Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree of it in which James Earl Jones played the role of the returning ex-con. According to L. Russell Brown, he read Hamill's story in the "Reader's Digest", and suggested to his songwriting partner Irwin Levine that they write a song based on it. Levine and Brown then registered for copyright the song which they called "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Ole Oak Tree". At the time, the writers said they heard the story while serving in the military. Pete Hamill was not convinced and filed suit for infringement. Hamill dropped his suit after folklorists working for Levine and Brown
An Oak Tree Catholic background and was an altar boy. He sees belief of both artist and viewer as having a key place in art, and that in "An Oak Tree" he had "deconstructed the work of art in such a way as to reveal its single basic and essential element", namely this belief. "An Oak Tree" was a turning point in his artistic development: prior to it his concern had been deconstruction, and afterwards he was "trying to put the pieces together again." Subsequently, using the rationale of Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain", he worked with drawings of utilitarian objects and flat areas of