94 Year Old Pirate Hero to Soldiers
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Loading... - Suth Inthuvarman
- 03 Nov 2020
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Below, is a story I was once told, of a great man. Some would even call him a hero. As the story develops, you will acknowledge the he may have broken the law many times over. In fact he has committed a phone book series worth of offences dating back to 2004. The amounts of illegal activity he has committed, is supposedly said to be enough to put him away behind bars for the rest of his life. However, it turns out due to the circumstances of the story, he may actually be rewarded for his actions rather than being punished for what most people would say is unfair or cruel.
Mr Hyman Strachman is a World War 2 veteran, who has spent most of the last decade pirating DVD movies. He began doing this as a small hobby, not long after his wife died, in order to keep himself busy. This then unexpectedly escalated, and before Mr Strachman knew about it he had made thousands and thousands of DVD’s. In fact it is reported that since the year of 2004, Mr Strachman has copied an over an estimated 350,000 movies.
This when the story develops and the twist is unravelled. Mr Strachman sent every single DVD to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. All his expenses and equipment came out of his own pocket.
It is reported that Mr Strachman has spent close to $40,000 on his hobby so far since he began, back in 2004. Of course, thinking about it, the cost of purchasing pirated copies of movies, blank CD's and expensive overseas postage really does add up! Every parcel Mr Strachman sends out has a total of 84 discs within the box, which usually goes out to a platoon in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Mr Strachman acknowledges his violations of domestic copyright laws, and is also aware that, there are activists and others out there, plotting to bring what he is doing now. Nevertheless, Mr Strachman is convinced he will carry on what he is doing. Well here’s the best part of all. If anybody ever questioned him on what he was doing and even considered destroying what he is doing, he would simply point to his walls. These walls were bright and colourful, full of huge American flags. Furthermore, there were parts of the walls there was hundreds of appreciative letters and photographs of soldiers holding up their favourite DVD's.
One of the photos that I have seen had a zoomed in picture of a letter on the wall, it read, “Our downtime is spent watching movies as we clean our weapons” this was handwritten clearly. Mr Strachman has obviously decided to treasure, what he has received in return for his excellence. As you can imagine, this is what gave Mr Strachman the motivation and determination to continue what he was doing.
After Mrs. Strachman, Hyman’s wife, passed away, he found a website online, while surfing the web, which collected soldier's wishes or requests. He found out over a few days, that the most common request was DVD movies. With a light bulb moment, he decided to fulfil their needs from the comfort of his own home.
When Mr. Strachman first began, he copied CD's on his personal desktop which as you can imagine is extremely slow. It was simply a one-by-one process, which would take forever. Not long soon after, he managed to get his hands on a three hundred pounds professional duplicator, which allowed him to speed up his process and save time by a huge lot.
To this date, Mr Hyman, has never accepted any type of payment for the work that he has done. He believed that the amount of appreciation he receives is enough for him to continue. Moreover, he still gets something in return. These are in the form of emails, letters and plenty of photos from soldiers thanking him for the work tha8t he has done for them over the years. It is understood that, to this date, Mr Strachman has a total of eight, three-ring binders which are overfilling with letters and printed emails thanking him for the things he has done. You simply couldn’t get your hats off to a better man.
