John Tinker Describes His Life After High School

John Tinker describes his experiences after high school, including his continued activism, alternative path to education and job training, and his success working in computer programming and telecommunications industries.

Mary Beth Tinker was a 13-year-old junior high school student in December 1965 when she, her brother John, 15, and their friend Christopher Eckhardt, 16, wore black armbands to school to protest the war in Vietnam. That decision led the students and their families to embark on a four-year court battle that culminated in the landmark 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision for student free speech: Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District.
 
This interview was recorded on February 21, 2019 at Iowa PBS studios in Johnston, Iowa.

Host: What did you end up doing after college you graduated?

I went to the University of Iowa. I just couldn't keep my mind on my studies. I was really concerned about the war, and I participated in large demonstrations there; but I mostly spent a lot of time thinking about how to oppose the war.

I read a lot about history. I dropped out of college. I moved into a 1941 delivery van and lived in the woods for about five years north of Iowa City. Minimized my consumption and my financial interactions and kind of had my Henry David Thoreau experience.

It was a beautiful time in my life. I don't regret it at all. I would encourage anyone, so inclined, to give it a try.

This doesn't put me in such good graces with educators sometimes, but it's the truth. I really think it was very valuable for me.

When I dropped out of school, I realized that I was going to have to pursue my education. I did that independently. I read a lot. I became an electronic engineer, a radio engineer. I was a chief engineer at a radio station in Iowa City.

I read a lot about foreign affairs. I read about Central America. I put together a solidarity project for Nicaragua. I shipped a lot of equipment down to Nicaragua: medical equipment, bicycles, sewing machines, clothing, shoes, all sorts of things through a Quaker organization in Florida. I shipped about 20 tons of stuff. Then over four years and several different trips, went down to Nicaragua learned to speak, or I should say half speak, Spanish and not really entirely fluent; but sufficient to get along.

Had a very interesting time. Traveled a lot in from America. Studied computers, databases. I wrote the water billing system for a small town I lived in, Olin Iowa. I then got hired, I wrote the state database of industrial byproducts for Iowa. I wrote that, and then I got hired by a telecommunications company did software. This is without any education at all in computers, all self-taught. I was put in a position of being an architect for very large billing systems in telecommunications industry.

Well that caused a shift, I'd been salvaging metal and doing programming for a friend of mine who built electronic equipment, living very low income and then suddenly I became like middle-class as far as my income went. I bought then, the old public school in Fayette Missouri, which I owned and lived there with my wife and kids.

We have built the community radio station there. On our roof we have the antenna. My wife is the director of programming. We work with the local officials, and the mayor comes in and does a show for us. We have a lot of interaction, now with the community of Fayette Missouri.

Host: So it continues. The activism continues.

It continues, I find it to be a very fulfilling way of life, honestly. To be engaged with the world, and to pay attention to the world. To do the best we can. The best I can to interact with it.