For many years, my dad, Michael A. Aun, Sr., made his living watching movies. Hard to believe? Believe it.

My father was a commercial artist by profession. Prior to World War II, the big one that was in all the newspapers, he had some 29 movies houses in the Paterson, N. J. area under contract.

His job was to go into the movie theater and watch a movie. He would make a rough draft of the scene on a sketch pad, capturing the essence of the movie.

His next job would be to literally paint the marquee on the front of the theater, recreating the scene he had captured during the movie. His challenge was to motivate people to go in and watch the flick. In those days, there was very little or no electronic promotion of movies and only modest print promotion in newspapers.

He would also reproduce his scenes into posters that would be hung in public places promoting the movie.

He did this for many years until the offset press was perfected, literally putting him out of business overnight.

What was most interesting was his methodology. It was virtually impossible to capture a visual "cliff notes" version of the movie by simply watching a few minutes of the film.

Deep in his heart, I believe the old man was a movie buff. I also firmly believe he wanted to do a bang up job for "his audiences."

Think about the challenge of this for a moment. You had to capture the entire essence of a monumental movie like "Gone with the Wind" with one simple scene. Not only did he have to be a terrific artist, he also had to be a movie critic. He was Siscle and Ebert with a paint brush.

When the offset press effectively ended his career as an artist, it was hastened along by the advent of World War II.

He joined the Army and was promptly shipped off to what was called Camp Jackson in those days in Columbia, South Carolina, which later became known as Fort Jackson, where he did his basic training. He met and married my mother, the late Alice Mack, and promptly shipped off to war.

"Michael A.," as he was affectionately known by his buddies, had a fairly illustrious military career. Not only was he an Arabic interpreter for General Eisenhower in the north African theater, he also saw considerable combat throughout Europe, taking a total of four bullets on four separate occasions, earning a handful of Purple Hearts and a Silver Star for his heroic efforts. Two of those wounds would be a source of considerable kidding over the years.

One of those was in the "buttocks" as Forrest Gump would describe it. Endless jokes about "friendly fire" surround that wound.

The other was a bullet wound to the head. Remarkably, a bullet entered the front of his helmet, entering just under the skin. The bullet traveled around the circumference of his head and exited from the back of his head. A gunshot that should have killed him immediately turned out to be nothing more than a flesh wound in the end.

After "doing his time" in the military, Michael A. returned to South Carolina to his new bride and they promptly began to make a family. After losing the first three children in various stages of birth, my mom and dad had 11 in a row. Michael A. pointed out later in life: "When we found out what was causing it we put a stop to it."

He kept his artistic touch alive becoming a cabinet builder and artist over the years. One of his huge undertakings was a landscape backdrop that was used in the theater of the original Lexington High School on North Lake Drive in Lexington, SC. Another endeavor was a 3-D production of the history of America in Aun's Feed Stable on South Lake Drive, now the site of the Lexington Town Hall. That was ultimately honored by the state of South Carolina in its museum of art history.