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Hurricane Street

By the end of the summer, having rested up sufficiently, I head back to California, where with the help of my friend and real estate agent Sally Baker, I rent a small house in Marina Del Rey along the ocean at 24 1/2 Hurricane Street. It is there that I hope to finally settle down and begin writing my book.

I still remember the night I put that first sheet of paper in my typewriter, thinking of all the things I wanted to say. I feel a powerful urge that’s hard to describe, only that I just know I have to write this book.

I love the night and work for hours as if no time has passed at all. I am exhausted and my back aches, but none of that seems to matter. Convinced that I am destined to die young, I struggle to leave something of meaning behind, to rise above the darkness and despair.

For the next several nights I continue to write as the words flow, seeming as if they will never stop. I feel wonderful inside, tired but completely consumed by my writing. I drink a couple cups of coffee and then with a new surge of energy work for another hour or so as the bright lights of the morning begin to fill the room. I neatly stack all the pages next to the typewriter after holding them proudly in my hands, then transfer out of my wheelchair and onto my water bed.

* * *

Everything is progressing nicely when, a few nights later, for some reason I stop writing. I don’t know what to do. For the next several hours I sit behind my desk waiting for the words to come—but there is nothing. I feel frustrated. I can’t concentrate. Why am I even writing this book? I ask myself. What am I doing here on Hurricane Street? The truth is, I can’t stop thinking about the war and the guys at the Long Beach VA hospital—Marty, Danny, Jafu, Willy, and Nick. I can’t abandon them. Wasn’t I the one who promised I would be there if they needed me? Wasn’t I the one who said I would never let them down? I have to do something.

For a moment there was hope with the Patients’/Workers’ Rights Committee, a belief that we could make a difference and that our lives could be improved. But they had infiltrated our group, set veterans against one another, did all they could to stop us. Who do these people think they are? How dare they try to stop us from expressing ourselves. What kind of country is this? What kind of democracy is this, where men who sacrificed almost their entire bodies are kept from exercising those very rights and freedoms they supposedly fought for? I am angry. There has to be another way.

My thoughts drift, and sometime around one a.m. I type the letters ARM. I sit staring at the letters, just three letters, ARM.

American Revolutionary Movement, I think to myself. Yes, that’s what I’ll call it!

ARM will be the answer. We will be the spark that will set off a raging prairie fire, sweeping away everything in its path. It will be a powerful organization, the vanguard of a great movement. Veterans from all across the country will join us. Millions will take to the streets, citizens from every walk of life, all of them will come, all of them will march with us, their fists raised high in the air, chanting and crying out for justice, for an end to this madness!

I continue to work on my idea throughout the next few days, but I soon begin to feel a queasiness in my stomach as I sit behind my rolltop desk. There is something about the name ARM that troubles me, something that makes me feel vulnerable.

Once again the nightmares return and I find myself trapped in a violent storm at sea. There is a terrible howling of the wind and a helpless feeling so profound that it leaves me shaking like a frightened child upon awakening.

At first I merely brush it off, but the next night is even worse. This time in my nightmare, a squad of heavily armed cops comes crashing through the door of my house with their guns drawn, cursing and screaming, calling me a traitor and threatening to kill me. “Get up, you fucking son of a bitch! Get up, you motherfucking Commie traitor!” yells one of the cops who looks exactly like Mr. Warden, my fifth-grade history teacher who warned us that “the Chinese Communists will someday have a billion people,” and that “Americans everywhere should be afraid!” The cops then drag me out of my bed and through a long and darkened hallway into an elevator, and take me down to the ground floor, where they pull me across a lawn covered in broken glass, laughing and cursing at me, slamming me against a brick wall where they say they plan to execute me immediately. I keep screaming to them that I am paralyzed and can’t stand up for the execution, and they are kind enough to provide a rickety old chair once used by the condemned Irish revolutionary James Connolly at his execution in Dublin, not long after the 1916 Easter Rising. I still remember them pointing their guns at me and firing as I jerked awake, my heart pounding in my chest.

Sensing right away what the dream means, I feel angry and frightened all at the same time. There has to be a way I can still accomplish my vision of a powerful revolutionary organization without the government cracking down on us before we even get started. How will we do it? What will be our approach? I have to be careful. I am already afraid that the government and police are tapping my phone and watching my every move. Perhaps a different, less provocative name for the group might be better.

