Speaker 1: What I have a question. I'm looking from medical perspective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just had soup and kind of a bull o Bays,
Speaker 1: you do not have what's a bull base?
Speaker 2: Why did you say I was trying to impress you
Speaker 2: so good?
Speaker 1: Anyway, the point is, after I have a bowl of soup,
Speaker 1: it really sloshes around in my stomach, like I really hear.
Speaker 3: I've done that. I've always heard your stomach, They're going
Speaker 3: for years.
Speaker 1: How would you have heard my stomach?
Speaker 4: Because everything about you is noisy, your finger lickings, noisy,
Speaker 4: your stomach.
Speaker 1: In some cultures, you know, it's considered a compliment.
Speaker 2: I'm not doing this no.
Speaker 1: From Gimblet Media. I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight
Speaker 1: Today's episode Sergeant John Capon. Right after the break.
Speaker 5: When I told some people at work that I would
Speaker 5: be talking with someone on a podcast, they all immediately said, oh,
Speaker 5: for murder.
Speaker 6: It's about murder.
Speaker 1: Melanie has never murdered anyone, and at the risk of
Speaker 1: sounding like an old softy, neither of I. But the
Speaker 1: story you're about to hear does involve a murder of sorts.
Speaker 1: Thirty years ago, Melanie snuffed out the life of a
Speaker 1: family heirloom. But as they say on the Murder podcasts,
Speaker 1: more on that later. The story all begins in rural Minnesota,
Speaker 1: on the bean farm where Melanie grew up. All her
Speaker 1: friends lived miles away, so for company, all she had
Speaker 1: were a couple Measley TV stations.
Speaker 5: Channels that we can could get through our bonnied Ear antenna.
Speaker 5: Like there'd be days where like my dad's up on
Speaker 5: the roof, like, okay, tell me when you can see
Speaker 5: the picture.
Speaker 1: And on February seventeenth, nineteen ninety three, Melanie really needed
Speaker 1: to see that picture, because that was the night ABC
Speaker 1: was airing the television event of the century, a special
Speaker 1: starring Melanie's favorite.
Speaker 6: Artist, Billy ray Cyrus.
Speaker 1: Billy ray Cyrus.
Speaker 5: So cool, he could dance, great mullet, tight pants.
Speaker 1: Oily biceps, Miley's dad, hip, soul patch, denim clad. The
Speaker 1: special was.
Speaker 6: Called Dreams Come True.
Speaker 1: For Melanie, the name couldn't have been more appropriate. She
Speaker 1: loved Billy ray Cyrus so much that she'd spend hours
Speaker 1: plunking out a key breaky Heart on the family piano.
Speaker 1: The only problem Melanie was nine years old and the
Speaker 1: special came on after her time.
Speaker 5: So my plan was to record the concert on a
Speaker 5: VHS tape so I could watch it later.
Speaker 1: Melanie's parents kept all the VHS tapes in a dining
Speaker 1: room drawer, so she pulled one out from way in.
Speaker 6: The back, slided it in, and pressed record.
Speaker 1: Melanie's memory of what happened next is fuzzy. It might
Speaker 1: have been the next morning, as she got ready to
Speaker 1: watch the special in her PJS, that her mom asked, Hey,
Speaker 1: by the way, what videotape did you record that on?
Speaker 1: That would have been the moment Melanie learned the horrible truth.
Speaker 5: The tape that I had grabbed to record an hour
Speaker 5: of Billy Ray Cyrus over was an interview that my
Speaker 5: father had done from Vietnam while injured and hospitalized.
Speaker 6: And the interview was with Walter Cronkite.
Speaker 1: On this videotape.
Speaker 5: Yes, that had now been recorded over by Billy Ray Cyrus.
Speaker 1: Of course, as a nine year old, Melanie could only
Speaker 1: understand so much about what she'd done. She never watched
Speaker 1: the tape of her father's interview. She didn't know who
Speaker 1: Walter Cronkite was or anything at all about the Vietnam War.
Speaker 5: But you know, I was able to comprehend that this
Speaker 5: was something we weren't going to get back. I have
Speaker 5: an older sister, she's six years older, and I think
Speaker 5: she probably helped me realize that by rubbing it in.
Speaker 1: Why did you put this on?
Speaker 4: Here? Do you know what was on this?
Speaker 1: This is Melanie's older sister, Sam, who was old enough
Speaker 1: to understand the significance of the tape and to remember
Speaker 1: her father's reaction when he found out it had been erased.
Speaker 4: Oh, it was like World War seventeen because there was
Speaker 4: none of the interview left, like there wasn't like, oh,
Speaker 4: here's where the beginning of the interview is. And then
Speaker 4: it cuts to Billy ray Cyrus. This was just straight
Speaker 4: up Billy Ray Cyrus on stage singing.
