Veterans Day 2016: Looking Back and Looking Forward

Every Thursday in November at 9 p.m., Rhode Island PBS features films profiling local veterans with universal stories of war-time duty and extraordinary courage. These films are the work of award-winning filmmaker Tim Gray (Tim Gray Media), the World War II Foundation, and award-winning cinematographer Jim Karpeichik. These films not only document history for us now and for future generations, but the films tell it through poignant stories of the uncommon valor of those who lived the horrors of war and survived.

At 1 p.m. on Sunday, November 13, of Veterans Day weekend, the World War II Foundation marks the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor with a special advance screening of their newest documentary, Remember Pearl Harbor, at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Providence. Admission is free for veterans. Tickets for all others are available online or at The Vets box office.

November 3 - Navy Heroes of Normandy
The film chronicles the building and dedication of the first-ever United States Navy monument in Normandy, France. Dozens of interviews with Navy D-Day veterans are included. Won New England region Emmy Awards for writing and photography.

November 10 - Uncle Jack: The Manhattan Project and Beyond (Rhode Island PBS Premiere)
The Manhattan Project in World War II was an enormous undertaking that required the efforts of many of the world's most brilliant scientists. Thousands of physicists, mathematicians and engineers were needed to design, build and test the world's first atomic weapon. The United States government did everything in its power to attract these individuals to the top-secret program. One of those assigned to the project was the filmmaker's uncle, John Edmund Gray. Regarded as a pioneer in the field of nuclear energy John Gray was front and center as the evolution of that power from wartime use to peaceful means came to fruition.


November 17 - Omaha Beach: Honor and Sacrifice
On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the green 29th Infantry Division faced some of the most brutal fighting on Omaha Beach. In June of 2014, a handful of remaining members of the 29th Infantry Division made a final trip back to Normandy to recognize the 70th anniversary of D-Day. The World War II Foundation was along as these veterans shared their stories and looked over the bluffs of Omaha Beach one last time. The aging veterans also visited the Normandy-American cemetery to say their final goodbyes to their friends who never left Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. Local villages and towns also honored the men of D-Day with dozens of celebrations around Normandy.

November 24 - The American St. Nick
The Nazis had outlawed the annual Christmas-related celebration of St. Nicholas Day when they occupied Luxembourg in 1940. Even though American GIs had liberated the town of Wiltz in late 1944, the citizens had no resources left with which to mark their very special holiday. So a group of soldiers of the battle-weary 28th Infantry Division got together and brought back hope and joy back to a small town. One GI, Corporal Richard Brookins, played the role of Saint Nick, costume and all. His sleigh was a U.S. Army jeep. Brookins and the men of the 28th passed out candy and baked goods to the children of Wiltz.

Beginning in 1947, the annual St. Nicholas day became the American St. Nick celebration, complete with someone dressed as Saint Nick in a jeep re-tracing the exact route Dick Brookins took in 1944. A shocked Richard Brookins knew nothing about the annual American Saint Nick celebration in his honor until 1977 when he was invited back to re-create his role. Thousands of people turned out to welcome him. is a World War II Christmas story that spans seven decades and continues to this day.

Stay tuned for more Rhode Island PBS news mid-November about Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, December 7.

New and Emmy-Nominated Documentaries Featured in Tribute to Veterans

On Memorial Day, May 30 at 9:30 p.m. (following the National Memorial Day Concert from Washington, DC at 8 p.m.), Rhode Island PBS presents the television premiere of War Journal: The Incredible World War II Escape of Major Damon "Rocky" Gause. The film, by World War II Foundation and Tim Gray Media, tells the true story of one of the most impossible escapes in World War II. American airman Damon "Rocky" Gause escaped a prison camp on the Bataan Peninsula in 1942, swam to nearby Corregidor Island, and then sailed with U.S. serviceman William Lloyd Osborne in a leaky 20-foot fishing boat from the Philippines to Australia. Fifty-two days and 3,200 miles later, the two Americans reached freedom. Despite facing typhoons, constant threats from Japanese ships, submarines and airplanes, a lack of water and food, and even a visit to the world’s largest leper colony, both Gause and Osborne survived to recount their harrowing ordeal.

