Bob McDowell grew up as a scrapper in the Philadelphia housing project, Bartram Village, on the southwest side of town. Life in the project was tough, but like a sapling in the wind, it toughened the tree.
A big challenge was the situation at home. After four years in New Guinea during WWII, his father’s heavy drinking routinely unleashed a demon inside. He beat his children angrily with little or no warning or provocation.
Bobby’s mother was resourceful – she was the equal and opposite reaction. To support the family, she took odd jobs of all kind, sometimes walking great distances to wash a family’s clothes for meager pay – yet it’s what put food on the table.
“Life was harmonious though,” he recalled. The surrogate family was the many kids nearby. “We were all in the same boat. There was no discomfort or any sense that we were a poor family surrounded by a lot of other poor people. I never had any worry about material things. We adapted.”
Bobby and his classmates from the project – blacks, whites and Puerto Ricans –walked a mile to school through neighborhoods where the other kids would routinely ambush them. They were the reviled “Village rats.”
Passing through the four-block-long “Little Italy” always bore great risk, regardless of age. The kids whose territory they moved through were always on the lookout for the Rats, eager to fight. Getting through the Irish/Polish neighborhood, an area of about the same size, wasn’t much better.
Bobby grew older and tougher. Eventually he was one of the bigger kids, admired by the small fry for his willingness to defend them. He earned those stripes. He acquired nicks, cuts and bruises on the way to school and on the way home.
In school, what should have been a safe haven, wasn’t. In ninth grade, as a smartass, Bobby initiated conflict with Mr. Dochery, a teacher who didn’t take well to being called “Vick’s cough drop.”
“His head was shaped just like a cough drop,” said McDowell with a smile. “When I called him ‘Vicks’ in front of the other students, he told me to be quiet. I replied, ‘Sure, cough drop head’ or something like that.”
By that time, there was raucous laughter at Dochery’s expense. Bobby could see it build: a seething anger percolated, topped off with a glare that told him he was on thin ice. Later that day, with no audience, the teacher beat him like no kid in Little Italy could. “But now that I look back on it, I brought it on and deserved the lesson,” he said.
A year later, the vice principal, Mr. Goldblatt, made it clear to the young McDowell boy that they were parting ways, and that the school administrator wasn’t planning to go anywhere. “Die, move, or join the Army,” were his words. McDowell left school after the tenth grade.
At 17, his best hope of leaving Philadelphia was to enlist for military duty at a time when young men were hurdling into the firestorm of Vietnam. “But I wanted make something of my life, to find an honest way to support the family I wanted to have.”
McDowell first went to Korea for a year where he met and trained under a young Army major, Roger Donlon, at the 2nd Infantry Division’s Imjin scout school. The captain’s mission was to teach young soldiers forward reconnaissance techniques, the art of stealth war tactics and guerilla maneuvers. (Donlon was the Vietnam war’s first Medal of Honor recipient, and the first member of the Special Forces so honored.)
The rigors of Imjin Scout School training, recalled McDowell, were tough as nails. Most memorable, he said, were the night patrols along the infamous DMZ.
After nine months in Korea, with newly-honed skills, McDowell volunteered to go to Vietnam. But before he was to serve there, he caught a flight home, via Japan, on a giant C130, its bowels filled with dead soldiers in caskets. The 30-day leave went quickly.
Three weeks after his arrival in Vietnam – with credentials as a forward recon artillery observer from the Imjin scout school – McDowell got his baptism by fire.
A Vietcong RPG made a direct hit in front of a soldier, a friend, standing just a few feet away. McDowell was burned by the blast, taking a hot splash of aluminum slivers that sliced into him. But he refused to leave his unit after seeing the chopper’s tethered basket haul-in the dead soldier. It wasn’t the last time he’d see a friend leave the field in a body bag.
“I couldn’t stand the thought of going up in a basket,” he said. “That was worse than staying right where I was, and I didn’t want to abandon the guys.” A medic patched the wounds, telling him 
he’d need to get to an aid station.
A day after the RPG attack, McDowell and a few other soldiers, trying to reach base camp, almost walked into an enemy battalion. Immediately, they called in an arty strike from several 155 howitzers a few miles away. The enemy casualties were substantial.
Back at camp, and with a brief layup at “Bearcat” hospital, McDowell snuck away from the nurses and into the local bar. Cold beer was served in Vietnam, and it was a good friend in time of need.
