describes his experience in the Marines, his training at Quantico and Pensacola, and his service in Vietnam as a naval flight officer specializing in photo reconnaissance and electronic countermeasures. Trainor reflects on the intensity of these missions, the camaraderie among Marines, and his skepticism about the war's purpose. He discusses his life after leaving the military, attending law school, and maintaining strong ties with fellow veterans.