August 11, 2020 • 47 mins
Today, Alec speaks with two colleagues he’s known for a long time, Brian Delate and Dick Hughes -- both actors whose lives were touched by the Vietnam War. Delate, Alec’s first guest, served in Vietnam after high school. He has performed on stage, in movies and on TV, and he’s also a playwright. His play, Memorial Day, tells the story of a Vietnam veteran on the verge of suicide over a Memorial Day holiday. Dick Hughes, Alec’s second guest, thought he was going to enter the priesthood as a young man, but decided to study theater. In his early 20’s, Hughes traveled to Vietnam as a conscientious objector, and ultimately opened a shelter for street children called the Shoeshine Boys Project.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Today.
I talked with two colleagues, Brian Dellett and Dick Hughes,
men I've known for a long time. Both are actors
whose lives have also been touched by our country's war
in Vietnam. Dell Itt, my first guest, served in Vietnam
(00:24):
after high school. Hughes traveled to Vietnam as a conscientious
objector in his early twenties. The impact of the war
has stayed with both of them. Brian Delitt spent on
stage in movies and on TV. He's also a playwright.
His play Memorial Day tells the story of a Vietnam
(00:45):
veteran on the verge of suicide over a Memorial Day holiday.
He developed the play in collaboration with the Actor's Studio,
with support from actors like Harvey Kitel and Ellen Burston.
Memorial Day was ten years in the making dell It
started to play after he was living in New York
(01:06):
trying to become an actor, and one of the planes
flew over him that September morning. That's when all this
Vietnam stuff got triggered, uh In in a major way.
And I started to take pieces of it into the
actor's studio and are icons there Uh Norman Mailer Harvey
(01:27):
Allen said, you got to keep bringing more of this in.
And this was the beginning of what would become the
play Memorial Day. And Ellen was instrumental in helping me
shape it in terms of having a beginning, medal, and end,
and also not having to totally rely on the exact
details of my story, so that I started combining situations
(01:48):
that served the greater truth of what I was trying
to say. When you wrote this, and in the time
you've worked on this, I'm wondering did it bring about
interaction with other generations of soldiers? Yeah, there were some
older veterans, but there was the younger ones that started
coming around. There was a I guess like a halfway
(02:10):
house around the corner from the actor's studio where men
and women coming out of the service could transition into
civilian life for like the next six months if they
wanted to. It was I think it was on forty
three Street, and this UH guy came and he had
done a couple of tours in Afghanistan and I didn't
really know him, but we set a little a couple
of times and he said, if you do this again,
(02:32):
would you tell me let me know how? How can
I find out? And they said, well, you know, the
studio will mention it. And I think it was like
six months later. We did like two or three weekends
at this little theater called the Drilling Company up on
the Upper West Side, and he let me know that
he was bringing one of his buddies from Afghanistan that
he had been with and that they were going to
(02:53):
come and see it like the next night. I said,
we'll say hello afterwards. So they did. They came, and
because the play really addresses the whole notion of suicide
and the prevention of suicide ultimately is the goal of
the play, so he um, he comes with his friend
and I guess it was the next day he uh
(03:13):
contacts me and he says, you met my friend. You
met last night? I said yeah. He said we were
maybe two blocks away from the theater and he stopped
and said, I've been planning to kill myself the last
couple of months. I don't know what to do. At
that time, I was thinking of stopping doing this because
it was costing me money. It was no financial reward.
(03:34):
So that meaning when that guy said that to you,
that put the wind back in your sales for the project. Yeah,
I just thought there's a purpose for this. You know,
if one if I can keep one guy from eating
a bullet, you know, I want to go back and
I want to just do a little quick timeline. So
you grew up Brown in Jersey, raised in Pennsylvania. Your
dad sold bar related materials, mixers, alcohol or whatever, cordials.
(04:01):
I love that. Yeah, he was what they called a missionary.
He was also a liquor salesman. But he when he
was at the height of his career, he would go
around and he would present slide shows to the wholesalers
in New Jersey and basically say, look, we use only
purified water and we do this, and they have my
sister and I have to sit through these slide shows
where they show these guys, here's that much formooth. You
(04:22):
wanted that Martin us an eye dropper. And then you
got drafted or you enlisted. Oh I got drafted. Was
your dad in the military. He was a World War
Two guy. He flew twenty four liberators and uh he
was actually interestingly enough, he was not like you should
do this. Like my mom said, are you going to
(04:44):
go to Canada? And I said, no, I'm not gonna
go to Canada. And my father he was interesting. He
just said, I don't know if this wants for us?
And where where're you going to train? Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
And it was tough because that was the home of
the eighty second Airborne and a lot of those drill
sergeants had already been to Vietnam. They were uh in
(05:05):
some instances there were rangers and they just didn't take
any ship um and uh um. I don't know. I
was surprised because I went in kind of less a
fair like let's get this over with. And then when
you have someone in your face like that and knows
how to scare you in the best way, and so
that was it was it really, it was a really
(05:26):
powerful um preparation. And also I didn't expect to thrive
in the military. I didn't know. I didn't know it's
gonna be a good shot um. And I wouldn't even
figure this out till a couple of years ago that
the eye hand thing came from archery when I was
like eleven, twelve, thirteen years old, because I've never had
to handle the weapon. I haven't had a weapon since
(05:48):
the Army, So it's like, um, it was really weird
to to to suddenly go, wow, you can. You're an
expert shot with an M fourteen and X six thing.
So finally you go and you get over there, and
I mean, you're an actress, so I'm assuming there's gonna
be an interesting description here. What does it feel like?
What does it feel like? Okay, I'll get to that
(06:10):
in one second. I didn't I didn't see my first
professional play until after I came back from Vietnam, so
like like I had no and I mean I have
to say, I think you're you're picking up on something,
which was I guess I was recording this, you know,
just and I mean I had the thing. I think
Stone really captures it in a platoon when you get
(06:32):
off the plane and you get hit with the heat
and you don't know where you are and the smell
and everything like that, it's just like you feel like
you've arrived at another planet. And so uh, in my case,
I landed in Cameron Bay and then um, I was
sent up to this area. But the place that was
called True Lie that very the very first night. Um,
(06:56):
that gave us some bad chow and it was hot.
This was early March of six and they gave us
warm beers and we sat down in these benches and
they had this giant white plywood screen and we watched
the movie called The Devil's Brigade, a World War two movie.
(07:17):
And then um, I was right after the movie, about
twenty minutes after the movie, and I had just talked
to this guy from Philadelphia. We were talking about Acapella. Anyway,
after the movie, all of a sudden, the rockets came in.
We were getting rocketed, and I didn't know what the
hell was happening, and and they didn't tell us. They
(07:38):
didn't tell us where the bunkers were. You could see them,
but I wasn't paying attention, you know, I'd expect to
get hit that night. But the rockets poured in and um,
there was all the screaming and they black out everything.
They turned the lights out right away, and it's like
I hit the dirt. I'm in the sand and I
can't see anything. And it was in that moment that
(07:59):
I felt this and drogyn this something next to me.
Maybe just give me a kiss on the cheek, you know,
and it was really I felt it was like this
beautiful form of death. And I remember thinking, no, no,
I'm not going to do that with you, you know,
(08:19):
and by Jessica Lang and all that jet exactly, Yeah, totally,
And so that I pushed that away. And it was
at that moment I made this vow that somehow, some way,
I was going to get home. For people, like, when
you're in Fort Bragg and you're getting ready to deploy
and go over to Southeast Asia, do you basically are
(08:41):
you basically told in any terms, whether they're vague or
specific terms, and they basically are they telling you you're
going to the ship man, like you're not going to
work in some telegraph office, you're not gonna edit movies,
You're going to get a gun and you're going to
the thick of it. Did they tell you that when
you're on your way and they will tell you where
you're going? Well one plus, you don't know. If it's
(09:03):
hard to describe the where is July in the topography
and the geography of Vietnam, it's Um. If you go
back to when it was half and half North and
South Um, there was the second largest city was Danang
and truly was about seventy miles seventy five miles south
of Denang along the coast of the South China Sea.
(09:25):
When you were there, what do you do? Like drugs, alcohol, sex, food, whatever?
What did you do to get through the experience of
two years of this? Wow? Um? Well, I lived for
the letters that would come from my girlfriend Carol and
from my mom. My dad never wrote to me the
(09:48):
whole time, and I didn't even notice it. Why do
you think The rationalization, which I would find out in
psychoanalysis years later, was oh, he's not a letter writer.
It's like you mean you? I think this is me
getting nailed by the shrink. Did he need to disengage
because he thought maybe you weren't going to come back.
I don't know. I mean I I find when you
(10:08):
came back. What did he say? Well? I I never
brought it up because I just accepted it, because it
was like if people said, did your dad right you,
I'd say no, my mom wrote for both of them.
I had totally rationalized. But I lived for the letters.
I lived for the letters. Um. The letters from Carol
and the letters from my mom were like life sustaining.
(10:29):
They were tethers. And as far as the day to day,
it's truly one day at a time. Living. You're looking
at the calendar all the time. You're seeing guys who
are going to leave in thirty days. So you see
guys that are leaving, and you just do you feel
that thing in your chest. It's like, God, when's that?
When's that day going to come? There were two times
I cried in Vietnam. Um. Once when I was in
(10:50):
the hospital I had skin problems that were really bad.
The other time was when I left the day I
had to leave my company to come home. I was
walking to go to the jeep with my duffel bag
and a couple of the guys I was tight with
crew following me, and I started shaking. I didn't know
what was going on. I thought, what's the I've been
living for this day? And um, I'm like, I'm coming apart,
(11:14):
you know, And I uh, And of course they're laughing.