I sit in front of my typewriter staring at the blank sheet of paper for a long time until finally I have it. It won’t be called the American Revolutionary Movement; instead I will call it the American Veterans Movement. This makes sense. I remember typing the letters AVM on the paper and then feeling a great sense of relief. Finally I have the name I’ve been looking for, a less provocative one, but still powerful. I work feverishly that night, as if there’s no time to lose. I type the words American Veterans Movement again and again, then the slogan, We will fight and we will win!

Just as quickly, I decide to design buttons and membership cards for the new organization. I draw a circle, and inside the circle I make a square with two lines through it. Above the top line I write the word red, in the middle the word white, and below the bottom line the word blue.

Across what is to become the red, white, and blue American flag, I write AVM in bold letters. Above the flag I write the words, WE WILL FIGHT, and below, WE WILL WIN! Outside the circle I then add, AMERICAN VETERANS MOVEMENT.

On the back I draw a crude map of the United States and across it I boldly print the letters AVM, giving the impression that it is a big national organization. No one even knows we exist! I think, laughing to myself. It’s nothing more than a dream in my head as I sit alone on Hurricane Street that night.

The following morning I get up early and can’t stop thinking about the AVM. After transferring out of the water bed and into my wheelchair, I head straight to my desk where I look at the drawings I did, feeling even more excited about the new organization. My mind fills with all sorts of ideas. I grab a blank sheet of paper and continue designing a membership card for the group. Across the top I type in the words, AMERICAN VETERANS MOVEMENT OFFICIAL MEMBERSHIP CARD. Below that, the obligatory name, first and last, address, phone number, and finally, at the very bottom, rank and specialty while in the service. I write down some basic rules and regulations for the new organization: veterans from every war will be welcome, no dues will be collected, and everyone will be treated equally and with the utmost respect.

That afternoon, after looking through the yellow pages, I find the AAA Flag & Banner store in Culver City. I call and ask the guy on the other end of the line if they make custom flags, banners, and buttons. “As many you want!” he exclaims.

The following morning I get in my hand-controlled car and head over to the store, all my drawings and designs for the AVM next to me on the front seat. I arrive around noon, transfer into my chair, wheel myself in, and am immediately met by a smiling bald-headed guy who seems to have just awakened from a nap.

“What can I do for you today?” he asks in a tired voice as he rubs the sleep from his eyes, straightening up a bit and taking a deep breath.

“I don’t know if you remember, but I’m the guy who called you yesterday about the flags and banners and buttons I need to have made up.” I hand him my papers with all the drawings and designs, explaining to him exactly what needs to be done.

“No problem,” he says.

I leave the store and head back to Hurricane Street.

About a week later I return to Culver City, hardly able to contain my excitement. I can’t wait to see the finished product. The guy unfurls a thirty-foot white canvas banner, and in large, bright red letters scrawled across it are the words, AMERICAN VETERANS MOVEMENT, just as I had envisioned that night on Hurricane Street.

“Wow! It’s beautiful!”

He then lifts a large cardboard box onto the counter filled with a number of small flags and hundreds of shiny red, white, and blue AVM buttons. The sign just above the register reads, BELIEVE IN YOUR DREAMS, and I think back to something I heard on the radio about how great entrepreneurs can envision their creations long before they become reality. That’s exactly how I feel now.

“They’re beautiful,” I say to the guy. “They look just the way I hoped they would!”

All of a sudden it seems to be coming together. I thank the guy, paying him with what’s left of my monthly disability check, money I should be using for rent. I drive back home with the AVM buttons, banner, flags, and membership cards in the trunk of my Oldsmobile, feeling happier than I have in a long time. My book can wait. Now I have to organize the others and turn my dream into reality.

The next morning I drive south down the 405 freeway to the Long Beach VA, where twenty minutes later I pull into the Spinal Cord Injury parking lot, transfer into my wheelchair, and head into the hospital. I really don’t know where to start first, and I feel an almost overwhelming desire to tell everyone about the new organization. But who can I trust? Who should I approach first? These are big plans and it feels like a lot is at stake. I finally decide to go to the cafeteria, get some lunch, and take a little time to think about what to do next.

As I enter the cafeteria I spot my friend Bobby Mays sitting alone at one of the tables, staring blankly out the window.

“Hey, brother, how ya doin’?” I shout as I wheel my chair next to his.

