IN: "Ode to Billie Joe" is a 1967 song written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry, a singer-songwriter from Chickasaw County, Mississippi. The single, released in late July, was a number-one hit in the United States, and became a big international seller. Billboard ranked the record as the No. 3 song for 1967 (the other two were #2 "The Letter" by the Box Tops and #1 "To Sir With Love" by Lulu). The song is ranked #412 on Rolling Stone's list of "the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" and at #144 in Pitchfork's 200 Best Songs of the 1960s.

The song is a first-person narrative to "sparse" musical accompaniment. It reveals a tale, mostly in the form of brief dialog extracts by the narrator's family at dinnertime, on the day that a local boy - and apparently friend of the narrator - jumped to his death from a nearby bridge. Throughout the song, the suicide and other tragedies are contrasted against the banality of everyday routine and polite conversation. The final verse conveys the quick passage of events and other deaths in a year's time. The song begins with the narrator, her brother and her father returning, after agricultural morning chores, to the family house for dinner (on June 3). After cautioning them about tracking in dirt, "Mama" says that she "got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge" that "Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge". At the dinner table, the narrator's father appears unmoved and almost dismissive; he comments that "Billie Joe never had a lick o' [meaning, any] sense", and asks for the biscuits to be passed to him, and comments that he has "five more acres in the lower forty" to plow. Her brother seems somewhat taken aback ("I saw him at the sawmill yesterday ... And now you tell me Billie Joe has jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"), but follows the comment by asking for a second slice of pie. He recalls a prank that he and his friends played on the narrator, and that he saw her and Billie Joe talking after church a few days previously. The only person who seems genuinely upset is the narrator. Her mother - who eventually notices the narrator's abrupt and complete change of mood at the news - seems unable to realize she is affected by the news ("Child, what's happened to your appetite? I been cookin' all mornin' and you haven't touched a single bite"). She shares other news instead, that a local preacher visited earlier in the day, and almost as an aside, that the preacher had mentioned seeing Billie Joe and a girl who looked very much like the narrator herself "throwin' somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge" - the object they were throwing is not identified. But again, the narrator's mother fails to connect this in any way to her daughter's emotional distress. In the song's final verse, a year has passed, and brought more harm and pain. The narrator's brother has married Becky Thompson, but they have moved away to another town ("bought a store in Tupelo"). Their father died from an unspecified viral infection, and their mother has been depressed and despondent, and "doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything". The narrator is also affected by the malaise; the main change she describes in her own life, is that she often visits Choctaw Ridge and picks flowers there to drop from the Tallahatchie Bridge into the murky waters of the river where Billy Joe jumped to his death.
QUESTION: How did the family react>
IN: Walter Bruce Willis was born on March 19, 1955, in the town of Idar-Oberstein, West Germany. His father, David Willis, was an American soldier. His mother, Marlene, was German, born in Kassel. Willis is the oldest of four children with a sister named Florence and two brothers, Robert (who is deceased) and David.

Throughout his film career, Willis has depicted several military characters in films such as In Country, The Siege, Hart's War, Tears of the Sun, Grindhouse, and G.I. Joe: Retaliation. Growing up in a military family, Willis has publicly sold Girl Scout cookies for the United States armed forces. In 2002, Willis's then 8-year-old daughter, Tallulah, suggested that he purchase Girl Scout cookies to send to troops. Willis purchased 12,000 boxes of cookies, and they were distributed to sailors aboard USS John F. Kennedy and other troops stationed throughout the Middle East at the time. In 2003, Willis visited Iraq as part of the USO tour, singing to the troops with his band, The Accelerators. Willis considered joining the military to help fight the second Iraq war, but was deterred by his age. It was believed he offered $1 million to any noncombatant who turns in terrorist leaders Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; in the June 2007 issue of Vanity Fair, however, he clarified that the statement was made hypothetically and not meant to be taken literally. Willis has also criticized the media for its coverage of the war, complaining that the press were more likely to focus on the negative aspects of the war: I went to Iraq because what I saw when I was over there was soldiers--young kids for the most part--helping people in Iraq; helping getting the power turned back on, helping get hospitals open, helping get the water turned back on and you don't hear any of that on the news. You hear, 'X number of people were killed today,' which I think does a huge disservice. It's like spitting on these young men and women who are over there fighting to help this country. Willis stated in 2005 that he wanted to "make a pro-war film in which American soldiers will be depicted as brave fighters for freedom and democracy." The film would follow members of Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, who spent considerable time in Mosul and were decorated heavily for it. The film is to be based on the writings of blogger Michael Yon, a former United States Army Special Forces soldier who was embedded with Deuce Four and sent regular dispatches about their activities. Willis described the plot of the film as "these guys who do what they are asked for very little money to defend and fight for what they consider to be freedom."
QUESTION:
Has he done any other things for troops besides the USO tour?