THERE WAS ALWAYS A STRONG SENSE OF SERVING OUR COUNTRY
Just before Veterans Day in 2015, I received an e-mail from VFW 107 Commander Jim Brandow. He said there was someone who wanted to make a video using our Post as a background and would like to have member of our Post in it. OK, I’ll bite and I headed over there. It turns out this someone was a young lady named Patty Smyth, singer of the hit songs, “The Warrior” and “Good Bye To You” and others. I’m sure many of you recognize these hits immediately.
What I didn’t know was that I had a lot to learn that day. Patty grew up in Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, New York and still has family that lives here. Patty said, “We shot the video for “Broken” where both my parents grew up.” “There was always a strong sense of serving our Country in the neighborhood, My father and all of my uncles served and most of them enlisted”. “When one of my father’s brothers returned from Vietnam, he was a different man. I was a kid, but it had a profound effect on me.”
As a Vietnam Vet, I could relate to this and it brought back to mind the following quotes from two former presidents:
“The War in Vietnam is not like these other wars. Yet finally, war is always the same. It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate, therefore, to know war is to know that there is still madness in the world” ~ Lyndon Johnson, January 1966
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then and it is misremembered now”. ~ Richard Nixon, New York Times March 1985
That “sense of serving our Country in the neighborhood” proudly continues to this very day, which is evident by the array of military, police, fire department and other City and State organizations, with insignias and bumper stickers you see on cars throughout the neighborhood. The growing number of green front door lights is catching on and signifies the awareness of our country’s Veterans.
Patty released her album dedicated to the men and women who serve our country in the armed forces, “Come on December” in December 2015. The video made at our Post can be viewed on YouTube under “Patty Smyth, Broken”. Starring in this video is yours truly along with several members of the Post who are well known in the Gerritsen Beach community. Click on this link to watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hUw_6OqKTU
~ Jim Markson, Past Post Commander VFW Post 107, Life Member Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 72 and Author of Vietnam and Beyond, Veteran Reflections
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