Dr. America: The Lives of Thomas A. Dooley

Christian Century, Feb 4, 1998 by Tim Unsworth

By James T. Fisher University Of Massachusetts Press, 304 pp., $29.95.

In 1959 Dr. Tom Dooley was listed as one of the most admired men in the world. He has now been in his St. Louis grave longer than e lived--he died of a malignant melanoma in 1961 at the age of 34. Even before his death, sincere followers were referring to him as "Blessed Tom of Laos."

Near the famed Grotto to Our Lady at the University of Notre Dame, where Tom Dooley spent an interrupted four years but never earned a degree, the school has erected a statue in Dooley's memory. He is depicted with adoring Lao children. For years after Dooley's death there was talk of entering his name into the canonization process. As recently as 1995, a reliable one-volume Encyclopedia of Catholicism (HarperCollins) used words such as "vigorous" and "heroic" to describe his dedication.

If Dooley's name were ever submitted for canonization, James T. Fisher's study should serve as a powerful counterwitness. It's not that Fisher--who holds the Danforth chair in humanities at Dooleys other alma mater, the University of St. Louis--has done a hatchet job. Indeed, the biography's power lies in its scrupulous research and balance. Fisher reminds us that Dooley did a great deal of good. He helped thousands of refugees escape from the advancing North Vietnamese army. Later he established 19 clinics in 13 nations that needed medical supplies. His prodigious gift for attracting goods and services was put to use.

Nevertheless, Fisher also shows us what was behind the charismatic exterior. A devout if self-loathing Catholic, Dooley was intensely anti-Communist and pro-American. He innately trusted the Central Intelligence Agency and was an unquestioning supporter of Ngo Dinh Diem, a fellow Catholic who deposed the monarch, Bao Dai, just before the young medical officer came to Vietnam.

Fisher also refreshes our memory about the early days of the Vietnam conflict. In 1954, a year after Dooley received his naval commission, a bitter defeat at Dien Bien Phu in northwest Vietnam broke the French hold on Vietnam. Diem deposed Bao Dai and, with strong U.S. backing, created a regime that suppressed all opposition, though it could not eradicate the North-supplied communist Vietcong. The skirmishing grew into a full-scale war, with escalating involvement on the part of the U.S.

In 1956 Diem anointed Dooley an Officer de l'Orden National de Vietnam. Dooley seemed blissfully unaware that national leaders do not give awards to low-ranking officers and that the award was inspired by the CIA's man in Vietnam, Colonel Edward Lansdale. Incidents like this would mark the celebrity saint's life. He used people and they used him.

Though early hagiographers suggest that Dooley came from modest roots, in fact his father was an executive with American Car and Foundry. Dooley's home included a chauffeur, houseman and maid and the family was part of the socialite scene in St. Louis. An indifferent student, he ignored the strict discipline at the University of St. Louis High School and at Notre Dame, where he spent two years but apparently completed only two semesters of work. He then spent two years as a medical corpsman in the U.S. Navy; returning to Notre Dame in 1946, he left two years later without a degree.

In 1948 he entered medical school at the University of St. Louis and managed to remain in school despite poor grades and dreadful attendance. His classmates viewed him with a mix of disdain and fascination. It took him five years to complete a four-year program. He graduated 109th in his class of 116 and promised the faculty that he would not practice medicine in the U.S.

He went on active duty with the navy in Vietnam in 1954 and in less than two years had become the best-known medic in Vietnam. By 1956 he was the subject of a Reader's Digest article. And in that same year, Dooley's account of the evacuation of refugees from North Vietnam, Deliver Us from Evil, sold over 500,000 copies.

In 1956, however, he was discharged from the navy after his predatory homosexuality was uncovered. There is evidence that his gay activity had started as a teenager. This may explain his aforementioned self-loathing, easily acquired at a time when both the church and the military viewed homosexuality as the most repulsive of sins. The navy was not about to expose an officer who had helped to justify the war effort. Indeed, Dooleys sexual orientation was not discussed openly until 1989, 28 years after his death.

Dooley fled from Vietnam to Laos, a country about which he knew virtually nothing. Laos had only a half-dozen missionary priests and not a single Caucasian physician. Here Dooley established medical missions, staffed by locals and volunteers. His missions, at which he personally spent very little time, have been described by some as a sham. Many faded almost as quickly as they were started. The patients received low-level care, though that was better than the nonexistent care that preceded Dooley's arrival. In any case, Dooley was lauded as dedicated, driven, kind and caring.