Betty And Ken Rodgers (transcript)
Main Street
Ken Rodgers is a marine veteran and with his wife, filmmaker Betty Rodgers, the couple has completed their second major film project. Their new film is titled I Married the War, and it's a documentary giving voice to wives of combat veterans from World War Two to present day Middle East Wars. The film will have its North Dakota debut in beach tomorrow, along with the Rodgers first film, Bravo! Common Man, Uncommon. Valor. Ken and Betty, welcome to Main Street.
Betty Rodgers
Thank you so much. It's a privilege to be here. Thank you.
Main Street
Before we discuss these important films, I want to let our listeners know that both documentaries will be screened at the New Bijou Theater Theater located on First Street Southeast in Beach tomorrow, Tuesday, October 17th, “I Married The War” kicks off the evening at 4 p.m., while “Bravo! Common Man, Uncommon Valor” follows at 7 p.m. There will be a $5 admission charge for each movie. And I also want to note that the film “I Married The War” will be shown this coming Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at the Fargo Air Museum, and there will be a $10 admission charge for that event. Both events include a Q&A session with the filmmakers and finally, Betty and Ken, I hope our listeners can take time to watch these impactful films. The first-person that counts in both of these films are so powerful. Why did you want to make these two films?
Betty Rodgers
Well, we started, as you mentioned, with our first documentary, “Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor,” telling the story or letting the veterans of Vietnam veterans tell their own stories about the 77 day siege at Khe Sanh in 1968, as we toured around the country with the film, I came to understand it. There were a lot of spouses out there, just like me, who have their stories to tell and and how their stories never been told. They've never been vocal about, you know, living with someone who the war came home with, I think.
Ken Rodgers
Most veterans that I know of the Vietnam War that saw combat have come to the conclusion that they caused problems in their family, and it's not anything that they PTSD didn't exist, TBI didn't exist. None of this stuff existed when we came home from Vietnam. And furthermore, there was the issue of the unpopularity of the war. So nobody allowed you to talk about any of this. So I think there was a lot of pent up stuff with all of us that we took out on our families. And so I think it's very appropriate in time for this story to come out. So we as a society can understand that there are long term ramifications every time we go fight a war.
Main Street
Betty, you talked to 11 wives in the film. Was it difficult to find them? Their stories are so very powerful. How do they feel telling their stories to you? It must have been difficult.
Betty Rodgers
It certainly was. We were very fortunate to have some wonderful referrals from people who heard that we were planning to make this film. One of them being Dr. Brian Meyer, who's a national expert on PTSD and other veteran issues. And he referred us to Ann Jackson, and we have friends. I found Precious Goodson online. She was writing a blog at the time about being a caregiver, which is, you know, military caregivers, the terminology used for those of us living with someone who was affected by war.
Main Street
And I want to ask you about Precious. She has given up so much to support her spouse.
Betty Rodgers
Exactly. Yes, she's very articulate about it. And your question was how did the women feel? They were all reluctant to expose themselves, to expose some of the issues and difficulties in their own lives with their spouse. And yet they realized that the only way other people would be helped is if they tell their story. And so that's what gave them the courage to speak out. And it was remarkable how they opened up and were very candid and helping people understand what's going on.
Main Street
Ken, you are a marine veteran, and were in the Battle of Khe Sanh, which is the focus of your first film “Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor.” Was this important for you and your wife, Betty? Was it helpful to your relationship with her to work on these projects? This is your life too. On
Ken Rodgers
On a number of levels is my life, you know? I mean, there's the life of being a veteran suffered, suffering from the issues of extreme fright and rage and all the other things that go with a lot of combat. And so you live with that for your life, but also. We've taken on telling these stories of both the veterans and the wives. And unlike a lot of filmmakers who make a film and move on, we live with these things. And so, yes, they are our lives there. We live this life together. We live these films together. We live with the people we've interviewed together, we live with the people that we've affected. And it's an ongoing thing. And we didn't know that when we got started. I mean, we were just going to tell a story.
Main Street
Betty this work must have been so helpful for you and your life with Ken and understanding so much not just with Ken, but with veterans everywhere.