Speaker 1: Can I ask, if you're a Billy ray Cyrus fan,
Speaker 1: did you feel like, well, this isn't all bad. I
Speaker 1: mean we lost a family heirloom.
Speaker 4: No, no, not be something where I would have said that,
Speaker 4: I would have considered that an equivalent swap.
Speaker 1: Look was it?
Speaker 4: Like, well, at least we've got Achy Breaky on VHS.
Speaker 1: Now that Melanie's an adult, she feels terrible about her
Speaker 1: mistake and wants to make things right. She wants to
Speaker 1: unerase the video and return it to her father, But
Speaker 1: after combing the CBS website emailing the network, her mom
Speaker 1: even mailed them a physical letter. Melanie's had no luck
Speaker 1: with finding a copy. She's not even sure the interview
Speaker 1: still exists. So much from that era doesn't. Until the
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies, networks with white TV shows once they'd aired.
Speaker 1: As a result, most Macy's Day parades are gone. Not
Speaker 1: to mention, the first episode of The Ed Sullivan Show,
Speaker 1: a surprise appearance from John Lennon on a nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: four Monday night football, only exists because it was recorded
Speaker 1: onto home video by a fan, a fan it would
Speaker 1: seem without a Billy Ray Cyris super fan for a daughter.
Speaker 1: What makes Melanie's guilt all the worse is that the
Speaker 1: video was the one thing she could have turned to
Speaker 1: to understand that time in her father's life.
Speaker 5: Because growing up Vietnam was just kind of a subject
Speaker 5: that we knew not to bring up.
Speaker 1: Everything from her dad's time in the army felt off limits.
Speaker 1: He kept his uniform deep in the closet, his purple
Speaker 1: heart in the back of a drawer. On the rare
Speaker 1: occasion their father did bring up Vietnam. It wasn't to
Speaker 1: share memories.
Speaker 5: There's times where my sister and I are just running
Speaker 5: around and you know, him commenting to us, pick up
Speaker 5: your feet. You wouldn't last five minutes in Vietnam. You
Speaker 5: guys would all be blown up.
Speaker 1: Pick up your feet. God damn it.
Speaker 4: You wouldn't have lasted four days, and.
Speaker 1: Now you would have been shot.
Speaker 4: So basically, all I knew about Vietnam was that I
Speaker 4: would not survived.
Speaker 5: I knew it was someplace where you needed to be quiet,
Speaker 5: and that he had gotten hurt there.
Speaker 1: John had been caught in an explosion of shrapnel in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: but his daughters only knew this because of the pieces
Speaker 1: of metal that would occasionally fall from his body.
Speaker 4: I remember him sitting at our kitchen table, and every
Speaker 4: now and then there would be this little piece of
Speaker 4: metal that would get worked out of an arm or
Speaker 4: a leg. He's like, well, that's shrapnel at shrapnel working
Speaker 4: its way out. And of course they would be very small.
Speaker 4: They weren't shiny, kind of like a very dark, dark gray,
Speaker 4: not black.
Speaker 1: I remember that, although Sam and Melanie are now adults,
Speaker 1: their understanding of their father's time in Vietnam is as
Speaker 1: piecemeal as when they were kids, and they're still too
Speaker 1: intimidated to broach the subject. So, as families tend to
Speaker 1: with big conversations, they kick the topic of Vietnam down
Speaker 1: the road to deal with someday. But given her dad's
Speaker 1: age and temperament, Melanie worries there might not be a
Speaker 1: some day.
Speaker 5: He recently was hospitalized with heart failure.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: He's okay, but you know, some imminent health issues and
Speaker 5: he's getting older, Like we don't have forever. It would
Speaker 5: be it would be nice to know him. And I
Speaker 5: feel like maybe this is something, you know, I kind
Speaker 5: of effed up as a kid, and maybe I can
Speaker 5: undo it.
Speaker 1: Getting the video back is something Melanie wants to do
Speaker 1: for her father, but she also wants to do it
Speaker 1: for herself. The tape feels like her strongest hope, possibly
Speaker 1: her last hope for understanding her dad. If she had
Speaker 1: the video, she could hear about her father's experiences at
Speaker 1: the moment he lived them, which is why she's come
Speaker 1: to me, her fellow Minnesotan. Let's see what we can do.
Speaker 6: Oh, you're so nice.
Speaker 1: The nicest thing that you could tell the Minnesotan is
Speaker 1: that they're nice.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I actually mean it.
