A Hero’s Story
Silver Star Vietnam veteran remembered with tribute
LOWER PROVIDENCE » It started out as a recollection of wartime details that had never before been accurately and completely told, but it soon turned into much more than that.
Jim Dougherty was a Marine Corps veteran who didn’t talk much about his harrowing time in Vietnam, other than at reunions with his fellow Bravo Company peers.
But the men who had also served in the Bravo Company — Dougherty’s longtime friend Jim Latta, Ken Vitucci, Ben Drollinger, Hugh Pankey, Jerry Stroud and Gary Petrous — knew it was time the world really knew about Dougherty’s bravery and the heroic achievements behind the Silver Star and four Purple Hearts he earned fighting the Viet Cong and then the North Vietnamese Army.
That time, sadly, arrived unexpectedly in September in the form of an obituary written by Latta and the men who fought with Dougherty more than half a century before.
Dougherty had gone for a morning walk at Eskie Park and had been making his usual Wawa run for coffee when he succumbed to a blood clot to his heart that day on Sept. 9, his sister Ann Tyler said.
“He used to walk every morning and then go to Wawa for coffee and drive back home to sit on the patio and have his coffee. They found his car on Church Road, half pulled off the road, with his foot on the brake and the car still running,” Tyler said. “It was a shock. We all had dinner the night before on the back patio, laughing and joking. We had a great time. This was totally unexpected because Jim was healthy as can be.”
Growing up on Ninth Avenue in Conshohocken, where everyone knew Dougherty as “Doc” when he worked at his aunt and uncle’s pharmacy, Dougherty’s Pharmacy at Fourth Avenue and Fayette Street, before graduating from St. Matthew’s High School and enlisting in the Marine Corps in 1964, Tyler recalled how close Dougherty had been with all of his siblings, including Mary Grove and Catherine Cleaver.
“We would always be there for each other in a heartbeat. If somebody in the area needed help he would help them without them knowing about it. That’s the kind of individual he was. I couldn’t have asked for a better brother, and neither could my two sisters. I met my husband through my brother while both were stationed together in the Marines.”
Ann and her husband, Pete Tyler, also a Vietnam veteran, eventually bought a home in Eagleville next door to Dougherty and his wife Elizabeth.
“They bought their house and the house next door was for sale, and the house behind us was for sale,” Ann Tyler remembered. “We werelooking for a house too. We looked at both houses and we ended up next door because it had the bigger yard. The neighbors thought we were going to have a big argument because they didn’t think families could live next door to each other, but it made us closer,” she said. “My sister-in-law’s parents lived in Ohio, our parents had been deceased, so all we had was each other.”
Her husband agreed. “I lived next door to Jim for 41 years and he was one of my best friends,” Pete Tyler said. “He was true to his word and was always there to help the people he’d grown up with. We raised our daughters together. He and his wife were my children’s guardians if something ever happened to my wife and me. And we were the guardians of Jim’s daughters, K.C. and Sarah if something ever happened to him and Beth. He left a big void in my life. I’m 76 years old and when you lose a friend, not only a friend but a brother-in-law, somebody you’ve known half your life, it’s hard.”
Pete Tyler recalled that Dougherty rarely missed one of his daughter’s softball or hockey games.
“I think Jim and I had one fight in 41 years,” he said. “It was kind of a joke. I wanted to loan him my gas grill and told him to be careful of it because it couldn’t light with a match so he just said, ‘keep the doggone thing and I’ll go get my own,’ And that was the only argument we had in 41 years. But you couldn’t ask for a nicer person. He was always more positive than negative. We’re both flag-wavers, that’s what we fought for. Something Jim and I would talk about, neither of us wanted to see this country go socialistic. We both said we fought for this country and we didn’t want to see it go in that direction and now we have to worry about our grandchildren, who we hoped would never have to do anything we did.”
Like everyone else who knew Dougherty, Pete Tyler was shocked by his brotherin-law’s sudden death.
“I should have gone way before he did because of all the medical things I have wrong with me from Vietnam,” he said.
With Dougherty having served as a Lower Providence supervisor from 2000 to 2005, the board of supervisors honored him with a moment of silence at the Sept. 17 meeting.
Dougherty’s death sparked not only a thoughtful obituary but a meticulously crafted tribute that the Bravo Company veterans felt was long overdue.
“Jim’s wife asked me to help with the obituary, and I did,” noted Latta.
“I knew some of the details for the obituary from talking to Jim, but not to the level that’s in the tribute. After talking to Jim’s platoon leader and some other guys they put a little more meat on the bones for me, and that’s why the tribute is so extensive. Jim and I talked a little bit about the war,” he added, “but you don’t really want to think about it. The only time you talk about it is when you’re with other combat veterans and then you can talk about it. Pete Tyler was in Vietnam the same time Jim was there on his first tour, ‘65 and 66, when it was guerilla warfare, the Viet Cong and by the end of ‘66 the North Vietnamese armyhad moved in because the Viet Cong were being beaten. Jim and I used to talk about this … it was a very different war in ‘65 and ‘66 than it was in ‘67 and ‘68.”
The tribute came together fairly easily when Latta made the necessary contacts, he said.
“I reached Jim’s platoon leader, Ben Drollinger, and Ken Vitucci and Gary Petrous and between us we were able to put the whole thing together,” he said. “They were witnesses to everything that is mentioned in the tribute. The obituary turned out to be much shorter and we decided to pull it all together into a more complete story.”