Betty Rodgers
I believe it has. We've learned a lot more about the issues of PTSD. It's helped me to understand it better. The things that happened, the rage, the self-isolation and things. You know, when you learn about it, you become more understanding of it and, you know, learn how to adapt. And the women articulating these things did help me personally. And for example, precious as we spoke of just telling us about how she controls or manages their life with alarms on their on her cell phone and had never thought of that, you know, as using that as a reminder. Oh yes, I need to do this now. And, you know, simple things like that. But they're a big thing in the long run. You know,
Ken Rodgers
I was going to say, I think that “I Married The War” specifically has made me a lot more aware of my behavior, personal behavior, and what kind of. Reaction is going to cause around the house. And so I'm trying to be better at monitoring how I feel and how I'm going to react to a given situation.
Main Street
This film allows us to realize that families and even extended families are impacted by the service of their loved ones.
Betty Rodgers
Many times someone will come up to us and say, now I understand my dad, now I understand my uncle, now I understand my mother. That is so rewarding to us to know that we're helping people get a hold on situations in their lives that they've never understood before. For example, a very dear friend of ours never had a great relationship with her mother, and it was she didn't like her mother because of the controls that her mother was putting into place as they were growing up. And she said that she realizes now, after seeing the film, that her mother was the one in the middle managing the kids' behavior and trying to be sensitive to her husband's needs. And her mother is 94 years old. And they've just now come to understand each other and work through this old, old, long term relationship and turn it into something good.
Main Street
We are enjoying our conversation with Ken Rodgers, who is a marine veteran, and with his wife, filmmaker Betty Rodgers. The couple has completed their second major film project. Their new film is titled” I Married the War,” and it's a documentary giving voice to wives of combat veterans from World War Two to present day Middle East Wars. The film will have its North Dakota debut in Beach tomorrow, along with the Rodgers’ first film, “Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor” and their film “I Married the War” will also be shown this Thursday, beginning at 6:30 p.m. at the Fargo Air Museum. Both screenings will have a follow up Q&A with both Betty and Ken. Betty and Ken, while I was watching your film, “I Married the War,” the wives that you interviewed were so helpful in allowing me to understand that it's not just the wife of veterans that can be impacted by his or her service, but also children and even grandchildren.
Betty Rodgers
That's been the next hidden or untapped generation, you know? And you're right, it's not just the kids, it's the grandkids. And after the film is shown, so many of them come up and say, you need to do a third film. You need to tell the story about the kids. And we try to include some of that in this film so that people would get the idea, but that the kids have had stories, too. And it's not just children, it's adults, you know, adults who remember what it was like growing up with a World War Two father, for example, or Vietnam or the Korean War.
Main Street
As you were researching wives to include in your film. I'm guessing there were some wonderful people you visited with who told you, you know, for me, it would just maybe be too personal, are too hard for me to talk about these issues right now.
Betty Rodgers
You know, Terry Miller was the first interview we did. And when we were considering doing the film, we talked to her and she said yes. She was very eager to tell us so that other people would learn to watch for the signs, to have a sensitivity toward the possibility. And Carmen Hintson also refers to it in saying how quickly combat veteran can go into a tailspin. And to be, you know, on on the lookout for that dive. So they were very eager to talk about it, to help other people. And that definitely happened. But obviously the ones who are in the film were willing to speak out, and we had to have conversations ahead of time so that they were comfortable with the actual filming of the interview. But I think more to this point is the husbands who did not want their wives to tell their stories. We had one woman in particular that we, she and I, just hit it off beautifully, and we couldn't wait to get the interview scheduled and get it underway. And when I reached out to her to set an appointment, she said her husband told her, absolutely not. And it was, you know, we understood he was a rather public figure in their community. And he said he just didn't want anything to come out about their personal life. And this is a very personal story.
Main Street
Ken the first movie that you and Betty worked on was about a battle in the Korean War that you were in? The film will also be shown in beach tomorrow, and it's titled “Bravo!, Common Man, Uncommon Valor.” What's the movie about?
Ken Rodgers
Oh, yes. It's the story of, through the voices of 15 people that were all served in the same company of Marines at Caisson Bravo Company, first Battalion, 26 Marine Regiment. By the luck of the draw or whatever, we got a lot of casualties and some fairly serious encounters with the enemy. In 2009in Denver, we went to a reunion. There were a lot of guys from Bravo Company there, and Betty said to me, you know, we need to get these stories told because when these guys get up and walk away, these stories are going to leave with them. And I said, okay, sure. And then she told me we were going to make a film. We'd never made a film. We didn't know anything about filmmaking. So I said, sure, because I didn't think it was going to happen. But we have had the good fortune of having a number of these gentlemen willing to talk about the experience, and we interviewed them, and we were more and more than fortunate when we got through the interviews that we didn't have an editor, we didn't know what we were going to do for an editor. People that we had talked to didn't get what we were trying to do. So we were contacted by a gentleman by the name of John Nutt, who has like 65 films under his belt who volunteered to work with us. And I asked him why he wanted to do it, and he said he was a Vietnam vet and he wanted to tell the story. And he really is. It made filmmakers out us, this guy, because we didn't know.
