Dr. Tom Dooley

The Lives of Thomas A. Dooley: A Cautionary Tale
Book Review
(from the July/August 1999 issue)

Dr. America: The Lives of Thomas A. Dooley, 1927-1961
Author: James T. Fisher
Publishing Date: 09/1998
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press

THE UNITED STATES emerged from World War II with a new sense of identity and purpose. The Depression was over. We had won a major victory in a two front world war. A new international community was forming which had resulted in the United Nations. It would meet on American soil and make New York City the virtual capital of the new world order.

The various (white) immigrant groups that had come to this country over the previous 100 years had successfully assimilated into the American "Melting Pot" and proven their loyalty to this country during the war. The "new" Americans had joined together with the "WASP" establishment in creating the world's greatest Super Power. After defeating Fascism on two oceans, the American people assumed responsibility for rebuilding postwar Europe and Asia while opposing the global threat of Communism.

But old prejudices die hard and religious prejudices are notoriously robust. The largest religious group among the new immigrants had been Catholics from Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, and Ireland. They had proven themselves against Fascism. In fact Catholics were grossly over-represented in the armed forces—and in battle casualties—in both World Wars considering their proportion in the population. It remained to be seen though how they would react in a Cold War especially when they had ethnic ties to many lands either trapped behind the Iron Curtain or strongly influenced by Communism.

In the post war period, Catholics looked for heroes who were both American and Catholic. They needed them to establish their own identity and to prove to the suspicious elements in American society that they too were true Americans who were fully in line with American values (and interests) overseas.

The first such Catholic hero had been Senator Joseph McCarthy whose visible and voluble Anti-Communist rhetoric touched off a virtual crusade against left-of-center thinking in America. But McCarthy was eventually discredited by his excesses, his harsh treatment of his opponents, and by his failure to provide hard evidence to support his allegations.

In the wake of McCarthy's downfall, a new Catholic hero was needed and one indeed was found. In 1954, when the small Asian nation of Vietnam was being partitioned between Communist and Democratic forces, reports about Catholic refugees fleeing persecution and degradation by North Vietnamese Communists were reported by a young U.S. Navy physician who was processing refugees at Haiphong harbor. He was an Irish-American who had attended Notre Dame and graduated from the Jesuit-run St. Louis University Medical School. He wrote letters to his mother about Vietnam, some of which were published in newspapers at home. He was a dynamic speaker who captivated audiences with his stories of the refugees and their sufferings. Eventually he wrote a book about his experiences Deliver Us From Evil, which became a bestseller in 1956. He also made no secret of his deep Catholic faith and his commitment to his country as the shining hope of free people everywhere.

And so Dr. Tom Dooley of St. Louis, Missouri became the new Cold War hero of Catholics and other Americans. He was also well received overseas. He was made an honorary member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate religious order of priests at their headquarters in Rome. In Laos he became known as "Thanh Mo America" (Dr. America), a title which would follow him on all of his humanitarian work in Asia.

His was a short moment of glory and legends grew up about him. He left the Navy after the Haiphong assignment, allegedly sacrificing his chances for a lucrative practice in the United States in order to provide badly needed medical care to the people of Southeast Asia. He was portrayed as a missionary "jungle doctor" in the tradition of Dr. Albert Schweitzer. His professed intention was to go as a private person to provide one-on-one care to people who needed him. He came as an American who was also a Catholic, but not for the purpose of converting anyone to his faith.

He was of the opinion that the native Asian people equated missionary activity with colonial exploitation. He often made it clear that he was a missionary of "Americanism" and that he was not out to "save souls." Nevertheless, Catholic figures like Cardinal Spellman and religious organizations such as Catholic Relief Serivces acknowledged him and were openly supportive of his work.

He documented his first mission to Laos in his book The Edge of Tomorrow in 1958. His one-on-one philosophy of providing medical care happened to coincide with harsh criticisms being raised at home about the ineptitude of career American foreign service people and the large, "inefficient" aid programs they ran out of the embassies. The popular novel The Ugly American was a bestseller at that time. It described the shortcomings of "establishment" foreign service people in Southeast Asia.

It was an open secret that one of the characters depicted favorably in the book—Jesuit Missionary John X. Finian—was based in part on Dooley. Fr. Finian was a "rough and tumble guy" who got his hands dirty and worked with the people himself. He was not a bureaucratic functionary like some of the other characters who would give funds away to corrupt foreign officials who would misuse, squander, or pocket the money. Life began to imitate art and Dooley started to use some of the catch phrases from the book in his writings and speeches.

Dooley founded an organization called MEDICO which eventually opened three hospitals in Asia under his supervision. He documented this in his third—and last—book, The Night They Burned the Mountain, published in 1960. It was also at this time that he was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, an aggressive type of skin cancer.

In February of 1960, CBS aired a television program entitled Biography of a Cancer in which the actual surgical removal of Dooley's lesion was performed on national television. This was the first time that a surgical procedure was televised. (I was 7 years old at the time and I remember the night this was on. Everyone was talking about it, but my mother would not let me watch it because she said it was not for children.)

