Containing two complete versions of the same play (a fully-mounted stage production and a readers theater version for nine actors), Purple Hearts is based on the award-winning novel How Can You Mend This Purple Heart, winner of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation James Webb Award and the Military Writers Society of America Silver Medal. It is a true story that chronicles a journey of love, redemption, sorrow, and joy. It is a journey of pain, anger, and hope. But most of all, it is a journey of the human spirit and its triumph over the most impossible odds.
Imagine: The year is 1969 and your whole life is ahead of you. You're only eighteen years old. Fresh out of high school, you do what thousands of others did for their country--you joined the Marines. Now imagine... Less than a year ago, you were dancing at the Senior Prom. You left home just over five months ago. And today, both of your legs have been blown off in Vietnam. And now, you find yourself in the comfort and healing space of a U.S. Naval Hospital with combat-wounded comrades; all young boys, all severely wounded.
Purple Hearts is not a story about combat. It is a story about boys who returned from combat as men; men who left the better part of their youth, a bit of their souls, and a lot of their flesh in Vietnam. It's a story about their longing to recapture the spirit of boyhood and rekindle the optimism and fearlessness of youth. And it's about their struggle to be whole again--or at the very least, to feel whole.
In 2025, our nation--a country that has finally begun to learn to separate anti-war from anti-servicemember--will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of that war. Today, I believe there is shared remorse among many of those who misplaced their anger about the war at the returning Vets, and maybe even among those who just ignored all of it. We were not so nuanced in 1969, when these men came home.
This story is an opportunity to give so many what they never saw and enlighten them--and maybe even help heal some of their decades-long emotional wounds--and finally say, "Welcome Home".
Sincerely,
Terry L. Gould
