Author: John Stansifer
Located in: Ft Lauderdale, FL
Submitted: February 14, 2024
Tell us a little about yourself. I was born and raised in Lawrence, Kansas and my parents and grandparents are from Wichita. I majored in film and English at Kansas University while serving 6 years in the Kansas Army National Guard as a mortar gunner. Out of a love of great movies I wrote many screenplays with no success until this story fell into my lap. I called it the greatest story never told.
What was your motivation behind this project? Always wanted to write a unique and compelling true war story and wrote some scripts set in the Vietnam War and WWII. It never occurred to me to research the Korean War until April 11, 2013 when I saw the posthumous Medal of Honor award ceremony on live TV. My jaw was on the floor and i said out loud "I'm going to write a movie about that guy and it's going to be bigger than myself." I finished an epic true story biopic Korean War script called Father Kapaun's Valley but had no chance to get a $100m budget war film made. Seeing my passion for the movie, the Wichita Diocese offered their papers on Fr Kapaun's canonization for a biography which is titled NO BULLET GOT ME YET - which comes from one of Kapaun's last letters written home before his capture by the Chinese in 1950.
What do you hope folks will gain from this project? Any inspired by the story of any saint will be inspired by this future saint whose story is one of the greatest war stories of all time. The numbers of those following him is growing rapidly every day. He truly had "relentless faith."
How were you personally impacted by working on this project? Father Kapaun's story has become my life's work in books, film and teaching and will remain so for the rest of my life. I knew this the moment I heard his name over 10 years ago.
Who are your influences, sources of inspiration or favorite authors / artists? My cousin was playwright William Inge who won the Pulitzer Prize for Picnic in 1953 and Oscar for best screenplay in 1962. Too many to mention but I read a lot growing up: Tennessee Williams, Sam Shepherd, Hemingway, Poe, Stephen King, Steinbeck. My favorite books were frequently biographies - especially of other writers.
Anything else you'd like readers / listeners to know: I would like readers of this book to know that I took ego out of the equation while writing this - which means I let witnesses and Father Kapaun himself tell these incredible stories without additional adjectives or hyped-up slants on his actions. Chaplain Kapaun often told his men and fellow officers that he wore "God's Armor” and he truly did.
