Fruita – The duffel bag slipping from the bronze statue’s fingers at the Western Slope Vietnam War Memorial takes Jim Doody back to a winter day in 1971.
His big brother Thomas had been flying a helicopter ferrying soldiers from Vietnam into Laos. The tail of his big green Huey was hit by sniper fire and crashed. Thomas and three others inside died.
Thomas Doody’s body wasn’t found, and the only thing shipped to the Doody family was his Army duffel bag. It went into a closet.
Now, the bag is a symbol of the great lengths to which one man will go to show brotherly love – for his own sibling and for a cadre of veterans who have become his new brothers.
A bronze casting of the bag is part of a sculpture that was unveiled Saturday for Veterans Day. The life-size sculpture, called “Welcome Home,” depicts a Marine welcomed by the outstretched arms of his parents.
Jim Doody, the mayor of Grand Junction, had been thinking about this memorial for more than 20 years before he set out on a concerted mission in 1998 to have it built.
Before the main part of the memorial was dedicated in 2004, Doody, who is not a veteran, would become a fixture on the service-club circuit, speaking out for veterans. He would wear down skeptics and garner the support of a loyal band of brothers ranging from a brigadier general to homeless veterans. His project would finally become reality after the national tragedy of 9/11 boosted patriotism – and donations.
“It never crossed my mind to give up,” Doody said.
The helicopter that now sits atop the monument was a turning point in Doody’s efforts. He got a donated Huey from Camp Robinson in Little Rock, Ark., and had it driven to Colorado on a flatbed, with passers-by giving him thumbs ups along the way. He had that helicopter driven around the Western Slope to drum up support. He parked it in shopping-center parking lots and at festivals along with buckets for donations.
He collected $700,000 in funds and donations of construction labor and materials.
Doody said he single- mindedly pursued this memorial project for a simple reason: “I always had this hole in my heart.”
When Thomas Doody went to war at 18, he already had his commercial pilot’s license. He had earned his first license at 14 and was looking forward to learning how to pilot a helicopter. He told Jim, then 15, that he would come back and they would start a commercial flight business.
For a little brother who had lost his father at age 5, it was a dream to latch on to, Doody explained as he stood under the Huey, which is visible from Interstate 70.
The memorial is a shield- shaped, granite-covered edifice that has the names of more than 1,000 Vietnam veterans etched in the sides. It also has walkway bricks with names of supporters and veterans going back to the Civil War and the Spanish-American War.
The monument draws in many cross-country travelers and has become a gathering place for local veterans, dozens of whom came out last week to help Doody place the new bronze pieces in a concrete pad in front of the memorial.
Roger McGuire crouched nervously nearby and smoked as workers prepared holes to anchor the statues. McGuire said he stops here twice a day as he travels between his home in Mack and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Grand Junction. He suffers from post- traumatic stress disorder, and he said the memorial feels like a comfort zone.
He always salutes the monument, he said. “This is sacred ground.”
“When I look at this, it gives me the welcome we never received,” said Tom Garcia of Montrose, one of the members of the Vietnam Veterans Motorcycle Club. The club donated a granite bench to sit by the sculpture and volunteered to stay with the new sculpture around the clock until the blankets were pulled off during ceremonies Saturday morning.
Local veterans had a hand in the work of Telluride sculptor and Vietnam veteran Richard Arnold when he made the pieces. They advised Arnold to make the returning Marine’s dress uniform wrinkled and a little too large because of weight loss. They recommended he have the “1,000-yard stare” of a young man who is home but, at the same time, is still in the battlefields.
The look in the mother’s bronze eyes is also uncertain, as if she is recognizing that the Marine before her is not the same son who left her to go to war.
At the statue’s unveiling, which included F-16 flyovers, speeches, music and a release of white doves, Doody’s eyes were on the duffel bag.
For Doody, Saturday’s dedication marks the completion of his mission of brotherly love.
Staff writer Nancy Lofholm can be reached at 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com.
