Clay grad being buried in Niles
By LOU MUMFORD
Tribune Staff Writer

NILES -- Recalling his late son, Tim, Marvin Walters says he never did anything halfway.

"He went full bore,'' he said. "It didn't make any difference whether he was working or playing.''

Or fighting in Vietnam.

Walters, a 1961 graduate of South Bend's Clay High School, died in the southeast Asian conflict. He was killed March 9, 1969, when his plane crashed in Laos not far from Vietnam's demilitarized zone.

The family was made aware of his death almost immediately, even though the exact circumstances were never made clear. But the remains of the 26-year-old Army staff sergeant were never recovered, prompting a sense of emptiness for Marvin; his wife, Marylynn; and Tim's sister, Jenelle Shadwick.

It was only in the last few months that a military recovery team located Walters' remains on that Laotian hillside. The remains were positively identified as those of Walters through dental records on Nov. 30.

At 11 a.m. Saturday, burial will take place in Niles' Silverbrook Cemetery. Walters will be laid to rest next to his uncle, Harry Walters, a U.S. Army Air Corps captain who died in World War II.

Marvin Walters said he had never considered the possibility that his son might be killed in combat, even though the Vietnam War was well under way when Tim enlisted in 1965.

"I felt like kicking him in the butt ... (but) I thought the war would be over by then (1969),'' said the elder Walters, a Niles native and former South Bend resident who now resides in Mesa, Ariz.

The special operations soldier had ample opportunities to come home. He had served four tours of duty, had fought in nine campaigns and had flown more than 100 missions when his life ended.

His commanding officers said his sense of commitment wouldn't allow him to leave a job unfinished.

"My observation was he was highly professional. ... He wanted it done, and he wanted it done correctly,'' recalled retired Lt. Col. Reginald Hathorn of Alexandria, La. "He was already on his fourth tour when he started to fly with me, and he told me he wanted to extend another six months.

"I told him he was stretching his luck, but his mind was made up. He never told me why.''

People like Don Mitchell of Edwardsburg wouldn't have been surprised by Walters' determination.

Mitchell recalled that he played football for Adams High School in the early 1960s and, in his senior year, was pitted against Walters, a linebacker for the Washington Clay Colonials.

"He was my assignment. I was a guard, and I lined up against him every play,'' he said. "In every skull session we had, we knew this guy was something to be reckoned with.

"He was a straight shooter. There was nothing fancy about Tim. It was blood and guts the whole way.''

Shadwick, now a resident of Houston, remembers Walters' sense of humor and boyish appearance. She said he was incensed when he was "carded'' at a Pizza Hut in Odessa, Texas, in 1968, during his last leave in the States.

"I was just 21, but they sent me back to the table to get his ID,'' she said. "Oh, was he mad. Tim said, 'I've been fighting a war.' "

In Vietnam, Walters was a member of the highly classified Military Assistance Command, Vietnam-Studies and Observation Group. He was a forward observer on an O-2 aircraft, which retired Brig. Gen. George Gaspard described as the "slowest-flying aircraft in the Air Force.''

Gaspard also described Walters as "one of the 12 most courageous persons'' he's ever known.

"We did a lot of reconnaissance with slow-flying aircraft. That's where Tim excelled,'' said Gaspard, Walters' commanding officer until a year before his death. "He was a very brash young man, and I loved him for it.''

Gaspard said it was Walters' job to locate areas where personnel could be dropped for weeklong periods, allowing them to seek out enemy supply, telephone and oil lines.

"Tim had to be one step ahead of everybody else. ... If they'd get lost on the ground, he'd tell them what heading to follow,'' he said.

No one knows for certain what caused Walters' plane to crash.

His family said it was ground fire that brought it down. Hathorn said he was told it was small arms fire. Gaspard said he received secondhand information nearly two years after the crash that the cause was heat inversion.

Gaspard said Walters and the plane's pilot were attempting to assist a ground team being pursued by the North Vietnamese.

"They were running across an open area, and Tim was firing at the enemy from the plane with an M-16" rifle, he said. "The enemy decided to set fire to the grass, to screen off the attackers.

"The pilot made a pass in there but the heat had built up, causing the inversion. It turned the plane over and it crashed.''

In posthumously awarding Walters a Silver Star medal, one of 11 he was granted, the Army said:

"Sgt. Walters successfully directed the extraction of a ground reconnaissance team, which was surrounded by a large enemy force and in imminent peril of death. Expertly coordinating the available aerial support, he guided rescue aircraft into the area, which ultimately succeeded in extracting the allied team.

"As a direct result of his unhesitating bravery, the survivors of the ground reconnaissance team were saved from certain death, and vital information was made available to allied forces for use against hostile elements.''

Hostile forces in the area made the recovery of bodies impossible. But this year's discovery of the remains set the wheels in motion for closure.

Hathorn said it's only fitting Walters should be buried in the soil of the country he fought to protect.

"I don't feel a hole in the ground on a forgotten hillside is the proper place for our people to be,'' Hathorn said.