“Bros” is based on a true story of two very different brothers who, through difficult challenges of deafness, alcoholism, homosexuality, Alzheimer’s disease and suicide, struggle to keep their family together.

SYNOPSIS:

Two brothers, Johnny and Kerry, are born three years apart to deaf parents. The father is deaf from birth and the mother is deaf since her teenage years due to an illness. She can speak but cannot hear.

Early on in their lives, the mother is institutionalized with TB and the boys are sent to live on a farm in Iowa with an aunt and uncle, Harry and Iris. They spend two happy years on the farm while the mother recuperates. During this time Kerry develops into a lively, devilish mischief-maker while his older brother Johnny grows up to be the more introverted, thoughtful and serious of the two.

Upon the mother’s release, the family moves to Toledo, Iowa which proves to be the first of six different houses, and schools, during the next two years. This is the motor behind the “new kid syndrome” that Johnny feels throughout his youth. All the constant moving and job changing is due to the father’s profession in the printing world as a linotypist. The deaf are considered ideal in this profession as they are immune to the insufferable noise in the printing room.

Finally, the family buys a house in Des Moines, Iowa that turns out to be the family home for many years to come. In all these different houses the father removes the boys' bedroom door as they can't be heard and an electrician is always involved to install a system to the front doorbell that causes lights in the house to flash due to the fact that neither parent could hear it.

Ten years go by in a more-or-less normal family atmosphere. More or less because living with deaf parents is hardly a normal situation. The only way the boys can communicate with their parents is through sign language and written notes and letters.

Johnny graduates from high school and leaves home to be with his high school sweetheart in Houston, Texas. Once there and with her, he decides to join the army to avoid marriage.

Now away from home, an intense exchange of correspondence starts between the two brothers and the parents. Johnny keeps all these letters throughout his lifetime.

Life goes on for both the brothers. Johnny is nominated for the Naval Academy but is turned down and leaves the Army. Kerry joins the Air Force. Johnny goes to Chicago, enrolls in the Goodman School of Theater and becomes involved with a girl named Laurie. Kerry visits Johnny in Chicago and makes a play for the girl.

In 1962 Johnny does a stint in summer stock, comes out as gay, comes back to Chicago with a boyfriend in tow and then moves to NYC. Two years later he is back in Chicago and working in night-club revue in Milwaukee. Kerry is stationed in Scotland with the Air Force.

Now the two brothers communicate with the parents by phone through the newly developed TTY portable typing machine that hooks into a telephone line and works like a fax machine.

The boys talk about the father’s drinking problem and that he is becoming a mean drunk. They wonder what the relationship has turned into with the mother.

Tragedy strikes the family with the suicide of the mother. She is found by the father hanging by the neck in the basement. Both boys rush home, Johnny from NYC and Kerry from Scotland on a 30 day emergency leave. Nobody knows why she did it. No note and no indication of her state of mind. There is a nagging suspicion that it has to do with the father. After a traumatic funeral, life continues.

Kerry gets a “hardship release” from the Air Force and moves back to the US to get on with his life and look after the father. Johnny does a gig in Puerto Rico and returns to NYC where he shares an apartment with Kerry.

Kerry moves to DC where he marries a French girl so she can get her green card. That marriage goes nowhere and they end up divorcing. Johnny goes to Vegas to work, the father moves to DC and remarries. The new wife is not popular with the boys.

Johnny returns to NYC, comes out as homosexual to his brother and tells him that he is living with Michael in what turns out to be a long-term relationship.

Kerry meets Penny while working in Atlanta and they marry. That marriage will last and Johnny becomes an uncle to their four girls.

One day Johnny gets a message from his father on the TTY machine that the new wife has left him. He calls Kerry and tells him to go to the father’s apartment in Arlington to see what is going on. When Kerry gets there, the second wife Maxine opens the door. She had been out shopping and has no idea what he is talking about. This is the first clue that there is something wrong mentally with the father. After many visits to doctors and neurologists, the father is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He has gone from a mean drunk to a lost little boy.

The problem is further aggravated by the father’s deafness. The two sons cannot find a care home for someone deaf with Alzheimer’s. Plus the wife remains in a total state of denial and won’t admit there is anything wrong with the father.

In the end, after a series of bad experiences trying to care for him at home, Kerry and Johnny finally locate the only nursing home in the US for the deaf who treat Alzheimer’s patients. Kerry makes the initial deposit to have the father admitted. Conflict: the wife won’t let him go and they lose the deposit. Finally she gives in, the father is admitted and the wife takes an apartment across the street from the facility.

During all this Kerry has gone from retail management to owning his own million dollar furniture business. Johnny has become a highly respected theater director as well as choreographer.

Celebrating his first year as a business owner, Kerry visits Johnny and his partner Michael in NYC where he suffers a stroke that leads to aphasia leaving him devoid of most of his communication skills.

He copes with the rehabilitation, regains his ability to write and speck and also becomes a founding member of the American Aphasia Foundation.

A few years later and after a second stroke, Kerry dies of a heart-attack on a golf course.

The story ends at Kerry’s funeral with a heart-breaking eulogy from his brother Johnny.