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The Armed Forces inspired Brenda Hughes,
32
WBM january 2012
another local documentary filmmaker.
A former news anchor/reporter for NBC
affiliates in Washington, DC, and Richmond,
Virginia, and one of the first female sports reporters in the
southeast, Hughes found herself listening to the story of
76-year-old Betty Vrancken on
the Thanksgiving weekend of the
same year she founded WetBird
Productions.
Vrancken’s story was about
her adoption of the grave of
an American soldier, buried
near her hometown in The
Netherlands in 1946. The soldier
was Eddie Hart, and out of
gratitude to the American military
for her freedom following
“I just
pursued
what I
felt was a
fantastic
story...”
four years of Nazi occupation,
Vrancken committed herself to
visiting the young man’s grave regularly with fresh flowers.
“It was clear,” Hughes notes on her website, “that her
commitment to this soldier, and her appreciation for the
gift of freedom was as strong as ever. I knew her story
needed to be told.”
Below left: Pvt. Eddy Verone of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is
surrounded by grateful children as the 28th Division enters the
town of Bastogne, Belgium on September 10, 1944. U.S. National
Archives and Records Administration; September, 1944. The WetBird
Productions film, Marching Once More, documented Battle of the
Bulge veterans when they returned to Belgium on the battle’s
60th anniversary. Below right: Brenda Hughes interviews Jim
Burke in a hotel banquet room in Belgium during the anniversary.
Burke, an engineer, was taken by the Nazis and held captive for
more than five months as a prisoner of war. Photography courtesy
of Brenda Hughes. Opposite: Brenda Hughes, founder of WetBird
Productions. Photography by Joshua Curry.