NOT FORGOTTEN
50 YEARS LATER: PFC. ROBERT J. MCCARTHY REMEMBERED ON VIETNAM MEMORIAL
The nightmares are over for Steve McCarthy, who said having his brother’s name read aloud tomorrow at the Dorchester Vietnam Veterans Memorial is an honor that will help heal his wounds.
“People spit on me, calling me a baby killer,” McCarthy, an Air Force vet, said of the experiences of those who served during that unpopular war. “But my brother didn’t go to Canada. He paid the ultimate sacrifice.”
Marine Pfc. Robert J. McCarthy was killed by a landmine on Nov. 11, 1968, in Quang Tri Province in Vietnam. He was 20, the average age of veterans from Dorchester who died in that war.
By the time the memorial was dedicated in September 1986, the family had moved to New Hampshire and his memory was lost to the city.
Massachusetts Fallen Heroes has brought this forgotten soldier’s ultimate sacrifice back to life, thanks to a cousin Mark Ransom, 69, who alerted them to the omission.
“I had never come to the memorial because I didn’t want to see all these names,” said Ransom, a former Marine who also served in Vietnam. “But when I finally did, I noticed his name wasn’t on it, and it’s been on my mind ever since.”
The group commissioned a stone engraver to add Robert McCarthy’s name to the Dorchester memorial on Morrissey Boulevard and hired a landscaper to beautify the grounds. His name will be read out loud with 76 others engraved on its three granite pillars at tomorrow’s ceremony.
Steve McCarthy, 62, remembers his brother as a tall, thin, easygoing “scrapper” who danced to Motown, stayed out of trouble and would do anything for anybody.
The oldest of six children, he took the place of their absentee father until he enlisted with the Marines because he saw them as “top of the notch.”
“I looked up to him a lot,” his brother said. “He was my hero way before he went in . ... He felt it was his job to serve his country.”
The last time they saw each other, Steve McCarthy said goodbye and told him, “I love you, Bobby.” “I love you, too, Steve,” his brother answered. “Behave.”
Every so often, a letter would arrive from Vietnam, along with a drawing of a bird or a field, nothing of the hell Robert McCarthy likely was seeing, until one day two Marines arrived at the family home with the news that he was dead. The earth seemed to spin off its axis into the gathering darkness.
“My mother was very religious but said, ‘I hate you, God. You take only the good and never the bad,’ ” his brother remembered. “I always felt it should have been me.”
After that, Steve McCarthy got into trouble a lot until he joined the Air Force in 1974, a year before the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.
He never saw combat but has struggled with his brother’s death to this day.
In one of his dreams, his brother appeared and told him, “You gotta smarten up, Steve.” In another, Robert McCarthy sat on his bed and said, “Steve, you gotta get over it.”
“I told him, ‘It should have been me,’ ” Steve McCarthy remembered. “And he said, ‘But it wasn’t. So you gotta get over it and live.’ ”
Tomorrow, when he sees Robert McCarthy’s name inscribed on the memorial near their old neighborhood, he can only imagine what his brother would say.
“It’s going to be an honor for me, and it’s going to hurt some, I’m sure,” McCarthy said, trying not to cry. “He’s probably going to be smiling and just saying, ‘Steve, it’s all right.’ ”
Michael Devin, a spokesman for the Fallen Heroes group, said this son of Boston deserves his place of honor.
“Robert is not forgotten,” Devin said, echoing the promise of the memorial’s inscription: Through us, they will live forever.
“Robert’s eternally remembered.”