By Lauren FitzPatrick
Staff writer
Over three decades of military service, Thomas A. McPheeters became a proud veteran of three of the 20th century’s defining wars.
He was a Marine aviator aboard the USS Rendova during World War II. He was a Marine commander in the Korean War. And he earned a Purple Heart for a leg injury in Dong Hai, seven miles south of the demilitarized zone in the Vietnam War.
But no one could tell by talking to him.
“He’s the only man I’ve ever known who was a veteran of three wars,” said his nephew, Jim Duhig, who also served in Vietnam at the same time.
“But he had never talked about any of his experiences in World War II, Korea or Vietnam. A lot of those guys in World War II never talked about it.”
Mr. McPheeters, who was raised in Chicago’s Chatham community, died Jan. 15 of cancer at age 81. He had spent 30 years in the Marine Corps, retiring as a Lt. Col.
“My ma used to say she never knew anyone else in her life with the sense of willpower and conviction like her brother Tom,” said Duhig, son of Mr. McPheeters’ twin sister, Jane. “He gravitated to the military because of his sense of duty.”
Mr. McPheeters was the third of five children born in Clinton, Ill., to a housewife and a railroad worker on the Illinois Central. In 1933, when he was 8, the family moved to 79th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, where Mr. McPheeter attended Hirsch High School.
He graduated during the throes of World War II and immediately enlisted in the Marine Corps, where he served in marine aviation. When the war ended, he re-upped and accepted an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
While in school, he met Patricia Richitt, the daughter of the chief of police in Washington, D.C.. The two married around the time he graduated from the academy in June 1951 and went on to have four children.
He spent 1953 and 1954 commanding a regiment during the Korean War.
Then the moving really began, his nephew said.
“When you’re a career military man, you’re like the milkman’s horse, you’re all over the place,” Duhig said.
The Marines sent the McPheeters to Salem, Ore.; Okinawa, Japan; Camp Pendleton, Calif.; Guam; and Washington, D.C.
When the Vietnam War broke out, Mr. McPheeters charged into battle. He was in the country during 1967 and 1968, first as a fire support coordinator at Dong Hai, just south of the demilitarized zone, then as a commanding officer.
He was hit in the leg with shrapnel during an artillery barrage in March 1968 and was sent home to recuperate. He later was awarded a Purple Heart.
He retired from military service in 1974 to a home in Friday Harbor, Wash., an island north of Seattle. His siblings remained in and around the Southland, his nephew said.
A few years later, his wife died. He remarried and moved inland to Chewelah, Wash., a small town near the state’s eastern border.
Mr. McPheeters was known in the family for his ferocious game of gin rummy.
“He used to clean my dad’s clock at gin rummy at the dining room table,” Duhig said. “And he made the meanest martini in the Midwest.”
But never would he speak about the current wars at the end of his long life.
“Never,” his nephew said. “He was not a political kind of guy. It would have been totally against his nature to speak about the military in a negative way.”
Mr. McPheeters also is survived by his wife, Lynda; two daughters Jane Carter and Marty Kipp; two sons, Tom and Tony; eight grandchildren; three sisters, Mary Ellen Grieshaber, Margaret Holsinger and Jane Duhig; and many nieces, nephews and friends.
Arrangements were by Danekas Funeral Home, (509) 684-6271.
A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. today at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church, 8404 S. Cass Ave., in Darien.
Lauren FitzPatrick may be reached at lfitzpatrick@dailysouthtown.com or (708) 633-5964.
