Author’s Biographical Information
Francis X. Kroncke is one of the “Minnesota 8” anti-war radicals who, in 1970, raided Selective Service draft boards and destroyed 1-A files as a protest against the Vietnam War. He served fourteen months of a five-year sentence in the federal prison at Sandstone, MN. A former Catholic seminarian, Franciscan monk, and lay theologian, he first became a Conscientious Objector, then a draft resister, and finally a Catholic Radical draft board raider. He has a master’s degree in theology (University of San Francisco) with doctoral studies in history and theology at UC–Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union. After prison he headed a prison reform lobbying project in California for the American Friends Service Committee. For the past thirty years he’s worked as a strategic planner and senior sales and marketing manager in the high-tech world. Presently, Frank lives in southwest Wisconsin.
Peace Crimes: The Minnesota 8 vs. the War is a docu-drama based upon Frank’s unpublished memoir, “Outlaw or American Patriot?” Doris Baizley, the playwright, was commissioned by the History Theatre (www.historytheatre.org) and the Playwright Center (www.pwcenter.org) to write the script. The play was co-produced by these two organizations and staged at the University of Minnesota Theatre Department’s Rarig Center. Nearly 4,000 people attended sixteen performances during February–March 2008. (See www.minnesota8.net.)
Frank developed an eight-college campus peace education promotional event around the play. TPT, a local public TV station, produced a documentary about the development of the play, Peace Crimes Backstage—The Minnesota 8. Fourteen print articles and four radio programs were produced. (See site and “Media” link at http://www.pwh-mn.org/media.php.)
Published – See www.minnesota8.net (bottom navigation “Writings”).
“Resistance as Sacrament,” Cross Currents vol. XXI, no. 4 (1971), the journal of the Association for Religion and Intellectual Life, www.aril.org. As attorney pro se I argued my federal appeal . I was assisted by appellate lawyer Charles Bisanz, Jr. United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit 459 F.2d 697 (1972). A copy of the appellate decision can be downloaded at http://wings.Buffalo.edu/law/BCLC/web/appkroncke.htm.
“Prison, Bottoming Out, The Mother,” Cross Currents XXVIII, no. 1 (Spring 1988).
“The Healing of Vietnam,” Voices, in the “Healing A Generation, The Vietnam Experience,” Journal of the American Academy of Psychotherapists vol. 27, no. 1 and 2 (Spring/Summer 1991. www.aapweb.com/
Interview, 2002 by Cheryl Seal http://www.minnesota8.net/Writings/seal01.htm
On “Peace and War in the Heartland” project, http://www.pwh-mn.org, and the “Minnesota8”
at www.minnesota8.net:
“Outlaw or American Patriot?” – unpublished memoir.
“Vietnam Undeclared” – unpublished; source for “The Healing of Vietnam.”
Trial documents.