“I found out that he was actually from a very prominent family that traced back to the 1600s, but during the Great Depression, the family was land rich and cash poor, losing everything. “That got me started doing genealogical research, taking me to South Carolina, which is where my father’s family was originally from,” Hewitt said. Hewitt said that sparked his interest in his father’s life and started his own research. One day, while attending a funeral in Toccoa, where he grew up, Hewitt learned a local historian interviewed his father and the tapes of those interviews had been sent to Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks to use as part of the “Band of Brothers” miniseries on HBO in 2001. Army's first paratroopers.Īccording to Hewitt, he knew that his father was raised in an orphanage and had been a paratrooper, but his parents divorced at an early age, so he had never had a close relationship with him. Local man John Hewitt recently released “Broken Wings: a brother left behind”, a historical book about the life of his father, Jim, who was one of the U.S. Army’s first paratrooper school in Fort Benning in 1941. Longtime Dawsonville resident John Hewitt recently released “Broken Wings: a brother left behind,” a historical book about his father, Jim, a graduate of the U.S.

Band of brother