‘Home’ film is reminder of old days

By David Maurer

Published: March 30, 2008

As frame after frame of black-and-white film whirled through the camera, the lens stayed locked on a Volkswagen bug parked at the end of a residential driveway.
Without content, the vehicle was nothing special. But viewers who saw the stark image on their television screens in 1967 knew why the camera lingered on this seemingly innocuous scene.
The car had belonged to Grandville Anthony “Tony” Jones, a young Charlottesville soldier killed in action in Vietnam on Dec. 5, 1965. Two years later when the National Education Television network made the documentary film “Home Front 1967” the forlorn Volkswagen became one of the program’s most poignant and powerful images.
Film crew find
The film crew learned about the car during an interview with the deceased soldier’s mother and his brother, David. With quiet dignity and composure the family members spoke about the 24-year-old man and a life that might have been.
Mrs. Jones’ eldest son was a graduate of Lane High School and had earned a degree in education from the University of Virginia. His dreams of getting married and becoming a teacher ended while serving with the First Infantry Division in Vietnam.
Jones had been on a search-and-destroy operation 40 miles northwest of Saigon when he was shot in the neck and died. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery a few days before Christmas.
Everytown USA
The network selected Charlottesville as a kind of everytown USA to document the effect the Vietnam War was having at the grass-roots level. Al Perlmutter, executive producer of the nationally broadcast documentary, said they considered a number of communities in different parts of the country before settling on Charlottesville.
“We recognize that there is no typical American community,” Perlmutter told Ted McKown, a reporter for The Daily Progress. “But we wanted to look at one community and determine to the best of our ability the effect or impact Vietnam has made on it.
“We were looking for a community that had a university, that had industry related to defense work to some extent, and a community that is not too large, one we could reasonably
cover in a five-day period.
“We find it an interesting community, and generally an alert community.”
During the course of several days, film crews roamed the city in their attempt to gauge war sentiment here. They visited a classroom at Lane High School, dropped in on a fraternity party at UVa and recorded the thoughts of a few war veterans standing at the bar in American Legion Post No. 74.
One of the combat veterans interviewed was Carl “Chubby” Proffitt, then and now, Charlottesville’s most decorated living soldier. A Vietnam veteran was located and interviewed on his thoughts about the war.
A group of local ministers was gathered and filmed as they provided their thoughts on the conflict. One of them was the Rev. Charles Perry.
“At that time, I was associate rector, responsible for ministry to the students at UVa and working out of St. Paul’s Memorial Church,” said Perry, who is now retired and living in Albemarle County.
“The students were relatively uninvolved in protesting the war or in the movement for racial justice in America. For the most part, and there were substantial exceptions, this was true of the faculty as well.
“I remember being disappointed to find that. When I recently saw the film again, it reminded me of that period of my life.”
A public showing of the documentary will be held at noon April 5 at the Vinegar Hill Theatre. The hour-long film will be followed by a discussion period in which people in the film will talk about their experiences.
The documentary was shot during February and early March 1967. After it aired, its timeliness was quickly outpaced by ongoing events and it was soon forgotten.
For 40 years a copy of the film languished largely undisturbed in UVa’s Clemons Library. It might have remained so if not for another more recent project having to do with Vietnam.
For the past decade Art Beltrone and his wife, Lee, have headed up the Vietnam Graffiti Project. With help from many volunteers the couple has saved, and currently exhibits, examples of the graffiti Vietnam-bound soldiers scrawled on canvas bunks while being transported to war aboard troopships.
“As part of the graffiti project we were having a forum that featured vets from Charlottesville who served in Vietnam,” Art Beltrone said of the recent event. “As part of the program I wanted somebody who could provide us with an overview of the 1960s here in Charlottesville.
“The person who agreed to do that had to cancel because of health reasons. I then got an e-mail from a person who asked if I was aware of the film ‘Home Front 1967.’
“I hadn’t heard of it, but I started searching around and found a copy of it in Clemons Film Library. I thought I would watch it for a few minutes, but I was so fascinated by it that I ended up watching the entire program.”
Beltrone had unearthed a time capsule of tremendous historical value. Not only does it capture something of the mood and timbre of the times, it shows the city and people as they were back then.
Vehicles are seen driving up and down a Main Street that is now a pedestrian mall. The late Darden Towe is seen presiding over a meeting of the Jaycees.
The main topic of discussion during the meeting had to do with a suggestion that they adopt a unit in Vietnam. The members put it to a vote and passed it unanimously.
The Vietnam War still was gathering speed in 1967. When the filming took place, the American death count in Vietnam was at the 7,000 mark. More than 50,000 more would die before the war ended in 1975.
Something of the cruel cost of war in terms of abbreviated lives and destroyed potential could be heard in the softly spoken words of Mrs. Jones. And in the driveway outside the Oxford Road home was a car that also said much about lost dreams and children who never made it back home.

DETAILS
A free showing of “Home Front 1967” will be presented at noon April 5 at Vinegar Hill Theatre, 220 Market St., Charlottesville. A $5 donation to benefit the Vietnam Graffiti Project is suggested.