It was 1968. The war was raging and people were dying. The military draft was in full swing. If you were not in school, you were drafted. And once you were drafted, odds were you would find yourself waist deep in Viet Nam.

Unless, of course, you were a senator’s son, a millionaire’s son, or some other fortunate one.

David Ford was none of the above. In Pittsburgh and fresh out of high school, he didn’t have a plan. Everyone else was going to college, and there was the draft, so college it was. Ashland College in Ohio was small, and it seemed like an easy school – although it did have a foreign language requirement.

Liz Doss, on the other hand, did have a plan. It was a pretty simple one - get the hell out of Urbana. Her small home town in Ohio, smack in the middle of farm country. Liz was a hippy girl, she had just graduated high school, and she was ready to see the world. Or, at least, go to college. Although Kent State was only an hour away, and Liz had spent some time there, her parents preferred Ashland College. So that’s where she went.

“I first saw David in French class,” Liz recalls. “I was a freshman and he was a senior. David was the only guy with long hair. I thought to myself, he’s one of us, a kindred soul. He approached me and joked that he wanted to cheat off my exam paper. His eyes twinkled!”

There weren’t many hippies around, so it was natural they would hang out. They drank beer, smoked pot, played pinball and putt-putt golf. Liz became David’s hippy girl. When he graduated at the end of that year, he returned home to Pittsburgh, and Liz visited.

“At that time, the overwhelming thing in my mind was that I was going to get drafted,” David recounts. “It was hard to go ahead with life, get a job and an apartment. I knew my time was short and none of it made any sense.” He began to follow the teachings of Dr. Timothy Leary.

David thought he had two choices, “go to prison, or get drafted and see what happens.” With that decision hanging over his head, David did what any young man would have done – he went to Woodstock. Sadly, that experience was marred by a psychedelic miscalculation. (Been there.) Shortly after he returned he received his draft notice. It was the fall of 1969, the war had torn this country apart.

Even within the military, the resistance was well-organized. “There was a large group of anti-war people within the army, our whole thing was to confront the army on the Viet Nam war. There were underground newspapers, we were actively protesting the war.” This is when David learned, for the first time, that he had a third choice - go to Canada.

May 4, 1970, was a pivotal day for the war, the nation, and for Liz and David. The Kent State shootings. Soldiers cutting us down. Four dead in O-hi-o, just an hour away from Ashland College. David “totally identified with the students there. I told my commanding officer, ‘I can’t do this.’ He said ‘you’re stuck, you’re here.’”

Or not. “David called me and told me he was leaving for Toronto,” Liz says. “I was glad he was leaving, we were fighting against the war. I was really proud of him. But I was abo very real. He was all alone, wondering what he was going to do. He could never, ever come home. I had to stay, to stand up for what’s right, to support him. I couldn’t leave him.”

They lived across the street from a houseful of hippies, all of whom worked at a false eyelash factory. The factory owner was an ex-Mennonite who wore purple jumpsuits and drove a white convertible Cadillac. Once David got his immigration status in order, he took a job there. Liz worked with Doubleday Publishing.

Liz and David built a nice life in Canada, happy, isolated from the war. They bought a VW bug, and for a time, they lived in a tent in the woods. After attending a free lecture, they got deeply into Transcendental Meditation (TM). It has been, for them, a life-changer, and they still meditate twice a day.

Canada has a free teacher’s college, in Stratford. They wanted to attend, but to enroll and live together they had to be married. “So we got married,” says Liz. “We felt we were bound together from the very beginning, no question, no doubt. We were a couple, marriage wouldn’t make it any different.” They had a wedding in a chapel, with both their families, fully supportive, in attendance.

The getting married thing worked out well. Teaching, not so much. Neither one lasted a month. Liz says “they threw you right into the classroom. I got some second graders, and after one class I quit. It didn’t go much better for David. It was one of those things that sounded good, but . . ..”

Next stop: Vancouver Island. Like Stratford, this was Liz’s idea. David had found his calling, building houses. Liz taught TM. Just when they were all settled in, President Gerald Ford announced an amnesty program for those who went to Canada.

He offered two choices: return and get a dishonorable discharge, or return as a conscientious objector, work two years for a nonprofit, and get a clemency discharge. David chose the latter; he did his two years at a TM academy in the Catskills, working on old buildings. Liz worked for the academy, producing audio and video tapes. When the two years were up and David received his clemency certificate, it was time to move on.

Fast forward a few years, and you’ll find Liz and David’s names on an adoption list. They didn’t think anything would come of it, Liz was 37. Still, the call came. The adoption agency had a son for them, he was in Ohio and they had to pick him up before midnight. Liz ran from work, picked up David, and they flew to Ohio. When they arrived at the adoption agency, it was just a few minutes before midnight. A social worker dropped the boy in Liz’s arms and wished them good luck.

You may know that baby boy. He’s Will Ford, Nederland realtor.

The family found their way to Boulder, and then Nederland, where Liz and David raised their mountain kid. David used to build houses here. He’s retired now. Liz and Will are now Ford & Co. Realty in Nederland, although Liz swears she’ll retire any day now.

What’s their secret? Liz says it’s this:

“What’s kept us together is that we both have a desire for supreme peace. We found that here in Nederland. We’ve been married for 51 years now. It’s not that we found the right person or the right home or the right this or that. It’s that we have a bond, we both visualize that we have a life in nature and in peace. It’s not in a place or a thing, it’s in your heart. And when you find that you share that.”

There you have it, my friends. A supreme peace with roots in a time of war. A 51 year love story that began in a time of hate. I guess things can work out, even if you’re not a senator’s son, a millionaire’s son. Liz and David fought for peace, and at the end of it all, they’re the fortunate ones.