Oliver Stones Born on the 4th of July Is one of my favourite films of all time, What’s more surprising it is probably Tom Cruises best performance by far. Ron was the voice of the forgotten generation of young men who deserved to be treated a great deal better than they were.
“I don’t like this,” my mother said as she set the dinner table. “It’s getting to be a bad habit.”
The rest of my family out-voted her. So my brother placed the portable black and white TV on a snack table in the corner of the kitchen.
It was fall, 1967, and I was a senior in high school. Between bites of dinner and sips of milk, my family watched the news unfolding from Vietnam. As a student who thought history was her best subject, I was interested in the logistics of it all, the politics. My ability to watch young men being ripped apart on a 16-inch screen and then say things like, “Please pass the potatoes,” evidently didn’t bother me.
Then Ron Kovic got shot.
Ron Kovic grew up one block over and two blocks up from our house. He and his friends were a staple of my…
View original post 430 more words
John D Eccles 