Speaker 1: Well, I can't really know, but it's nice to be
Speaker 1: nice to the nice and no matter what state you're from,
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree it's always nice to
Speaker 1: hear from our trusted sponsors. Get ready to raise the
Speaker 1: roof with savings. During the conversation with Melanie, I'd asked if,
Speaker 1: after learning she'd erase the tape, she could bring herself
Speaker 1: through her shame, through her mortification to actually watch the
Speaker 1: Billie Ray Cyrus special.
Speaker 6: Heck, yes, I did, you did? Yes? Oh yes.
Speaker 5: The intro to this special, he has his back to
Speaker 5: the camera. He's wearing a cutoff T shirt, skin tight jeans,
Speaker 5: and it's just him like bopping back and forth with
Speaker 5: his mullet swaying.
Speaker 6: And that went on for like a minute.
Speaker 1: And a half before you even see his face.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, yeah, it's just the back of him.
Speaker 7: Man. That is confidence.
Speaker 5: I don't know if they were like wanting to showcase
Speaker 5: his body or just the mullet.
Speaker 1: Was it like in an arena?
Speaker 5: Yeah, and there's you know, ladies bawling and.
Speaker 1: Wow like Beatlemania, billy mania. My mission is clear. I'll
Speaker 1: need to begin my research by watching the Billy ray
Speaker 1: Cyrus special for myself. Well, maybe not need to, but
Speaker 1: watching an hour of Billy ray Cyrus seems easier than
Speaker 1: search for a fifty year old news clip. In the special,
Speaker 1: Billy stands on stage as the audience shouts for him
Speaker 1: to take off his shirt, but Billy is demure, keeping
Speaker 1: it classy.
Speaker 8: How is my mom gonna feel when she wakes up
Speaker 8: to read the flat Woods Kentucky Times Tomar and finds
Speaker 8: out that her baby boy came all the way to
Speaker 8: Reno and gotten naked on his first ABC special.
Speaker 1: Yet sadly, Billy succumbs to peer pressure.
Speaker 6: I lived my life on my fans, and if that
Speaker 6: lets you run out too.
Speaker 1: Just when it feels like things cannot possibly grow anymore,
Speaker 1: sexually unhinged, Billy reaches behind his back and in one
Speaker 1: fluid motion, unleashes the rear end of his lush mullet.
Speaker 1: It wafts free in the arena vents like the main
Speaker 1: on a majestic stallion.
Speaker 8: Sing it to me one time Reno and is his tongue?
Speaker 9: Where am I going on?
Speaker 3: Ria?
Speaker 5: I'm not get home.
Speaker 1: I want to emphasize this is what supplanted John Capon's legacy.
Speaker 3: This is where I was born raised.
Speaker 8: This is McDow Elementary School.
Speaker 1: The special is also filled with autobiographical interstitials. Billy visits
Speaker 1: his old elementary school, where the kids receive him as
Speaker 1: a hero. He stops by his hometown church, and then
Speaker 1: he races up the walkway of a small, unassuming house.
Speaker 1: It's one of those moments you'd see on American Masters
Speaker 1: where some American Master journeys back to his childhood home.
Speaker 8: This is Cindy, my ex wife, Sandy, how you doing.
Speaker 1: It's fine, But the house is in fact not Billy's
Speaker 1: childhood home. It's his ex wife, Cindy's home.
Speaker 8: This is the lighty that had the courtesy to set
Speaker 8: my stuff out in the yard about four point thirty
Speaker 8: in the morning into drisling right.
Speaker 1: Cindy, he explains, is the inspiration for the song where
Speaker 1: am I gonna live when I get home?
Speaker 8: And she was laying on this couch when I said, uh,
Speaker 8: where am I gonna live when I get home? My
Speaker 8: old lady stowed out everything home.
Speaker 3: She meant what she said when she wished.
Speaker 8: I was dead.
Speaker 1: All the while Cindy stares into the camera teeth clenched
Speaker 1: in a smile. The special ends with one last number,
Speaker 1: one highly ironic number. It's a song called Some Gave All.
Speaker 8: This is a song I wrote about a Vietnam veteran
Speaker 8: I met back in Huntington, West Virginia, in the spring
Speaker 8: of not ten eighty nine.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, Billy Resyris is well known for
Speaker 1: his work on behalf of veterans, and so as one
Speaker 1: West Virginian vet is being elevated in song, another Minnesotan
Speaker 1: vet is being brought low by song, his service to
Speaker 1: his country erased by don't to my heart?
Speaker 6: Oh Hi, Hi, how are you good?
Speaker 3: How are you?
Speaker 6: I'm good?
Speaker 1: Best thing I found the clip of your father get.