Filmed in Bataan, Corregidor, and in Manila, the 90-minute documentary is narrated by three-time Emmy Award-winning daytime soap opera star Chandler Massey. Actor Kyle Chandler (NBC’s Friday Night Lightsand the films Argo, Zero Dark Thirty and Carol) provides the voice of Rocky Gause, with Tom Kane voicing William Lloyd Osborne. Using the journals of Gause and Osborne, archival footage and photos, and interviews with Gause's relatives and Army associates, War Journal chronicles the unimaginable tale of two American servicemen who survived one of the deadliest conflicts in World War II.

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Also in May, Rhode Island PBS is pleased to encore two World War II Foundation and Tim Gray Media documentaries recently nominated for Boston / New England Emmy Awards. These two films will share 10 p.m. Thursdays in May with two more documentaries from the same award-winning filmmakers Tim Gray and Jim Karpeichik. 

The first Emmy-nominated work airs Thursday, May 5. Omaha Beach: Honor and Sacrifice recalls the devastating events surrounding the landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, as well as the touching reunion 70 years later. Read the story here.



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On Thursday, May 12, Eagles of Mercy tells the story of two American 101st Airborne (Screaming Eagles) medics caught in a church in Normandy, France during the opening hours of D-Day. Outside a savage battle raged all around them. The church changed hands several times with American and German forces over-running the village of Angoville-au-Plain.

Inside the small church the wounded wore both Allied and Axis uniforms and civilian clothing. The American medics, Robert Wright and Kenneth Moore of the 2nd battalion, 501st PIR, treated all who were brought into the 12th century Norman church, no matter whether they were friend or foe.

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On Thursday, May 19, Escape in the Pacific recalls the events of April 4, 1943, when ten American prisoners of war and two Filipino convicts executed a daring escape from one of Japan’s most notorious prison camps. The prisoners were survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March and the Fall of Corregidor, and the prison from which they escaped was surrounded by an impenetrable swamp and reputedly escape-proof. Theirs was the only successful group escape from a Japanese POW camp during the Pacific war. Escape from Davao is the story of one of the most remarkable incidents in the Second World War and of what happened when the Americans returned home to tell the world what they had witnessed.

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The second 2015 Emmy-nominated film from the World War II Foundation and Tim Gray Media airs Thursday, May 26 at 10 p.m. America St. Nick describes the special 1944 Christmas party organized by American soldiers in the small town of Wiltz in Luxembourg for the children - for all the townsfolk - who had not been able to celebrate their traditional St. Nicholas Day in nearly 5 years because of the war.



National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences - New England Chapter will announce this year's Emmy winners during its award ceremony on June 4.

Remembering Those Who Served - Memorial Day 2015

Remembering Those Who Served 

Every day, 1,500 World War II veterans die. In just 10 years, very few will be left to tell their stories. 

  

Award-winning Rhode Island filmmaker Tim Gray and The World War II Foundation, have undertaken the task to capture and share as many of the stories and experiences of World War II veterans as possible, before the sources of this remarkable history have passed forever. 

To commemorate Memorial Day, Rhode Island PBS presents a collection of documentaries, including the television premiere of Omaha Beach: Honor and Sacrifice, by Gray and cinematic artist Jim Karpeichik. Many of these stories prominently feature Rhode Islanders telling their stories, some for the first time since the war.

Escape in the Pacific 1943 - May 4 at 10 pm 

Eagles of Mercy - May 11 at 10 pm 

Navy Heroes of Normandy - May 18 at 10 pm 

Above and Beyond - May 24 at 6 pm 

Omaha Beach: Honor and Sacrifice - May 25 at 9 pm 

World War II: Saving the Reality - May 25 at 10 pm

Omaha Beach Trailer

For more information, visit World War II Foundation site.

The annual PBS favorite National Memorial Day Concert will air live on Sunday, 5/24 at 8 p.m.; Tuesday, 5/26 at 12:30 a.m.; and Saturday, 5/30 at noon.

updated: May 22, 2015

WWII Service of Former RI Governor Bruce Sundlun is "Above and Beyond"

Years before he became Rhode Island's 71st governor, Bruce G. Sundlun experienced one of World War II's most dramatic escapes from behind enemy lines. Tim Gray Media and the World War II Foundation tell Sundlun's story in Above and Beyond: The Incredible Escape of Jewish-American B-17 Pilot Bruce Sundlun from Nazi-Occupied Europe in World War II. Filmed on location in Belgium, the documentary is narrated by Sundlun’s daughter, Kara, who traveled back to the village of Jabbeke in Belgium, to re-trace her father’s footsteps in World War II. Rhode Island PBS presents Above and Beyond both as part of our ongoing series of local documentaries, Rhode Island Stories, on Sunday, November 9 at 6 p.m., and as a prime time special on Monday, November 10 at 9 p.m. 