They're like, a man, you're going home. You know what's
your version of why one was? I made it? I'm
going home. Um. I have my opinions, but that's one
of the that's one of the most profoundly human emotions
you can feel is to finally be escaping the clutches
(11:38):
of a situation that you prayed would be over, and
it's finally over, and you just collapse. Why do you
think you collapse when it was over? You know, I
have to. I wanted to fit this in and I
hope it's not a non sequitur. But it's as opportunities
arrived to appreciate life's beauty, mysteries, truths, and heartbreak, to
(11:58):
understand life on a higher plane. That's from your memoir.
That's so anyway. I don't mean to throw that idea
like this, but I felt it yesterday thinking about it,
which was this is going be a conversation about transformation.
We'll talk about it. We have so much to cover
therapy forget about suicidal and the deepest painful thoughts. But
(12:22):
how soon do you want to go to therapy after
you get back? How soon? Oh? I got sent to
a shrink at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. I had to
do my last few months at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.
So I was basically going back and forth from home.
But it was it was a disaster because I didn't
trust the guy, I mean, the key, the key things
with most veterans, and especially coming out of these situations
(12:46):
is trust. You know, who did you trust him? Why?
I just didn't trust him. I didn't think I wasn't
gonna talk to him at all. And I trusted the bars.
I was into the bars and drinking, and because I
didn't drink that much in Vietnam, I had a lot
of responsibility. So I took it pretty seriously. And uh um,
(13:06):
I mean I'd smoked grass once in a while and
stuff like that, but it was it was really about
the work, and also I want to be as responsible
as I possibly could. When I got home, I thought
I would sleep for the next two weeks. When I
got home, I couldn't sleep. I couldn't sleep for more
than two hours a night, and every night I was
out drinking, and I had a load of cash. And
(13:28):
I got into trouble a couple of weeks after I
was back because I wasn't twenty one yet and in Pennsylvania,
you know, and I was getting away with it because
in those days, you had a military idea where you
had your picture on it, so and I was a
big kid, so they didn't even look at it. But
then I you know, I got into this scrap with
this owner of this bar, and uh, I got in
(13:49):
trouble and it was it was long. Not long after that,
there was a situation where, um, I was in New
Jersey and it was a very violent incident that took place,
um like right next to me. And it was the
day after that thereabouts, I just decided I had to
do something with my life because I was wrecking cards.
(14:10):
I was just I was feeling like it was me
against the world and uh and I just didn't trust
anything or anybody. And I was it with you. I
was with your girlfriend and your parents who were primary
to you while you were overseas. What was it like
when you we engaged with them? Um, I scared them.
Um My girlfriend, uh, Carol just kind of she wanted
(14:31):
to keep like this distance, you know, and it was
um and of course that made me crazy. And we've
had this incredible um relationship, really romantic and all that
stuff before I went over there. And when I got back,
you know, a year can change a lot of life
in a ninety twenty year old and uh so, um
(14:53):
so we had trouble, you know, finding our way back
to each other to the end eventually it was off.
I became a volcanic thing for the next few years.
I mean, um my, my dad was really worried. My mom.
They were worried continually, like what's he doing now? You know.
There would be like they'd see me open up the
(15:15):
trunk of the car and they'd be like, you know,
a bunch of coats from the army and stuff like that.
They didn't know what was going on. So what what
were the coats? They were, you know, like fatigue jackets
or they were those kind of dress army coats. And
what were you doing with them? I had I was
giving them away half the time. I didn't care, you know,
(15:36):
it was just I was And if somebody wanted to
buy one, I'd sell for five bucks or something. When
does the acting playwriting? When did the arts take hold?
My second year of college, where did you go? Again?
You said, Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania. What did
you study? I started just generally, and because I was
terrified of college because I had had bad reading learning
(15:58):
problems all through school, and so some confidence came from
the Army in terms of work ethic and stuff like that.
But I took a reading course to learn how to
really read. I had site things that I was doing
that we've never been corrected from the time I was
a kid. I got this guy. He saved me. He
just he set me up for college. It was the
first year I got my confidence because I got this
(16:20):
reading problem taking care of. And then in my second year,
I was thinking pretty mad because I had this confidence
I didn't have before. But I took this acting class
because I couldn't get the math teacher I wanted. He said,
get me next semester. So I, Uh. I took this
acting class, and two weeks into it, the guy said,
can you stay for a minute. So yeah, he said,
(16:41):
you should drop out? Why I love me drop bad?
He said, you're not You're not getting up, you're not working.
You can't just watch. So he gives me a monologue
from your good man Charlie Brown, and it's when Snoogy
goes up to fight the Red Barren. He should come
back with this next week. Don't come back. And so
I did. And I came back, and I was scared
(17:02):
the ship out of me. But I had a great time,
and I felt like, you know, I wanted to work
further into this fire. Then I got into this play
and then I started taking classes and when I transferred
the writer they had a really great little field apartment
there and they were right down the street from the Carter,
which is where I would do this internship. The following year,
my senior year. Um, it was in this melodrama called
(17:24):
Deadwood Dick and who wrote that idea? Because from like
the nineteen twenties or something. I played the sheriff and
it was bigger than life and I popped my arms.
Where did you do that? Where? At Fox County Community College?
I was terrified, but there was something there for me.
I knew there was something there for me. I had
no idea what was there for you? What? There was
(17:47):
a sense of purpose and there was a sense of
kind of just an approval. It's like you could get
this putty in yeah exactly. Yeah. And also the thing
too that that you get from the military and I'm
just thinking of this now, but from the military and
theater film people is you have a community. You know,
it's a very specific community and it has its own language.
(18:12):
You're part you're you're part of a society. You get
into a society where there are rules and beliefs. I
don't want to say it's a religion, but it's rules
and beliefs and language and codes and references that are
just unique. But you're in a world where you know
the passion runs pretty deep. You walk out a writer
with a degree in theater. Yes, And where do you go?
(18:35):
New York? I moved to New York and I don't
know anybody. Where do you live? Well, my first apartment
was on the Upper west Side. It was between Giverside
and West End, and when it was a dodge city days,
I called it the wild Wild West. Oh yeah, wild
West May. So you're there on the Upper west Side,
And do you tell yourself, I'm going after this professional thing?
(18:57):
Where you were because you sound unsure about a lot
of things in your alive Yeah, did you have the
confidence to turn pro? Now? I worked in restaurants. I
worked in restaurants for for almost four years, and I
started having nightmares about the war and it was like freaky.
It was like it was like if you touched the
stove and it was hot, and six months later you
(19:18):
feel your hand burn. It was like that kind of
like I didn't know what to do with it. A
pure PTSD exactly, but it was, but they didn't have
the name for it yet. So I did go to
the v A and when I got to the front
entrance when it was located on twenty three Street, I
threw up and I thought, I'm not supposed to be here.
That's what that means. Ended up working with this guy,
(19:40):
Larry Stern. He was a psychoanalyst and he really angel
the box among us. He was the one who really
get out of the hole that I was thinking and
at the time, as it was drinking too much and
it was just a it was at sober every here.
Uh see, I stopped on my own and eighty five
got into a recovery program, and the recovery program and so, um,
(20:09):
you're in the city, and uh, when you're riverside the
wild wild West, And when does the actor's studio become
an avenue for you? Oh? Not until Um I was
really putting my nose in the grindstone when I met you.
Did a little bit that little little student thing. When
I got my first job on a soap opera in
(20:29):
New York, they would put you in the show very sparingly.
They wanted to kind of build you into the show
so you didn't have much to do, so I worked
maybe a day. I mean if I worked two days
a week, it was it was epic and they paid
you per show. And I went and did a play
Summer Tree, a young guy whose family were pretty well
to do. They would produce him in these plays, and
(20:51):
I played, you know, the event, like the kid would
go into war and I would play the soldier I
would play. I played all the other ancillary characters in
these little bursts. So I do the play, and then
I would go to the student Film Bulletin Board at
n y U and they have casting cards put up
on the index cards wanted and I would read them.
And I ended up in a bar in Brooklyn with
(21:13):
you because while I was doing the soap right and
we shot that agend and the bar was closed. And
that's crazy fucking movie about who You were an alien?
Or I was an alien? Who was the alien? Oh? No,
I mean I I just played it. I just played
a pretty weird guy with a spider on my cheek
or something. I think you were the alien. I think
the bar Matter of Space and were Bartender was some
(21:35):
crazy show. But anyway, so um, you get your equity
card win anyone. I worked in both productions in Central Park.
How did that happen? Oh? Because uh, I knew no one.
So I went to the public theater back in like
December of eighty or thereabouts, and I dropped off a
picture and resumeas ad the open door policy. And I
met a woman named Ellen Marshall who worked for Rosemary
(21:57):
Tishler Stanley soboll Le Novak, and I gave her my
picture resume. She said, we're not doing generals for at
least none of the six months. I said, okay, well,
thank you, and I went back. Of course, six weeks
later you were here before, right, I said, yeah. She's well,
I'm gonna tell you again, and it's not Gonner six months.
That's okay. Of course I came back again. I came
back to March and then she said, and I've been
polishing up these couple of these good monologues. One was
(22:19):
a one from Henry five, one was contemporary piece, and
she um, she says, okay, come back in two weeks,
call me in two weeks and come in with the
questional monologue and contemporary. I said, okay, fine, I show up.
