Jesse Howard Fry III. 82 years old.
Drafted and served in Korea from 1953-1955
I remember the day that I filmed Mr. Fry. By this time I was about a month into filming Welcome to America and I was collecting poorly hung flags*, which sadly there are more than you’d think once you start looking for them. When I was with him, he looked up at the flag as he was walking out of the grocery store. And said, “I wish they’d fix that”.
“So when you came back from Korea, how did they treat you?”
“They spit at me. They called me ‘war-monger’, ‘child killer’. I didn’t have one friendly comment when I was in uniform. They were just anti-war at that point and the took it out on us. But I didn’t have any choice, I was drafted!”
*The reason that I was collecting shots of poorly hung flags is because it was so symbolic of the theme of the song. If you don’t take care of something, it’ll fall apart. Everything requires maintenance. It’s not unpatriotic but the opposite, showing someone “you’ve missed a spot” doesn’t mean that you don’t care, it means that you do care.
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” – Elie Wiesel