Until five years ago, Dorothy Hadjys led a rather unremarkable life.
A divorced, middle-aged, Midwestern mother of three, Hadjys' life took a startling and horrifying turn in 1992 when her 21-year-old son, Allen Schindler, was beaten and kicked to death by two of his shipmates from a U.S. Naval vessel while on shore leave in Japan.And she was shocked to learn that her son's death was a gay-bashing.
"If you were to tell me five years ago I was going to be here before a bunch of people talking about a movie being made about me, I probably would have said you're all crazy," Hadjys said.
But she overcame Navy attempts to sweep the case under the carpet and her own homophobia to take a stand - and attempt to make certain what happened to him would not happen to others.
Hadjys (played by Bonnie Bedelia in "Any Mother's Son") only discovered what had happened over a period of weeks, then months. The Navy didn't tell her Allen (Paul Popovich) had been killed by shipmates Terry Helvey and Charles Vins until the funeral.
She learned it was a gay-bashing when a reporter from Pacific Stars and Stripes called her and told her. Hadjys said that, at the time of Allen's death, she had no idea he was a homosexual. She had thought he was kidding when he tried to tell her two years earlier.
"Allen used to do things all the time to see how he could blow my mind," she said. "One year for Mother's Day, he sent me a Chinese crocodile lizard overnight express mail and had it delivered to where I work. I mean, that is a gift that every mother wants."
And she readily admits she was strongly biased against gays.
"I did have this fear for gays," Hadjys said. "I didn't believe Allen was gay. I believed that all gays had to be weirdos."
Hadjys also believed the Navy when she was told that she would be kept informed about all the legal proceedings in the case. But she learned from a reporter that, without informing her, the Navy's legal department had cut a deal with Vins - that he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and served just 78 days in jail. He didn't even receive a dishonorable discharge.
This despite the fact that not only did the Navy have a signed confession from Helvey - meaning Vins' testimony was not needed to convict him - but Vins himself confessed to participating in the murder.
At that point, "the rage just built up inside of me and I knew that there was something that had to be done."
"I may not agree with a lot of things. I may not agree with who some of you sleep with. But that doesn't give me a right to kill you. And that didn't give Terry Helvey and Charles Vins a right to kill my son."
"Any Mother's Son," written by Bruce Harmon and directed by David Burton Morris, does an excellent job of bringing Hadjys' story to life. Bedelia does a fine job of portraying this woman who goes from grief to bewilderment to anger and back to grief once again.
And, as Bedelia herself pointed out, "there are universal feelings in this movie." Had Allen Schindler been killed because of his race or his religion instead of his sexual preference, the message would have been the same.
And no one is happier about the TV movie than Hadjys herself.
"I really just can't say enough about it," she told TV critics. "And I'm so happy that Bonnie said yes to playing me because she did such a great job. The only thing is, I wish there was some way you could make me as skinny as she is."
Not that it was an easy movie for Hadjys to watch.
"The first time I bawled through the whole thing because it brought back so many memories," she said. "The second time was a little bit easier."
And, while various naval officers behave less than honorably in the film, Hadjys rejects the notion that this is an anti-Navy movie.
"The movie is not an indictment of the Navy. It's an indictment of this one incident that happened. A tragedy," she said.
Hadjys also said she is proud that something good came out of her son's death. In the wake of his murder, the Service Members' Legal Defense Network was created for gays in the military.
"There's help out there for them," she said. "And I hope that because of that, there woun't be any more Allen Schindlers being killed."
A charming, determined and altogether unaffected woman, Hadjys has taken a tragedy and turned it into a crusade of sorts.
"The biggest reason I wanted this movie made was because I wanted people to understand how hard it was for me to come to grips that Allen really was gay and to realize that gays aren't all these weirdos that you see. They are very loving and caring people," she said. "And for people to realize that Allen could have been any mother's son. . . . And I hope that each of you would have loved your son as much as I did."
WARNING SIGNS: Lifetime has placed a strong written warning at the beginning of "Any Mother's Son," cautioning viewers that the movie's content may be objectionable.
Although it deals with a violent murder, the killing itself is handled briefly and non-graphically. And there's but a brief glimpse of some rather mild crime-scene photos.
The TV movie is devoid of sexual content. It's not replete with "NYPD Blue"-like language.
The sole reason for the warning seems to be that the content matter deals with a young man who was homosexual. No matter that the point is not that the victim was killed because he was gay, but that he was killed because he was different.
Which makes that strong warning rather curious.
Granted, there are those who do not approve of the gay lifestyle. And there are characters in the movie, most notably Allen Schindler's sister (Hedy Burress), who espouse the view that homosexuality is not a choice and that there's basically nothing wrong with it.
But when you consider all the programs filled with violence and sex that go into homes without warnings this strong, it's rather odd. You could easily make the case that your average network sitcom deserves closer monitoring than "Any Mother's Son."