Ron Kovic, a war veteran turned anti-war activist, had a life story that was so extraordinary that it inspired a movie, with Tom Cruise playing his role, and winning two Oscars. To achieve this fantasy, Kovic had to serve three tours of duty in Vietnam, get paralyzed for life by combat wounds, and write a best-selling book about it all.
Kovic grew up in the Midwest and New York's suburban Massapequa, Long Island, the son of a grocery clerk and a housewife. He was a high school wrestler and pole vaulter, and after graduation, he hoped to play major league baseball. However, he enlisted in the Marines in 1964, in the early days of the Vietnam War, after the assassination of President Kennedy and inspired by the speech of a Marine recruiter.
His gung-ho Marine patriotism was undermined by two incidents - one in which he feared he had accidentally killed a fellow Marine in the chaos of combat, and another in which Vietnamese children were unintentionally wounded in a night assault. These incidents made him so desperate that he was relieved when he was wounded by gunfire. However, a subsequent bullet tore into Kovic's spine and paralyzed him from the chest down.
Kovic returned to the States in 1968 and was awarded a Bronze Star for heroism and a Purple Heart, as he received extensive medical care. He began college studies a year later, but landed in a rundown veterans hospital after an accident. The horrible conditions in the hospital turned his increasing despair into outrage over what he felt was America's betrayal of Vietnam veterans and he began to seriously question the government's conduct of the war itself.
Following the killings of student protestors by National Guardsmen at Kent State College in 1970, Kovic joined the Vietnam Veterans against the War and transformed himself into a pro-active anti-war supporter. During the 1972 Republican Party convention, Kovic and some fellow vets in wheelchairs succeeded in disrupting President Nixon's televised acceptance speech, an event he considers one of the highlights of his activist years, which also included protests against nuclear-power plants, American interference in Central America and the too-often inferior medical treatment of war veterans.
Kovic's life story was later adapted into a film, "Born on the Fourth of July," directed by Oliver Stone and starring Tom Cruise. The movie won two Oscars.
