Film Features Senior Citizens Who Greeted Almost a
Million Troops Passing Through Bangor, Maine
The Way We Get By featured on PBS for Veterans Day;
in some theaters now, on DVD November 3 - Video clip below in story.
My
life don't mean a hell of a lot to me, but if I can make it
mean something to somebody else, that's my endeavor... Jerry
Mundy
Oct. 18, 2009 – Too much of the world finds it easy
to ignore senior citizens – the has-beens of yesteryear – but almost a
million American military personnel will not forget the seniors of
Bangor, Maine. They are the “troop greeters” of Bangor, an intrepid
group of retired and elderly citizens who have taken it upon themselves
to greet every troop plane arriving or departing Bangor, which is the
last and first piece of U.S. soil many GIs will see before and after
their deployments. Now millions of Americans will know them too, thanks
to a movie on PBS for Veterans Day.
Among their neighbors, they’ve become a source of
pride. To a nation wrestling with the politics behind the wars, they’re
an inspiration. They are famous among the soldiers who have passed
through the airport in Bangor, Maine, on their way to and from the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The opening scenes of The Way We Get By, the
new documentary airing Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009 on PBS’ POV (Point of
View) series, makes clear why the troop greeters are surefire morale
boosters for a war-burdened nation. Regardless of their personal views
about the wars’ politics, the greeters, some of them veterans, turn out
at all hours of the day and night to show their respect for the
soldiers’ willingness to make sacrifices for the nation.
The Way We Get By takes a look behind the
hearty smiles, handshakes, heartfelt thanks and free cookies and cell
phones the greeters bring to the airport, and discovers a world in which
the seniors are engaged in their own struggles with aging, disease,
loneliness, memories of war and personal loss.
The film discovers a remarkable symbiosis between
the soldiers’ fighting mission and the greeters’ fight to overcome pain,
fatigue and depression in making sure no soldier departs or returns
without thanks.
The film focuses on three of the most dedicated
troop greeters.
Stars Jerry Mundy, Joan Gaudet, Bill
Knight
● At 87, cantankerous Bill Knight is the
oldest. A World War II veteran, he has the most straightforward
patriotic view of the new conflicts. He sees today’s soldiers as
fighting the wars of the United States, just as he did in North Africa
in the 1940s, and he swears they won’t be neglected, as he believes
Vietnam vets were.
● Joan Gaudet, age 76 and as grandmotherly
as a grandmother can be, has greater doubts about the wisdom of the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, she has a wrenching personal stake in
the wars: Her granddaughter and grandson are set to deploy to Iraq.
● Something of a loner and like a favorite uncle,
Jerry Mundy, age 74, shares Joan’s doubts about the wars. But he
supports the troops and grieves for the parents of those who don’t
return, recalling his own unbearable pain at losing a son at an early
age.
Yet different temperaments, experiences and
political outlooks turn out not to be the only remarkable things about
the three elderly Americans spotlighted in The Way We Get By.
Even more notable is the daily drama shared by all
three in meeting their commitment to be at the airport day in and day
out.
Bill
Knight visits soldier
Bill Knight has been diagnosed with prostate
cancer, which has spread. He’s been given treatment, but at his age, he
doesn’t figure he has much time left. Increasingly infirm and unable to
pay his bills since his wife died, he feels his grip on an orderly life
slipping away.
Bill nonetheless shows up to meet the troops with
all the military precision he can muster. In fact, on the day he learned
he had cancer, Bill was the first greeter to arrive at the airport.
Joan Gaudet has had three knee operations, which
have forced her to use a walker. She’s developed an intense fear of
falling during Bangor’s icy winters. Living alone after having raised
eight kids (including filmmaker Aron Gaudet), Joan was afraid to go out
at night or when the weather was bad.
Then she discovered troop greeting, which required
her to be on call whenever the planes arrived or departed — something
that happened with increasing regularity as the wars heated up.
Time and again, Joan overcomes near-constant pain —
and her fears — to get to the airport whatever the conditions. So
exhilarating does she find the effort that she describes it as a kind of
addiction. The one thing Joan finds most difficult to overcome is her
urge to cry as she says goodbye to troops headed for the war zones.
Realizing this would be distressing for the soldiers, she wisely
reserves her emotions for those returning.
Jerry Mundy has unexplained heart problems, which
are sometimes aggravated by the hours he pulls at the airport, and which
put him in the hospital during the filming of The Way We Get By.
He’s a congenial man, but a lonely one; his solitude is perhaps rooted
in the sudden loss of his 10-year-old son years ago. The thought of the
soldiers who don’t return to their families brings back those memories.
His best friend is his dog, Flannagan, and most
days the two sit in Jerry’s truck outside the airport, watching for
arriving military planes. If Jerry is fast enough, he can be inside the
airport before a plane’s wheels touch the ground. His warm, good humor
and the free cell phone calls he offers the soldiers bring instant
smiles to the soldiers’ faces. These small acts help him cope with the
memory of his loss and a growing sense of his own mortality.
“Unfailingly modest and profoundly
humane - neither pro- nor antiwar - this fine, affecting film
perfectly exemplifies Milton’s famous claim: ‘They also serve
who only stand and wait.’”
Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times
All three seniors share the same contradictory
feeling that, for all that they want every soldier to come home for
good, they’re not sure what they would do without the sense of purpose
that troop greeting has given them.
With simple candor, Bill, Joan and Jerry take stock
of their lives and anguish over the use they still might have in this
world. The loss of that usefulness is what scares them most of all.
Their ruminations on aging, failing health, loneliness and death are at
the core of the film’s drama.
Though Bill, Joan and Jerry’s appearances at the
airport are predictable, The Way We Get By is full of suspense as
it follows how they cope with the “tribulations,” as Jerry calls them,
that life has sent their way.
“This is a very personal story to me,” says
director Aron Gaudet. “Witnessing firsthand how my mother’s life changed
in such positive ways, while at the same time touching the lives of
troops from all over the country, convinced me this was a story that
could inspire people. The moment I saw the Maine troop greeters welcome
home a plane full of soldiers and Marines returning from Iraq, I knew it
could be a movie. The moment I met Bill Knight and Jerry Mundy, I knew
it could be something more than a movie.”
He continues, “I knew it could be a way to show the
everyday struggles of senior citizens and an inspirational story of how
these three seniors use a simple handshake to change their lives, and
the lives of the 900,000-plus troops they've greeted.”
The Way We Get By is co-production of Dungby
Productions and ITVS in association with WGBH and Maine Public
Broadcasting Network with funding provided by the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting (CPB).
In honor of Veterans Day, Aron Gaudet’s The Way
We Get By has its national broadcast premiere on POV in a special
presentation on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009, at 9 p.m. on PBS. (Check local
listings.) American television’s longest-running independent documentary
series, POV is the recipient of a Special News & Documentary Emmy for
Excellence in Television Documentary Filmmaking. The series’ 22nd season
concludes on Wednesday, Dec. 30 at 9 p.m. with a special presentation of
Patti Smith: Dream of Life.
