If we can’t be the United States of America, then we should just change the name.”Ĭharles “Top” King wanted to make sure that his son knew how he felt about Canedy, and how Jordan should treat other women in his life, including the woman he might one day marry. The soldiers he trained were white, Hispanic, Asian, black, because that’s what America looks like. He died for the Constitution and its ideals, for the opportunity to love each other or fight with each other. “But Charles didn’t serve and die for black America. It’s not lost on the author, publisher, and journalist that this is a film about a black family, especially not one of the co-authors of 2001 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting with the series “How Race is Lived in America.” “We don’t often see people on screen that look like us,” she admitted. “That’s great coming from a white woman from the Midwest! I’m getting hugged all over.” “People say things like, ‘Charles reminds me of my father or my husband,’” Canedy recounted, starting to chuckle. Canady beams with pride as she speaks of King’s service, and talks openly about the way that her story resonates with people of all backgrounds. With the film releasing on Christmas Day, audiences will see a film about an American hero, who is also an honorable black soldier and father. “He wanted you to know that he loves you and that you’re going to be okay.”
First Sergeant Wesley had called Canedy from Iraq to tell her that King had made Wesley promise to call if anything happened to him. On the answering machine in her apartment, a light blinked. “On the way home, I could just feel the baby getting heavier and heavier, and I said out loud, as I’m shaking, ‘I can’t do this alone. I was having a hard time breathing and I hurt all over,” remembered Canedy. “I didn’t know before then that grief was so physical. Just days after the IED explosion, and prior to King’s funeral, the military took Canedy to a military base in Brooklyn where she needed to sign paperwork. But King read the Bible “through and through,” and is the only man Canedy says she was comfortable praying with as they dated. While Canedy hadn’t grown up in a churchgoing home, she says that her parents were Christian. “I hadn’t lost anyone before that and assumed when the time came, that I would be mad at God. “My faith is what got me through,” she mused. King’s faith clearly impacted Canedy, even after he was killed. On the last page, Charles wrote, ‘I hope this will be somewhat meaningful,’ and apologized for any misspellings because he was tired.” “We all have to say what we mean, and define our own legacy with words. “He wrote about the power of prayer and his love of God, his dedication to the military and patriotism, his respect for women, and his love for me,” Canedy highlighted. The journal is practical and philosophical, a mixture of the things that King wanted their young son to know, the important lessons passed down from a father to a son. To sit there and write these things down in Iraq, that’s the real deal.” “There’s a humility in that experience as you’re watching the end of life for these men you trained and considering your own life. “He wrote to his unborn child, as the men he trained to be soldiers were dying around him,” explained the author. By 2008, Canedy had published the memoir Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor, and producer Todd Black and actor/director Denzel Washington were linked to a cinematic version of the story.įifteen years later, Canedy says that there’s nothing to edit in the two-hundred-page journal King kept while in Iraq. She wrote an essay for the Times about King’s sacrifice and the journal he kept for their son, Jordan, who was six months old when King died.
In 2006, an improvised explosive device killed United States Army First Sergeant Charles Monroe King, the fiance of Dana Canedy, then-senior New York Times editor, but Canedy refused to let King’s death silence his voice.
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