Dooley would live one more year. He continued working on his MEDICO projects up to the very end. He became more reflective during this time and wrote several inspirational letters to people. He remained a devout Catholic and frequented the sacraments. He also began -- but did not complete -- a book of meditations entitled The Night of the Same Day, which was never published. He received the last rites just before he died on January 18, 1961, at the age of 34. He was hailed worldwide as a humanitarian, a great American, and a virtual "saint" on par with Albert Schweitzer.

Failed canonization attempt

The MEDICO organization fell apart without Dooley's leadership and was dissolved within a few years. His books remained in print and became modern American Catholic classics. Deliver us From Evil was on my high school summer reading list in 1968. It was Dooley who is credited with making the previously obscure Asian nations of Vietnam, and Laos into household words in the United States. This simplified the selling of the Vietnam War to the American people. Thanks to Dooley's books, Americans already knew the Vietnamese as "Asian Catholic Christians" who needed to be protected from the ravages of atheistic Communism.

In the late 1970s a cause for Dooley's canonization was started. It did not succeed. And in this lies the unraveling of the well-constructed —and fraudulent— myths about "Dr. America."

It is as a result of the investigation into his life for his cause in Rome that the real story of Dr. Tom Dooley came out. The Dooley legend was that he was an idealistic young American who had sacrificed a lucrative career in medicine for the sake of the people of Asia. In reality he was the son of a wealthy automobile magnate from St. Louis. He was quite well off and did not need to work. During his time at Notre Dame, he was what was called a "skiver," someone who stayed out past curfew, kept up an active social life off campus, and negotiated with his teachers for grades more than studied. He was the life of the party. He had a dynamic outgoing personality and that gift of the "blarney" for which the Irish are famous. He managed to get by in college without much effort but with no great accomplishments.

He never completed his undergraduate degree but transferred to the St. Louis Medical School after his third year. He found it much harder going. He was actually expected to show up for class in medical school and his extracurricular shenanigans did not amuse the staff. His engaging personality did win him some support from the faculty, but not much. If it were not for the prominence of his family in St. Louis, he would have been expelled. He was forced to repeat the last year of medical school and was only allowed to graduate with the understanding that he would not be recommended for postgraduate medical training.

Dooley’s unique "gay" perspective

As with many young men in his generation, Dooley entered the military serving in the Navy as a general medical officer. He was assigned to the Pacific theater and served in Southeast Asia. It is at this point that we first have evidence of his promiscuous homosexual activity. While it cannot be confirmed, it has been rumored that he was assigned to Haiphong because his commander became aware of this. It was intended to be a dead end assignment preparatory to his discharge from the service at the end of his obligation.

But his massive ego and his natural talent for self-promotion saw this as an opportunity. He embraced the assignment and made himself into a media figure. His writings exaggerated his own part in the evacuation (e.g., he was not the only navy doctor there though he was the last to leave). He exaggerated the Catholicism of the Vietnamese people who were in fact mostly Buddhists. He exaggerated the stories of atrocities committed by the Viet Minh which no one else seems to have documented.

All of this made him popular not only with the people at home but with the CIA propagandists covering Asia. It is now known that the CIA provided a ghost editor for his first book and provided funding and support for his speaking tour after its publication. The CIA would continue funding his work through surrogates for the rest of his career.

The Navy became very nervous about Dooley's celebrity especially because of the rumors about his homosexuality. There were fears that it would embarrass the service if it ever leaked out. The Navy launched a discrete investigation and determined that Dooley was an active and habitual homosexual. On the basis of this evidence he was actually discharged from the Navy for homosexuality. Dooley never admitted this in public and appears to have hidden this from his mother as well. In Asia, it was possible to engage in any number of sexual perversions, including those with pre-pubescent children, without interference. Many homosexuals then and now have found the far east to be a haven for their lifestyle. Dooley was no exception. He remained an active homosexual for his entire life up to his death.

There is much testimony that he thought the Church's attitude on homosexuality was "just plain wrong" and that his "gay" sexual proclivities gave him a unique spiritual perspective on the world that straight people could not understand. Nevertheless, he was a truly devout Catholic who overtly practiced his faith to a reasonable extent all of his life. There is no reason to think that his faith was not genuine. Nevertheless, he habitually participated in seriously disordered sexual activity. He was a confused young man.

His CIA contacts apparently knew about this but they were so successful in running him as a cold war hero figure that they kept up their support. They probably thought this would give them some leverage on him in the future though they never actual had to use it. In fact if anything, it appears that Dooley was much better at manipulating them and was almost immune to the manipulation of others.

Propaganda tool of the CIA

Dooley's "humanitarian" medical mission was hyped as a great boon to the people of Asia. In actuality it was a thinly veiled propaganda tool of the CIA for which Dooley was a naïve but willing participant. Dooley did not bring 20^th century medicine to these people but acted instead as a glorified Navy corpsman bringing low tech first aid to places for which this was a major improvement.

