Jake's Journey

An Amazon Reader Review for Man with No Yesterdays begins by calling the book “a fascinating read,” then elaborates on the premise: a man who suffers from total retrograde amnesia, recalling only bits and pieces of his early childhood, who comes to believe he will never remember more.

Could it happen? Theoretically, it could. Traumatic brain injury can leave the victim with little or nothing in the way of personal memory, as well as loss of the ability to speak, move, reason. Best case scenario, the patient slowly recovers most if not all of his life and returns to a normal, or very nearly normal, life.

Jake Cameron, my character introduced in Memories of Jake whose story is told in considerably more detail in Man with No Yesterdays, suffers a T.B.I. due to a helicopter crash in Vietnam. Jake quickly regains his ability to function in the world, but nearly all of his personal history has apparently been locked away for the remainder of his life. He doesn’t remember anything about his years as a Green Beret in Vietnam, even after meeting men he served with.

How would a man react to this truly awful dilemma? Jake first tries to regain his memory, spending time at home with his family, looking at photos, listening to their memories of him. And he does have moments of recall from childhood, a few very vivid; but most are snapshots, faded and foggy. As weeks and months pass and very little more is revealed to him, he begins to face the possibility he may never remember the man he was … the warrior he was. So who is he now? 

Throughout the book I strove to reflect on the daunting difficulties our warriors faced in Vietnam, both in country and after returning home. As a novelist, my aim in writing the novel was to address a “what if” situation: what if a young man who had fought valiantly in Vietnam lost all memory of himself and even began to wonder why he had become a warrior? What then? How would he move forward to create some kind of life for himself? And for Jake, this is complicated further when he vividly recalls one childhood memory that rocks him to his core.

I appreciate that this reviewer called the book “a fascinating read.” My hope is that a reader will come away with that sense. It was not an easy book to write, and I challenged myself even further by allowing Jake to speak for himself … writing in the first person.

If you are intrigued, the link to order the book on Amazon is included below, and it’s available in paperback and as a Kindle. If you read and enjoy … I would love to hear from you (my email address is on my website), and reviews are music to us indie authors’ ears!

(originally published November 22, 2017)

“The Cameron Saga,” Memories of Jake and Man with No Yesterdays

covers by Tristan Flanagan

website: www.susanmoorejordan.com

Link to Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Susan-Moore-Jordan/e/B00IBZ731U/

Thoughts on the Vietnam War

Introduction for National Vietnam Veterans Day Observance, March 24, 2019

“Vietnam changed every person who was there.” A comment made by my character Andrew Cameron in my book Memories of Jake.

Some three years ago I embarked on a journey of research and writing books about two brothers whose lives were turned upside down by their involvement in the Vietnam War. I was a young wife and mother during that period, and while I was, of course, aware of the war, I had no idea how much I didn’t know or understand about the conflict. Research included reading many first-person accounts, watching videos and films, visiting veterans’ forums online, and eventually finding a voice, Lt. Col. Charles Vincent of the Army Corps of Engineers who had fought with the Green Berets in Vietnam and who became my military consultant. The result was these two books, Memories of Jake and Man with No Yesterdays, the first published in March of 2017 and the second the following November.

While writing, I began to have some small understanding of what our valiant warriors endured both while in country and after returning home. It was a deeply emotional journey and has changed my life forever. Over the course of the books, I covered nearly every aspect of the war, from the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to the fall of Saigon and beyond. Andrew, the older brother, visits the Wall in Memories of Jake. In Man with No Yesterdays, Jake, the younger brother, spends time in the Cascade Mountains in Washington State with his brothers-in-arms. This is my dedication for Man with No Yesterdays: “To Jake and to all who fought in Vietnam, with the hope that never again will we blame the warriors for the war.”

I followed the bill that was introduced in Congress to declare March 29 National Vietnam Veterans Day which was signed into law on March 28, 2017. Last year, the Pocono Cinema worked with me to honor our local Vietnam Veterans. Staged readings from both these books were presented along with music from the era. Courtney Tolino and I agreed this observance should become an annual event. This year, I asked the Vietnam Veterans of America, Pocono Chapter 678, if any of them had personal memoirs we could present in this same format … actors reading the words they had written. Three men—Tom Doyle, Glen Lippincott, and Jim Sargent—submitted the writings you will hear tonight.