Main Street
Ken and Betty, you have dedicated much of your time to making these films. And I guess the simple question is why?
Betty Rodgers
Oh gosh, for many reasons right now, less than 1% of our population serves in the military. And so there's really a world of people now who don't know what it means when we send people off to war. And with “I Married the War,” then it shows the implications, the long term human cost of war. So it's important also because right now there are families where the veteran has come home and the kids don't understand, you know, high school kids now - from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. It's to raise awareness. It's important to raise awareness with young people. You want to add to that?
Ken Rodgers
Well, I think, you know, it's just not families. It's like you join the military when and of course, I join the military. One of the circumstances of even being in the military was completely different now because there was a draft in effect. And so sometimes you joined whether you wanted to or not, because you were going to go anyway. But nobody tells you what it's like. Nobody tells you this is what you're going to encounter. Nobody tells you this is what's going to happen to you when you come back. So you are not prepared for the long term effects of fighting and war, and you're going to get I mean, if you get shot at and you get really frightened and you have to face death and you have to kill somebody. You're never going to get over the emotional impact of those things. And so I think it might be a good idea if somebody wants to tell you, hey, this is what's going to happen. And I think the military in some regards may be frightened of that, because we don't want you to scare our potential service people out. But in my case, it would have made no difference because I joined the Marine Corps, because I was interested to see what it was like and if I could cut the mustard. So if you told me all this stuff, I said, oh, okay. That just makes it more of a challenge. But I would have I think it would have helped me out a lot if I would have understood the emotional responses long term. I had my combat experience.
Main Street
I thought that in “I Married the War,” it was so very powerful that you interviewed spouses of veterans from many different generations and many different experiences and type of service.
Betty Rodgers
That was one of the things, the reasons that we decided to try to interview from the different major wars as far back as we could for us personally to find out if there was a difference or if it was all the same experience from from back then until now, and really back as long as there's been lore, you know, there's Greek mythology about these things and history long before World War II even so. And what we found was that it's pretty common. The thread is something that they each experienced. There was a little bit of a different attitude from World War II and the Korean War with the spouses who knew that things were different, that their husbands had somehow been altered for a lifetime. And they felt that why should they complain about their lives knowing what their husbands went through? And now there's a lot more awareness about taking care of yourself, about mental health, about how to deal with things and so the younger wives of combat veterans have more tools that they're aware of that they can use, and are aware that they are a segment of the population that needs to be cared for as well.
Main Street
So how do you go about promoting your film to let people know of the important work you've done?
Betty Rodgers
That's a question we ask every day. And thank God for people like Jared Dabrowski, who's organized this wonderful double feature in North Dakota. She understands. She feels it's important. And that's what it takes, is people who see the film, who want it shown. And it's been shown on a couple of PBS stations. And so we're, you know, we're just out there. If someone wants a film to come to their community, we will talk to them and see how we can work that out. So if you have another idea, we'll be delighted to hear about it. And thanks to people like you who are willing to talk about it on the radio, where people can tune in or tune in later to the link and hear about the film. So thank you.
Main Street
Are there more films to be made? What's next on your agenda?
Betty Rodgers
Take a nap! No, we're doing just what we're doing now, just continuing to show screenings. We have a film festival coming up in Columbus, Indiana in the end of October at the Yes Film Festival, at the Yes Cinema Theater. And then we have other people who are talking to us about bringing it to their communities.
Main Street
Ken Rodgers is a marine veteran and with his wife, filmmaker Betty Rodgers, the couple has completed their second major film project. Their new film is titled I Marry the War, and it's a documentary that gives voices to wives of combat veterans. The film will have its North Dakota debut in beach tomorrow, and the film will also be shown at the Fargo Air Museum on Thursday. Congratulations to you both, Betty and Ken, and thank you so much for joining us on Main Street.
Betty Rodgers
Thank you, Craig
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