Ron Kovic

Ron Kovic
Kovic at an anti-war rally in Los Angeles, California on October 12, 2007.
Born	Ronald Lawrence Kovic July 4, 1946 (1946-07-04) (age 70) Ladysmith, Wisconsin, US
Occupation	Political and peace activist, author, writer

Ronald Lawrence "Ron" Kovic (born July 4, 1946) is an American anti-war activist, writer and a United States Marine Corps sergeant, who was wounded and paralyzed in the Vietnam War. He is best known as the author of the memoir Born on the Fourth of July in 1976, which was made into an Academy Award–winning film in 1989 directed by Oliver Stone, with Tom Cruise playing Kovic.

Kovic received the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay on January 20, 1990, 22 years to the day after he was wounded in Vietnam, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.Bruce Springsteen wrote the song "Shut Out the Light" after reading Kovic's memoir and then meeting him.Tom Paxton, the folk singer/political activist, wrote the song "Born on the Fourth of July", which is on his 1977 New Songs from the Briarpatch album, and met Kovic backstage at the Bottom Line Club in New York City the same year. Academy Award winning actress Jane Fonda has stated that Ron Kovic's story was the inspiration for the 1978 Vietnam War film Coming Home that she starred in.

Kovic was born in Ladysmith, Wisconsin, the second eldest of the six children of Patricia (Lamb) and Eli Kovic. He was raised in Massapequa, New York, in a Roman Catholic household. His father of Croatian descent served honorably in the United States Navy during World War II. After the war Eli Kovic and his family moved to Levittown, New York where he worked as a grocery clerk in an A&P food store. His mother also served in the United States Navy during the Second World War having enlisted not long after Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. It is where she met his father. She was of Irish ancestry, and a housewife. In high school, Ron Kovic was a wrestler and pole vaulter, and hoped to be a major league baseball player after graduation.