She said, okay, here we are into April. She said,
now I want you to come in and you're gonna
audition for the three casting directors. So I commended an
audition for the three casting directors. Then Standley has me
(22:42):
come in in audition for des Maconoff for a small
part and a bunch of fighting stuff in Henry four.
So I go in for that, and then and the
call back for that, Elenova came in and watched it,
and I had no idea that um I got into
Henry for. And then they called me the next day
and they said, can you also understudy in the Tempest
(23:05):
for like Steven Keats and a couple of other actors,
And I said yeah, like holy shit. So that was
like the doorway was opening to like start to work
in the business with great people. And then and then
the studio becomes an option when not for another few
years and how does that happen? Well, I did place
(23:25):
at the at the public I did I did uh
Hamlet with Diane Vnora that Joe direct I saw you
in that. Oh that's right, I got you one of
the posters. I think, Yeah, I love that. Jamie who
played Forton Brass at the end, Jamie Sheridan, Oh, Proud Death.
He came in. I loved him. I loved him. I
(23:46):
love that production. I love Diane Vanora in that part.
Pat was going to be the first man to cast
a woman in a major production, and I thought she
was fantastic. I love it was exciting, excited. There was
just something about the humanity of it. It was so beautiful.
But I was in a play with a combination of
Vetko and the public that Joe and the Scott tom
(24:06):
Burke put together, so play Tracers came into be Tracers.
Was we did that. We did that for I think
eight or nine months there and then we did it
in London for the Real Court for a couple of months.
Harvey uh Kitel and de Niro came one night. That's
what would lead me to the studio. There was a
guy who had asked me to do a scene with
him there and they said, oh, we can't have non
(24:28):
members coming in, and Harvey said, I know this guy.
Then I worked and at that time, back in those days,
they wouldn't six. I think the moderators would not they
wouldn't give you any comments. But then Ellen had taken
over for Lee to run the place and she gave
me this kind of I don't know what to call it,
like a guest status. So I got to do that.
(24:48):
And then there happened to be a play we're doing.
We ended up doing Very Child, and she said that's
going to be your final audition, because I auditioned a
couple of times for judges and they said very different things,
and and she said, let's see what you're doing the
Very Child. And then I got in with Michael O'Keeffe
a couple other people, and that was and he seven
(25:09):
tell people in the time we have left, because there's
so many other things, I want to ask you, describe
what is Memorial Day about? What's what's the story. It's
a guy who's on the verge of suicide. He's basically
going to take himself out. How old viet Non better
in age, I'm seventy one. He's basically got the gun
under his chin. And here comes this character I called
(25:29):
Sister Blister that when he met that first night in Vietnam.
And here she comes and she's ready to help him.
She wants him to come over, and he hesitates because
he's gotten a voicemail from his daughter who's concerned, and
it breaks his resolve and he freezes and he goes
(25:50):
into this nether world with her because she wants him
to be clear about his decision, and they go through
the scotlet of memories. The play is about remembering. That's
one of the most important things veterans can do. Remember
their stories, share their stories, and have the people around them,
whether they're veterans or non veterans, to be able to listen.
And was the last time you did it out here
(26:12):
at the Road Theater? It was perfect and they had projections.
I'd always wanted to do it with projections because when
we took it to Vietnam, when I did it over there,
I did it with their one of their actresses. She
did it in Vietnamese, her part in Vietnamese. I did
mine in English. We had what was that like? I thought,
Oh my god, Oh my god. Did you and she
have a tear in your eye together? A couple of times.
(26:34):
I'm telling you, yes, she I feel it. We had
two nights and I and they were talkbacks. And when
I was there as a soldier, she was seven years old,
and and she had the year before she had done Dollhouse,
Ibsence Dollhouse. Before that, they did all my sons. When
they found out I was from the Active Studio, they
got all excited as well. When they did the stage
(26:54):
Preasent Tayon was a four hundred seat house. They had screens,
big screens on both sides with Vietnamese translations for what
I was saying in English translations for what she was
saying for sub titles. What year was that, I said,
We did the play over there in two thousand fourteen.
What was your first time you'd returned to Vietnam was
when two thousand twelve you went back to Vietnam for
(27:15):
the first time in two thousand and twelve. Yeah, for
what purpose? I went as a veteran because this guy Dr.
Edward Tick and his organization came and saw the play
in workshop when Ellen was helping me, Um and uh
we did. He saw it, he said you should take
this to Vietnam, and I just thought that was stupid.
I just said, no, that's I'm not doing that. He said.
(27:37):
He said, you'd be surprised. The Vietnamese are more curious
about the American point of view now than than ever before.
So I went over as a veteran and I met
the culture ministers. Then In the second trip we set
up the whole thing, and then the third trip we
went we went there and h and I just can
I share one thing? I gotta please, please please. The
(27:58):
second trip I got away from I was in Hannoy
and I took a plane down to Chula, the place
I was telling about before where I was first in country.
And I was standing on the ground there and um,
it was right by the ocean, and I had three
Vietnamese with me, a videographer, driver, and a translator. I said, guys,
I just need a minute and I just want I
(28:18):
just wanted to be quiet and still, and I got
on my knees and there was um this feeling slash
voice which was of the guys who did not get back,
and they were saying, we're okay, and so are you.
And it was from that moment on that's something broken,
a deeper level where I started to see their humanity,
(28:43):
their divinity because before that a lot there was a
lot of white knuckling and I don't trust these people.
I don't I don't see anything divined in these people.
Yes there's a lot of beauty here, Yes this this
and that and the other thing. But that was that was.
That was a cathartic um moment. That was beautiful. Also,
(29:03):
I just wanted to mention too, with the whole saga
with that, with that play Memorial Day and having done
it in Vietnam in front of the former enemy, and
then having filmed it and my good friend Robert Duncan
is putting together. But I think we have are close
to our final rough cut and so um yeah, we
(29:26):
want to start to take it out to you know,
whoever will look at it. So this involves soldiers who
we turn who you might interact with, if at all
I'm not assuming you do. But if you interact with men,
people who see the play, people who have had whatever
level of PTSD experience themselves, what do you tell them?
What's your advice to them? And what's your advice to
(29:47):
and what's your advice to young actors? Okay, so give
me give me the soldier first. Well, the soldier first
is uh. I feel that the most important components for
PTSD recoveries combination, spirituality and community and the bottom line
too is PTSD. If I think I can handle it
(30:07):
by myself, it will crush you. Bottom line. Don't be
ashamed to ask for help, ask for help. That's Brian Dellett.
He lives in l A today. If you want to
hear more about the war in Vietnam, take a listen
to my conversation with Ken Burns and Lynn Novik on
the making of their ten part documentary about Vietnam. When
(30:30):
Americans talk about Vietnam, we just talked about ourselves, and
that what what we needed to do was to triangulate
with all the other perspectives, not just the enemy. It's
finding out what the civilians felt, the enemy felt, the
viet Cong felt, but then our allies, the South Vietnamese
who get treated like you know what all the time,
and their civilians and their protesters, as well as all
(30:53):
the servicemen that we did and everybody all the way
out to deserters and draft dodgers across the American spectrum.
And if you then do that, then the kind of
political dialectic loses its force because you realize that more
than one truth could obtain at any given moment. The
rest of that conversation can be found in our archives
(31:16):
at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin,
and you were listening to Here's the Thing as a
young man, Dick Hughes thought he was going to enter
(31:37):
the priesthood, but then he transferred to Carnegie Mellon for
theater and wound up at Boston University for graduate work
in the same subject. This was the late sixties, the
Draft was underway. Hughes was a conscientious objector to the
Vietnam War, but he ended up getting a journalist visa
and going to Saigon on his own. He found a
(32:00):
wire service in Vietnam, but his focus became the street kids,
those making do on the street, hustling, shining shoes and stealing.
Hughes opened a shelter for these children called the Shoeshine
Boys Project. This led to a foundation with support from
people all over the world, including hughes as family and
(32:22):
friends from his hometown in Pittsburgh. He's from a big family,
one of seven Catholic family Pittsburgh and lived in Pittsburgh
right below the Hill Section, after which Debochco named Hill
Street Blues. Yeah, Irish Catholic family and uh yeah, I
at one point was looking at the priesthood. Do you
(32:45):
know why? What was it was the sense of the
drama of the Catholic church and and and the power
in a sense that the priest has, you know, all
of that is kind of attractive. I thought about becoming
a priest. Yeah, the oldest son of an oldest in
an Irish Catholic family, it's supposed to become a priest.
I was told they sold me that idea, but I
went off into actual drama, another kind of drama. You
(33:08):
don't go to Vietnam for US until sixty eight. I
don't go to Vietnam until nineteen sixty seven. So yeah,
as I was in bought at the graduate school in
Boston and then the theater Company Boston, Uh, Vietnam became
so enormous the moral question uh that it was it
was hard to concentrate on my acting because of that.
So yeah, that's when it really started kind of eating
(33:31):
away at me. And I think in some sense I
was in a bit of a quiet rage about it,
in the sense not understanding why we were doing that, uh,
and seeing things like, uh, the generals shooting that we
had cong in the head and stuff like that. That
really uh So at that point I got drafted. So
then I had to decide in in six s seven,
(33:52):
you had to decide. But I now decided Okay, I
think what I'm gonna do is refuse induction and go
to and you're going to be decided. I was going
to go to where the center where this was happening. Um,
I'm going I'm gonna face this head on and I'm
not gonna do it your way. I did it my way.
(34:13):
And so I decided to go to Vietnam. I didn't
know anybody, I had no connections, and I had no money,
and I didn't tell anybody. Um, and you went there
to do what I was going to go there just
to try to do something to help people who were
affected by the war. Had no idea what it would be.