Latta’s and Dougherty’s paths didn’t cross in Vietnam, but Dougherty’s second tour of Vietnam in late 1967 and early 1968 nearly coincided with Latta’s tour when Latta arrived in February 1968.
“Jim graduated from high school three years before me, and of course he was in Conshohocken and I was in West Chester, so we didn’t know each other before the war. I got to Vietnam right after the Troui Bridge fight and Jim was Medevacked by then. He was wounded about three days before I arrived and he went through a lot in the six months of his second tour. Drollinger was wounded and they got a new platoon leader who was dead within a week, so Jim took over the platoon. He was adored by his men.
Here he was, 20 or 21 years old and he’s looked up to as the older man. Our lieutenants were just a year out of college, 23 years old with the responsibility of 50 men, just like Jim.”
It wasn’t until many years after the war, at one of the Bravo company reunions, that Dougherty and Latta were introduced to each other.
“We were in the same company but Jim was in another platoon. I never really knew him. The casualties were so heavy, you hardly got to know people in your own platoon. It was just continuous casualties, new people, casualties, new people … your squad and your platoon were your reference points. It’s hard for people to imagine what it was like; you joined the company and they were in the field at the time, so you were choppered out to the field and incorporated into your platoon.”
During the day, there was continuous movement, Latta recalled.
“You just kept moving, under horrible conditions. At night you just scooped out a hole and went to sleep and if it rained you just covered up with your poncho. The nicest sound was when you got back to a base, which might have been two days out of a month. You’re so exhausted that you could sleep anywhere and one of the most difficult things was trying to stay awake at night, because a lot of times the enemy would harass at night. So there wasn’t a lot of idle time in getting to know your friends.”
Latta met Dougherty not long before he retired from Municipal Supply Company.
“I met Jim through the reunion activities, the 1/5 Vietnam Veterans Association and the First Marine Division’s annual reunions,” said Latta, who initially resisted going to the reunions.
“There’s a lot of unhappiness and yet through those
times spent together everyone bonded. The only thing you feared more than your own death was the death of a buddy. Most men I knew wouldn’t have hesitated to sacrifice their life to save a buddy because they knew how much he wanted to go home to his family. You’re so terrified because you’ve seen so many terrible things, and the screams and people calling for their mother. It’s a horrible thing. It was very difficult to start going to the reunions because my association with those times is a lot of very sad experiences,” he said. “It’s hard to bring yourself to make those connections again. But once you go to a reunion you can tell the ones who are at their first reunion because they’re kind of in a daze. The best part is when they meet somebody they haven’t seen in 51 or 52 years and the years just fall away. There are a lot of tears shed when you see a guy you would’ve died for, or who would’ve died for you, it’s a very emotional experience. Through these reunions, I got to know the people who were in Vietnam when I wasn’t there. At the reunions we were organized by battalion, so when they arrive for registration and look at the names of people they might know that’s when it gets interesting when they see somebody they haven’t seen in 50 years and the last time they saw him he was shot full of holes and being loaded onto a helicopter.”
Latta, who owns a farm in Fulton County, Central Pennsylvania, and Dougherty became good friends as a result of the reunions and
working together on fundraisers.
“Jim and I traveled all over the country for these reunions. We got to be very good friends and then Jim was president of the 1/5 Association and one of the boys that was killed on Operation Swift was named Rodney Davis, a medal of honor recipient from Macon, Ga. We found out the cemetery where he was buried was overgrown with weeds. Here’s a man who gave his life to save other men and we knew we needed to do something. We went to the cemetery to clean it up and started a fund drive and raised over $100,000. With the money left over we started the Rodney Davis Memorial Scholarship Fund, which is now self-sustaining and serves students selected by the foundation. Jim was the leader on all of this. He made all the decisions.”
Latta recalled Dougherty’s graciousness when he was asked to address a group of VFW veterans at the last minute.
“Jim was here at the farm two years ago and we went to the local VFW for Veterans Day and the speaker for the evening couldn’t be there and the commander mentioned it to me so I said why don’t you ask Jim to be your speaker?” Latta recalled. “So, with about 15 minutes’ notice Jim talked about his experience, not in combat so much but about being a Marine. He said his proud
est moments were when he was leading a platoon of marines in Vietnam. He spoke very eloquently on very short notice.”
Latta believes that Dougherty would be proud of the way he and the other Bravo Company men reconstructed the brutal battle details for the tribute.
“Jim was a very humble man,” Latta noted. “He was never going to be bragging about what he did. But a friend of ours said this story needs to be told. Jim was a real hero. He was awarded a Silver Star for the fight at Troui Bridge and he probably should have gotten another Silver Star for what he did in Phu Loc, for the way he extracted his men. His lieutenant was gone; everybody was shot up. Jim’s leg was almost torn off in combat. They really worked to save his leg but the muscles were destroyed. He was fitted with a brace and they prescribed special shoes to enable him mobility. But he was so grateful that he hadn’t lost his leg. This tribute is going to end up where it belongs, which is in Jim’s backyard,” Latta said. “It’s his legacy, because no one would ever have known about it. He never talked about it. But Jim would be very pleased to know that the story has been told, one that he would have found very difficult to tell. Now his family knows what a huge hero he was.”