| Show s Two men i from very different worlds are brought together by the risks and hazards of war F t 9 I : I 1 i ' ' 1 4 '4 - D 4 r 11 A1 '''''' '11V 1'7 - c 1 Nzt itt- U 1 2 sammilaymmoretortmeadookaaa:masitommommanommoommudinroini ' Ufa B "Zip" today at be ) VER THE YEARS black friends and relatives who visited my home for holidays 'birthdays graduations and funerals would wonder who that white fellow was—sitting right in the middle of this family of black people We and being treated like blood-ki- n call him Zip and many an eyebrow would be raised when the Southern accent escaped his lips Everyone would wonder "What was this white Southerner doing in the Terry home?" The answer lies in what happened in Vietnam on one day in May 1963 On that day—a few weeks after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr plunged black America into rioting and despair—one black American and one white American learned the meaning of i( ktoldp II BY WA Cant and the author Wallace Teny Inetaant itittnorial Wastingtoa DC in the brotherhood and streets of Saigon 1I first went to Vietnam on assignment for Time magazine in 1967 it led to a cover story dealing with the performance of the black soldier in our first fully integrated war When 1I didn't wilt under fire Time asked me to return It was the war of my generation—the biggest story in the world then—so I said 1I would go Zahn B "Zip" Grant first went to with a Vietnam in the mid-'6unit then stayed on as a correspondent for Time one of the few newsmen who could speak Vietnamese In 1967 he came back home and in one of his first stateside assignments stood up to black rioters in Newark That's when I met him—at the Time Washington bureau "Gutsy little white dude" I thought He wore handmade self-sacrifi-ce 0s military-intelligen- LI ACE ce Italian suits and drove a Porsche "Cocksure of himself too" I thought Zip had picked up his nickname playing football We played some touch together He wasn't bad But he couldn't play basketball worth a lick And when he opened his mouth out fell the wits A Southerner! From South Carolina! I had grown up in Indiana afraid Of the South In Texas during World War II my uncle—in the uniform of a second lieutenant—was dragged from his car and beaten by white men because my grandmother used the toilet at a service station After I saw the former slave markets on a trip to Charleston I had nightmares It was Zip's character though that made me forget his accent He told me that when Harvey Gantt the first black to enter Clemson arrived on campus in 1963 he had gone to sit with Gantt in the dining hall when no one else would "As far as many people were concerned" Zip told me "I was the 'chief nigger-love- r' I was only doing what was right" That was Zip—tough brave and fair Our friendship—between a white Southerner and a black man from the "John could be bleeding to death" Zip says to me So we jump Mini-Mo- into a and set ke out to find him When vve hear bullets whistling we stop and get out walking crouch in a - I NoFith—ormwanasy darerlignsfo rith9698t t:laes 'not a good time for me Eight years into my profession 1I had seen too much death covering the civil rights movement and the urban riots Close friends like NAACP leader Medgar Evers and a white minister Jim Reeb had been murdered in the South Dr King my son's godfather would be next Now 1I would be back in Vietnam When1I wondered would God lower the curtain on my play? I Saigon 19681am living at the Embassy Hotel 1I am hungry for a guide to Vietnamese culture and 1I find one—John Cantwell a Time correspondent from Australia He loves Asia its people its languages He can speak three dialects of Chinese We are like roommates because we are the only Time reporters staying at the hotel One night John and!I take a bagful of jaa 4 N3 I taa--- ' '' Ne i' - 4 ' 11 1 ! e'''' - fl'i ivi - ' 4m ta- iit -- r ' '' John Cantwell a follow carrespandont was a sodden victim of a Wet Coos strike force TERRY 1 PAGE MIMEO I 4 JULY 1 199 e PARADE MAGAZINE 1carmimitgwsomomodzwoPmowi Qn |
