16 | NOVEMBER 5 • 2020
Tales of the brave, young physicians
who saved countless lives in Vietnam.
IN
THE
JEWS D
ON THE COVER
I
’
ve never really shared “my” Vietnam
War memories with anybody. It took
me years before I even knew how to
process and comprehend the enormity of
the war. And I never wore a
uniform.
I only observed the war
from my family’
s dining
room table — a 12-year-old
in 1967, eating dinner while
watching Walter Cronkite.
It sickens me how I was
numb to the fact that the
day’
s U.S. casualty numbers
appeared on our television screens as
mundanely as the day’
s sports scores. The
American death toll in 1967 alone was
11,363.
I grew up sheltered and unscathed in
1967, while American teenagers just six
years older than me were dying in the jun-
gles of Southeast Asia. I didn’
t have a clue.
Those childhood memories came
rushing back to me recently during con-
versations I had the privilege of having
with several Jewish Detroit doctors who
served in Vietnam and still reside in our
community. I learned about them through
a column written 30 years ago in the JN.
Dr. Paul Gold, Dr. Jerry Taylor, Dr.
Larry Blau and Dr. Irving Gold (no rela-
tion to Paul), were featured in the June
1, 1990, article by Susan Weingarden.
The Academy Award-winning film Born
on the 4th of July was released that year.
Oliver Stone directed the film. The four
doctors lived it.
Weingarden wrote of the film: “It
offered a vivid depiction of the horrors
of the war.
” She chronicled the physicians
“revived memories of their own experi-
ences” that the 11-time Oscar-nominated
movie generated.
The four men, who all grew up in and
around the beloved old Jewish Detroit
neighborhood of Dexter and Davison,
were drafted — not at the minimum age
of 18, but in their mid to late 20s. Barely
out of their internships, some married
with young children, they were just estab-
lishing their medical careers in Detroit
when their fateful draft letters arrived.
Dr. Paul Gold, 80, originally made me
aware of the previously written JN article,
and I enlisted his help to seek out his three
comrades. He provided valuable contact
information and backstories about each.
This Veteran’
s Day, in the 45th year since
the end of the Vietnam War, I wanted
to know how they were faring nearly a
half-century later and, in so doing, I dis-
covered some amazing untold stories they
still had left to share.
During our initial conversation, Dr.
Paul Gold informed me that sadly Dr.
Irving Gold (Army) and Dr. Taylor (Navy)
JERRY ZOLYNSKY
Alan
Muskovitz
Contributing
Writer