Author tells story of two lost photojournalists

George Hamilton, Perry Deane Young and Tim Page visit the spot where photojournalists Sean Flynn and Dana Stone were last seen on Highway 1 near Chi Pou, Cambodia. Contributed photo

By Carolyn Bowers

StarNews Correspondent

Published: Monday, September 27, 2010

via CAAI

Journalist, author and playwright Perry Deane Young will be the guest speaker at the Friends of the Library Southport-Oak Island annual meeting on Tuesday.

He is the author of nine books and three plays.

But to Tricia Foy, Friends of the Library board member and close friend of Young, the man is so much more than that.

“He is a kind of Renaissance man,” she said, “a kind, quiet, gentle man who plays music and plants things. There’s a lot of depth there.”

Foy has a lot to base her description on. Young lived with her family as “one of the basement boys” while he attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Foy and Young were both students at UNC at the same time. “He was one year older, and he treated me like a little sister,” she said.

In 1993, Young returned to Chapel Hill to finish his degree, and he visited Foy’s mother, his landlord from some 30 years ago. “He took his keyboard and played and sang to her in the nursing home,” Foy said.

When Foy read Young’s newest book, an updated version of “Two of the Missing: Remembering Sean Flynn and Dana Stone,” which was originally published in 1975, she said, “I didn’t know the adventurer that was in him until I read this book, and I couldn’t put it down.”

The book tells the story of two of Young’s colleagues, Flynn, son of Errol Flynn, and Stone. The two Vietnam war photojournalists rode off on their bright red motorcycles into Communist-held Cambodia on April 6, 1970, and were never seen again.

This updated version, published in 2009, contains 18 pages of pictures of the two of them, many of which have never been published before.

Last April Young returned to Vietnam for a reunion of fellow photojournalists, and he revisited the site where his friends were lost. After 40 years, he concluded that his friends took the risk of crossing the border into Cambodia because they wanted to take pictures and write stories that would “give the world a rare perspective on war from the other side.”

When Foy e-mailed Young asking him if he did “speaking gigs,” Young said, “Sure. Can I bring my books?”

His wide range of books includes “Hanged by a Dream? The Facts Behind the Legend,” the story of Joshua Young, Perry’s grandfather’s first cousin, who was disturbed by an incredible dream or vision. Another is “The Untold Story of Frankie Silver,” a scrupulously researched book that dispels the untruths surrounding the hanging of Frankie Silver, who was accused of cutting her husband’s head off with an ax.

This journalist, playwright, multifaceted author and Renaissance man will talk about the old and the incredibly different, new Vietnam, as well as autograph copies of his books, at the Friends of the Library’s annual meeting.