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Now that a faulty ticker ended three decades in broadcast news and control rooms, the former television producer has returned to his college roots - as an activist and citizens advocate.
Jon Duffey was one of the first teenagers to file for, and ultimately succeed in getting the Fort Wayne draft board to grant him a Conscientious Objector status in the early years of the Vietnam War.
Duffey's parents both served in WWII. His mother was an Army Nurse, his father a Red Arrow Division Infantryman who fought in the South Pacific - and was the recipient of a Silver Star as well as two Bronze Stars and two Purple hearts. Both supported their son's decision to be a non-combatant.
Then to prove killing people was not a requisite for patriots, in 1967 Duffey volunteered for the draft. He was one of four (out of a class of 400) soon to graduate medics who volunteered for service in South East Asia. 396 of his classmates were ordered to the Republic of Vietnam... but the four who requested service in the war zone were sent to Germany. Arriving in Europe, Duffey learned he was getting assigned to a post within the Third Armored Division and would join the 1st/32nd Armored - the same battalion where Elvis Presley served earlier and Axel Rose would serve later.
During his active duty, Duffey earned a number of commendations including the prestigious Expert Field Medic Badge and was the first Conscientious Objector draftee to be promoted to the rank of Specialist Fifth Class in the Third Armored Division. Serving most of his time in the Recon Platoon, his unit was one of the first to be sent to the German-Czech border when the Soviets stormed into Prague in August of 1968. See http://www.duff.net/resume/army09.html
After his discharge from the military, Duffey wanted to get a closer look at the occupation of Czechoslovakia. To do that, he accepted a position taking pictures for the U.S. State Department, in and around Prague. After a few months he resigned to return to the U.S. to be with his ailing mother as she battled cancer.
He went back to work at the NBC affiliate in Fort Wayne, while resuming his college studies at IU-Purdue Fort Wayne and completing it with graduate work at IU, Bloomington. Duffey earned a double major in Radio-TV and Speech & Theatre and a minor in journalism under the tutelage of his incredible mentor, Dick Yoakam.
On campus, when not learning to be a journalist, Duffey was deeply involved in the anti-war movement. While a proud Xi Gamma Iota (X-GI,) he actively discouraged others from sacrificing their lives in Southeast Asia, and that lead to his involvement in the Students for a Democratic Society. It was at an SDS meetings that he met Bill and Emily Harris, who would later become famous for their parts in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and their involvement in the Symbionese Liberation Army. He abandoned the IU SDS chapter when other members ignored his pleas to not resort to violence, culminating with the fire bombing of the old IU Library Building.
After leaving campus in the middle of the Masters program, Duffey spent most of his career as a gypsy TV News Producer - moving among a dozen stations on a trail from Indiana, to Arkansas, back to Indiana, then to California, Indiana one more time, Michigan, and finally to Florida. See http://www.duff.net/resume/
Grieving, if not heart broken over the bastardization of his once proud craft of broadcast journalism, Duffey suffered a near fatal heart attack and was implanted with a defibrillator in 1994. On doctors' orders, he bid adieu to the news business and crossed over to being a news maker.
He ran for Congress (FL-09) in 2000 as a Reform candidate, hoping to forge an alliance between Reformers and members of the Natural Law Party to benefit a man he counts as a friend, Dr. John Hagelin, the NLP Presidential Nominee that year. That effort went awry when a faction lead by Pat Buchanan disrupted their noble effort.
When Duffey rejected several appeals by Buchanan to campaign with him in Florida, he was denied financial support from both the NLP and Reform parties. Campaigning on his own money, all of $3000, he was out spent by incumbent Republican Mike Bilirakis by a half million dollars (166 to 1.) Even so, Duffey earned more than 46,000 votes for 18%... the highest vote tally and largest percentage of any third or no party federal candidate that year, except for the Vermont incumbent.
He was able to do that well by conducting one of the first ever campaigns, relying mostly on viral internet marketing methods. Since then, Duffey has used the internet to conduct a variety of campaigns including support for candidates regardless of party affiliations, fund raising for efforts such as veteran assistance and service dog training, enviro, human rights, energy, health care, and peace initiatives, as well as public media scrutiny.
You will find his postings on HuffPost and other popular web sites - whenever news coverage converges with any of Duffey's Hot Button issues.
