Yes, he was tall, towering over me at probably 6’ 3” or 6’ 4”. However he was very kind and soft spoken, always smiling and quick to answer my questions. “I’ve never really done an interview before, this is exciting!” he exclaimed as we sat down in my grandfather’s living room to get started. I ask him some basic questions, trying to get to know him, before we begin to start to discuss Vietnam. My first questions pertaining to the war was what job he performed in the military.
What comes to mind when you think of the word “traitor”? To many people the man Benedict Arnold is the first to mind. I read the book The Man in the Mirror: A Life of Benedict Arnold by Clare Brandt. Born in 1971, he was one of two of his mother’s eleven children to survive into adulthood. While volunteering to serve for his country he fought with skill and courage in many campaigns during the American Revolution, not many people know that the description above is for the man Benedict Arnold, who is best known for betraying his country.
“He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.” (Crane, 57) As he was marching with the wounded regiment he found his friend Jim, who was wounded badly on his side. Jim was becoming delusional and walked off into the woods so Henry followed. He suddenly stopped and started shaking violently. After falling onto the ground and becoming as still as stone, Henry realized that his friend had just died. Angry with the death of his friend Henry walks off towards the sound of the battles with revenge in his
Lance Corporal Brown enlisted into the United States Marine Corps, knowing he wanted to make his grandfather proud. Brown's grandfather was also stationed on Camp Lejeune, but that was way back in the years between 1953 and 1987 when they had an issue with water contamination. Brown could not remember the year his grandfather had been in, all he can remember is his grandfather used to tell him the water had harmful chemicals in it. A Place That Speaks To Thousands 3
Farmer had seen a lot in Haiti, but this case impacted him more deeply than anything he had ever seen there. The man, whom Farmer called Chouchou Louis to protect his family, had made a disparaging remark about the road of the country. Unbeknownst to him, inside the truck he was riding was a soldier dressed in plain clothes. At the next checkpoint, he was taken inside an official building and beaten severely. They let him go, but his name was added to their blacklist.
“This is my personal favorite characteristic of him, and most likely the smartest decision he ever made in his life.” States my Aunt Jenny about the mobster deals that Da’dooch turns down. Da’dooch was always looked down as the non- experienced and feeble- minded brother in the eyes of his father. His father always wanted his sons to be great business men or baseball stars. My great Uncle Pete (Da’dooch’s brother) was a third round pick for the New York Yankees, there he played for five years. Da’dooch never became the extraordinary business man or baseball star that his father intended him to be.
Notice that Sarty has no real sense of his father's outrage. He sees his father's anger, but he cannot understand it or from where it comes. Sarty was not alive during or before the war, so his only frame of reference is his ten years in this sharecropping family. Sarty lives with his father, his mother, an aunt, two sisters, and a brother. Sarty is the only member of the family to truly act on his own conscience, and ultimately this separates him from the rest of the family.
He was named in honor of Rose’s father, John Francis Fitzgerald, the popular Boston Mayor who everybody knew as Honey Fitz. Soon after he was born, family and friends called this small blue-eyed baby, Jack. Jack as a child was never very healthy; he always suffered from one ailment or another. When Jack was three years old, they moved a couple blocks away to a new and bigger home to support the large family. Jacks father worked very hard to be successful
Wesley lives under the shadow of his brother Frank and as the story progresses he is slowly escaping it. However, despite Wesley’s wilted physique and lack of superiority in the Hayden family hierarchy, he possesses a great deal of moral virtue and mental strengths. First of all, Wesley’s leg injury leads to other factors to develop Wesley as a better and stronger man. In his life he goes through many obstacles, such as his failure to go to war, and thus becoming the underdog of the Hayden family. This is discovered when the patriarch, Julian Hayden, says to his son Wesley “Ever since the war…Ever since Frank came home in a uniform and you stayed home, you’ve been jealous” (118).
Acknowledgments Gratitude is expressed to Mike Hughes and Jayne Arrowood without whose financial and emotional help I would not have survived the writing of this book. Dedication I would like to dedicate this work to the memory of Ray Glasgow who expressed kindness and generosity to me at vital times in my life. CHAPTER 1 GOODBYE “I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.” William James Psychologist and Philosopher It would only be polite for me to introduce myself and provide a bit of an explanation before murdering myself. My name is Hank McGovern, and I am a 42-year-old, single psychologist with a masters degree. I mention my profession and degree because they have particular relevance to my last and final crisis of injustice, a wrongful termination from a mental health center.