Star Volunteers

With 11 prestigious awards under their belts, you’d think Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly were seasoned professionals in the world of documentary filmmaking. You’d be wrong. The Way We Get By, a story about three senior citizen troop greeters at Bangor International Airport, is their very first film.

Gaudet, an Old Town native and graduate of the New England School of Communications, directed and edited the award-winning documentary while Pullapilly, who hails from Indiana, handled the logistics and interviews. While both had a background in television news, producing and editing a news clip is small potatoes when you consider the hundreds of hours of footage they sifted through to create the 84-minute documentary film that has earned them accolades and standing ovations from audiences across the country. Many believe it has a real shot at the Oscars.

Gaudet’s interest in making this film started with a minor annoyance—his mother stopped answering her phone. Before becoming a troop greeter, Joan Gaudet, Aron’s mom, lived a rather inactive life. “She had few friends and fewer hobbies and basically spent her days alone at home, literally watching birds,” Gaudet says. He could always be sure his mom would pick up the phone whenever he called. That changed when Joan started troop greeting. After countless unanswered calls, Gaudet contacted one of his siblings to find out where his mother was. “I was told to try mom’s cell phone,” Gaudet says. “I thought, why does my mother need a cell phone?”
Joan’s new cell phone helped her keep in touch with the other troop greeters. A widowed mother of eight, Joan became so absorbed with her new hobby that she began spending all hours of the day and night at the airport. “It’s addicting!” she says. When Gaudet brought Pullapilly, then his girlfriend, home with him for Christmas in 2004 to introduce her to his mother, he was anxious to find out how Joan was spending her time. When Joan’s phone rang for a 2 a.m. flight arriving from the Middle East, Gaudet and Pullapilly followed Joan to the airport. Gaudet immediately got the idea to capture it on film.

“The emotion that was in that airport on a daily basis was amazing,” Gaudet says. “It just seemed like if we could find the right way to tell a story, it would have heart.”

What started out as an idea for a short film project quickly morphed into a feature-length documentary once Gaudet and Pullapilly met Jerry Mundy, a noncombat veteran who served during the Korean War, and Bill Knight, a 32-year veteran of the Army Air Corps and the Navy.

Knight was one of the very first troop greeters who organized in the early 1990s during the Gulf War. “During Desert Storm, the troops were forbidden to wear their uniforms when they went out on the street,” Knight says. “Well, we didn’t like that [because they weren’t getting recognized for their service] and about 19 of us got together to do something about it. We decided to start greeting the troops when they got off the plane.”

Bangor International Airport (BGR) is the closest full-service airport to Europe with quick turnaround and few delays, making it a desirable stopover for military flights and giving the troop greeters plenty of opportunities to show their appreciation.

Almost 20 years later, the troop greeters have welcomed over 900,000 troops into BGR. Bill Knight, wearing his decorated World War II cap, is usually the first in line to shake the hands of servicemen and women coming home or shipping out. He used to make the 40-minute drive from his home in Bradford to BGR for every flight, no matter the time or the weather. “Sometimes I’d be so tired on the drive I’d have to prop my eyelids open to keep from falling asleep,” Knight says. He now lives in Bangor, which is closer to the action and makes for a safer commute.

Gaudet and Pullapilly’s initial plan was to make a film about supporting the troops, but once they spent considerable time with their subjects they knew they had a broader topic to contend with. While the premise of the film is patriotic, the real story is about living as a senior citizen in America.

The crew that shot The Way We Get By was tiny by Hollywood’s standards. The film’s codirector of photography, Winslow native Dan Ferrigan, worked the cameras alongside Gaudet while Pullapilly handled the interviewing.
An expert interviewer, Pullapilly got her three subjects to talk candidly about their health, their fears, and even their thoughts about dying. “My life doesn’t mean a hell of a lot to me, but if I can make it mean something to somebody else, that’s my endeavor,” Knight says in one of his interviews. “I’ve outlived my usefulness as an individual.” The camera focuses in close on his face as he talks—so close that tears can be seen welling up in his lucid blue eyes. It’s hard not to be moved by these simple statements from a man whose wife and children have passed, whose farmhouse is in desperate need of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and who spends the majority of his time helping others.

Gaudet believes the size of the crew was the reason they were able to achieve such intimate interviews. “The movie would not be the same if we had tried to go in there with a bigger crew or a bunch of lights,” Gaudet says. “Our goal from the beginning was to make these people forget about the camera, and create a comfortable atmosphere.” What you get is the raw truth that is sometimes hard to watch on the big screen. Through intense close-ups, thoughtful pauses, and sensitive interviews, Gaudet and Pullapilly let their subjects tell their story without unnecessary narration. A fourth major character in the film, the music, was composed by Zack Martin. It moves in and out inconspicuously and adds an introspective soundscape that perfectly complements the film.

Though Knight, Mundy, and Joan Gaudet have seen the film countless times, the three troop greeters still get emotional when they watch it. Even though Joan’s grandkids, Amy and Troy Johnston, are home from their deployments to Iraq, she cries every time she sees the part in the movie when they’re heading overseas. “I can’t help but cry,” she says. “I know they’re home; they’ve been home for a long time now. They’re safe. But that’s one of the places in the movie where I still cry.”

In 2006, as the film became central to their lives and careers, Gaudet and Pullapilly moved to Boston to be closer to Bangor to continue filming. The duo spent the summer of 2008 editing over 300 hours of footage into the 84-minute film. Believe it or not, that wasn’t the hardest part. “Throughout it all the biggest challenge we had was finding funding,” Gaudet says. Their big breakthrough came when Marion Kane at the Maine Philanthropy Center introduced Gaudet and Pullapilly to Warren Cook, CEO of Saddleback Ski Resort. When Cook saw an early version of the film, he agreed to help fund the project and act as the film’s executive producer.

