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 Paul Gold, 80, originally made me 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