On Wednesday, May 26 (John Wayne’s birthday) Fort Worth honored the actor by declaring it John Wayne Day, with Mayor Betsy Price on hand to make the announcement.
During the festivities, we caught up with his son Ethan Wayne, who talked about memorializing his dad in The Stockyards with the John Wayne: An American Experience museum.
On putting together the memorabilia and personal items for the John Wayne museum collection, Ethan says it was such a meaningful experience.
“He wrote letters, and they’re very thoughtful,” Ethan says, “and he was very articulate and well read. When you go through and you look at his correspondence you see a man who had strong beliefs, but was never close-minded about someone else’s beliefs and always reached out to others to try to understand why the felt or believed something that they felt. He would want to learn and that’s a great quality, and a quality that I think we could all try to emulate as we go through our lives.”
On what the actor was like as a father, Ethan says, “I loved my dad. I loved being with him. ... He was a loving, kind, and generous man, tough but also very compassionate. Yah know, my childhood was idyllic.”
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