* * *

Bobby and I first met the year before, just as I was leaving D ward one afternoon and he was walking out too. As we passed each other I remember he suddenly stopped, looked straight at me, and started shouting, “Ron Kovic? Are you Ron Kovic? I can’t believe it’s you!” Months before, his wife Sharon had given him a copy of the July 19, 1973 Rolling Stone article about me, “Ask a Marine,” by the draft resister David Harris, with a large centerfold photo of me sitting in my wheelchair, taken by the photographer Annie Lebowitz. He told me he had read the article countless times and had been carrying around that issue of Rolling Stone in his backpack for months. “I knew it was you!” he shouted, hugging me with that tremendous enthusiasm of his, almost lifting me out of my wheelchair. How could I not love Bobby from the start? He made me feel great. He was one of the sweetest, most generous men I had ever met and even gave me the shirt off his back on several occasions when I was down and out and running low on clothes.

He had curly red hair, sparkling, intense, almost crazy blue eyes, and the handsome good looks of a movie star. “I always knew I was going to meet you someday!” he yelled. Like long-lost brothers we bonded that afternoon, and I knew we would always be friends.

Without missing a beat, Bobby talked nonstop for nearly an hour, telling me how he had become addicted to heroin while serving with the air force in Saigon, and was later arrested, tried, and sentenced to nine months of hard labor at Vietnam’s infamous Long Binh Jail stockade, describing the terrible abuse he had suffered in solitary confinement.

He eventually became involved in a riot at LBJ in August of 1968. Bobby was initially accused of being one of the ringleaders of the rebellion, though the charges were eventually dropped. After finally being released from the LBJ stockade in April 1969, he was forced to serve the rest of his tour of duty before being allowed to return home.

In October of 1969 he headed back to Indiana a broken man, distrusting all authority and hooked on heroin. After wandering around for several months, depressed, homeless, and jobless, he joined the local chapter of the Vietnam Veterans against the War (VVAW), where he met the beautiful nineteen-year-old Sharon McAlester, who got him off drugs and eventually agreed to marry him.

They hitchhiked out to the West Coast in early ’73 with, from what Sharon later told me, nothing more than twenty-nine dollars and the packs on their backs. Bobby was now clean and sober and got a job as a nurse’s aide for one of the paralyzed veterans at the Long Beach VA and began taking caregiver classes at the hospital, determined to leave the drugs behind and straighten out his life.

He and I soon became the best of friends, with Bobby on several occasions inviting me down to his place in Long Beach for one of Sharon’s delicious home-cooked meals. He would later join me in organizing the Patients’/Workers’ Rights Committee and attended every meeting we had.

Bobby really missed me when I was away, telling me he got depressed after the Patients’/Workers’ Rights Committee fell apart and that he’s anxious to know what we plan to do next. He’d heard rumors I was back in town and wants to know about everything I’ve been doing. “What’s up, brother? What’s happening? Anything new?” he asks.

His eyes light up as I begin telling him all about the AVM. Then I share my idea of setting up a meeting with Senator Alan Cranston to discuss the conditions on the SCI ward. Later in the afternoon I show him the buttons and banners in the trunk of my car, explaining how we will get all the guys we know in the hospital to join us, and will take over the senator’s office and begin a sit-in, not leaving until our demands are met.

“Will he actually meet with us?” Bobby asks.

“I don’t know. That’s what we’re going to find out. Come on, Bobby, follow me!” I say as I wheel over to a pay phone, in that crazy and spontaneous way of mine back then, and put in a couple of quarters. “I’m calling the senator’s office over at the Federal Building in Westwood right now!”

Bobby stands next to me with a curious look on his face.

“Hello, is this Senator Cranston’s office? Who am I speaking with, please? . . . Hi, this is Ron Kovic and I’m a paralyzed Vietnam veteran calling from the Long Beach veterans hospital. I’m calling today because we’ve got some serious problems down here on the Spinal Cord Injury ward and we’d like to set up a meeting with Senator Cranston as soon as possible.”

The guy, who by the sound of his voice I can tell is very young, thanks me for my service, telling me that the senator will be out of town for the next few weeks. However, the senator’s aide offers to meet with us the following week on Tuesday, February 12, at two o’clock, promising that he’ll take notes and share all our concerns with the senator. “Will that work for you?” he asks in a chirpy voice.