Speaker 6: Out of Town.
Speaker 5: That's crazy, that's amazing, that's wonderful.
Speaker 6: Sounds like a lot of digging.
Speaker 1: I want to say yes, but I can't. One night,
Speaker 1: over dinner with friends, I brought up the difficulty of
Speaker 1: trying to find a news clip that's over fifty years old. Oh,
Speaker 1: said Matt, my journalism professor friend. You just have to
Speaker 1: search the Vendorbilt TV news archive. He pulled out his phone.
Speaker 1: He had the app right there. And when you search
Speaker 1: Melanie's father's name, Sergeant John Capon. The clip comes right up.
Speaker 5: Well, you can't make it sound like it was super easy,
Speaker 5: otherwise I'm going to feel like an even worster.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, it was very hard. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: the reams of microfiches that we had to go through.
Speaker 1: Now that we have the interview, Melanie and I strategize
Speaker 1: about the best way to return it to her father,
Speaker 1: when to do it, and where to do it, which
Speaker 1: is somewhat complicated.
Speaker 5: So fun fact, my parents are still married, but they
Speaker 5: live in separate houses that are half a mile apart
Speaker 5: with a lake in between them.
Speaker 1: Do you think he would open his home to us?
Speaker 6: No, you say that without hesitation, No, he won't.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: All entertaining, Melanie says, is done at her mom's place,
Speaker 1: never at her dad's.
Speaker 5: I haven't even been in there for probably fifteen twenty years.
Speaker 6: His house, Yeah, where I grew up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What about your sister? Has she been in there more recently?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 1: And what about your mom?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 5: I think my mom like maybe broke there, wants to
Speaker 5: try to get something.
Speaker 1: And she had to break in there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's like growing up, we couldn't have an answering
Speaker 5: machine because he didn't want people listening to his.
Speaker 1: Messages, seeing is how private Melanie's dat is. I wonder
Speaker 1: how he'll feel about the recovered interview being accompanied by
Speaker 1: a stranger with a microphone. But I hope for the best.
Speaker 1: So if things went really well at your mother's, what
Speaker 1: do you think the likelihood is that we would go
Speaker 1: over there for cake and coffee afterwards?
Speaker 6: Two percent?
Speaker 1: I like those odds because two percent is how I
Speaker 1: like my milk when it's clouding my coffee. Then I'm
Speaker 1: drinking alongside the cake I'm being served in someone's house
Speaker 1: that no one's been inside in twenty years. The interview
Speaker 1: only exists as a digital file, so I decided to
Speaker 1: have a transferred to VHS. Presenting John with a tape,
Speaker 1: I'll have a certain poetic symmetry, So I start calling
Speaker 1: video transfer services, the first of which informs me they
Speaker 1: don't put things on VHS tapes, and in fact, quote
Speaker 1: do exactly the opposite. Eventually, though, I find a place
Speaker 1: willing to flout the Darwinian chain of media evolution for
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty dollars. It feels like a bargain,
Speaker 1: and so videotape in hand I set off to see
Speaker 1: the Capons. I'm on my way to Melanie's mom's house
Speaker 1: to lure her dad over. Melanie told him she'd written
Speaker 1: into a radio show that was featuring children of Vietnam vets.
Speaker 1: The host is coming over to do a story about
Speaker 1: me and Sam. She told them, maybe you can show
Speaker 1: up to answer a few questions, and once he does,
Speaker 1: that'll be when I spring into action, surprising him with
Speaker 1: the tape. Oh, that was it. The house is on
Speaker 1: a dirt road, nothing but farmland and sky for as
Speaker 1: far as the eye can see. The Capons live in
Speaker 1: a town called Elbow Lake in rural Minnesota. It's a
Speaker 1: kind of place where everyone knows everyone, going back generations.
Speaker 5: Hi.
Speaker 1: I greet Melanie outside her mom's house. There's a dog
Speaker 1: running around and a big American flag waving in the wind.
Speaker 1: For COVID reasons, we all settle down in the garage
Speaker 1: where the airflow is better.
Speaker 3: Hello.
Speaker 1: Melanie's mom, Diane, and her sister Sam are already seated inside.
Speaker 1: Sam's four year old runs up to say Hi, Hi, Hello, Hello,
Speaker 1: nice to meet you. And there's Melanie's dad, Sergeant John Capon.
Speaker 1: He's large and imposing. I introduced myself and ask if
Speaker 1: I can hook him up with a mic. I clipped
Speaker 1: the microphone onto John's lapel. John, can you tell me
Speaker 1: what you had for breakfast?