I was able because the university newspaper covered my draft
refusal to get an accreditation from Boston University News and
(34:38):
go as a quote journalist unquote. I actually did end
up doing some journalism. I ended up traveling with the
Marines and the army ended up starting dispatching new stories.
Who we started our own news agency called Dispatch News,
which Sihirst broke the Melie story through UH and with
Asians French press a fp OAR service UH and UH
(35:00):
and I also UH, you know, I I wanted to
kind of get into combat and find out if my
philosophical objections were more than just speculations sitting in Boston,
and so I kind of thought, I'll go in to
where the battle is and see. And I wasn't there
a week when we walked into an ambush and uh
(35:24):
and I had a corporal beside me, a radio operator
bleeding from the head and uh. Sergeant goes back under
all this fire and hands me a cocked forty five
and says, they're coming up on the rear as soon
as you see them start firing. And and I'm what's
wrong with this picture? This is a conscienous objector and
a foxhole at County End, uh, with people coming up
(35:45):
in the rear who may kill you. Uh. And I
A million things go through your head at that time.
How many other people that you encountered over there were
like you? Nobody? There no free agents that I encountered. Uh.
There were some conscients objectors who stayed in the army
and were UH medics. There were some country objectors with
the Quaker organizations than men and sing. But I haven't
(36:08):
yet run into anybody who just packed up and flew
off to Vietnam. And got into the airport, and when
the whole place cleared out, said all right, now where
do I go? Um. I also early on also met
some of these street children whom shine shoes and made
the living in the streets. And when I got an apartment,
I would mention from time to time, you know, a
(36:28):
few folks want to come down, You're welcome to each
show or do everyone? It took a while they were
like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but they finally did come down.
So I was on two tracks. Uh. It was covering
the war out with the military, and it was starting
this home for these street kids. After a year, I
decided to turn this over to some Vietnamese students and friends.
(36:50):
So I spent the next seven years raising support. Those students,
brought in other students, opened up eight homes. They helped
children during the war. You stayed in Vietnam? Yeah, after
the fall. I stayed about eighteen months after the fall.
I was I may just be still doing the same thing.
(37:13):
I was winding down the project. You know, I think I'm,
if not the I'm one of the last Americans to leave.
I felt that that there was no reason to evacuate,
and it was really tragic that so many uh NGEO
voluntary agencies and charities were evacuating with the remaining military
and the embassy people. Because I thought, you can't just
(37:36):
drop a project. Uh And in August of seventy six,
I came back to New York to close the foundation
down and go back to acting. Finally, that's that was
the plan. I was sitting there saying, I mean, I
have this image of you having tea in some cafe
and sagon and you're reading variety. Uh No. I always
(38:01):
had in the back of my mind, I gotta get
this done. I gotta get this done. I want to
be an actor. I love acting. I didn't do any
of it over there. I didn't do acting over the
acting school over there. No, because you know, I was going,
I'm like a doctor in the emergency room. We were
going seven. We were in mortuaries and hospitals, and you know,
there was no there was never a day off. There's
(38:22):
never a vacation, and there was never uh cercease in
the tension that was there. It was it was racing,
racing against time through the whole thing, and those are
connections that are forever. And so I kept in contact
with sending a little money to help people from where
I could that human rights thing, uh, you know that
to get those two guys out. And then in two
thousand and five, coming across Philip Jones Griffith's Agent Orange
(38:46):
book and saying, you know, the last thing I need
is another Vietnam humanitarian thing. But the pictures are so graphic.
So when you when you described to me when you
first came across this book, this is uh one of
the best photo of journalists, uh, in the came of
this that you gave me, Yes, Philip Jones Griffiths. It's
(39:06):
called Agan Orange Collateral Damage in Vietnam. Philip covered the
war and a lot of his photos are used over
and over, iconic photos, uh that you see from time
to time. But then he went back after the war
many times and he went to villages where Agent Orange
had been sprayed and where people had been horribly deformed
and affected illnesses by it. And he came out with
(39:30):
a book that has just dedicated to Agent Orange, the
Collateral Damage, and to meet him. I knew Philip very
well from from he came to the shoeshine boy house,
so I knew him over there. He was a good friend. Yeah,
what's the work now. Well, the effort is to get
I want to jump start serious aid to some three
million victims in Vietnam through the US Congress. Uh, we've
(39:53):
had some success with that, but Agian Orange is like
below the radar. No president from ford On ever put
Agent Orange in the budget. None Democratic Republican. You have
soldiers on each side of the war in Vietnam who
had healthy children before they went go to the battle
fight where it's sprayed. They come back, they have one
(40:15):
too horrific bursts and they go, yeah, that's kind of anecdotal,
you know. I think what they have to do is
get damage done to their own d DNA materials. Uh.
They are in denial about it, but it's not because
it's political. It's just a kind of lethargy of the bureaucracy.
And I also I think people who are just new
(40:36):
to it feel it's just one more thing. They can't
make any difference about what can I do? Defects as
a result of dox and still being born of absolutely
to this day, dioxin is so lethal. Little parts of
it are can wreak havoc and dioction doesn't go away,
it stays and it's in the soil, etcetera. And people
(40:59):
think that a in Orange is past history, and you say, no,
it's right now and it's a million victims. Now when
you came back here, you came back where to New York?
To New York? How would New York changed? New York
was dense full of people. Uh, they didn't talk to
each other on elevators like they did in Vietnam. Nobody
held hands or touched each other. That was a little
bit of a cultural adjustment. Uh. But um, yeah, I
(41:23):
was so I was on two tracks. They're closing down
the foundation and going back into acting. When you come back,
how would you changed from being over there? Um? You
know what? I think one of the biggest changes I experienced,
especially it came out of combat. Um, Before I went
and I saw things like I mentioned the general Sagan
(41:45):
General shooting the Vietcong soldier in the head, that famous photo.
I jumped right out of my seat at that time,
and I thought, how could we be doing this? How
could we be involved that this? But what I learned
in combat was, uh, my darker side. I learned that
I too, under certain circumstances, could be capable of the
same thing. So I think what I got an education
(42:07):
is a more rounded sense of what human beings are
and how I could employ that in drama. That's why
I love drama so much, because I think it can
articulate almost what can't be quote articulated unquote people considered
a drama and go yes, yes, without saying exactly what
it is. And to me, that helps avoid wars, that
(42:28):
helps humans grow. So I I actually saw theater in
just as sacred or as just as profound a sense
as I did the acting work, as I'm sorry, the
social work that I was doing in Vietnam. I felt
it was as important you saw your darker side. Do
you want to articulate that more? Meaning you're not talking
about like me? Lie, you didn't think I'm capable of anything? Oh,
(42:52):
I think human beings are. No. I am capable depending
on the circumstances, depending on being pushed to it. I
think that's what dramas about. You know, you know this, Uh,
when you're playing a character who's up to something reprehensible,
you play them on their terms. You know, you have
to justify why they do that. And I think people
who who are are toying with the darker side, are
(43:14):
justifying it in some respects uh. And to me, that's
as much a part of the human soul as uh
the some of the brighter side of it. When you
get a sense of that, you have that capability to
do that, you're less about judging other people and you're
more about I just got to use all my time
two in this case for me, uh, presenting theater in
(43:36):
a sense that will help educate people and answer questions
that are out of the context of black and white
or or debates back and forth the Because you've dedicated
so much of your life to theater, to acting, uh,
in and around your relief work and your advocacy work,
have you ever thought about writing a play? I have
(43:59):
a real experiences I have about the shoeshine boys and
about young Dick Hughes arriving there, And um, I don't
know who would play young Dick Hughes. I could get
a little makeup down, and we want to sell some tickets,
so look at the right guy to play the young
And I think do a kind of documentary, uh, because
(44:22):
we have a lot of film footage and stuff like
that that would show how to work in another country
and do it effectively. That's one thing. The Uh when
you come back? Um, and uh is it safe to
say that acting is the is your primary focus when
you come back and what you want to get back
to that and you want to give that everything you've got?
(44:44):
And is it a case where you have this lingering
empathy for what happened back there and you're haunted by
what you saw? Have stopped me if I'm getting too dramatic,
But but but when it's like the Godfather Part three line, Uh,
they keep pulling me back in, you know what I mean,
the Pacino line meaning to go there and you want
to Are you done with that? No? I think here's
(45:06):
the funny thing about that. It makes a huge It's
it's forever there and those are connections that are forever.
And so I kept in contact with sending a little
money to help people from where I could. So it
was I always had a sense of being pulled again,
you know, to tide, dragging me kind of back in,
but acting still being the first priority. But interestingly enough,
I made three post war trips two thousand one, two
(45:28):
thousand eight, and two thousand sixteen. And when I went
and I when I left Vietnam. There was nothing emotional
much about it when I got on the plane and left,
which I thought was kind of odd making that break.
But the first trip back UH, some of the grown
street kids and their families and other friends who worked
with me UH set up visits, all reunions and kind
(45:50):
of stuff, and we went to the airport. They had
all taken a day off they couldn't afford. And as
I went up into the section transition section, transit section,
they were all waving goodbye. And I got on the
plane and I sobbed all the way to Hannoy, and
I thought why, And then I realized what had happened
was I had gone over there, giving up everything, my job,
(46:13):
I had no money with girlfriend, my family, hadn't even
told my family. I was going with this idea, I
am going to do something about this goddamn war. And
I came back and it wasn't until I returned again
in two thousand one that I saw that their lives
they'd made it. So the odd thing about it was
that that promised to myself and sixty eight was not
(46:36):
resolved until that two thousand and one of seeing them
healed and survived and healed, and that my effort in
that respect was over. Dick Hughes, actor, writer, founder of
the Shoeshine Boys project. This is Alec Baldwin and you
(46:57):
were listening to Here's the Thing four
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Today.
