PLYMOUTH (NEWS CENTER Maine) — Memorial Day is a holiday for most Americans. For many, it's a day to relax at home, go to the beach or have a cookout. But Memorial Day is meant to be about honoring those who lost their lives in war. For their families, it is never really a holiday.
In the small Maine town of Plymouth, the Sawyer Cemetery is the final resting place for two men, two sons of that town, who were laid to rest there long before their time. Donald Skidgel and Tarry O'Reilly were both 20 years old when they were killed in Vietnam.
Skidgel’s sister, Carol Small, remembers it well.
"I was very upset about my brother going," she recalls. "I cried. I said, 'if you go you won't come back, I know you won't.'"
Small said she and her brother, who they called Donnie, were four years apart in age but very close.
"He used to make me laugh, do silly things. He loved motorcycles, fast things. He was a very good, good person."
She said Donnie and the other boys in town all played together, and that included Tarry O’Reilly. Small said he would ride bikes, play ball, swim in the pond — all the things boys did together.
Vileta Stone, Tarry O’Reilly’s sister, remembers, too.
"Growing up in this small town of Plymouth where everyone knew him and loved him, he just was happy all the time," she said.
Tarry's other sister, Coreine, said the two of them were very close as kids.
"He was my best friend," she said. "My buddy. We’d climb trees together, play cowboys and Indians, and trucks and cars."
She said it was a great shock when Tarry announced he was enlisting in the Army.
"He said he didn’t want to be drafted," said Vileta.
She remembers trying to talk him out of it, saying their father was disabled and that Tarry, as the only boy, could avoid the service.
"And he said, 'Vileta, I need to go,'" she recalls. "I say, 'you need to go?' He says, 'yes, because Dad couldn’t and I need to do this.' It was what he wanted to do."
He became a helicopter pilot. Old family photos show Tarry and his parents when he graduated from flight school. Soon thereafter, he was sent to Vietnam. Coreine says she feared the worst.
"When I heard he had been stationed in Vietnam a cold chill went down my back," Coreine said, "and I knew he weren’t coming home."
By that time, Donnie Skidgel had been drafted into the Army, where he quickly rose to the rank of sergeant. In September 1969, his unit was attacked while guarding a convoy. Carol Small said she vividly remembers the day the family found out her brother had been killed.
"I was not nice to my mom. I told her she was lying," Carol recalled, as she broke into tears.
"For years I didn’t talk about my brother. I never went to the grave until my mother died."
She said Donnie’s death changed the whole family, but especially her mother.
"It tore her apart. I think my mom aged overnight."
Just five months later, Tarry O’Reilly’s family got the bad news that his helicopter had been shot down. Tarry had been badly injured and burned. A few days later, he died.
"Mom and Dad never talked about it," Vileta said. "It broke my Dad, just broke him."
Remembering Vietnam - One town's loss
Today, nearly 50 years after Plymouth’s two sons died in that war, the families say the pain never goes away.
Tarry O’Reilly’s sister Vileta said they are proud of his becoming a pilot.
"I mean, all his letters and everything that he wrote, he loved what he was doing," Vileta said.
But for both of them, the grief is still all too real. Coreine also broke into tears.
"You lose somebody," she said "and [if] you can’t be there when they pass you always look out that door, wondering are they going to come through that door? Because you didn’t see them go. Because you weren’t there. He had to die alone in that god-awful country."
For Donald Skidgel’s family, many reminders come from outside, because Sgt. Skidgel was a hero. Fighting off the enemy until he died, protecting a command unit. Donald Skidgel was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
The medal citation gives the extraordinary details of Skidgel’s actions in that battle. But his sister Carol says she couldn’t bring herself to read it for 40 years.
"I spent 10 years of my life waking up every night [with] nightmares, dreaming of my brother," Carol said.
She said those nightmares have mostly gone away now, but not the sadness.
"But its like yesterday, like yesterday."
In 2011, she did read the citation. That’s when the bridge in nearby Newport was dedicated to her brother’s memory. The Sgt. Donald Skidgel Memorial Bridge is one of several monuments to him. They include a building at Fort Knox, Y, the American Legion Hall in Newport and the Dahlgren-Skidgel Farm of Hope in Caribou, which provides housing for veterans in need.
Family members have attended all the ceremonies, Carol says, including Donnie Skidgel’s three children. They were all too young to have any memory of their father, but say they have learned about him from Carol and others. All three said they are proud of what he did, and cherish the stories about him.
"It's hard, but we have to learn to live with it," said Tammy Russell. "We have no choice. And we tell our kids the good memories and show them what their grandfather did."
For them, Memorial Day brings tears. Both families say they plan to visit the cemetery where the graves of Donald Skidgel and Tarry O’Reilly are about 30 feet apart. Their white marble military headstones tell of the deaths of two young men, sent to the other side of the world for war, and finally brought home to the town where they once played together.