Two books I read when researching have resonated with me ever since, and we’ve included two selections from Home Before Morning by Army nurse Joyce Van Devanter. Women also served in Vietnam, and some died there. The other is a book I believe should be required reading in every high school in this country, Philip Caputo’s book A Rumor of War. The author shows us a clear-eyed, heart-wrenching, totally honest look at the things war can do to a man. And the things a man can do while he is at war. Nearly thirty years later, Caputo considered his time in Vietnam in retrospect and his thoughts included this:

“Vietnam was the epicenter of a cultural, social, and political quake that sundered us like no other event since the Civil War. […] Our self-image as a progressive, virtuous, and triumphant people exempt from the burdens and tragedies of history came apart in Vietnam, and we had no way to integrate the war or its consequences into our collective and individual consciousness. […]

“At the very beginnings of Western civilization, it was the role of the battle singers, who sang their verses around the warriors’ glittering fires, to wring order and meaning out of the chaotic clash of arms, to keep the tribe human by providing it with models of virtuous behavior—heroes who reflected the tribe’s loftiest aspirations—and with examples of impious behavior that reflected the worst failings.

“Vietnam was fought with M-16s and helicopters instead of swords and steeds, but the battle singer’s task was the same. The nature of the war made it exceptionally difficult: how to find meaning in such a meaningless conflict? How to make sense out of a succession of random fire-fights that achieved nothing? And what heroes could be found in a war so murky and savage? How to explain our failings? Yet the task was necessary. […]

“The politicians, commentators, analysts, and historians still cannot agree on the war’s causes, much less on its larger significance. So, it is left to the artist to make sense of it, or at the very least to begin to make sense of it, shaping enduring art out of the shapeless muck of a terrible experience.”

  

And that is why we are here tonight, to try to make some sense of the Vietnam war through words and music, to share thoughts and memories and pay tribute to the fallen and honor their sacrifice, to celebrate the heroes who are still with us. Tonight, we are the “battle singers.”

**

 Excerpts from A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo, First Owl Books Edition 1996

covers by Tristan Flanagan

The Mouse’s Mom – My Friend, Judy Lawler

How do you pinpoint the genesis of a friendship? In this case, it was community theater that brought Judy Lawler and me together. The first show I directed for Pocono Lively Arts was Cinderella, in 1984. While there were no mice in the script, I recalled the Disney film which had a veritable mouse universe. I’m sure I wasn’t the first director of the stage show to do this, but I thought, we have to have mice in this show. We had four adorable little kids, I think maybe six and seven years old, and the tiniest and I believe youngest was Marjorie Lawler. Marjie’s mom, Judy, who was there for rehearsals anyway, offered to help backstage.

That was the beginning. The next year PLA did Brigadoon and both the Lawler ladies were onstage, and that became their routine for many years. (One of the greatest things about PLA was the involvement of more than one family member in our shows.) Over the years, Judy played a lot of characters, from a nun in The Sound of Music to one of Major-General Stanley’s female relatives in The Pirates of Penzance; from the White Rabbit in Alice to Fruma Sarah in Fiddler on the Roof. She was a talented woman with a great sense of comedic timing, and one of my favorites of her myriad roles was the Stepmother in another production of Cinderella, in 1993. This tiny, dynamic lady was incredibly funny bullying her two daughters who were both bigger than she was.

  

As one of the comic duo in Babes in Toyland, Judy suffered a severe injury onstage near the end of the final performance of the show when she landed a comic jump at a bad angle. Her foot was severely broken and she was out of commission for months. But she returned as soon she could, and in later years was a terrific Widow Harper in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, singing as she danced all over the stage. And she was the greatest ever Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Her castmates in any theatrical production loved this unfailingly positive and supportive actress. Judy had a wicked sense of humor. She had fun, and she was fun.

Judy loved performing and went outside of Pocono Lively Arts musicals to appear with Center Stage Players in non-musical productions—both comedy and drama—and even took part in an indie film, a drama. I don’t recall what led to our deciding to establish a summer Children’s Theater Workshop, but we did it together for some twenty years. Judy was beloved by all those children we saw over those years—mainly because she truly loved them. She had a gift for teaching and directing our children’s shows.

Our friendship went beyond theater, though, and in 2013 she encouraged me to try my hand at writing a book. I remember the exact day (May 6), and exactly what she said to encourage me. At first, I scoffed and said I might as well try climbing Mt. Everest, but she said, “Don’t think so big. Think of one event. One thing.” I had just the thing in mind, a story of tragedy to triumph that happened to a high school friend. And then she said: “Write it in the first person. From her point of view.” That did it. I was set on a path that opened my life to a new passion. She read my work and encouraged me. She would listen for long stretches when I discussed a plot I had in mind. Now, that is a true friend.

Professionally, Judy earned a second degree in pastoral counseling from Moravian College. She worked in a rehabilitation center for a number of years, and for the local hospice. She had private clients as a counselor. Judy’s spirituality allowed her to always see beyond the moment, beyond the trouble and pain. Beyond despair. She exuded love and kindness.

She was a great wife and mother, an amazing friend, generous to a fault. Judy was in many ways my mentor, my guru, the person I could confide in. The person who would listen to my book plots and be unfailingly encouraging.

She will be sorely missed.