I talked with two colleagues, Brian Dellett and Dick Hughes,
men I've known for a long time. Both are actors
whose lives have also been touched by our country's war
in Vietnam. Dell Itt, my first guest, served in Vietnam
(00:24):
after high school. Hughes traveled to Vietnam as a conscientious
objector in his early twenties. The impact of the war
has stayed with both of them. Brian Delitt spent on
stage in movies and on TV. He's also a playwright.
His play Memorial Day tells the story of a Vietnam
(00:45):
veteran on the verge of suicide over a Memorial Day holiday.
He developed the play in collaboration with the Actor's Studio,
with support from actors like Harvey Kitel and Ellen Burston.
Memorial Day was ten years in the making dell It
started to play after he was living in New York
(01:06):
trying to become an actor, and one of the planes
flew over him that September morning. That's when all this
Vietnam stuff got triggered, uh In in a major way.
And I started to take pieces of it into the
actor's studio and are icons there Uh Norman Mailer Harvey
(01:27):
Allen said, you got to keep bringing more of this in.
And this was the beginning of what would become the
play Memorial Day. And Ellen was instrumental in helping me
shape it in terms of having a beginning, medal, and end,
and also not having to totally rely on the exact
details of my story, so that I started combining situations
(01:48):
that served the greater truth of what I was trying
to say. When you wrote this, and in the time
you've worked on this, I'm wondering did it bring about
interaction with other generations of soldiers? Yeah, there were some
older veterans, but there was the younger ones that started
coming around. There was a I guess like a halfway
(02:10):
house around the corner from the actor's studio where men
and women coming out of the service could transition into
civilian life for like the next six months if they
wanted to. It was I think it was on forty
three Street, and this UH guy came and he had
done a couple of tours in Afghanistan and I didn't
really know him, but we set a little a couple
of times and he said, if you do this again,
(02:32):
would you tell me let me know how? How can
I find out? And they said, well, you know, the
studio will mention it. And I think it was like
six months later. We did like two or three weekends
at this little theater called the Drilling Company up on
the Upper West Side, and he let me know that
he was bringing one of his buddies from Afghanistan that
he had been with and that they were going to
(02:53):
come and see it like the next night. I said,
we'll say hello afterwards. So they did. They came, and
because the play really addresses the whole notion of suicide
and the prevention of suicide ultimately is the goal of
the play, so he um, he comes with his friend
and I guess it was the next day he uh
(03:13):
contacts me and he says, you met my friend. You
met last night? I said yeah. He said we were
maybe two blocks away from the theater and he stopped
and said, I've been planning to kill myself the last
couple of months. I don't know what to do. At
that time, I was thinking of stopping doing this because
it was costing me money. It was no financial reward.
(03:34):
So that meaning when that guy said that to you,
that put the wind back in your sales for the project. Yeah,
I just thought there's a purpose for this. You know,
if one if I can keep one guy from eating
a bullet, you know, I want to go back and
I want to just do a little quick timeline. So
you grew up Brown in Jersey, raised in Pennsylvania. Your
dad sold bar related materials, mixers, alcohol or whatever, cordials.
(04:01):
I love that. Yeah, he was what they called a missionary.
He was also a liquor salesman. But he when he
was at the height of his career, he would go
around and he would present slide shows to the wholesalers
in New Jersey and basically say, look, we use only
purified water and we do this, and they have my
sister and I have to sit through these slide shows
where they show these guys, here's that much formooth. You
(04:22):
wanted that Martin us an eye dropper. And then you
got drafted or you enlisted. Oh I got drafted. Was
your dad in the military. He was a World War
Two guy. He flew twenty four liberators and uh he
was actually interestingly enough, he was not like you should
do this. Like my mom said, are you going to
(04:44):
go to Canada? And I said, no, I'm not gonna
go to Canada. And my father he was interesting. He
just said, I don't know if this wants for us?
And where where're you going to train? Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
And it was tough because that was the home of
the eighty second Airborne and a lot of those drill
sergeants had already been to Vietnam. They were uh in
(05:05):
some instances there were rangers and they just didn't take
any ship um and uh um. I don't know. I
was surprised because I went in kind of less a
fair like let's get this over with. And then when
you have someone in your face like that and knows
how to scare you in the best way, and so
that was it was it really, it was a really
(05:26):
powerful um preparation. And also I didn't expect to thrive
in the military. I didn't know. I didn't know it's
gonna be a good shot um. And I wouldn't even
figure this out till a couple of years ago that
the eye hand thing came from archery when I was
like eleven, twelve, thirteen years old, because I've never had
to handle the weapon. I haven't had a weapon since
(05:48):
the Army, So it's like, um, it was really weird
to to to suddenly go, wow, you can. You're an
expert shot with an M fourteen and X six thing.
So finally you go and you get over there, and
I mean, you're an actress, so I'm assuming there's gonna
be an interesting description here. What does it feel like?
What does it feel like? Okay, I'll get to that
(06:10):
in one second. I didn't I didn't see my first
professional play until after I came back from Vietnam, so
like like I had no and I mean I have
to say, I think you're you're picking up on something,
which was I guess I was recording this, you know,
just and I mean I had the thing. I think
Stone really captures it in a platoon when you get
(06:32):
off the plane and you get hit with the heat
and you don't know where you are and the smell
and everything like that, it's just like you feel like
you've arrived at another planet. And so uh, in my case,
I landed in Cameron Bay and then um, I was
sent up to this area. But the place that was
called True Lie that very the very first night. Um,
(06:56):
that gave us some bad chow and it was hot.
This was early March of six and they gave us
warm beers and we sat down in these benches and
they had this giant white plywood screen and we watched
the movie called The Devil's Brigade, a World War two movie.
(07:17):
And then um, I was right after the movie, about
twenty minutes after the movie, and I had just talked
to this guy from Philadelphia. We were talking about Acapella. Anyway,
after the movie, all of a sudden, the rockets came in.
We were getting rocketed, and I didn't know what the
hell was happening, and and they didn't tell us. They
(07:38):
didn't tell us where the bunkers were. You could see them,
but I wasn't paying attention, you know, I'd expect to
get hit that night. But the rockets poured in and um,
there was all the screaming and they black out everything.
They turned the lights out right away, and it's like
I hit the dirt. I'm in the sand and I
can't see anything. And it was in that moment that
(07:59):
I felt this and drogyn this something next to me.
Maybe just give me a kiss on the cheek, you know,
and it was really I felt it was like this
beautiful form of death. And I remember thinking, no, no,
I'm not going to do that with you, you know,
(08:19):
and by Jessica Lang and all that jet exactly, Yeah, totally,
And so that I pushed that away. And it was
at that moment I made this vow that somehow, some way,
I was going to get home. For people, like, when
you're in Fort Bragg and you're getting ready to deploy
and go over to Southeast Asia, do you basically are
(08:41):
you basically told in any terms, whether they're vague or
specific terms, and they basically are they telling you you're
going to the ship man, like you're not going to
work in some telegraph office, you're not gonna edit movies,
You're going to get a gun and you're going to
the thick of it. Did they tell you that when
you're on your way and they will tell you where
you're going? Well one plus, you don't know. If it's
(09:03):
hard to describe the where is July in the topography
and the geography of Vietnam, it's Um. If you go
back to when it was half and half North and
South Um, there was the second largest city was Danang
and truly was about seventy miles seventy five miles south
of Denang along the coast of the South China Sea.
(09:25):
When you were there, what do you do? Like drugs, alcohol, sex, food, whatever?
What did you do to get through the experience of
two years of this? Wow? Um? Well, I lived for
the letters that would come from my girlfriend Carol and
from my mom. My dad never wrote to me the
(09:48):
whole time, and I didn't even notice it. Why do
you think The rationalization, which I would find out in
psychoanalysis years later, was oh, he's not a letter writer.
It's like you mean you? I think this is me
getting nailed by the shrink. Did he need to disengage
because he thought maybe you weren't going to come back.
I don't know. I mean I I find when you
(10:08):
came back. What did he say? Well? I I never
brought it up because I just accepted it, because it
was like if people said, did your dad right you,
I'd say no, my mom wrote for both of them.
I had totally rationalized. But I lived for the letters.
I lived for the letters. Um. The letters from Carol
and the letters from my mom were like life sustaining.
(10:29):
They were tethers. And as far as the day to day,
it's truly one day at a time. Living. You're looking
at the calendar all the time. You're seeing guys who
are going to leave in thirty days. So you see
guys that are leaving, and you just do you feel
that thing in your chest. It's like, God, when's that?
When's that day going to come? There were two times
I cried in Vietnam. Um. Once when I was in
(10:50):
the hospital I had skin problems that were really bad.
The other time was when I left the day I
had to leave my company to come home. I was
walking to go to the jeep with my duffel bag
and a couple of the guys I was tight with
crew following me, and I started shaking. I didn't know
what was going on. I thought, what's the I've been
living for this day? And um, I'm like, I'm coming apart,
(11:14):
you know, And I uh, And of course they're laughing.
