‘Sketches of War’ to Aid Homeless Veterans in Boston

Because a 36-year-old former Vietnam infantryman asked them to, Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, Michael J. Fox, Donald Sutherland, Roddy McDowall, Kevin Bacon and Lindsay Crouse will be among the performers directed by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet in Boston Oct. 10 in a one-night engagement to benefit homeless Vietnam War veterans in the Boston area.

With musical accompaniment from Tom Paxton, Bob Gibson and the Pipes and Drums of the New York City Police Department’s Emerald Society, “Sketches of War” will include Sutherland reading from Dalton Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun”; Pacino in David Rabe’s “The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel”; Dennis Franz, Charles Haid and Chuck Stransky in an original scene by Shel Silverstein; and a selection from Shakespeare in which Julius Caesar addresses his generals.

“It’s a testimony to them that they wanted to get involved,” Ken Smith, a Boston emergency medical technician who served in Chu Lai and Da Nang in 1971 and 1972, said of the entertainers who agreed to volunteer their services.

Smith said he contacted the performers and told them “there are close to 100,000 veterans living homeless in this country, and I need you to come to Boston to help me.” With that kind of entreaty, Smith said, “they drop what they’re doing.”

Smith is among 12 Boston-area Vietnam combat veterans who for the last four years have met together as a support group. “A couple of lawyers,” an advertising executive, a public relations man, a one-time Vietnam combat nurse and Smith, the 36-year-old paramedic, have confronted issues ranging from persistent Vietnam flashbacks and readjustment difficulties to divorce, substance abuse and the death of a child. Last year, Smith and a member of his group decided to observe the Fourth of July weekend by making their first trip to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.

“While we there there,” Smith said, “we came across all these homeless veterans, a couple or three dozen guys, who were actually living in the shadow of this memorial, no more than 50 yards away.” Homeless, the veterans were camped out “in a group of trees,” Smith said. “They were just there.”

Back in Boston, Smith’s group began to research the question of homeless veterans. “We became consumed with this,” he said. With figures obtained from the Veterans Administration and elsewhere, Smith said they found out that nationally, “30% of the homeless are veterans,” and of those, “70%-80% are Vietnam veterans.”

Stunned by the enormity of the problem, Smith and his friends began discussing how they could raise public awareness. “We wanted to write a book, make a movie, write a play, but none of us knew how to do that,” Smith said.

Instead, after more research, “we went to the arts community, held out our hands and said ‘we need your help to attack a social problem. These are our brothers,’ ” they said of the homeless vets, “ ‘and they’re living like animals.’ ”

A member of the Boston arts community mentioned that David Mamet had recently moved to neighboring Cambridge with his wife, the actress Lindsay Crouse.

Smith wrote to Mamet, explaining that “we were interested in doing a kind of ‘Big Chill’ of combat, what it’s like to be a Vietnam veteran in 1988. We wanted somebody who could accurately portray our emotions.”

When Mamet, who declined to be interviewed on the subject, attended his first meeting of Smith’s group, “he immediately disarmed us by saying ‘I’m honored to be in the same room as you guys.’ That’s it,” Smith said. “That’s all it took.”

Beginning last winter, Mamet met weekly with the Vietnam Veterans Workshop, as the group, nonprofit and dedicated to helping other veterans, was now calling itself. “At times these meetings get pretty volatile,” Smith said. “Emotions run high. And Mamet sits back and sees all this. We’d never invited anybody to our group before. We invited him so he could see this deep reservoir of feelings.”

When Mamet told them he doubted a play could be available this year, “we felt we needed to do something sooner, this winter,” Smith said. “It’s cold here in Boston.”

In discussing a benefit, “the idea was to answer the biggest question, which was why are these guys homeless,” Smith said. “Our answer is that they’re homeless because of the effect of combat on their psyche.

“That’s what ‘Sketches of War’ evolved into,” he said.

With tickets for the evening at Boston’s Colonial Theater ranging from $75 to $500, the Vietnam Veterans Workshop hopes to raise $200,000 from “Sketches of War.”

“This little workshop pretty much picked up a rock and threw it at Goliath,” he said.