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closeFALLEN HEROES OF THE VIETNAM WAR DAY | CENTRE COUNTY’S SACRIFICE Life interrupted
Family wonders what could have been for Pleasant Gap soldier
By Chris Rosenblum
It was late in the afternoon when Jake Fisher, a fresh pack of cigarettes in hand, crossed East College Avenue.
CDT/Nabil K. Mark
Francis "Sis" Fisher, holds a picture of her son Dale C. Fisher, a 21-year-old form Pleasant Gap who was killed in Vietnam 40 years ago on Feb. 22, 1969. CDT/Nabil K. Mark
He stuck his head into Don’s Pizza, a popular spot in Pleasant Gap. Maybe another time, he would have ordered a pie. But on this day, he stayed for only as long as it took to deliver the news.
“Dale’s dead,” he said. His son, at 21, had died in South Vietnam. Hours earlier, two uniformed officers had walked up to the Fisher home in Pleasant Gap, crossing the small lawn with word Spc. Dale Charles Fisher had been shot on Feb. 22, 1969.
No longer would the bespectacled redhead scale spooky, enshrouded mountains with the 101st Airborne Division. Nor would he fulfill his wish to study accounting in college. Three weeks too early, he was coming home.
On a bitter March day, the wind whipping mourners, Fisher’s coffin descended into a snowy grave at Centre County Memorial Park. Flags flew at half-mast around the county.
Forty years later, Pennsylvania would designate Memorial Day as “Fallen Heroes of the Vietnam War Day.” Those honored would include 25 men from Centre County, among the 3,144 Pennsylvanians killed in the war.
Some of the local casualties fought for draining months. Some died within weeks. A few received posthumous decorations. Most just lost their lives. Fisher fell to his own side.
Friendly fire caught him on a search and destroy mission. All the firefights he had survived, all those battles in the hills and coastal plains near Hué, and the end came on wayward shots from all-American boys like himself.
But in 1969 that mattered less than a harder truth.
Dale was dead.
The boy, the man
He had an old brown Chevy, and he wasn’t shy about letting it rip.
“He loved to go into Bellefonte and go up and down the alleys making noise,” said his mother, Francis Fisher, now living at The Oaks at Pleasant Gap nursing home.
By then, he had grown to be 6 feet 2 inches tall, his lanky frame inspiring the nickname “Bones.” Little League had occupied much of his childhood, but sports fell by the wayside at Bellefonte High School. Instead, he bowled at the local five-lane alley or hung out next door at Don’s Pizza, grabbing a counter seat or a side booth.
Some evenings, he rolled dough and fixed hoagies, never becoming too coated in flour.
“He was always a clean nut,” said Jim Martz, of Pleasant Gap, who co-owned the restaurant with his brother. “Whenever he got something on his fingers, he had to go wash them.”
Long behind him were his cowboy days.
As a youngster, he loved “Gun-smoke” and his Roy Rogers jacket, all suede with the little fringes. He had boots, too, and a belt from which to hang his holstered guns. Money also intrigued him.
He couldn’t have been more than 6 when he would boldly approach visitors and solicit contributions to his reindeer bank.
“He’d say, ‘If you put a dime in it, his nose will light up,’ ” Francis Fisher said.
As he grew, so did his love for numbers. He balanced the books for his uncle, Russ Fisher, a World War II veteran who ran a garage in Wingate. It was a favorite place for the boy, who could often be found pumping gas when not adding up figures.
Over time, he acquired a reputation for frugality.
“He just liked to save his change,” Martz said.
What he enjoyed spending was time with friends.
Becky Fisher, his older sister who lives in Pittsburgh, remembers him as a popular kid, “jovial and upbeat” with a “bubbly personality.”
“When he laughed, everybody else laughed,” she said.
She wasn’t chuckling after he enlisted.
He had graduated in 1965, then held jobs around the county. It was only a matter of time before his draft notice. So he analyzed the numbers.
If he joined the Army, he could be out in two years to go to college. Becky Fisher wanted him to choose the Air Force or Navy, but that meant longer commitments.
Nope, he had it figured out. “He wanted to do what he had to do so he could get on with his life,” said his brother-in-law, David Fisher.
On the battlefield
He arrived in Vietnam in March 1968, assigned to Company B, 2nd Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment. Surprised to be in an airborne division, he assured his mother he wouldn’t be jumping out of planes. The war held other perils.
“Used air strikes and artillery,” Fisher wrote on June 4 after weeks of fights along the coast below Hué at the top of South Vietnam. “I’ve lost a lot of friends.”
During Operation Nevada Eagle, the division’s largest single campaign that lasted until early 1968, he helped capture the biggest rice cache to that point. He spent 16 straight days in the deadly highlands, including one memorable night along the Perfume River.
On June 30, his squad ambushed three river skiffs loaded with supplies.
“When they got in front of us, we opened fire,” Fisher wrote.
One boat sank; the others escaped damaged. For the mission, Fisher received the Army Commendation Medal and a Bronze Star, two of his several decorations.
The one that meant the most to him, however, was his Combat Infantryman Badge.
“Haven’t earned much in my 20 years, but I’ve earned this,” he wrote.
He celebrated his 21st birthday and Thanksgiving in the jungle. Not until January 1969 did he take his first R&R trip, a few weeks in Hong Kong, where he bought a sports jacket and two pairs of pants.
“Hong Kong wasn’t bad, but now I’m back in the boonies,” he wrote on Feb. 7. It was his last letter.
Many years later, his squad leader told Becky Fisher about his death. His tour almost up, he was supposed to be moved to the rear. But he wound up on a mission anyway.
A firefight broke out, and somehow, Fisher’s squad crossed in front of other Americans. In the confusion, he was killed instantly.
At his military burial, Becky Fisher remembers, her brother looked smaller in his dress uniform. Thin to begin with, he had lost 40 pounds. His mother was so overcome she refused to accept the flag from the honor guard.
“I tell you what, we were all heartbroken,” Jim Martz said. “It was a sad, sad time.”
This Memorial Day, as he has for many years, Martz will visit Fisher’s grave. The redhead from Pleasant Gap rests next to his father, not far from the only home he ever knew.
“It was such a short period of time we had him,” Becky Fisher said. “He turned 21, and then he was gone.”
Chris Rosenblum can be reached at 231-4620.
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