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McKees Rocks’ most decorated Vietnam veteran spent a lifetime giving back to his community, writes BILL ZLATOS
A McKees Rocks Vietnam veteran spent a lifetime giving back to his community
In the 1960s, Mike Hepler frisked drunks for dough in McKees Rocks and ran the numbers for local politicians. He hot-wired cars and sold them to gangs for $15 each.
Life was tough in The Rocks, and he was at a fork in the road.
At age 10, he hopped a Cyclone fence and slipped into the old Boys Club. He helped himself to a Flay’s soda pop and felt the firm hands of a man on his shoulders. It was Ed Ferris Sr., director of the club, and he encouraged the youth to quit stealing and enjoy the club’s programs.
Over the next seven years, Mr. Hepler hovered between the stability of the club and the lawlessness of the streets.
“I was sitting on a fence,” he said. “The streets were pulling me one way, all the illegal activity, and the club pulled me another way.”
Mike Hepler has been fighting his whole life: First, the street toughs. Next, the enemy in Vietnam, where he became one of the most decorated Vietnam veterans from the Pittsburgh region. Ever since, the demons of war. And now, the ravages of age.
Crossroads
Mr. Hepler was born Frank J. but known as Mike. He was the second of five children — Ray, of Brentwood; Andrew “Dink,” of Salem, Ohio; Mary Waugh, deceased; and Eleanor Beynan, of Finleyville, Washington County. Mr. Hepler did not know his father. He talked to him only twice.
His mother, Rita, raised the family on welfare in the public housing project McKees Rocks Terrace. “She’s got tough bark,” Mr. Hepler said.
Now 72, he lives in a 130-year-old farmhouse in Richland Township along with his dachshunds, Noodles and Cashew.
By age 14, he suffered three stab wounds in knife fights. He pulled a stiletto out of his left hand — a souvenir from an assailant.
Untimely death loomed over The Rocks like a dark cloud. Mr. Hepler saw a truck with bad brakes jump a curb and kill three bystanders.
He saw the body of his grandfather after a train struck him. He served as pallbearer for a friend who swung on a rope like Tarzan, hit a pier and fell into the Ohio River.
Playing near Chartiers Creek, he and his friends noticed a partly submerged brown paper bag. They lifted it, and the body of a baby fell out.
He became acquainted with death throughout childhood. “I was already raised for Vietnam,” he said.
Mr. Hepler, however, found refuge in the Boys Club. There he did his homework, swam, played basketball and dodgeball, shot pool, and worked with wood and plastic.
“Everything in the building seemed created just for me,” he said.
Ultimately, he chose the way of the club. He graduated from McKees Rocks High School in 1966, joined the Army in September and volunteered for Vietnam.
He was 17.
Staff sergeant
Mr. Hepler stepped off the plane into heat and humidity. He served as a machine gunner on a 13.5-ton armored personnel carrier for B Troop, 1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry. As track commander and captain’s bodyguard, he was promoted to staff sergeant.
He fought in four major battles and a dozen skirmishes, including the firefight near the village of Dai Hanh in 1968.
Manning a .50-caliber machine gun, Staff Sgt. Hepler mowed down enemy soldiers popping up from camouflaged “spider holes” like jacks-in-the-box, he recalled.
“I had a pretty good body count that day. It was carnage,” he said in an interview for the Veterans History Project.
The air smelled of gunpowder and jungle, and smoke cast a light blue tint. Bullets pinged off armor. Urgent voices squawked on the radio. Rocket-propelled grenades and incoming mortar shells exploded. The wounded screamed.
A bullet in the chest felled a lieutenant running between vehicles. Bullets flying, Staff Sgt. Hepler zigzagged about 90 feet, picked him up and carried him back to the track. He patched up the victim’s chest, which spurted blood with each breath. The officer survived.
Staff Sgt. Hepler was wounded three times during the war. A bullet ricocheted and lodged in his neck, where it remains. He wears a beard because it’s too painful to shave.
Shrapnel from a grenade injured his buttocks and right knee. In a third skirmish, punji sticks — sharpened bamboo branches — pierced his right leg after he half fell into a booby trap.
“That was more pain than getting shot and blown up,” he recalled.
Mr. Hepler won the Silver Star, two Bronze stars, a Purple Heart and numerous other medals. He later was inducted into the Hall of Valor of Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum.
