Driving force behind city’s Vietnam veterans memorial
T. J. McGarvey was known to many as a proud Marine and proud Vietnam veteran who worked on many projects that benefited men and women who served their country.
Mr. McGarvey, of Upper St. Clair, was perhaps best known as “the soul and the fire” behind the Pittsburgh Vietnam Veterans Monument that was erected with $1.2 million in local donations, said Bill Cammarata, a Vietnam veteran who was chairman of fundraising. Mr. McGarvey was president of the monument committee.
Mr. McGarvey, 74, died Monday, 30 years and two days after the Nov. 11, 1987, Veterans Day dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Monument on Pittsburgh’s North Shore. He had survived a stroke in 2015, but had never fully regained his health.
He grew up in Scott; his parents named him Thomas Joseph, but everyone always called him “T.J.,” including his wife of 48 years, Jean Fiori McGarvey.
They were engaged in 1967, before Mr. McGarvey left to serve 13 months in Vietnam.
“He never told me that he was on the front lines, where there were so many fatalities his regiment was called ‘the walking dead’,” Mrs. McGarvey said. “He earned a Purple Heart but turned it down because he didn’t want to worry his mother.”
The couple married on Jan. 11, 1969, shortly after he returned from the war.
“T.J. was very hurt and very upset” by the way veterans were treated in the 1960s and 1970s when they returned from Vietnam, Mrs. McGarvey said. In 1984 he turned those feelings into a drive to erect a monument. “I told him that would never happen.”
Three years later the monument rose on the bank of the Allegheny River. Beneath an inverted hibiscus pod that is an Asian symbol for “rebirth and regeneration,” life-size statues depict two soldiers coming home from war to rejoin their wives.
The couple’s young son, Conor, was the model, Mrs. McGarvey said, for the child held in the arms of one of the women.
Jack Wagner served in Vietnam when Mr. McGarvey did, though they didn’t know each other at the time, and he was a member of the Vietnam Veterans Monument Committee.
“I do not know a veteran who has done more for veterans than T.J. McGarvey,” said Mr. Wagner, who was a member of Pittsburgh City Council when the monument was dedicated. “I absolutely believe the monument helped to heal our community.”
Half of the $1.2 million cost of the monument was cash donations. The other half was donated services, including labor donated by building and construction unions.
Mr. McGarvey also was active in his church, St. Louise de Marillac in Upper St. Clair, and he coached the parochial school’s football team. He loved classic cars; his large circle of friends included classic car cruisers.
He was a member of the Friends of Danang, a founder of the Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program, and he raised money for many veterans causes, including the Vietnam Veterans Monument in Upper St. Clair that was dedicated on Nov. 11, 2011.
Mr. McGarvey was a member of Iron Workers Local Union No. 3. He earned a master’s degree in industrial relations from St. Francis College in Loretto, worked as labor relations manager for Allegheny County and taught labor relations courses at local colleges.
Vietnam veteran Tony Accamondo, also a Marine, called his longtime friend “the ultimate citizen-warrior who battled bravely in Vietnam and then returned to that country decades later for the dedication [in 1999] of an elementary school built with money he helped to raise.”
Survivors in addition to his wife include two daughters, Kathleen McGarvey and Maureen Shaw, both of Upper St. Clair; and two sons, Timothy of Upper St. Clair and Conor of Moon; and three grandchildren.
Visitation is from 2 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday at the Beinhauer Family Funeral Home, 2828 Washington Road, in Peters. The funeral Mass is at 10:30 a.m. Friday at St. Louise de Marillac Church, 320 McMurray Road in Upper St. Clair. After the funeral, there will be a 21-gun salute and other military honors at the Vietnam monument at the Upper St. Clair municipal building. Interment is at Queen of Heaven Cemetery.
The family suggests donations to Guardian Angels Medical Service Dogs, 150 Hillside Drive, Bethel Park, 15102, or to Vietnam Veterans Inc., P.O. Box 97765, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15227.