IU professor’s documentary to be shown for Veterans Day

IU telecommunications professor Ron Osgood’s hour-long documentary “My Vietnam, Your Iraq: Eight Families, Two Generations” gives a portrait of families with a member deployed in the Iraq War and the stress they endure during these times.

The documentary will be shown at 9 p.m. today on public television stations WTTW in Chicago and WTIU in Bloomington for Veterans Day.

By concentrating on families with a parent who fought in Vietnam, as well as a child in Iraq, the viewer is able to have some idea of anguish a parent goes through in contrast to the bravery of the young adults who are serving their country.

Osgood said he was in Chicago at a dedication of a new Vietnam memorial in 2005.

He said it was the first time since leaving the military after service in an aircraft in Vietnam that he had attended anything related to the military or the Vietnam War.

“It was a nice ceremony, a beautiful memorial, and I was able to identify several hundred men wearing patches, hats and jackets, which identified them as veterans,” Osgood said.

He said it struck him that all these people were taking pride in this event.

Osgood said he had identified the fact that many such Vietnam memorials were placed underground or in places of less recognition than other war memorials.

He said Vietnam veterans were not thrown parades, showered with praise or treated as heroes like those who fought in other wars have been.

At the rally, several young men had returned from Iraq and were talking about their opposition to the war. Osgood said he was able to speak with them and tell them how brave they were to speak out while still enlisted.

He said one of the young men admitted that his actions would polarize his relationship with his father, a Vietnam veteran.

Osgood said on the drive back to Bloomington he wondered if families of members of the military supported the war, especially those whose parents had fought in Vietnam.

Osgood said he put call-outs on various Vietnam Veteran organizations’ websites asking for participants willing to be interviewed who had both served in Vietnam and had children in Iraq.

From there, his contacts branched out, and there were occasions where someone reached out to him as well. He decided to film a documentary on the opinion of these families and call it “My Iraq, Your Vietnam.”

The most difficult aspect of these interviews was having the parent and child together. Since in all cases the younger interviewee was in Iraq, Osgood said he had to wait until they were back in the United States.

“I wanted the dynamics of the film to be about both parent and child being in the home at the same time,” Osgood said.

Osgood said he was willing to give up much to achieve his goal and said he even paid for a father’s airfare to get him from Alaska to Philidelphia.

Some families didn’t want to participate while others were happy to tell their stories.
Osgood said some people were emotional talking about their own stories.

“Most good documentaries are good because of a twist or turn, yet in this case, the turn was not really planned and for the most part, it went as I wanted it to happen,” Osgood said.