Quayle Booed by West Point Cadets : Mention of His Duty in Indiana Guard Sets Off Students

Vice President Dan Quayle, dogged during last year’s campaign by suggestions that he was a draft dodger, was booed by West Point cadets today as he was introduced as commencement speaker.

Ignoring the less-than-hearty welcome and a steady downpour, Quayle praised the nation’s new second lieutenants--including 112 women, 156 minority members and four foreign students--who were presented with degrees and officer’s bars at the U.S. Military Academy’s 191st commencement ceremony.

“You are the guardians of peace. While working for peace, we must keep our defense strong,” he said.

The boos and hisses arose from the corps of cadets, West Point’s undergraduates, when the vice president was introduced with a mention of his Vietnam-era service in the Indiana National Guard. Quayle, 42, did not react.

Questions were raised during last year’s presidential campaign about whether Quayle’s family, influential in newspaper publishing and Indiana political circles, pulled strings to get him into the Guard to dodge the draft.

In his commencement address, Quayle praised the graduates who had earned academic honors and noted that he had never made the dean’s list while in college.

He told the cadets--resplendent in dress gray uniforms, purple sashes and white hats--that “devotion to the profession of the military and to the well-being of soldiers is a legacy of West Point and of those leaders in the long, gray line that preceded you.

“It is their achievement and their sacrifice that you must never fail to honor, and whatever the circumstances, always remember to be proud, very, very proud. . . . There is no more noble calling than serving your country.”

Quayle drew applause when he announced that former President Ronald Reagan, who in 1987 reviewed the corps and granted “amnesty” for all demerits, will receive the academy’s Thayer Award, which goes to the American who best fulfills West Point’s motto, “Duty, Honor, Country.”