They're like, a man, you're going home. You know what's
your version of why one was? I made it? I'm
going home. Um. I have my opinions, but that's one
of the that's one of the most profoundly human emotions
you can feel is to finally be escaping the clutches
(11:38):
of a situation that you prayed would be over, and
it's finally over, and you just collapse. Why do you
think you collapse when it was over? You know, I
have to. I wanted to fit this in and I
hope it's not a non sequitur. But it's as opportunities
arrived to appreciate life's beauty, mysteries, truths, and heartbreak, to
(11:58):
understand life on a higher plane. That's from your memoir.
That's so anyway. I don't mean to throw that idea
like this, but I felt it yesterday thinking about it,
which was this is going be a conversation about transformation.
We'll talk about it. We have so much to cover
therapy forget about suicidal and the deepest painful thoughts. But
(12:22):
how soon do you want to go to therapy after
you get back? How soon? Oh? I got sent to
a shrink at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. I had to
do my last few months at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.
So I was basically going back and forth from home.
But it was it was a disaster because I didn't
trust the guy, I mean, the key, the key things
with most veterans, and especially coming out of these situations
(12:46):
is trust. You know, who did you trust him? Why?
I just didn't trust him. I didn't think I wasn't
gonna talk to him at all. And I trusted the bars.
I was into the bars and drinking, and because I
didn't drink that much in Vietnam, I had a lot
of responsibility. So I took it pretty seriously. And uh um,
(13:06):
I mean I'd smoked grass once in a while and
stuff like that, but it was it was really about
the work, and also I want to be as responsible
as I possibly could. When I got home, I thought
I would sleep for the next two weeks. When I
got home, I couldn't sleep. I couldn't sleep for more
than two hours a night, and every night I was
out drinking, and I had a load of cash. And
(13:28):
I got into trouble a couple of weeks after I
was back because I wasn't twenty one yet and in Pennsylvania,
you know, and I was getting away with it because
in those days, you had a military idea where you
had your picture on it, so and I was a
big kid, so they didn't even look at it. But
then I you know, I got into this scrap with
this owner of this bar, and uh, I got in
(13:49):
trouble and it was it was long. Not long after that,
there was a situation where, um, I was in New
Jersey and it was a very violent incident that took place,
um like right next to me. And it was the
day after that thereabouts, I just decided I had to
do something with my life because I was wrecking cards.
(14:10):
I was just I was feeling like it was me
against the world and uh and I just didn't trust
anything or anybody. And I was it with you. I
was with your girlfriend and your parents who were primary
to you while you were overseas. What was it like
when you we engaged with them? Um, I scared them.
Um My girlfriend, uh, Carol just kind of she wanted
(14:31):
to keep like this distance, you know, and it was
um and of course that made me crazy. And we've
had this incredible um relationship, really romantic and all that
stuff before I went over there. And when I got back,
you know, a year can change a lot of life
in a ninety twenty year old and uh so, um
(14:53):
so we had trouble, you know, finding our way back
to each other to the end eventually it was off.
I became a volcanic thing for the next few years.
I mean, um my, my dad was really worried. My mom.
They were worried continually, like what's he doing now? You know.
There would be like they'd see me open up the
(15:15):
trunk of the car and they'd be like, you know,
a bunch of coats from the army and stuff like that.
They didn't know what was going on. So what what
were the coats? They were, you know, like fatigue jackets
or they were those kind of dress army coats. And
what were you doing with them? I had I was
giving them away half the time. I didn't care, you know,
(15:36):
it was just I was And if somebody wanted to
buy one, I'd sell for five bucks or something. When
does the acting playwriting? When did the arts take hold?
My second year of college, where did you go? Again?
You said, Bucks County Community College in Pennsylvania. What did
you study? I started just generally, and because I was
terrified of college because I had had bad reading learning
(15:58):
problems all through school, and so some confidence came from
the Army in terms of work ethic and stuff like that.
But I took a reading course to learn how to
really read. I had site things that I was doing
that we've never been corrected from the time I was
a kid. I got this guy. He saved me. He
just he set me up for college. It was the
first year I got my confidence because I got this
(16:20):
reading problem taking care of. And then in my second year,
I was thinking pretty mad because I had this confidence
I didn't have before. But I took this acting class
because I couldn't get the math teacher I wanted. He said,
get me next semester. So I, Uh. I took this
acting class, and two weeks into it, the guy said,
can you stay for a minute. So yeah, he said,
(16:41):
you should drop out? Why I love me drop bad?
He said, you're not You're not getting up, you're not working.
You can't just watch. So he gives me a monologue
from your good man Charlie Brown, and it's when Snoogy
goes up to fight the Red Barren. He should come
back with this next week. Don't come back. And so
I did. And I came back, and I was scared
(17:02):
the ship out of me. But I had a great time,
and I felt like, you know, I wanted to work
further into this fire. Then I got into this play
and then I started taking classes and when I transferred
the writer they had a really great little field apartment
there and they were right down the street from the Carter,
which is where I would do this internship. The following year,
my senior year. Um, it was in this melodrama called
(17:24):
Deadwood Dick and who wrote that idea? Because from like
the nineteen twenties or something. I played the sheriff and
it was bigger than life and I popped my arms.
Where did you do that? Where? At Fox County Community College?
I was terrified, but there was something there for me.
I knew there was something there for me. I had
no idea what was there for you? What? There was
(17:47):
a sense of purpose and there was a sense of
kind of just an approval. It's like you could get
this putty in yeah exactly. Yeah. And also the thing
too that that you get from the military and I'm
just thinking of this now, but from the military and
theater film people is you have a community. You know,
it's a very specific community and it has its own language.
(18:12):
You're part you're you're part of a society. You get
into a society where there are rules and beliefs. I
don't want to say it's a religion, but it's rules
and beliefs and language and codes and references that are
just unique. But you're in a world where you know
the passion runs pretty deep. You walk out a writer
with a degree in theater. Yes, And where do you go?
(18:35):
New York? I moved to New York and I don't
know anybody. Where do you live? Well, my first apartment
was on the Upper west Side. It was between Giverside
and West End, and when it was a dodge city days,
I called it the wild Wild West. Oh yeah, wild
West May. So you're there on the Upper west Side,
And do you tell yourself, I'm going after this professional thing?
(18:57):
Where you were because you sound unsure about a lot
of things in your alive Yeah, did you have the
confidence to turn pro? Now? I worked in restaurants. I
worked in restaurants for for almost four years, and I
started having nightmares about the war and it was like freaky.
It was like it was like if you touched the
stove and it was hot, and six months later you
(19:18):
feel your hand burn. It was like that kind of
like I didn't know what to do with it. A
pure PTSD exactly, but it was, but they didn't have
the name for it yet. So I did go to
the v A and when I got to the front
entrance when it was located on twenty three Street, I
threw up and I thought, I'm not supposed to be here.
That's what that means. Ended up working with this guy,
(19:40):
Larry Stern. He was a psychoanalyst and he really angel
the box among us. He was the one who really
get out of the hole that I was thinking and
at the time, as it was drinking too much and
it was just a it was at sober every here.
Uh see, I stopped on my own and eighty five
got into a recovery program, and the recovery program and so, um,
(20:09):
you're in the city, and uh, when you're riverside the
wild wild West, And when does the actor's studio become
an avenue for you? Oh? Not until Um I was
really putting my nose in the grindstone when I met you.
Did a little bit that little little student thing. When
I got my first job on a soap opera in
(20:29):
New York, they would put you in the show very sparingly.
They wanted to kind of build you into the show
so you didn't have much to do, so I worked
maybe a day. I mean if I worked two days
a week, it was it was epic and they paid
you per show. And I went and did a play
Summer Tree, a young guy whose family were pretty well
to do. They would produce him in these plays, and
(20:51):
I played, you know, the event, like the kid would
go into war and I would play the soldier I
would play. I played all the other ancillary characters in
these little bursts. So I do the play, and then
I would go to the student Film Bulletin Board at
n y U and they have casting cards put up
on the index cards wanted and I would read them.
And I ended up in a bar in Brooklyn with
(21:13):
you because while I was doing the soap right and
we shot that agend and the bar was closed. And
that's crazy fucking movie about who You were an alien?
Or I was an alien? Who was the alien? Oh? No,
I mean I I just played it. I just played
a pretty weird guy with a spider on my cheek
or something. I think you were the alien. I think
the bar Matter of Space and were Bartender was some
(21:35):
crazy show. But anyway, so um, you get your equity
card win anyone. I worked in both productions in Central Park.
How did that happen? Oh? Because uh, I knew no one.
So I went to the public theater back in like
December of eighty or thereabouts, and I dropped off a
picture and resumeas ad the open door policy. And I
met a woman named Ellen Marshall who worked for Rosemary
(21:57):
Tishler Stanley soboll Le Novak, and I gave her my
picture resume. She said, we're not doing generals for at
least none of the six months. I said, okay, well,
thank you, and I went back. Of course, six weeks
later you were here before, right, I said, yeah. She's well,
I'm gonna tell you again, and it's not Gonner six months.
That's okay. Of course I came back again. I came
back to March and then she said, and I've been
polishing up these couple of these good monologues. One was
(22:19):
a one from Henry five, one was contemporary piece, and
she um, she says, okay, come back in two weeks,
call me in two weeks and come in with the
questional monologue and contemporary. I said, okay, fine, I show up.
She said, okay, here we are into April. She said,
now I want you to come in and you're gonna
audition for the three casting directors. So I commended an
audition for the three casting directors. Then Standley has me
(22:42):
come in in audition for des Maconoff for a small
part and a bunch of fighting stuff in Henry four.