Speaker 2: I had a piece of toast and some pretzels and
Speaker 2: a hard boiled egg and two domus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the videotape is in my backpack. I consider how
Speaker 1: the best surprise John present the tape with a flourish,
Speaker 1: without a flourish, perhaps with a hearty handshake. Would it
Speaker 1: be offensive to hand it over with a salute? But
Speaker 1: before I can do any of these things, John surprises me.
Speaker 2: Needs to be more of this, What more younger people
Speaker 2: finding out what the hell went on?
Speaker 1: How many years were you in Vietnam?
Speaker 2: I was only there for about eight and a half
Speaker 2: nine months.
Speaker 1: And just like that, John is talking.
Speaker 2: No, I'll tell you what. When he got off the airplane,
Speaker 2: they opened up the plane, the air conditioned plane door,
Speaker 2: and it was one hundred and twenty gays, just like
Speaker 2: somebody threw a hot pail of water in your face.
Speaker 1: Maybe having a stranger present somebody doesn't have to worry
Speaker 1: about burdening is actually helpful. Or maybe John just needed
Speaker 1: someone to pose the question.
Speaker 2: And I'll never forget this. They took us stone.
Speaker 1: Like, And so the Sunday conversation becomes a Today conversation.
Speaker 1: For the next couple hours, John shares stories that his
Speaker 1: daughters have never heard, stories that even Diane, his wife
Speaker 1: of many decades, never heard. It turns out that a
Speaker 1: lot of what John did in Vietnam was called long
Speaker 1: range reconnaissance patrol, which meant acting as a scout, tiptoeing
Speaker 1: through enemy territory. John was often the one who stayed
Speaker 1: out in front, the most exposed of all the men.
Speaker 2: Anything that don't look right isn't right. If you've seen
Speaker 2: a leaf that was turned a little color where the
Speaker 2: bottom of the leaf was up, there's something there was there?
Speaker 7: Really, are you just exaggerating?
Speaker 2: Well? Is that exaggerating? Because there'd be a trip wire there?
Speaker 2: And the other thing is if you were walking along
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden the birds didn't start singing anymore,
Speaker 2: why because there's somebody else there.
Speaker 1: You had to be careful about smoking too, John says,
Speaker 1: or showering because the Vietcong might smell you. You had
Speaker 1: to be on alert twenty four to seven. And of
Speaker 1: course you had to pick up your feet and walk
Speaker 1: real quietly. John shares the everyday things, like the food
Speaker 1: he ate, sometimes bananas, which he said were the best
Speaker 1: he'd ever tasted, plucked right from the trees. John looks
Speaker 1: from Melanie to Sam, telling them about the guys he
Speaker 1: served with and the nights they spent playing cards and
Speaker 1: talking about their childhoods. He also shares the horrific things,
Speaker 1: of which there were many.
Speaker 2: Always used to tell us war as hell than it is.
Speaker 2: But there's one time we had come along and there
Speaker 2: was a school teacher with their head cut off, sitting
Speaker 2: on a post. She was like a twenty five year
Speaker 2: old woman. So that's the worse to humanity as far
Speaker 2: as I'm concerned.
Speaker 1: Eventually, John winds his way to the day he was wounded.
Speaker 1: He'd been sent to check out an area by the river,
Speaker 1: and there was a moment, he says, when he noticed
Speaker 1: something feeling off no more than a leaf, turned it
Speaker 1: a strange way, and suddenly his men were caught in
Speaker 1: a hail of gunfire. John was shot in the leg.
Speaker 1: A helicopter came to evacuate him, but as John limbed
Speaker 1: towards it, he stepped onto a booby trap. That's when
Speaker 1: the shrapnel embedded all over his body and even in
Speaker 1: his eyes, rendering him unable to see.
Speaker 2: And I woke up on my birthday, so that would
Speaker 2: have been three days later. I remember this one nurse
Speaker 2: telling me happy birthday. Yeah, okay, yeah. And then anyway,
Speaker 2: she said, well, you've got some very important there's people
Speaker 2: here from CBS television.
Speaker 1: She said that what John and his family have not
Speaker 1: discussed the news clip in easily thirty years. Hearing John
Speaker 1: bring it up now on his own, I'm struck by
Speaker 1: how baked into the story of a service it is,
Speaker 1: John says. So that he'd look presentable for television, the
Speaker 1: nurse spent a lot of time washing his hair. He'd
Speaker 1: be in bed with his eyes and face bandaged over,
Speaker 1: but at least his hair would look nice. And on
Speaker 1: December thirtieth, nineteen seventy one, the nation tuned in to
Speaker 1: see John on TV.
Speaker 2: Felt kind of privileged. You know how many people are
Speaker 2: on Walter Cronkite News, You know, not very many.
