What's Important this Veterans Day?

A few months ago, I did a post about a little Vietnamese boy I did not know, grabbing my hand as we both edged into a sea of motorbikes to cross the street. The original is here.

Tonight in reviewing and re-publishing my work over this last year I ran across my old post again but had forgotten the beautiful and poignant response from Ken Herrmann, who had been here during the war. Today we only fight motorbikes in Vietnam. That's important to remember.

Ken Herrmann Jr said...

Your post reminded me of late 68 and early 69 when I lived in Hiep Duc village, thirty=five miles southwest of Danang, as the liaison for the 196th Light Infantry Brigade. There were 1,500 locals resettled in the village and me. I lived on a small hill next to the village. Each morning a few kids from the village would wake me. One I called "Mao" because he was the spitting image of a tiny Mao. I ate breakfast with him and his buddies, before walking down the hill to feed the village with hundreds of boxes of stolen C-rations. Later each day an ARVN surgeon came to the village for a medcap. Sometimes Capt Goldberg, the 4th/31st Infantry Battalion surgeon came to treat the people. I recall Mao holding my hand when a little girl, about four-years of age wandered into the village one morning. She walked and stared at us, but I looked at her brain. Her skull had been blown off the night before. The ARVN surgeon told me he would bring her home that day. "I don't know what my wife will say about this." He had brought home about a dozen kids I had begged him to help. I wonder what happened to her. I wonder what happened to him. I wonder more when you write about the little boy who held your hand. Some things never end. Some thoughts are never silent.

Thanks, David.

Ken works as a Professor of Social Work at SUNY and runs a Vietnam and foreign studies program there. He and I have been corresponding for nearly three years now, well before the birth of this blog, based on a PSA I did for his program.

Thank you for reminding me of this, Ken.

2.6 Million for a Super Bowl spot?

I recall having around a million dollars once to produce a spot for the Super Bowl. It was okay, not great, but not as bad as some of the shite I saw the other day on YouTube. You can see the game here in Vietnam, on a Monday morning at an American bar, but you don't get any commercials. It's an ESPN international feed or something.

Shortly after I arrived here, I was sitting on a tiny plastic chair on the street having a coffee and a smoke – little plastic chairs are pervasive in Asia because so much living is done at street level. As I sat, I saw the man in this video, slowly making his way toward me so I discretely pulled out my cel-phone and shot this film. If a picture is worth a thousand words this spot should be worth at least a million dollars. It didn't cost a cent, but hopefully will do some good.
_______________________________________________

After I made the original film, it sat around awhile until the script came. This would have been a little over two years ago. Watching George Bush on TV roostering around and acting as if America had some sort of copyright on morality just didn't add up to me, when I could see the results of our morality, 30 years after the fact. I finished the final commercial at home on my Mac and then sent it around the world to interested organisations. A wonderful man named Professor Kenneth Herrmann from SUNY Brockport in New York responded and we began a partnership. Do click on Professor Herrmann's link and see the good work he and his students are doing in Vietnam – and of course help them out with a donation if you can.