From Conscientious Objector to Health Advocate: A Short Interview with Bruce Leonard

I’m a retired Captain of Public Health Service. I graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1968. After college, I served as a VISTA volunteer and lived in a low-income housing project in Honolulu, Hawaii, for two years. I applied to my draft board as a Conscientious Objector. After avoiding the draft, I immersed myself in the counter-culture of drugs, sex, and rock and roll, which I document in this book, Captain Energy.

 

After several years, I received a Master’s Degree in Public Health at the University of Hawaii and married Carol Ing, who grew up in Hawaii. This year, we celebrated our 46th wedding anniversary. We have a 32-year-old daughter and a 28-year-old son. 

After graduating with my Master’s degree, I joined the Public Health Service. As a health educator, community organizer, and behavioral scientist, I worked for the Indian Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control. My wife and I lived and worked on the Fork Peck Indian Reservation, a home for the Sioux and Assiniboine Indians in eastern Montana.

After four years, we transferred to the Zuni Indian Reservation in western New Mexico, where we lived for three years. We moved to Albuquerque, where I served as Executive Director of HealthNet New Mexico, a statewide health promotion organization, and four years at the Headquarters of the Indian Health Service. 1992, I transferred to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and retired in 1999. I taught health for ten years as a college instructor.

As a health educator, I promoted fitness to prevent Type II diabetes and obesity. I was also an athlete, wrestling in high school and college and ten years in Freestyle and Greco-Roman. After completing 21 marathons, I qualified for the prestigious Boston Marathon. In 1989, I rode my bike 3400 miles across the country from Seattle, Washington, to Atlantic, New Jersey.