Glory Days

Before civil rights and gay rights and equal money for equal work, there was the 1960's and Viet Nam, and the underlying current of civil unrest that occasionally bubbled to the surface. Out of the horrors of Southeast Asia and into the rarified air of Hollywood's Golden Age stepped Peter Aarons, into the shadow of his powerful father, Peter Aarons. The real one - the White lion of Hollywood. At twenty-six he could have had everything his father offered him - all the wealth, all the power - but what he wanted was to become a concert pianist - the next Sergei Rachmaninoff. He knew he needed to summon the strength to be his own man, to have faith in his own decisions, and he had no idea how to do that. Then he found Gloriosa Daisy Ruiz and her husband Rafael. A black woman and her Mexican husband. He fought for them to run his grandmother's household; they taught him what manhood really meant.