Speaker 1: And John intended to commemorate that privilege by preserving it
Speaker 1: in the form of a videotape cassette, but alas.
Speaker 2: Got wiped off of the achy breaky heart.
Speaker 1: It seems that Justine baked into the story of his
Speaker 1: military service, as the TV news clip is so too
Speaker 1: is it's erasure and what it was erased by?
Speaker 2: I hate Billy because he raised my table.
Speaker 6: I actually hi the tape. Let sleep Billy out of it.
Speaker 5: When's the last time you watched it? Right before the
Speaker 5: achy Breaky insid, Yeah, where did you get it?
Speaker 7: The guy who was my.
Speaker 2: Officer, he knew what was going on with this filming
Speaker 2: and stuff, so he had his dad recorded and that's
Speaker 2: how I got it.
Speaker 1: And then Melanie tells John the news.
Speaker 6: Well, Jonathan got it.
Speaker 3: He did.
Speaker 5: That's the whole reason we contacted him was to get
Speaker 5: this for you.
Speaker 1: Really, more than during any of the stories he told,
Speaker 1: even the one about his being wounded, hearing about the
Speaker 1: news clips recovery makes John grow more emotional than I've
Speaker 1: seen him all day.
Speaker 7: Do you want to take a look at it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: Sadana CD.
Speaker 1: Well as I offer John an impromptu lecture on the
Speaker 1: importance of poetic symmetry. Melanie sets up the VCR Lucky
Speaker 1: for us, her mom still uses one. Then we pop
Speaker 1: the tape in and hit play. As it turns out.
Speaker 1: There are a few things Melanie got wrong about the clip.
Speaker 1: For one, Walter Cronkite was out that day, the anchor
Speaker 1: replacing him as a man named Charles Collingwood. The segment
Speaker 1: opens with him seated at his desk beside a graphic
Speaker 1: about Vietnam War injuries.
Speaker 8: Some of the best evidence that American involvement in South
Speaker 8: Vietnam is drawing to a close may be found.
Speaker 2: In the military hospitals and medical evacuation units.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 1: As the tape plays, John shuts his eyes and leans back.
Speaker 1: Sam says, this is something she'd seen her dad do
Speaker 1: at his father's funeral. It's hard to tell what John
Speaker 1: is thinking. Bob Simon, the anchor, turns the segment over
Speaker 1: to the reporter, Bob Simon, and this is the second
Speaker 1: thing Melanie had wrong. John was not merely interviewed. He
Speaker 1: was the subject of a documentary news report. Simon and
Speaker 1: his film crew began following John right after he was
Speaker 1: injured out in the field. Simon shouts to be heard
Speaker 1: over a helicopter. It's the helicopter that's headed to evacuate John.
Speaker 3: We're going to pick up an American. He's been hit
Speaker 3: by shrapnel.
Speaker 1: And then we see him, twenty three year old Sergeant
Speaker 1: John Capon. He's lying on a stretcher, completely still, looking
Speaker 1: like he could be dead.
Speaker 9: Sergeant John Capon is rushed aboard the chopper.
Speaker 1: Melanie and Sam stare at the TV screen as the
Speaker 1: camera cuts to a close up of John's face, which
Speaker 1: is completely bloodied. Breathing is normal, says a man in
Speaker 1: aviator glasses of John's wounds. He says, it's just superficial.
Speaker 1: Seeing his young self. John lets out a pained sound,
Speaker 1: but is riddled with shrapnel.
Speaker 3: His wounds look worse than they really are.
Speaker 1: John is taken to a surgical unit in Long Bin.
Speaker 1: There we see him operated on by a frenzy of
Speaker 1: people in medical masks, his insides on full display across
Speaker 1: the living rooms of America.
Speaker 9: Four surgeons work on Sergeant Caupon for more than an hour.
Speaker 9: They remove dozens of metal fragments. Fortunately, the wounds are
Speaker 9: all superficially, aside from an injury to his left eye,
Speaker 9: which may cause problems.
Speaker 1: The potential problem Simon's referencing or blindness. So much shrapnel
Speaker 1: had entered John's eyes that at this point he still
Speaker 1: was without his sight. The last thing he'd heard before
Speaker 1: going under was the surgeon saying, I don't know if
Speaker 1: this guy's going to see again, and I don't know
Speaker 1: about this leg. We might have to cut that off.
Speaker 1: Melanie later tells me that the whole report made her mad,
Speaker 1: the way they kept underplaying everything her dad went through,
Speaker 1: calling it superficial when all through her childhood she watched
Speaker 1: him pick shrapnel from his body. After the surgery, John
Speaker 1: lies shirtless, teeth smashed in bullet hole in his left leg,
Speaker 1: and eyes bandaged over. Simon posed his questions at his bedside.
