The Compass My Father Gave Me
A reflection on inheritance, conviction, and the everyday work of standing up for what is right.
The person I have admired most in my life is my father, Draper Kauffman. Almost everything I believe about honor, courage, service, and standing against political extremism, I learned from him.
In 1938, my father went to Germany on business. While there, he twice went to hear Hitler speak. He understood immediately what he was watching: fascism — a movement that fuses nationalism with the suppression of dissent, the demonization of minorities, and the worship of a single strongman leader. The size of the crowds, and the fervor with which they cheered, told him exactly how dangerous it was going to become.
When he returned home, he tried to warn people. No one listened.
So he acted. When Hitler invaded France, my father quit his job, joined the French army, and served as an ambulance driver on the front lines until he was captured. He was eventually released — that is a long story for another day — and made his way to England, where he joined the British Navy and volunteered to dismantle unexploded bombs during the Blitz. It was one of the most dangerous jobs of the war.
Shortly before Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy brought him home. There he founded the Navy's first bomb disposal program and later created the Underwater Demolition Teams — the "Frogmen" who led amphibious invasions in the Pacific and eventually became the Navy SEALs.
Years later, as Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, he worked to broaden the curriculum and to recruit Black and brown midshipmen. He believed that leadership required both knowledge and inclusion — and that an institution preparing people to defend a diverse country needed to look like that country.
My father died in 1979. But if he were alive today, I have no doubt he would recognize, in our own country, the warning signs he saw in Germany in the 1930s:
He would oppose the erosion of democratic norms and institutions.
He would oppose the use of American soldiers against the civilian population they swore an oath to protect.
He would oppose white nationalism and the mass deportation of people targeted because of their race, their faith, or their country of origin.
And so do I.
I have spent my life trying to live the values he handed down. In 1965, at the age of 17, I traveled from Washington, D.C., to Alabama to join the Selma-to-Montgomery march led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I have been a member of the NAACP for decades and have served as president of the Greencastle branch. In the 1990s, working with a wide coalition of Putnam County pastors from denominations across the spectrum, I authored a report on white supremacy inside the Putnamville Correctional Facility that led to legislative hearings and reforms in the Indiana Department of Correction.
I believe racism — beginning with the kidnapping of generations of innocent people from Africa, and continuing through every form of injustice that legacy has produced — is the greatest stain on our nation's history. It is one we are still called to confront.
A year ago, after spending time on the West Coast helping with my grandchildren, I returned to Putnam County to help lead local opposition to mass deportation and to the targeting of peaceful, hardworking people — our neighbors — because of their skin color, their accent, or their country of origin.
Now I am running for the Indiana legislature, because I believe we are all called to stand up, publicly, for what is right — even when it is unpopular, even when it is risky.
That is the compass my father gave me. I have done my best, every day of my life, to follow it.
For those interested, more about my father's work can be found in By Water Beneath the Walls and in historical accounts of the Navy's bomb disposal program and the founding of the UDTs (later the Navy SEALs).
Paid for by Kelsey Kauffman for House District 44