A Vietnam veteran, Cook is all too familiar with the cold reception and lack of support that waited stateside for soldiers returning from the Vietnam War. His son, a career Marine officer, has been deployed five times since 9/11. Cofounder of Common Good Ventures, Cook is considered by many to be a heavyweight when it comes to community service and fundraising. “When I first saw the rough cut I was speechless. I told Aron and Gita that I would do anything I could to help them.”

With Cook’s investment, Gaudet and Pullapilly had the funds they needed to finish the film. Cook helped bring Bangor Savings Bank on board to fund the film’s Maine tour as well as the cost of film prints, which totaled nearly $40,000. The $100,000 Bangor Savings Bank committed to The Way We Get By is the largest single grant in the bank’s history.

Carol Colson, senior vice president and director of community relations and communication for Bangor Savings Bank, says that the film appealed to the bank executives for many reasons. “It speaks to the true character of Maine people and our sense of obligation to help others,” she says. She hopes the film will increase volunteerism. “If these senior citizens can greet the troops in the middle of a snowstorm in poor health, anyone can do it.”
In truth, it’s become more difficult for Knight, Mundy, and Joan Gaudet to keep up the pace they set when Gaudet and Pullapillly began filming six years ago. “It’s getting harder to get to the airport, especially when it’s cold outside,” says 87-year-old Knight. “You jump out of bed and you want to crawl back in.” Many times the greeters head home from greeting a flight in the middle of the night only to get a call as soon as they get home to head back to the airport. Joan, 76, admits she can’t do a quick turnaround like that anymore.

But while the trio has more health problems now, it doesn’t stop them completely. Jerry, Joan, and Bill (as their fans know them) have turned into bona fide celebrities. Over the past year, The Way We Get By has been shown at 27 film festivals and featured in over 60 cities from Boston to New York to Los Angeles. Gaudet and Pullapilly have been working tirelessly to promote their film. This has often included traveling with the three troop greeters to opening nights in cities like Cleveland, New York, and Washington, D.C. “I’ve never traveled before,” Joan says. “I always wanted to but I never did before this. Now Aron and Gita drag me all over the country.” Her favorite trip has been visiting the wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “The first two soldiers I saw there had been through Bangor,” she says. Their second trip to D.C. came in early October when the film was shown on Capitol Hill. The three troop greeters, Gaudet, and Pullapilly were invited to the White House and spent a half an hour visiting with Vice President Joe Biden who honored them with gifts of cuff links and charm bracelets decorated with the vice presidential seal.

One of Mundy’s favorite experiences came in Hollywood when he was recognized on the street. The group was walking back to their rented house after breakfast when a car pulled up alongside of Mundy. “I thought to myself, ‘Oh, please don’t ask me for directions; I don’t know my way around here,’” Mundy remembers. “This woman leans out of her window and says ‘Hey, Jerry! I saw you in the movie!’”

Mundy, 74, is the comedian of the group. In the movie and out, his quick wit and frequent off-color jokes temporarily mask the sensitive man he is. “If I can’t make someone smile once a day, I’ve wasted a whole day. It’s the only way you can get by,” he says. For Mundy, troop greeting has a kind of therapeutic effect that he embraces. “The older you get, the more you go through. I think about my wife and son passing, my brothers and sisters; you have to be happy to survive all that grief.”

Although troop greeting has given many local senior citizens a newfound purpose in life, Joan wonders why the film hasn’t stirred younger people to volunteer as greeters. “It makes you wonder when we can’t do it anymore what will happen,” she says. “There’s not that many younger people involved to take over.” And if the troops all came home tomorrow? “We’d just have to break ourselves in on something different,” Knight says. “Find somewhere else to volunteer.”

As for Gaudet and Pullapilly, their journey keeps getting more interesting. They’re working on a special web project called “Returning Home” with the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC) based in California, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, POV, and additional funding partners ITVS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Each year BAVC chooses eight independent films to develop web components for. Returning Home is an online resource where families and friends can reach out online and connect with troops who have returned home but might be having a hard time adjusting to the pace of normal life. “I think physically these soldiers are back home but emotionally they’re still on a journey,” Gaudet says. “What we’re developing opens the lines of communications and gets soldiers talking again.”

In an effort to partner with more independent filmmakers, Gaudet and Pullapilly recently moved from Boston to Brooklyn, New York. “We have met many other filmmakers this past year and most of them live in New York City and Brooklyn,” Gaudet says. “There seemed to be many more opportunities for us there. We’re already sharing office space in Brooklyn with two other filmmakers.”

The duo isn’t quite sure what their next film project will be, but you can bet they’ll be working on it together—now as husband and wife. Since the couple was too busy and too broke from the making and marketing of the film to spend a lot of resources on their wedding, Real Weddings Maine gifted them with a wedding at the Retreat at French’s Point in Stockton Springs. The wedding was held in October with over 25 vendors donating more than $800,000 for the three-day event. Even Knight and Mundy got into the act by being fitted for what Mundy calls “penguin suits.”

Today, the filmmakers and their subjects are as close as family. “I love them,” Mundy says. “They’re just super people.” Back in Bangor, Knight, Mundy, and Joan Gaudet will continue to do what they do best for “as long as the good Lord lets them,” Knight says.

“If I drop dead greeting troops, that’s where I want to be when I go,” Mundy says. “Greeting the troops makes me feel like I’m worth something.”