Soldiers, seniors help each other "get by"

When Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly started their film about troop greeters in Bangor, Maine, just about everyone said their film wouldn't make it.

"We were turned down for every grant we applied for," Gita said. "We went to people in the film industry. They said, 'A film about seniors and soldiers -- no one will come and see it.'"

"The Way We Get By" -- the film Aron and Gita spent their savings to make -- will have 35 screenings between now and November. It has won 12 awards, including the coveted Special Jury Award from South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Tex. and the audience award from Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham.

Not bad for a film the experts said no one would see -- and for good reason, too.

Centered around the Bangor International Airport -- the busiest outbound and inbound destination for troops leaving or returning stateside -- Aron and Gita focus on the Maine Troop Greeters, volunteers that, at all hours, come to the airport to greet each and every soldier coming home, to give them something to eat or a cell phone to call family and friends.

The troop greeters are all seniors -- and they all are struggling, as they deal with debt, illness and loneliness and growing old, to find meaning in their lives.

"The Way We Get By" goes beyond the shallow homefront politics of war and gets to a deeper, often-times darker reality: That seniors and soldiers -- two groups of people that often go overlooked in our national consciousness -- deserve recognition for their contributions to the greater good.

At its purest form, the film exposes a simple lesson of a heartbreaking truth -- that behind every handshake, there is someone hurting on either side of that handshake, but they share a brief moment of kindness that will never be forgotten.

Seniors and soldiers: Unlikely subjects for a documentary, but one Aron and Gita beautifully weave together to produce an bittersweet tale of our modern times.

It's not easy growing old in America -- and these three troop greeters face their physical limitations head on.

Joan Gaudet, the director's mother, had her knees operated on, which forced her to use her walker more and more. She hated to go out after dark and into Maine's harsh winters. Yet, when Aron took Gita to meet Joan, when the filmmakers begin dating, Joan was getting phone calls at 2 a.m.

"It was getting to the point where Aron wasn't able to get a hold of her," Gita said. "She told him, 'Why didn't you call me on my cell phone?' We didn't know she had a cell phone."

Joan began her troop greeting mission in October 2003, when a nurse at the nursing Joan was working at the time invited her to go to the airport.

"I've been doing it ever since," Joan said, "and I wouldn't give it up for anything."

When Aron and Gita went to the airport with Joan for the first time, in October 2004, they met her friends and fellow troop greeters -- Bill Knight, a World War II veteran who served in the U.S. Navy and Jerry Mundy, a scrappy old Marine whose dog was his best friend.

As Aron and Gita observed these three, their stories began to seep out, bit by bit.

Knight, 86, lived alone on his farm. When his wife died, he basically shut down and wouldn't let anyone into his house. He raked up a lot of debt and, on top of that, was just diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Mundy, 73, and his four-legged friend, Mr. Flannigan, lived to greet troops as they came off the plane.
He would sit by the runway at the airport and wait for the troop planes to land. He would hug the troops, offer them cigarettes and cell phones. He hammed it up to make departing soldiers smile.

And, Joan, now 76, would man the desk in the Maine Troop Greeters office and talk to soldiers as they came in and left. Her only point of trepidation: She couldn't tell the soldiers departing goodbye.

"I'm a cryer," she said. "If I stood at a bus station, I would cry at strangers getting on the bus to leave."

She said she couldn't think of anything to say to departing soldiers.

"It really upset me when I saw them leaving," Joan said. "I mean, what can you say, they are going to war. 'Stay safe' just doesn't cut it."

But Joan faced her fears head-on, when her granddaughter and grandson, Amy and Troy, were deployed as helicopter pilots to Iraq with an Army Reserve unit in January 2008.

"Oh, to me, it was awful," Joan said. "Every time we would go down and greet the troops, I couldn't help but think of them."

Troy and Amy returned safely this past January, to Joan's joy.

"Everyone they took over there they came back with," Joan said.

Aron and Gita followed Joan, Jerry and Bill around for four years, trying to find the underlying story that would give their film meaning. They knew they had something, but it took a while for the cast's lives to play out, Aron said.

They also couldn't get any funding for the project.

"We said we were not going into debt making this movie," Aron said. "From the start, we said let's think ahead and prepare to do this ourselves, every step of the way."

And they have. To this day, Aron said no distributor has stepped up to take on the film, despite its success on the film festival circuit, and distribute it nationally.

But they have gotten help along the way. Bangor Savings Bank helped pay for five prints and DVD copies of the film, so it could get some kind of theatrical release. The filmmakers The PBS program, P.O.V., will air it nationally in November and other public television entities have helped promote the film. They also have partnered with the USO and the Hands-On Network to promote volunteerism.

But it's been word-of-mouth that has spread the film's story, said Gita.

"We don't a million dollars to spend on marketing," she said. "But at multiple screenings, we've seen that at the second and the third screenings, the crowds have been bigger and bigger. Audiences have championed the film."

People leave the theater and tell their friends, "You have to see this film," Aron said.

And while the film focuses on the three volunteers, it was also a personal journey for Aron and Gita.

"It made me look at my mom's life different," Aron said. "I thought I knew my mom, but it was almost shocking to me just how much time she spent by herself.

Aron is the youngest of eight kids, but even with a big family close by, "she is spending 22 hours a day on her own."

And even though it is more difficult for her to get out, Joan doesn't plan on stopping her volunteer work.

"It's a really a fun thing to do," she said. "You come away with a really good feeling that you help someone feel better."