“For the longest time I had no remorse for what I did,” he said. “That made me less of a man. I’ve changed since then.”
He blames the government for taking advantage of the unquestioning patriotism of America’s youth to fight a war he now finds a waste.
“We were babies,” he said.
Debt of honor
While in Vietnam, Mr. Hepler learned that his mentor, Ed Ferris, had died. He promised himself that when he returned home, he would pay his mentor back for saving his life.
He was discharged on Sept. 8, 1969. The next day, he enrolled at Robert Morris College in business management and worked at the club as swimming director. That began a series of promotions here that led to his becoming executive director of the Boys & Girls Club in Jamestown, N.Y., in 1981.
He returned in 1987 to become vice president of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Western Pennsylvania. Two years later, he rose to president and CEO.
By his retirement in 2018, he raised a total of $25 million without a fundraising firm. He built a club in Lawrenceville, additions to clubs in McKeesport and McKees Rocks and a sports arena in McKeesport.
Dick Farrell, former board member of the club, called Mr. Hepler one of “the best of humanity” and “an antidote to the cynicism we face in society.”
He said some foundations advised Mr. Hepler to close financially struggling clubs. “He would never shut a door,” said Mr. Farrell, 78, of Franklin Park. Mr. Hepler has three children — Jenny, 48, of Beaver Falls, Jeremy, 42, of Cranberry, and Michael, 33, of South Park — and five grandchildren. His daughter offered a simple explanation for her father’s hard work. “It was always about the kids,” she said.
He worried so much about club members that he fingered a rosary, praying for them as he drove.
It didn’t always work. In 1995, a 12-year-old boy drowned in the pool of the Shadyside club.
“We did everything by the book, but that does not change the fact that this wonderful little boy lost his life,” Mr. Hepler said.
In 1989, drug dealers at a bar next to the Lawrenceville club sold cocaine. When a 6-year-old girl walked into the club with a hypodermic needle that she found on the steps, Mr. Hepler decided to wage war. He let police observe drug transactions from the club.
Dealers retaliated by vandalizing the club and setting three fires, causing $710,000 in total damage. They slashed the tires of his car and broke his windshield.
They made death threats. They called his home and gave the precise time his children got off the school bus.
He closed the club for six months but would not relocate it. The police made 49 drug arrests, and the nuisance bar closed.
“We lost the battle, but won the war,” Mr. Hepler said.
Mike “Beef” Berwick, 57, of Jamestown, N.Y., grew up in Hays Manor, a housing project in The Rocks. He credited Mr. Hepler for saving him from a life on the streets.
Mr. Hepler gave him his first job, dining room orderly, when he was 11. He considered dropping out of high school until Mr. Hepler threatened not to let him work at summer camp. After graduating, Mr. Berwick announced he was done with school.
No, you’re not, Mr. Hepler told him. He obtained money for Mr. Berwick to graduate from culinary school.
“I love him with all my heart and soul,” he said, his voice breaking up. “If he called me right now and asked me to come down and give him all my blood, I’d be there as fast as I could.”
Trauma
A few weeks after returning home from the Army, Mr. Hepler sought psychiatric help.
“I was so afraid I would be one of these guys on a roof shooting people,” he said.
Mr. Hepler won’t join veterans groups or return to Vietnam. “It’s like going back to the scene of a crime,” he said.
He visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, saw the names of two buddies etched on the black granite and turned around. He has not gone back.
“It was like somebody hit you upside the head with a two-byfour,” he said.
The trauma of combat did not affect his work at the club, he assured, but it still haunts his sleep.
“The nightmares are overwhelming,” he confided. “They’re not going to go away, and, part of me says, nor should they.”
Mr. Hepler said he’s repaid his mentor and his debt from Vietnam through a half-century of helping children.
“He’s touched thousands if not more,” Mr. Berwick said.
New enemies
For years Mr. Hepler jumped dirt bikes up to 80 feet high and performed the Korean martial art of taekwondo. Due to his quick hands, he was inducted in the Eastern U.S. International Black Belt Hall of Fame.
But after breaking 23 bones, doctors told him to stop those hobbies. Instead, he restores vintage motorcycles for a friend.
Now he faces a new enemy — Parkinson’s disease. He wobbles when he walks. He goes to physical therapy and boxes at Rock Steady in Hampton to improve his balance.
He loves punching the bag. “If I stay with this, I am going to get better,” he said. “I am not going to lose this battle.”