A RARE DAY WITH SONNY, LT. COLONEL MARVIN ELLIOT, IN HIS HOME 6.20.08

Since we started this production, Detroit Our Greatest Generation, many people have told me about an extremely rare hand-made scrapbook.  It is the one that Sonny Elliot brought back from his eighteen months in a POW camp in Germany.

It was an honor to inspect this piece of history with him at his home.

It was a special time for me, just me to be with Sonny, the weather meteorologist I watched on TV, growing up in Metro Detroit.  I also remembered his famous Zoo show, Sonny at the Zoo.

But, on this day, those memories would all fade away.  A man, who in his early twenties was the pilot of a B-24 bomber during the world’s most memorable war, took me back in time.  Sonny shared his incredible story; how it felt inside a plummeting B-24, engulfed in flames; the long days, hungry and bored in prison camp. I learned about the resourcefulness of those 1500 prisoners; how they made a radio out of pieces of material so they could hear the news on the BBC; how cunning they were in hiding items from the Nazi’s in hollowed-out fake-bottom buckets or holes in walls.

However, the book was why I was there, and as I held it in my hand, in an odd way, it spoke to me; the poems, stories and some unimaginable drawings from so many of his solider friends, all still there.  It will be a day that I will never forget, and it will be a true emotional highpoint of the film.

Now, I no longer see Sonny as just a zany weatherman.  He is the caregiver of his wife who has been tragically paralyzed by a stroke.   He is an accomplished WWII pilot.  He is a POW survivor, and a heck of a storyteller.  These characteristics define Our Greatest Generation. It was an absolute honor to have shared this time with Lt. Colonel Marvin Elliot.

Executive Producer
Keith Famie