Within a few months, he achieved the rank of Staff Sergeant. When his time came to leave the 
tropical paradise, he considered reenlistment, but instead chose to leave the Army with an honorable discharge.
Sadly, issues haunted him: a psychologist verified PTSD. And an immediate result of exposure to Agent Orange defoliant was chloracne, a rare skin eruption of blackheads, acne and cysts linked to dioxin exposure. Eventually, the acne disappeared, though McDowell is still haunted by the war.
On September 29 2012, a day after his release from the PTSD ward, McDowell went for a workout at the gym in the Philly area. He was thirsty and light-headed and wanted a GatorAid, so he stopped at a 711 store.
When he walked out with his drink and turned the corner, his world went black. The ex-soldier’s greatest threat to his life was just a blur – all he could remember of a brutal attack by a group of thugs. They beat him so badly that many of the bones on one side of his face were crushed.
He woke minutes later in a pool of his own blood to find himself surrounded by caring people. Initially, most of them were sure he was dead. He refused ambulance and hospital service because he knew how expensive the emergency care would be.
What others around him saw was a terribly beaten man. Flaps of skin hung as face swelled and bled. The left eye was swollen shut, needing surgery. But at the moment Bob was only aware of a dull, throbbing pain in his temple, and the blood – with realization that a trip to the hospital would mean an inability to care for his wife of 43 years. Virginia was at home – blind and deaf as a result of her battle with brain tumors – and he was her caregiver. A man and his wife gave him a quick ride home.
At home he cared for one hand that hurt especially bad. He pulled a tooth out, lodged in a knuckle.
Three days later, with infection setting in around his eyes and cheek, McDowell accepted a ride to the hospital and was there for a week. He was stitched up and pumped full of liquid gold – some of the most advanced antibiotics available. Fortunately, family and church friends helped “Ginny” while he was away.
Eleven months later and after numerous reconstructive surgeries to help redefine his face, McDowell’s artificial cheek and jaw still hurt, his left eye was bruised and red. Both eyebrows are stitched, hairless furrows, protruding in an arc above each eye, a suggestion of the features he lost in the beating.
Yet, McDowell’s face is radiant and engaging. He’s pleasant and cheerful, a soft-spoken man with telltale scars and pearly white teeth; the sort of guy you’d immediately trust.
There is a wariness to his knowing gaze, having been there, having seen so much. There’s also a sense of caution that dissolves when he accepts you.
Concentrating on a specific topic for more than 10 minutes gave him difficulty and – a new habit developed after the beating – he blinks and nods forcefully to realign his concentration.
The attempted robbery and attack (netting the thieves not a penny) was so brutal that physicians told McDowell shortly after recovery from the first operation that he surely would have died – if not from trauma, from the infection waging war with his immune system, overwhelmed and failing.
Today, he laughs about it with a sense of ease that comes with an acknowledgment that bad things happen to good people. He dismisses concern, as though any level of attention to himself is too much – a learned behavior stemming from years on the street (looking out for/supporting the other guy), having a key role within a small combat team where everyone has each other’s back, and devotion to a marriage vow, for better or worse.
“I’d have it no other way,” he says without hesitation. “It could’ve been me that she was taking care of so many times. But I was chosen for that. Love is powerful ointment.”
About the attack that almost took him out, he dismisses that too with a quick remark that Philadelphia’s worst weren’t good enough. “I guess I’m tougher than that, but as I grow older, I think I’ll do my best to avoid those sorts of things.”
Seeing him today at 64 – on arms that still have considerable width and musculature – his tats draw attention. They include “Special Forces” with beret and skull; a deck of cards; and one he’s worn since the age of 15 with a green bird and heart. The latter also has the name “Bibbles” in it, Virginia’s nickname.
McDowell says that he now looks to each new day with a sense of purpose.
“I turned my back on God for 35 years,” he said quietly. “Now, I’ve given my life to Him and have no worries. He’ll take care of me and Ginny. When it’s our time to go, we’ll do that with no struggle. But for now, I still have Ginny, my daughters Kimberly and Bobby Ann, and three grandchildren, one of whom is now serving in the military.”
“I thank God for the life I’ve lived and have shared with Virginia. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Bob McDowell can teach us all a thing or two.
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