On this day in 1986, Top Gun opened and became a smash hit. Written by Michigan State professor Jim Cash and his former student Jack Epps Jr., the film was a product of their remote collaboration. And today in 2016, John Willie Jordan of Farmington, Michigan, received the Congressional Gold Medal. Jordan was one of the first Black Americans to join the Marines in the 1940s, serving as one of the Montford Point Marines. He reflected, “I thought I had been forgotten.”
TRANSCRIPT
Today in 1986, we all went to the Danger Zone as the film Top Gun opened and became a smash hit. The film was written by a Michigan State professor, Jim Cash, and his former student, Jack Epps Jr. They kept in touch after Epps graduated in 1972 and moved to Santa Monica, California while Cash kept his professorship at MSU and they only collaborated remotely.
And today in 2016, the Congressional Gold Medal was bestowed to the 90 year old John Willie Jordan of Farmington, Michigan. Jordan was one of the first Black Americans to join the Marines in the 1940s. More specifically, he was one of the Montford Point Marines, named after the military’s segregated training grounds found outside North Carolina’s Camp LeJeune until President Eisenhower ended the US military’s racial discrimination in 1948. As Jordan told the Detroit News in 2016, “I thought I had been forgotten.”