In The Shadow Of The Blade: A Story Of Reconciliation and Coming To Terms
In the Shadow of the Blade, a documentary film that follows the flight of a restored UH-1H Huey helicopter, leads to people and places stretching across 10,000 miles of America. It leads to memories and loved ones and the never-ending pain of great loss. It leads to Landing Zones scheduled and Landing Zones found along the way, and last-minute requests from people who ask: "Can you land here?"The heart of the film is found in veterans who still look skyward at the sound of a helicopter's blades slapping the air; it leads to families imagining a loved one dying alone in a faraway place. It leads to a reunion of a door gunner and the man whose life he saved; a sister's flight with her brother's commanding officer and his pilot as they remember the last day of his life; a former POW who will climb into a Huey for the first time since he was shot down in 1968; a daughter's flight in the co-pilot's seat in memory of her father who died in Vietnam; a Gold Star Mother who still grieves for a son; a memorial built in a mountain valley by the father of a Marine.It leads to Mary Padilla in Rio Rancho, N.M., when she says of her grievously wounded husband coming home from Vietnam in a wheelchair: "Love is not a burden."In October 2002, Patrick and Cheryl Fries of Austin, Texas, lifted off with their Arrowhead Film and Video Production crew in a restored Huey to fly across America to record what would become a remarkably moving film. The creator of scores of documentaries, television commercials, and corporate branding campaigns over a 20-year career, Patrick Fries set out on a project like no other he'd seen in his career, calling the people he ran into in the course of making the film "some of the most inspiring people I have met."He found he had made a movie that changed lives, including his."You'd think that after 33 years the wounds would be healed up," Patrick Fries said. "I had no idea that by scratching the surface the wounds would be so fresh."His wife, Cheryl, creative director and producer of the film, underscores the impact of the stories they recorded."We knew the stories would be moving, but what we didn't know was the power that would be unleashed," she said.About four years ago, on a long helicopter flight across Texas, Patrick Fries chatted up the pilot, a Vietnam veteran. Encouraged by the conversation, the pilot recounted experiences from the Vietnam War. He talked about the Hueys flying in and out all day. It seemed as if the air was never empty. Always there was a Huey up there somewhere.Fries, a longtime documentary filmmaker with no connection to the Vietnam War either through his own experience or with family members, reflected on the films of the war. He had seen many documentaries on Vietnam and thought it had all been done. There was nothing to tell.Then he asked the pilot a question: What if you could fly one of those Hueys across America and take it back to the people who depended on it every day?"The thing that struck me was that every person, whether they were administrative or a cook or a grunt or a pilot, they all had a Huey story," Fries said. "The one common thing to all those people was the Huey. What really fascinated me was what about all the average guys who gave up their lives in Vietnam? Who's going to tell their story? Who cares about them? That's what drove me."The pilot thought it a grand idea to fly a Huey across America, but told Fries that the filmmaker never would be able to pull it off. Hueys were too hard to find. They were classified as experimental aircraft and very few were in private ownership."It will be impossible to find one and get it to fly and land it in these places you're talking about," the pilot said. "It's impossible.""He was almost right," Fries said.Back home in Austin, Fries told Cheryl that he had a great idea for a film
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