On this Father’s Day, Barry Tishler is preparing to travel from Florida to Arlington National Cemetery to honor a father he never met, and who he believes never knew about him, with a memorial service and white marble headstone.
Tishler helped make this happen for Sgt. Thomas “Bullet” Bouchard, more than 25 years after he died.
For Tishler, the story starts a couple of years ago, in his Ormond Beach home, with a DNA test.
He took it mostly to settle a bet with his wife and learn a bit more about his roots.
Tishler, 59, knew from a young age he was adopted. He grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in New Jersey. His father was a doctor. He’d long been convinced he was of Italian heritage, like his wife. She thought otherwise.
So he did an at-home test with a swab, sent the sample off to a lab and waited for a few weeks.
Within an hour of the results coming back from Ancestry, linking his DNA to a family in Maine, his phone started ringing.
The first call came from one of Tom Bouchard’s nieces, telling him they were first cousins.
“I know who your dad is,” she said. “He’s a war hero.”
Like looking in a mirror
At first he had his doubts about what she was telling him. Then Tom Bouchard’s family sent him pictures. And it was like looking in a mirror.
Aunt Paula — that’s what he now calls the woman who’s married to Bouchard’s brother, Billy — later told him: “We didn’t even need the DNA test. Once we saw you, we knew you were Tom’s son.”
They’ve compared pictures of him playing Little League baseball with ones of Bouchard in his Little League uniform. And ones of him in the Navy in his early 20s to ones of his biological father in the Army. And ones when they were older with greying facial hair.
“That’s what really blew away me and my wife,” Tishler said. “We saw the goatee. I have these two silver lines that go down by my jaw. He had the exact same ones.”
From cook to Congressional Record
The story — any story about Tom Bouchard — inevitably goes back to Dec. 7, 1967, near the village of Dai Dong in Vietnam.
Bouchard was a 19-year-old private serving with the 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry. And on that particular day, he was supposed to be serving food. He was a cook.
When the details of the day were read into the Congressional Record, they didn’t say he had been given this job because he’d managed to upset someone, and that this wasn’t the first or last time, but that’s part of the story retold by friends and family.
The official story, as described when he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, says he had been assigned to be a cook, but when he heard that his former company was engaged in fierce firefight with a battalion of North Vietnamese, he left the security of headquarters, boarded a helicopter and flew to the battle site.
It continues: “He joined the unit as it began an assault on heavily fortified enemy positions. In the first minutes of the attack, one of the company’s armored personnel carriers was hit and the entire crew was wounded. Private Bouchard fearlessly raced 20 meters through an intense hail of bullets to the stricken vehicle. Still exposed to withering enemy fire, he placed all casualties in the area aboard the armored personnel carrier, mounted the vehicle, and took the controls. He then drove the vehicle to safety, plowing through the North Vietnamese machine gun bunker and killing its occupants as he went.”
The Army account said that during a second assault, “Private Bouchard braved savage hostile fire to personally charge several fortified enemy bunkers and destroy them with rifle fire and hand grenades.” It said his “dauntless courage in close combat accounted for 20 enemy dead.”
Bouchard chose to go back to Vietnam for a second tour, Tishler says, “so his brother wouldn’t have to.” When he finally came home, he was disabled from shrapnel wounds and dealing with more than physical injuries.
“He had some demons,” Tishler said. “He struggled with substance abuse and PTSD.”
Bouchard channeled some of his experience and struggles into helping others. He volunteered for the Disabled American Veterans, spending countless hours driving fellow veterans to get VA services. He helped families of veterans who were MIA. He served as a post commander of a local VFW post.
And in 1990, he was inducted into the Legion of Valor.
Medals and memorial
Tom Bouchard had long-term complications from Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam. When he died in 2000 at age 52, there was a military ceremony at the cemetery in his hometown of Eastport, but there wasn’t a plot for him there.
A couple of decades later, when Tishler met his Maine family, his half-brother, Chris Stevenson, gave him what the family had received at the ceremony: a flag and two shell casings.
“He said to me, ‘Here, the older brother really should have this,’” Tishler said. “That meant a lot.”
To both of them.
He learned that the family thought his father’s medals — the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, Purple Heart, Air Medal and more — were forever lost. They had been in a Maine VFW, but it closed, and they ended up elsewhere. Where? For years, the family had no idea.
But while Tishler was meeting family in Maine, they got a call. A couple of Tom Bouchard’s friends, Gerald Laffey and Allen Suddy, had heard the medals might be at Maritime International Coins in Bangor.
Tishler met the two men at the coin shop. The owner, Paul Zebiak, told them he had bought the medals maybe a decade earlier, and hadn’t sold them, thinking that one day he’d be able to put them back in the hands of the family. This was that day.
Zebiak gave Tishler the medals and said, “I just want you to do something with them.”
That stuck with Tishler.
When he got back to Florida, he had the flag, medals and Legion of Valor certificate framed. But that really felt like just a “do something” starting point. He wanted his father to have a final resting place. He began working with the office of Sen. Susan Collins.
At 1 p.m. on June 24, there will be a service at Arlington National Cemetery at the new white marker with Thomas D. Bouchard’s name and honors on it.
Tishler says he expects about 14 people — family, friends, the coin shop owner — to be there.
He also says this isn’t the end of the story.
Plans for Jacksonville
“I always told my parents, ‘I never want to replace you, you’re my parents,’” Tishler said. “I just wanted to know more about my heritage.”
Tishler’s story, of course, begins before Bouchard shipped off for Vietnam. Tishler’s birth mother gave him up for adoption while he was there. And he believes his father never knew he existed.
It should be said that when it comes to connecting with biological parents, it is a very personal decision, for all involved. When Tishler contacted his biological mother years ago — writing a letter thanking her for the gift she gave him, letting her know he was OK, the father of two daughters — she decided she didn’t want to open that door to the past.
“And I completely understood,” he said.
So he was a bit surprised how quickly and strongly he connected with Tom Bouchard’s family and a man he will never meet.
The pictures were just the beginning. Tishler learned more about his biological father, partly from reading what’s out there, but largely from meeting his father’s family and many friends, hearing some of the stories about him. The wild things he did when he was young. The kind things he did for others. The struggles he’d had with substance abuse.
That’s when the connection really hit home.
For decades, Tishler struggled with addiction. At 59, he’s not only been in long-term recovery, he’s made it his career, earning degrees and certification in trauma and addiction services, and starting a nonprofit in Florida, Addiction Education Foundation.
“When all this happened, it became clear my purpose needs to be helping veterans recover,” he said.
This is where the story leads to Jacksonville and the future. Tishler is working to open the 2nd Mission Veteran Sober House here. He envisions a residence dedicated to helping veterans recover from PTSD, trauma and substance use.
That has become his ultimate answer to “do something.”
So on this Father’s Day, he will celebrate being a father — one of his daughters is a junior at the University of North Florida, the other just graduated from high school in Daytona Beach — and doing something for a father he never met but now feels like he knows.
“When I found out who my father was — not just because of his story, but just when I found out who he was — it was instantly healing,” he said. “He’s a part of me. I know my dad. And now he’s with me every day.”
mwoods@jacksonville.com
(904) 359-4212
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: This Florida man took a DNA test. He found a father and a purpose
Reporting by Mark Woods, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Mark Woods, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union | USA TODAY Network