During overseas active duty beginning in June 1943, Bruce Sundlun, a Jewish-American college student, served as a B-17 Flying Fortress pilot in the England-based 384th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force at Grafton-Underwood Air Base. Sundlun’s plane, the Damn Yankee, was shot down over Nazi-occupied Jabbeke, Belgium on December 1, 1943, after being damaged by flak and attacked by German fighter planes following the bombing of Solingen, Germany. It was the “Yankee’s” 13th mission over Europe. Five of the crew were killed, four others captured by the Germans.

After being smuggled out of Belgium on stolen bicycles and hidden by Catholic priests, and after six months' time cooperating with the French Resistance under the code name Salamander, Bruce Sundlun made several attempts to enter neutral Spain in an effort to escape back to England. However, after deciding that there was too much danger of capture or loss in the snowy Pyrenees, Sundlun made his way - once again on stolen bicycles - north-eastward across France where he finally escaped into Switzerland.

Before escaping into Switzerland, Sundlun had once again engaged with the Maquis (French Resistance fighters) in acts of sabotage against German Army units.

Upon entering neutral Switzerland, Bruce Sundlun was recruited by Allen Dulles, working out of the U.S. Embassy in Bern to reenter France under the auspices of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to act as a spy and bombardment spotter for the Allied invasion of Marseilles (Southern France) in August 1944.

Following WWII, Bruce Sundlun became a very successful businessman, advisor to presidents and the 71st governor of the State of Rhode Island.

Source: Tim Gray www.wwiifoundation.org

Remembering D-Day

To mark the 70th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, Rhode Island PBS presents stories from local veterans, filmed by award-winning filmmakers Tim Gray and Jim Karpeichik:

Thursday, June 5 at 8 pm - Day of Days June 6, 1944 

Thursday, June 5 at 9 pm - Navy Heroes of Normandy 

Thursday, June 5 at 10 pm - D-Day the Price of Freedom

 

Visit our Web site for encore dates and times. Visit the World War II Foundation for more information about the history film projects, and about the most recent Emmy awards. 

World War II: Saving the Reality

Over the course of five decades, Kenneth W. Rendell amassed the largest and most comprehensive private collection of original World War II memorabilia in the world. Directed by Tim Gray and narrated by Dan Aykroyd, World War II: Saving the Reality opens the doors to this private museum in Natick, Massachusetts.

Rendell, a South Boston native who lives in Wellesley, opened the 10,000-square-foot museum in 2004 and has filled it with 7,000 military and historical artifacts of World War II he has collected. He provides a guided tour of the museum's 30 exhibits, which chronicle the end of World War I and the rise of Nazism to the start of World War II and the fight in Europe and the Pacific.

The period artifacts, both small and large, include propaganda posters, Hitler Youth uniforms, Winston Churchill's original siren suit, French Resistance clothing and radios, spy gadgets, General MacArthur’s license plate, a Japanese admiral's uniform, Field Marshall Montgomery's signature beret and even a Sherman tank. Some of the museum's more significant documents include General Patton’s copy of Mein Kampf and his personal map of Sicily, the original order to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and a revealing letter from Dwight Eisenhower to his wife.

Supplemented with archival photos and footage, the film also features interviews with more than 50 World War II veterans, civilians and Holocaust survivors who offer absorbing first-person accounts of these historical events and speak to the complexities, moral ambiguities and emotional toll of the war.

Rhode Island PBS airs World War II: Saving the Reality on Monday, January 7 at 10 p.m.

"Rhode Island Stories" presented in April and May

Saturday nights, WSBE is the neighborly place to be, thanks to Rhode Island Stories – a collection of independent films with a uniquely "Rhode Island" flavor. For an hour (beginning at 7 p.m.), visit with neighbors - local people, places, and events that punctuate our history and reflect contemporary issues. Some subjects will be familiar; others will be more obscure. Either way, you can count on gaining deeper insight and new perspective you had not considered.

