Larry Heinemann & Jacob Lawrence

I decided to read Larry Heinemann's story because i was interested in the fact that he was a Vietnam Veteran. I was so interested by this because, from my past experience, most if not all war veterans especially Vietnam veterans have a number of story's. Even though Larry's story's were not so much about the Vietnam War itself, i was still impacted by what he had to say. I quickly learned about Larry when he said, "In my household, there was never any political discussion. We were raised to just submit to the draft, stiffly and strict." Larry continues through his story's talking about how he took a lot of "shit" from people and how differently he had to deal with people from being at home to being in the army. Two interesting story's that he had were him talking about how he drove a convoy in the army and would have guns around him and had to watch out for suspicious activity, and when he got home he drove a bus where he was surrounded by people who pissed him off and there was not a whole lot he could do about it. The second story that really grabbed my attention was when he said, "I heard there was tear gas and cops beating up kids. When i was in Vietnam, we used tear gas to flush people out of tunnels."
I chose to read Jacob Lawrence's story not because i love art, but simple because i just wanted to see what an artist artist had to say. Something that shocked me that Lawrence said was, "It is ironic that people like myself benefited from the Great Depression." "It lasted about five years, a wonderful, wonderful period." This surprised me so much because it was the first time i heard someone say that they benefited from the Great Depression, and i feel like it will certainly be the last time.