To Remember, a documentary film co-directed by Military.com alum Glen Osten Anderson and co-produced by current reporter and editor Amy Bushatz, chronicles the personal journeys of men and women whose family members were killed in action in 2009. The complete film is streaming online until September 19th and Amy has written the following piece about her experiences making the film. Check out the film and Amy's thoughts below.
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By Amy Bushatz
The moment in 2009 I learned four more soldiers from our battalion had been killed downrange – bringing the count to six in the mere first 20 days of deployment – is burned into my brain. Lying in a dentist’s chair, my blackberry buzzed with a new email in my lap. The dentist turned his back, I looked at the screen. And even though I was in the middle of getting three fillings I sat upright and cried.
Six months and 16 more KIAs in our battalion later, Lisa Hallet, one of the Army wives made a widow that August day, gathered seven other battalion wives around her and went for a run to remember the fallen and move through her grief. Wear Blue: Run to Remember (WBR2R), and, by extension, the documentary film To Remember was born. And it’s now available online through BBC World until Sept. 19.
Lisa’s story moves people to action. As a reporter and editor for Military.com, writing is what I know how to do. So I wrote about WBR2R for the magazine Runners World. And when my then-Military.com colleague Glenn Osten Anderson read the story he knew what – tell the story in film.
Over the three years Glenn and his co-director Ian Connors spent making To Remember, Lisa grew and worked through her grief – and the WBR2R moved forward with her. The group now has thousands of members wearing blue and remembering the fallen worldwide. As one of the film’s co-producers I assisted with fact checking and story development. Although we had since moved with the military and I was not able to be a part of the actual filming, I am proud to have connected Glenn and Ian with this story.
To Remember is a powerful look into the depth of military loss and how one woman pulled herself and others out of it through literally moving forward one step at a time.