Speaker 3: Hey, you feeling okay? Okay? Nowhere?
Speaker 2: Oh tt and a leftne and my hands kind of
Speaker 2: sorry yet what about your face?
Speaker 3: Ah, not too.
Speaker 1: Bad not to worry about. It's like John's echoing back
Speaker 1: the tone of the report. He's being stoic, protecting his parents,
Speaker 1: who he knows are back home in Elbow Lake watching,
Speaker 1: but he probably also understands that nobody really wants to
Speaker 1: know how he's doing. By this point in the war,
Speaker 1: America didn't see the likes of Sergeant John Capon as
Speaker 1: a hero so much as a living reminder of an unwinnable,
Speaker 1: unpopular war that they wished would go away.
Speaker 3: What does the doctor tell you about your eye?
Speaker 2: Ah says that it should be okay.
Speaker 3: How do you feel about it? You're worried? Oh?
Speaker 7: No, scene worse.
Speaker 1: Melanie later points out one the bitter irony of her father,
Speaker 1: saying he's seen worse when at the moment he's literally
Speaker 1: unable to see anything, and two that like any kid,
Speaker 1: the wounded soldier on the hospital caught can't really grasp
Speaker 1: what's to come. Even though her father would regain his
Speaker 1: vision when he returned home, he would become prone to
Speaker 1: angry outbursts, outbursts she remembers vividly throughout her childhood. He'd
Speaker 1: also begin drinking a lot, trying to blot out his memories.
Speaker 1: Hearing fireworks, John would think AK forty seven and instinctively
Speaker 1: hit the floor, and to this day he still dreams
Speaker 1: of the Army buddies he lost. Melanie always thought of
Speaker 1: the video as the sole record of her father's story,
Speaker 1: a story she'd erased, But seeing the report all these
Speaker 1: years later, it seems like John's story was erased long
Speaker 1: before Melanie got to it. A troop of USO entertainers
Speaker 1: tromp through the hospital entertaining. A glamorous woman approaches John
Speaker 1: blonde hair. If I'm bleeding in Vietnam, right, I'm going to.
Speaker 3: Stay here your mind wonder.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful, and then it's over.
Speaker 3: Bob Simon, CBS News Long bin.
Speaker 1: All told the entire news report lasts no more than
Speaker 1: six minutes.
Speaker 5: I can't see you.
Speaker 1: As John stares at the screen, a nineteen seventies perfume
Speaker 1: ad plays It's jingle, repeating over and over again. I
Speaker 1: can't seem to forget you.
Speaker 5: Say so, you haven't seen that for how many years?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Thirty?
Speaker 5: The cadence of your voice is the same, but your
Speaker 5: voice sounds so much different.
Speaker 7: Recognize your father and that.
Speaker 6: Guy, No, not at all. I mean it looks like
Speaker 6: a young, blown up kid.
Speaker 2: That's where it was, so we were everybody was young.
Speaker 2: The average person that fought in Vietnam was nineteen years old.
Speaker 1: When John returned home to life in a peacetime town,
Speaker 1: he wasn't welcomed as a hero. In fact, he was
Speaker 1: advised by the army not to wear his uniform so
Speaker 1: as not to advertise his service in Vietnam. As it
Speaker 1: was in Elbow Lake, John was shunned. He remembers attending
Speaker 1: the local basketball game and how he ended up sitting
Speaker 1: in the bleachers alone. All the other spectators had moved
Speaker 1: away from him. Just like the country at large, the
Speaker 1: town wanted to distance itself from the likes of John.
Speaker 1: John describes one afternoon when he stopped in at the
Speaker 1: local American Legion Hall for he figured it'd be the
Speaker 1: one place in town where he could comfortably enjoy a
Speaker 1: drink among peers. There were a few older vets hanging
Speaker 1: out inside.
Speaker 2: They were in there drinking with their wives, some pictures
Speaker 2: of beer sitting on the table. And well, there's one
Speaker 2: guy come walking up to me, and he said, are
Speaker 2: you one of them losers? And I said, excuse me, yeah,
Speaker 2: you one of them Vietnam veterans that you gave us
Speaker 2: a bad reputation. And I said, I'm a Vietnam veteran.
Speaker 2: I'm in here to have finished my beer, and I
Speaker 2: want to leave. You leave right now. I said, I'm
Speaker 2: going to drink my beer first. I paid for it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do that.
Speaker 8: Well.