As other physicians became involved in Dooley's work, they wanted to upgrade the medical support being provided. Dooley would have none of it. He insisted on maintaining his one-on-one model of primary medical care and treated with contempt any suggestion that public health initiatives, surgical specialists, or advanced technology be introduced through his MEDICO system. He threw temper tantrums and acted against those people who would sully his vision. What he built were not hospitals but glorified first-aid stations.

Being myself a public health trained physician, I am appalled that Dooley's simplistic "vision" was ever tolerated as a model for introducing health care to Asia. It is no wonder that his medical school professors would not recommend him for any advanced residency training. He had neither the discipline nor the insight to know what was really needed in health care delivery. His MEDICO program was a self-promoting publicity stunt which allowed him to avoid confronting his personal, sexual, and professional problems. If he had come home from Asia, his shortcomings would have been blatantly obvious and embarrassing to himself and his family. It is quite understandable why MEDICO fell apart shortly after his death. Without his forceful personality, the bogus vision he espoused collapsed under its own weight.

In the last year of his life, Dooley's routine remained unchanged. He pursued the goals of his MEDICO project with the same vigor as he did his sexual adventures both at home and abroad. His illness made him more introspective, but it never led him to reassess his life or to question any of the major life choices which he had made. He remained a practicing Catholic and died in the bosom of the Church with full benefits of the sacraments and with the prayerful support of his fellow Catholics. He was beloved by the Asian people with whom he worked, denounced by the Communists as a CIA agent provocateur, and respected worldwide as a humanitarian.

To Catholics, his flagrant sexual perversion in knowing defiance of Church teaching is particularly disturbing, especially since he played to Catholic audiences as a fellow Catholic trying to live out the mandates of the Gospel. Maybe more attention should have been paid to his espousal of "Americanism" and his refusal to actively support evangelization among the unbelieving Asian masses. Even he seemed to know that a man should practice what he preaches. By not preaching, he may have felt free to practice however he wished.

Looking back on him now, warts and all, it is all too tempting to dismiss Dooley as a sham, a charlatan, and a moral reprobate. He was clearly a dupe and tool in the hands of American Intelligence and acted as a source for disinformation in their propaganda machine. Nevertheless, he genuinely cared for the Asian people to whom he ministered and was beloved and respected by them. While his mission was a cover for American foreign policy goals and his own egotism, it served a need both among the Asian and the American people. In particular, he filled the need for a Catholic American hero who could inspire the West and its allies in the struggle against international Communism.

We believed about Tom Dooley what we wanted to believe about ourselves. Just as he created a false image of himself as an American humanitarian, America wanted to see itself as "a city on a hill" inspiring the rest of the world to emulate us and our achievements.

Sooner than confront the racial, economic, and moral problems of our own nation, we extolled the simple virtues of being a "natural" American as if we had no need for introspection or repentance or reformation. We also wanted to see America as righteous not as the product of any particular religious conviction, but as the result of our collective abandonment of religious sectarianism in the name of religious freedom. As President Eisenhower once said, "our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is." It was this brash, almost idolatrous veneration of ourselves as Americans which made the public persona of Tom Dooley irresistible to us.

A cautionary tale

The story of Tom Dooley's life is a cautionary tale and should teach us the lesson that while we may be Catholic Americans, we can never be American Catholics. We must strive to put Christ first as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. As Christ taught us, we should not worry about our material needs, "But seek first [God's] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well." [Mat 6:33] Dooley tried to create his own righteousness in competition with the righteousness which God had revealed. As a consequence, all of his works were swept away and even his memory today is discredited.

In the end, Americanism is not the hope of the world. Christ is. We must therefore reverse the priorities of Tom Dooley. We must be missionaries of Christ to the world and avoid trying to convert foreigners to a naïve jingoistic Americanism. Otherwise we pay lip service to Christ but only serve our own egos.

When we think of Tom Dooley, we need to remember that Our Lord warned us not to judge others harshly lest we ourselves be so judged. We have no way of knowing his ultimate fate before God and we should remember him in our prayers as one who went before us marked with the sign of faith but under the cloud of personal failing and sin. While he did not possess the heroic Christian virtue of a saint, he did possess the good sense as a sinner to seek forgiveness in Christ and His Church. There is evidence that he did sometimes try to avoid homosexual activity, stating that he did so because he was "in a state of grace."

Dr. America by James T. Fisher of St. Louis University is a comprehensive portrait of both the hype and the reality behind the man who was Tom Dooley. Fisher's book covers every aspect of Dooley's life without dwelling overlong on some of the more sordid details. It gives a portrait of his life and times and helps to explicate Dooley's place in American history. This is definitely a book for adults, especially for those adults who, like me, were aware of the Dooley persona in their youth. It tells the rest of the story which Dooley's own writings and those of his hagiographers failed to tell.

--Arthur C. Sippo, M.D., M.P.H.

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