~Let it be noted and remembered, that when no one in America in the public eye gave a damn about the Vietnam Veteran, Jane Fonda, used her celebrity pulpit to do everything in her power to stand with, and stand-up for the Vietnam veterans. I know because I was one of them who went to her rally in Los Angeles and marched with a hundred other vets in support of her message that the federal government was totally out of control, heartless, and deliberately blind about the damage that occurred to the minds and bodies of Vietnam combat veterans.

Ron Kovac (“Born on the Fourth of July” starring Tom Cruise) was her guest speaker, and he burned the house down. She had a conscience that demanded she give the best of herself for his and other’s sakes. Everyone else in America was silent.

And who in the public eye stood with her? A few folk singers of no real stature. No one else. No one in politics, no one in the media, and no one in Hollywood. She was, and was forced to be, a one-woman anti-war movement crusading against the damn illegitimacy of sending draftees to their deaths in someone else’s war. To risk all for a people who were unwilling to take the same risks for themselves, and thus were rolled over by the North within two years of our departure.

No other women in my lifetime has tried to do more with less than what she had to work with. Where are the loud, insistent voices of objection to the travesty of politics that our nation has degenerated into? There are no other Jane Fondas, and unless some appear, we will remain in deep doo-doo.