Speaker 2: Let He grabbed me by the arm, and I grabbed
Speaker 2: him by the and just shoved him. He fell over
Speaker 2: backwards onto that table all full of beer and it
Speaker 2: went flying all over the place. The bartender come out
Speaker 2: with a night stick and he was going to club
Speaker 2: be over the head, and I grabbed him by the
Speaker 2: wrist and I twisted it. Two of them, I found
Speaker 2: out later. Two of them were World War Two veterans
Speaker 2: who had never been in combat, and there was another one.
Speaker 2: I was a Korean veteran who had never left the
Speaker 2: United States.
Speaker 1: John says he only had one friend who also saw
Speaker 1: combat in Vietnam. Many were for f and didn't have
Speaker 1: to serve, So while his classmates were getting on with
Speaker 1: their lives, John was left struggling to cope. And yet
Speaker 1: his experience also showed him the expanse of the world.
Speaker 2: I was in a restaurant here about a year ago,
Speaker 2: and there was people in there talking about Black lives
Speaker 2: matter and all that there, and then in order to
Speaker 2: shoot him, all and all that there. And I said,
Speaker 2: how many black people do you know? Nobody knew any
Speaker 2: He said, how many have been on the ground county
Speaker 2: for more than two months out of your life? None
Speaker 2: of them? And nine people. And I'd have probably been
Speaker 2: sitting there right with him. I wouldn't have had those
Speaker 2: life experiences without being in the military. That to me,
Speaker 2: that to me is worth a lot.
Speaker 1: For better and for worse. The moment John left for Vietnam,
Speaker 1: his life diverged from everyone he'd grown up with. Melanie's nephew,
Speaker 1: John Z has been coming in and out of the
Speaker 1: garage while we've been talking.
Speaker 5: John Z, do you know that grandpa was in the army?
Speaker 1: Should Maybe John never fully felt like the country, CBS News,
Speaker 1: or even Elbow Lake really wanted to know what he
Speaker 1: saw and how he felt. But hopefully after today j
Speaker 1: family does. Although John has opened his Achi breaky heart,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look like he's about to open his achy
Speaker 1: breaky home or offer me any achy breaky cake. So
Speaker 1: we all adjourn to the living room where the family piano.
Speaker 10: Sits, and don't worry, there will be plenty of miskeys,
Speaker 10: just like there are in life.
Speaker 1: Knowing what an advocate Billy ray Cyrus is for veterans,
Speaker 1: I'd asked if he could show up to Elbow Lake
Speaker 1: and serenade John, girl.
Speaker 5: You can burn my clothesmend I am gone.
Speaker 1: And while Billy's people initially said that that sounded like
Speaker 1: a great opportunity for Billy, it fell through as did
Speaker 1: my more modest request for Billy to sing over speakerphone,
Speaker 1: and my even more modest request that he leave a
Speaker 1: voice mess at John John's phone. And so in the
Speaker 1: end I asked Melanie if she could dig out her
Speaker 1: old Billy Ray Cyrus sheet music.
Speaker 5: Or you can tell my lips to tell my brother Cliff.
Speaker 1: As Melanie sings and Sam plays the out of tune
Speaker 1: piano and John checks his phone, possibly while wishing he
Speaker 1: was wearing a pair of noise canceling earphones, I stand
Speaker 1: back and save her the poetic symmetry.
Speaker 8: To tell my heart, my aby, breaky heart. He might.
Speaker 6: Tell my heart, my heart. Just don't think you don't understands.
Speaker 8: Now that the fern entures returning to its goodwill home,
Speaker 8: now that the last month's rant is scheming with.
Speaker 5: The damaged possible take this moment to dissolve.
Speaker 3: If we mess him, if we talk.
Speaker 5: Of Felder from the Dames at Accident Lee Bos.
Speaker 1: This episode of Heavyweight was produced by senior producer Khalila
Speaker 1: Holt and me Jonathan Goldstein, along with Moheeney mcgauker. Our
Speaker 1: supervising producer is Stevie Lane. Production help from Domiano Marquetti
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Emily Condon, Matt Carlson, Peter Mullen, Sanya
Speaker 1: de Sani, Mitch Hansen, Jonah Delso, and Jackie Cohen. News
Speaker 1: footage courtesy of Veritone and CBS News Archives, and concert
Speaker 1: footage courtesy of the Billy Ray Cyrus Team. Bobby Lord
Speaker 1: mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson,
Speaker 1: and Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found on
Speaker 1: our website Gimbletmedia dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme song
Speaker 1: is by The Weaker Thands courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email us at Heavyweight
Speaker 1: at gimletmedia dot com. Back with a new episode next week.
Speaker 7: Wow, I think.
Speaker 5: That's as good as we're gonna get.
Speaker 1: You recognize some of it