So I go in for that, and then and the
call back for that, Elenova came in and watched it,
and I had no idea that um I got into
Henry for. And then they called me the next day
and they said, can you also understudy in the Tempest
(23:05):
for like Steven Keats and a couple of other actors,
And I said yeah, like holy shit. So that was
like the doorway was opening to like start to work
in the business with great people. And then and then
the studio becomes an option when not for another few
years and how does that happen? Well, I did place
(23:25):
at the at the public I did I did uh
Hamlet with Diane Vnora that Joe direct I saw you
in that. Oh that's right, I got you one of
the posters. I think, Yeah, I love that. Jamie who
played Forton Brass at the end, Jamie Sheridan, Oh, Proud Death.
He came in. I loved him. I loved him. I
(23:46):
love that production. I love Diane Vanora in that part.
Pat was going to be the first man to cast
a woman in a major production, and I thought she
was fantastic. I love it was exciting, excited. There was
just something about the humanity of it. It was so beautiful.
But I was in a play with a combination of
Vetko and the public that Joe and the Scott tom
(24:06):
Burke put together, so play Tracers came into be Tracers.
Was we did that. We did that for I think
eight or nine months there and then we did it
in London for the Real Court for a couple of months.
Harvey uh Kitel and de Niro came one night. That's
what would lead me to the studio. There was a
guy who had asked me to do a scene with
him there and they said, oh, we can't have non
(24:28):
members coming in, and Harvey said, I know this guy.
Then I worked and at that time, back in those days,
they wouldn't six. I think the moderators would not they
wouldn't give you any comments. But then Ellen had taken
over for Lee to run the place and she gave
me this kind of I don't know what to call it,
like a guest status. So I got to do that.
(24:48):
And then there happened to be a play we're doing.
We ended up doing Very Child, and she said that's
going to be your final audition, because I auditioned a
couple of times for judges and they said very different things,
and and she said, let's see what you're doing the
Very Child. And then I got in with Michael O'Keeffe
a couple other people, and that was and he seven
(25:09):
tell people in the time we have left, because there's
so many other things, I want to ask you, describe
what is Memorial Day about? What's what's the story. It's
a guy who's on the verge of suicide. He's basically
going to take himself out. How old viet Non better
in age, I'm seventy one. He's basically got the gun
under his chin. And here comes this character I called
(25:29):
Sister Blister that when he met that first night in Vietnam.
And here she comes and she's ready to help him.
She wants him to come over, and he hesitates because
he's gotten a voicemail from his daughter who's concerned, and
it breaks his resolve and he freezes and he goes
(25:50):
into this nether world with her because she wants him
to be clear about his decision, and they go through
the scotlet of memories. The play is about remembering. That's
one of the most important things veterans can do. Remember
their stories, share their stories, and have the people around them,
whether they're veterans or non veterans, to be able to listen.
And was the last time you did it out here
(26:12):
at the Road Theater? It was perfect and they had projections.
I'd always wanted to do it with projections because when
we took it to Vietnam, when I did it over there,
I did it with their one of their actresses. She
did it in Vietnamese, her part in Vietnamese. I did
mine in English. We had what was that like? I thought,
Oh my god, Oh my god. Did you and she
have a tear in your eye together? A couple of times.
(26:34):
I'm telling you, yes, she I feel it. We had
two nights and I and they were talkbacks. And when
I was there as a soldier, she was seven years old,
and and she had the year before she had done Dollhouse,
Ibsence Dollhouse. Before that, they did all my sons. When
they found out I was from the Active Studio, they
got all excited as well. When they did the stage
(26:54):
Preasent Tayon was a four hundred seat house. They had screens,
big screens on both sides with Vietnamese translations for what
I was saying in English translations for what she was
saying for sub titles. What year was that, I said,
We did the play over there in two thousand fourteen.
What was your first time you'd returned to Vietnam was
when two thousand twelve you went back to Vietnam for
(27:15):
the first time in two thousand and twelve. Yeah, for
what purpose? I went as a veteran because this guy Dr.
Edward Tick and his organization came and saw the play
in workshop when Ellen was helping me, Um and uh
we did. He saw it, he said you should take
this to Vietnam, and I just thought that was stupid.
I just said, no, that's I'm not doing that. He said.
(27:37):
He said, you'd be surprised. The Vietnamese are more curious
about the American point of view now than than ever before.
So I went over as a veteran and I met
the culture ministers. Then In the second trip we set
up the whole thing, and then the third trip we
went we went there and h and I just can
I share one thing? I gotta please, please please. The
(27:58):
second trip I got away from I was in Hannoy
and I took a plane down to Chula, the place
I was telling about before where I was first in country.
And I was standing on the ground there and um,
it was right by the ocean, and I had three
Vietnamese with me, a videographer, driver, and a translator. I said, guys,
I just need a minute and I just want I
(28:18):
just wanted to be quiet and still, and I got
on my knees and there was um this feeling slash
voice which was of the guys who did not get back,
and they were saying, we're okay, and so are you.
And it was from that moment on that's something broken,
a deeper level where I started to see their humanity,
(28:43):
their divinity because before that a lot there was a
lot of white knuckling and I don't trust these people.
I don't I don't see anything divined in these people.
Yes there's a lot of beauty here, Yes this this
and that and the other thing. But that was that was.
That was a cathartic um moment. That was beautiful. Also,
(29:03):
I just wanted to mention too, with the whole saga
with that, with that play Memorial Day and having done
it in Vietnam in front of the former enemy, and
then having filmed it and my good friend Robert Duncan
is putting together. But I think we have are close
to our final rough cut and so um yeah, we
(29:26):
want to start to take it out to you know,
whoever will look at it. So this involves soldiers who
we turn who you might interact with, if at all
I'm not assuming you do. But if you interact with men,
people who see the play, people who have had whatever
level of PTSD experience themselves, what do you tell them?
What's your advice to them? And what's your advice to
(29:47):
and what's your advice to young actors? Okay, so give
me give me the soldier first. Well, the soldier first
is uh. I feel that the most important components for
PTSD recoveries combination, spirituality and community and the bottom line
too is PTSD. If I think I can handle it
(30:07):
by myself, it will crush you. Bottom line. Don't be
ashamed to ask for help, ask for help. That's Brian Dellett.
He lives in l A today. If you want to
hear more about the war in Vietnam, take a listen
to my conversation with Ken Burns and Lynn Novik on
the making of their ten part documentary about Vietnam. When
(30:30):
Americans talk about Vietnam, we just talked about ourselves, and
that what what we needed to do was to triangulate
with all the other perspectives, not just the enemy. It's
finding out what the civilians felt, the enemy felt, the
viet Cong felt, but then our allies, the South Vietnamese
who get treated like you know what all the time,
and their civilians and their protesters, as well as all
(30:53):
the servicemen that we did and everybody all the way
out to deserters and draft dodgers across the American spectrum.
And if you then do that, then the kind of
political dialectic loses its force because you realize that more
than one truth could obtain at any given moment. The
rest of that conversation can be found in our archives
(31:16):
at Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin,
and you were listening to Here's the Thing as a
young man, Dick Hughes thought he was going to enter
(31:37):
the priesthood, but then he transferred to Carnegie Mellon for
theater and wound up at Boston University for graduate work
in the same subject. This was the late sixties, the
Draft was underway. Hughes was a conscientious objector to the
Vietnam War, but he ended up getting a journalist visa
and going to Saigon on his own. He found a
(32:00):
wire service in Vietnam, but his focus became the street kids,
those making do on the street, hustling, shining shoes and stealing.
Hughes opened a shelter for these children called the Shoeshine
Boys Project. This led to a foundation with support from
people all over the world, including hughes as family and
(32:22):
friends from his hometown in Pittsburgh. He's from a big family,
one of seven Catholic family Pittsburgh and lived in Pittsburgh
right below the Hill Section, after which Debochco named Hill
Street Blues. Yeah, Irish Catholic family and uh yeah, I
at one point was looking at the priesthood. Do you
(32:45):
know why? What was it was the sense of the
drama of the Catholic church and and and the power
in a sense that the priest has, you know, all
of that is kind of attractive. I thought about becoming
a priest. Yeah, the oldest son of an oldest in
an Irish Catholic family, it's supposed to become a priest.
I was told they sold me that idea, but I
went off into actual drama, another kind of drama. You
(33:08):
don't go to Vietnam for US until sixty eight. I
don't go to Vietnam until nineteen sixty seven. So yeah,
as I was in bought at the graduate school in
Boston and then the theater Company Boston, Uh, Vietnam became
so enormous the moral question uh that it was it
was hard to concentrate on my acting because of that.
So yeah, that's when it really started kind of eating
(33:31):
away at me. And I think in some sense I
was in a bit of a quiet rage about it,
in the sense not understanding why we were doing that, uh,
and seeing things like, uh, the generals shooting that we
had cong in the head and stuff like that. That
really uh So at that point I got drafted. So
then I had to decide in in six s seven,
(33:52):
you had to decide. But I now decided Okay, I
think what I'm gonna do is refuse induction and go
to and you're going to be decided. I was going
to go to where the center where this was happening. Um,
I'm going I'm gonna face this head on and I'm
not gonna do it your way. I did it my way.
(34:13):
And so I decided to go to Vietnam. I didn't
know anybody, I had no connections, and I had no money,
and I didn't tell anybody. Um, and you went there
to do what I was going to go there just
to try to do something to help people who were
affected by the war. Had no idea what it would be.
I was able because the university newspaper covered my draft
refusal to get an accreditation from Boston University News and
(34:38):
go as a quote journalist unquote. I actually did end
up doing some journalism. I ended up traveling with the
Marines and the army ended up starting dispatching new stories.
