"Love Separared in Life...Love Reunited in Honor"
Film Demonstrating Honor Among Soldiers and Military Families
Among Films Announced by the San Diego Black Film Festival,
January 30-February 3, 2019
San Francisco -The San Diego Black Film Festival has announced films to be screened during its 17th Anniversary, January 30-February 3, 2019. Among them is "Love Separated in Life…Love Reunited in Honor" written and directed by San Francisco publicist Jackie Wright, founder of Wright Enterprises and Jack LiVolsi, CEO and Founder of San Francisco's Jackson Street Productions. LiVolsi co-directed and edited the short documentary.
Given these days of racial derision that we are facing again in our country, festivals like the San Diego Black Film Festival are very significant since they give balance to the public discourse on race, " said Jackie Wright, founder of Wright Enterprises. "Many thanks to Director Karen L. Willis, J.D. and team for providing a platform for films like ours that demonstrate the best in America. We removed a Fallen Vietnam Hero from a deteriorating segregated cemetery reburial at Arlington National Cemetery with other military families giving honor at the ceremony."
"Love Separated in Life…Love Reunited in Honor" will be screened Saturday, February 2 in the 12:30 p.m. block at the ArcLight Cinemas LaJolla Village in San Diego with films: "Harlem Schools 1970;" "Three Women" and "Asia A."
For more details about the film San Diego Black Film Festival visit www.sdbff.com.
Background on "Love Separated in Life…Love Reunited in Honor"
The Internet allowed the Wright Family to find out the circumstances of the March 9, 1964 death of Sp5 Wyley Wright Jr., whose last mission two weeks before returning home was as an honor guard for Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara of San Francisco, who was viewing the troops.
The description of the UH-1B 62-01961 helicopter crash in the Mekong River near Sedac was recorded in "The Gold Book" and posted on the Internet. "Love Separated in Life…Love Reunited in Honor" chronicles the removal of Wright from a segregated cemetery in Jacksonville, Florida to the reburial, March 10, 2014 at Arlington National Cemetery fifty years and a day after his death. The short documentary film also shows, two of his four children, who were 10 years old, 8 years old, 5 years old and 6 months at the time of his death, finding an Army base in Vietnam named in Wright's honor. "The Shannon Wright Compound" named for 1Lt. Kenneth A. Shannon and Sp5 Wyley Wright of the 114th Aviation Company (Knights of the Air) in Vinh Long, Vietnam was not known to the Wrights until the 21st Century. Growing up, they had no idea that their father was so respected by his fellow soldiers.
As children the Wright siblings had no knowledge that during the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, their father, a Black man, who helped desegregate the U.S. military, was honored with his White fellow comrade. For years, The Wrights have seen their father's name on the Vietnam Memorial Wall and had no idea that the name that followed his, Kenneth A. Shannon was connected in honor.
The highlights of the film include the family meeting a Houston, Texas based soldier, George Moll, who was 19 years old a the time he said Sp5 Wright mentored him and Mrs. Ginger Shannon Young, the widow of Fallen Hero 1LT. Kenneth A. Shannon, who died March 15, 1964. A year after the Arlington Ceremony, The Wright Sisters met the family of the Vietnamese photographer, who made the treasured last wedding anniversary gifts for Wright for "the love of his life," his wife of eleven years, Ouida Fay. A tribute to soldiers and their families, the film demonstrates how people of different races came together to give honor to the fallen.
The uniqueness of the short documentary is found in a clip that did not make the film, Vietnamese tour guide, Hung Phan Ngoc, sings the anti-war song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," as a request of Jackie Wright as they completed a ceremony on the Mekong River honoring the 58,000 Fallen U.S. soldiers and the Fallen Vietnamese people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXx3_bQ1-Jk
Related to the film, "Love Separated in Life…Love Reunited in Honor" is an e-book released May 2018 by Jackie Wright via smashwords.com. "Dead Men Tell No Tales; But their Children Do" can be found at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/834396.
For more information about future screenings and screening opportunities for organizations, contact Jackie Wright at loveseparatedlovereunited@gmail.com or 415 525 0410.
"Love Separated in Life...Love Reunited in Honor" Trailer:
https://vimeo.com/236990657