The films chosen for Rhode Island Stories have a strong local connection: the documentaries are made by Rhode Islanders, or feature Rhode Island in some significant way. The current collection includes a mix of new and previously broadcast programs, and may be a single hour-long documentary or two 30-minute films.

Rhode Island Stories airs Saturdays at 7 p.m., with re-broadcast on Sundays at 11 p.m., on WSBE Rhode Island PBS, digital 36.1, Cox/Verizon/Full channel 08 (Comcast cable subscribers should check local listings for correct channel number), DirecTV 36, and Dish 7776.

April 18 – Lizbeth: A Victorian Nightmare – The documentary film explores the legend and lore of Lizzie Borden, the woman accused - and acquitted - of killing her father and stepmother with an ax. The documentary looks at not only the facts of the murder, but at the "popularity" of the crime and the culture of those who follow it. The film started as a master's thesis project by the director, Bristol Community College film instructor, Ricardo Rebelo. He said people are drawn to Lizzie for different reasons, even almost 120 years later. For some, it's the Victorian-era that draws them; for others, it's the fact that an upper-class woman is embroiled in the murder controversy. For still others, they like a good spooky story, or true crime element. No matter what the draw may be, the crime – and the woman at its center – remains one of the most studied in American history.

April 23 – Free Wheelin' with Susan Boyce (7 p.m.) – In this breezy half hour, Rhode Island performer Susan Boyce sets off in her Vintage Airstream to explore the warm winters of Florida.

Greatest Salesman in Rhode Island (7:30 p.m.) - From the lost manuscript of Rhode Island's Pulitzer Prize winning author Edwin O'Connor (The Last Hurrah), comes a short story about the power of motivation. Six-time New England Emmy® Award-winning director Robert Rose produced the film in the style of a 1950s TV comedy, complete with laugh track and swipe transitions. The Greatest Salesman in Rhode Island is rich in historical and cultural content, and is peppered with humorous local Rhode Island references. The cast features Trinity Repertory Company’s Stephen Thorne; Bob Colonna, winner of the prestigious Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts; and Susan Boyce, national touring performer.

April 30 – Home Across Lands - The documentary chronicles the journey of a small group of resettled Kunama refugees as they strive to become self-reliant, invested participants in their new home, Rhode Island. Guiding their transition is the local resettlement agency, International Institute of Rhode Island, which connects them to the resources they need as they work to establish a new community and a better life for their families. Director / producer John Lavall is an Emmy® Award-winning producer and director from Pawtucket, Rhode Island. His work has been broadcast nationally, his films shown in festivals throughout the country.

May 7 – Pre-empted for the Rhode Island PBS Spring Auction

May 14 – Drinking, Driving, Lethal Choices (7 p.m.) – In this half-hour documentary, drinking and driving is explored through powerful stories told by family members, victims and offenders, and those who have survived catastrophic crashes with debilitating brain and spinal cord injuries. This is the second in a drunken driving educational series targeting youth by award-winning producer and director Deborah A. Hoch of Seekonk, Massachusetts. Her first documentary, The Impact of Your Choice: Underage Drinking and Reckless Driving, won a New England Emmy award and was honored with four Bronze Telly Awards for outstanding achievement in Film and Video.

Hidden in the Leaves (7:30 p.m.) – The half-hour documentary spotlights the efforts of University of Rhode Island entomology professor and director of the Center for Vector-Borne Disease, Thomas Mather, and his team, to help people understand the risks of tick-transmitted disease. Directed by award-winning filmmaker and URI film media professor, Mary Healey Jamiel, the film explores the serious dangers lurking in an increasing number of rural, suburban, and even semi-urban landscapes in the eastern United States.

May 21 – Ilha dos Meus Sonhos (Island of My Dreams) - Ricardo Rebelo, an Azorean immigrant, local filmmaker, and instructor of TV and film courses at Bristol Community College, captures the untold stories of Portuguese emigration to the Fall River area, particularly the two waves of emigration from the Azores in the 1950s and the 70s. The film also explores how Portuguese immigrants have maintained the culture of their homeland here, while the Azorean culture has changed since the revolution.

May 28 – D-Day: The Price of Freedom - This film captures the moving stories and memories of five Rhode Island veterans who return to Normandy 60 years after the invasion. Throughout the documentary, former paratroopers, gunners, landing craft operators and others representing the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy share their harrowing tales of survival. This film was written, directed, and filmed by Tim Gray and Jim Karpeichik.