1. Ronald Lawrence Kovic was born on July 4,1946 and is an American anti-war activist, author, and United States Marine Corps sergeant who was wounded and paralyzed in the Vietnam War.
21 Facts About Ron Kovic
1. 2.
Ron Kovic's best selling 1976 memoir Born on the Fourth of July was made into the film of the same name which starred actor Tom Cruise as Kovic, and was co-written by Kovic and directed by Oliver Stone.
3.
Ron Kovic was born in Ladysmith, Wisconsin, the second of six children of Patricia Ann Lamb and Eli Thomas Ron Kovic.
4.
Eli Thomas Ron Kovic met Lamb while serving in the Navy during the Second World War after both enlisted shortly after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
5.
Ron Kovic grew up in Massapequa, New York, and graduated in 1964 from Massapequa High School on Long Island.
6.
Ron Kovic was assigned to the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing at Cherry Point, North Carolina.
7.
On January 20,1968, while leading a reconnaissance force of battalion scouts from the 1st Amtrac Battalion just north of the Cua Viet River in the vicinity of the village of My Loc, in the Demilitarized Zone, Ron Kovic's squad came into contact with the NVA 803rd Regiment and elements of a Viet Cong battalion that was besieging the village; he was shot by NVA soldiers while leading his rifle squad across an open area, attempting to aid the South Vietnamese Popular Force unit in the village.
8.
Ron Kovic spent a week in an intensive care ward in Da Nang.
9.
Ron Kovic attended his first peace demonstration soon after the Kent State shootings in May 1970, and gave his first speech against the war at Levittown Memorial High School in Levittown, Long Island, New York that same spring.
10.
Undeterred, Ron Kovic continued speaking to students from the school's football grandstands.
11.
Ron Kovic refused to leave the office of the draft board, explaining to a representative that, by sending young men to Vietnam, they were inadvertently "condemning them to their death", or to be wounded and maimed like himself in a war that he had come to believe was "immoral and made no sense".
12.
Ron Kovic was told that, if he did not leave the draft board immediately, he would be arrested.
13.
Ron Kovic refused to leave and was taken away by police.
14.
In 1974, Ron Kovic led a group of disabled Vietnam War veterans in wheelchairs on a 17-day hunger strike inside the Los Angeles office of Senator Alan Cranston.
15.
In late August 1974, Kovic traveled to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he spent a week in the Catholic stronghold of "Turf Lodge", interviewing both political activists and residents.
16.
In 1990, Ron Kovic considered running for a seat in the House of Representatives against California Republican Bob Dornan.
17.
From 1990 to 1991, Ron Kovic took part in several anti-war demonstrations against the first Gulf War, which occurred not long after the release of his biographical film in 1989.
18.
In early May 1999, following the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, Ron Kovic met with China's ambassador to the United States Li Zhaoxing at the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC to express his condolences and present the ambassador and his staff with two dozen red roses.
19.
In November 2003, Kovic joined protests in London against the visit of George W Bush.
20.
Ron Kovic attended the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado.
21.
Ron Kovic had a close relationship with Connie Panzarino, author of The Me in the Mirror.