Who we started our own news agency called Dispatch News,
which Sihirst broke the Melie story through UH and with
Asians French press a fp OAR service UH and UH
(35:00):
and I also UH, you know, I I wanted to
kind of get into combat and find out if my
philosophical objections were more than just speculations sitting in Boston,
and so I kind of thought, I'll go in to
where the battle is and see. And I wasn't there
a week when we walked into an ambush and uh
(35:24):
and I had a corporal beside me, a radio operator
bleeding from the head and uh. Sergeant goes back under
all this fire and hands me a cocked forty five
and says, they're coming up on the rear as soon
as you see them start firing. And and I'm what's
wrong with this picture? This is a conscienous objector and
a foxhole at County End, uh, with people coming up
(35:45):
in the rear who may kill you. Uh. And I
A million things go through your head at that time.
How many other people that you encountered over there were
like you? Nobody? There no free agents that I encountered. Uh.
There were some conscients objectors who stayed in the army
and were UH medics. There were some country objectors with
the Quaker organizations than men and sing. But I haven't
(36:08):
yet run into anybody who just packed up and flew
off to Vietnam. And got into the airport, and when
the whole place cleared out, said all right, now where
do I go? Um. I also early on also met
some of these street children whom shine shoes and made
the living in the streets. And when I got an apartment,
I would mention from time to time, you know, a
(36:28):
few folks want to come down, You're welcome to each
show or do everyone? It took a while they were
like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but they finally did come down.
So I was on two tracks. Uh. It was covering
the war out with the military, and it was starting
this home for these street kids. After a year, I
decided to turn this over to some Vietnamese students and friends.
(36:50):
So I spent the next seven years raising support. Those students,
brought in other students, opened up eight homes. They helped
children during the war. You stayed in Vietnam? Yeah, after
the fall. I stayed about eighteen months after the fall.
I was I may just be still doing the same thing.
(37:13):
I was winding down the project. You know, I think I'm,
if not the I'm one of the last Americans to leave.
I felt that that there was no reason to evacuate,
and it was really tragic that so many uh NGEO
voluntary agencies and charities were evacuating with the remaining military
and the embassy people. Because I thought, you can't just
(37:36):
drop a project. Uh And in August of seventy six,
I came back to New York to close the foundation
down and go back to acting. Finally, that's that was
the plan. I was sitting there saying, I mean, I
have this image of you having tea in some cafe
and sagon and you're reading variety. Uh No. I always
(38:01):
had in the back of my mind, I gotta get
this done. I gotta get this done. I want to
be an actor. I love acting. I didn't do any
of it over there. I didn't do acting over the
acting school over there. No, because you know, I was going,
I'm like a doctor in the emergency room. We were
going seven. We were in mortuaries and hospitals, and you know,
there was no there was never a day off. There's
(38:22):
never a vacation, and there was never uh cercease in
the tension that was there. It was it was racing,
racing against time through the whole thing, and those are
connections that are forever. And so I kept in contact
with sending a little money to help people from where
I could that human rights thing, uh, you know that
to get those two guys out. And then in two
thousand and five, coming across Philip Jones Griffith's Agent Orange
(38:46):
book and saying, you know, the last thing I need
is another Vietnam humanitarian thing. But the pictures are so graphic.
So when you when you described to me when you
first came across this book, this is uh one of
the best photo of journalists, uh, in the came of
this that you gave me, Yes, Philip Jones Griffiths. It's
(39:06):
called Agan Orange Collateral Damage in Vietnam. Philip covered the
war and a lot of his photos are used over
and over, iconic photos, uh that you see from time
to time. But then he went back after the war
many times and he went to villages where Agent Orange
had been sprayed and where people had been horribly deformed
and affected illnesses by it. And he came out with
(39:30):
a book that has just dedicated to Agent Orange, the
Collateral Damage, and to meet him. I knew Philip very
well from from he came to the shoeshine boy house,
so I knew him over there. He was a good friend. Yeah,
what's the work now. Well, the effort is to get
I want to jump start serious aid to some three
million victims in Vietnam through the US Congress. Uh, we've
(39:53):
had some success with that, but Agian Orange is like
below the radar. No president from ford On ever put
Agent Orange in the budget. None Democratic Republican. You have
soldiers on each side of the war in Vietnam who
had healthy children before they went go to the battle
fight where it's sprayed. They come back, they have one
(40:15):
too horrific bursts and they go, yeah, that's kind of anecdotal,
you know. I think what they have to do is
get damage done to their own d DNA materials. Uh.
They are in denial about it, but it's not because
it's political. It's just a kind of lethargy of the bureaucracy.
And I also I think people who are just new
(40:36):
to it feel it's just one more thing. They can't
make any difference about what can I do? Defects as
a result of dox and still being born of absolutely
to this day, dioxin is so lethal. Little parts of
it are can wreak havoc and dioction doesn't go away,
it stays and it's in the soil, etcetera. And people
(40:59):
think that a in Orange is past history, and you say, no,
it's right now and it's a million victims. Now when
you came back here, you came back where to New York?
To New York? How would New York changed? New York
was dense full of people. Uh, they didn't talk to
each other on elevators like they did in Vietnam. Nobody
held hands or touched each other. That was a little
bit of a cultural adjustment. Uh. But um, yeah, I
(41:23):
was so I was on two tracks. They're closing down
the foundation and going back into acting. When you come back,
how would you changed from being over there? Um? You
know what? I think one of the biggest changes I experienced,
especially it came out of combat. Um, Before I went
and I saw things like I mentioned the general Sagan
(41:45):
General shooting the Vietcong soldier in the head, that famous photo.
I jumped right out of my seat at that time,
and I thought, how could we be doing this? How
could we be involved that this? But what I learned
in combat was, uh, my darker side. I learned that
I too, under certain circumstances, could be capable of the
same thing. So I think what I got an education
(42:07):
is a more rounded sense of what human beings are
and how I could employ that in drama. That's why
I love drama so much, because I think it can
articulate almost what can't be quote articulated unquote people considered
a drama and go yes, yes, without saying exactly what
it is. And to me, that helps avoid wars, that
(42:28):
helps humans grow. So I I actually saw theater in
just as sacred or as just as profound a sense
as I did the acting work, as I'm sorry, the
social work that I was doing in Vietnam. I felt
it was as important you saw your darker side. Do
you want to articulate that more? Meaning you're not talking
about like me? Lie, you didn't think I'm capable of anything? Oh,
(42:52):
I think human beings are. No. I am capable depending
on the circumstances, depending on being pushed to it. I
think that's what dramas about. You know, you know this, Uh,
when you're playing a character who's up to something reprehensible,
you play them on their terms. You know, you have
to justify why they do that. And I think people
who who are are toying with the darker side, are
(43:14):
justifying it in some respects uh. And to me, that's
as much a part of the human soul as uh
the some of the brighter side of it. When you
get a sense of that, you have that capability to
do that, you're less about judging other people and you're
more about I just got to use all my time
two in this case for me, uh, presenting theater in
(43:36):
a sense that will help educate people and answer questions
that are out of the context of black and white
or or debates back and forth the Because you've dedicated
so much of your life to theater, to acting, uh,
in and around your relief work and your advocacy work,
have you ever thought about writing a play? I have
(43:59):
a real experiences I have about the shoeshine boys and
about young Dick Hughes arriving there, And um, I don't
know who would play young Dick Hughes. I could get
a little makeup down, and we want to sell some tickets,
so look at the right guy to play the young
And I think do a kind of documentary, uh, because
(44:22):
we have a lot of film footage and stuff like
that that would show how to work in another country
and do it effectively. That's one thing. The Uh when
you come back? Um, and uh is it safe to
say that acting is the is your primary focus when
you come back and what you want to get back
to that and you want to give that everything you've got?
(44:44):
And is it a case where you have this lingering
empathy for what happened back there and you're haunted by
what you saw? Have stopped me if I'm getting too dramatic,
But but but when it's like the Godfather Part three line, Uh,
they keep pulling me back in, you know what I mean,
the Pacino line meaning to go there and you want
to Are you done with that? No? I think here's
(45:06):
the funny thing about that. It makes a huge It's
it's forever there and those are connections that are forever.
And so I kept in contact with sending a little
money to help people from where I could. So it
was I always had a sense of being pulled again,
you know, to tide, dragging me kind of back in,
but acting still being the first priority. But interestingly enough,
I made three post war trips two thousand one, two
(45:28):
thousand eight, and two thousand sixteen. And when I went
and I when I left Vietnam. There was nothing emotional
much about it when I got on the plane and left,
which I thought was kind of odd making that break.
But the first trip back UH, some of the grown
street kids and their families and other friends who worked
with me UH set up visits, all reunions and kind
(45:50):
of stuff, and we went to the airport. They had
all taken a day off they couldn't afford. And as
I went up into the section transition section, transit section,
they were all waving goodbye. And I got on the
plane and I sobbed all the way to Hannoy, and
I thought why, And then I realized what had happened
was I had gone over there, giving up everything, my job,
(46:13):
I had no money with girlfriend, my family, hadn't even
told my family. I was going with this idea, I
am going to do something about this goddamn war. And
I came back and it wasn't until I returned again
in two thousand one that I saw that their lives
they'd made it. So the odd thing about it was
that that promised to myself and sixty eight was not
(46:36):
resolved until that two thousand and one of seeing them
healed and survived and healed, and that my effort in
that respect was over. Dick Hughes, actor, writer, founder of
the Shoeshine Boys project. This is Alec Baldwin and you
(46:57):
were listening to Here's the Thing four
Host
Alec Baldwin
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