One man's mission to remember the fallen
              Efforts lead Clark to honor pilot killed in Vietnam
                           by Molly Bloom, Star-Ledger Staff
                                         

Bill Duffy doesn't wear a hero's medals. He spent three years in the Army during the Korean War, but never saw combat. In 28 years with the Clark Police Department, he never fired his gun.

But he has undertaken a heroic task, working for nearly 30 years to seek out and honor Clark 's forgotten war heroes. Scanning hundreds of reels of microfilm and shelves of crumbling papers, he identified long-buried Clark natives who were killed in the Civil War and in World War I and had their names added to the township's war memorial and honored with street renamings.

This year, Clark is adding one more name to its list of fallen soldiers - Cmdr. Richard Hartman, a Navy pilot shot down over Vietnam almost 40 years ago. After a failed rescue attempt, Hartman, 32, died as a prisoner of war in 1967. Seven years later, his remains were buried at Arlington National Cemetery .

As the son of a career Army officer, Hartman grew up on dozens of military bases. The closest thing to home was his aunt and uncle's Cape Cod house on Gertrude Street in Clark . Still, he was never recognized on the township's war memorial or honored with the township's other veterans.

Thanks to Duffy's efforts, this Memorial Day the township will preserve the memory of a pilot long lost and now found in Clark , the one place he called home. Tomorrow, Hartman's name will be added to the township war memorial and lent to a street sign in a new subdivision - Hartman Court .

Richard Hartman and his younger brother Edward Hartman grew up on bases in Asia, Europe and across the U.S. ''We didn't have much of a permanent address,'' Edward Hartman said. ''There'd be three addresses in a four-month time.''

Richard Hartman graduated from high school in Olean , N.Y. , and entered the U.S. Naval Academy as a varsity soccer player in 1953. Two years later, after his hard-drinking father abandoned the family, Ann Hartman moved to a series of furnished apartments in southern New Jersey with 16-year-old Edward.

With his mother and brother in temporary and often - cramped quarters, on academy vacations and service furloughs, Hartman came home to the Clark house owned by his mother's sister, Eleanor Koch, and her late husband, James Koch.

''We were always there,'' said their son Jim Koch. ''That was his place to come home to.''

Seeing Hartman's avocado - green Ford T-bird convertible in the driveway was a moment eagerly awaited by Jim Koch and his sister, Laurie, both in elementary school when Hartman entered the naval academy.

Richard Hartman had become a born-again Christian as a teenager and later led the rest of his family into the faith. In Christianity, Hartman found the stability and certainty he never had in his wandering childhood or with his alcoholic father.

''It was something for him to right his life around,'' Koch said. ''It all made sense to him.''

After graduation, Hartman earned his pilot's wings and joined an attack squadron. Hartman didn't doubt he had made the right choice: He trusted in God and the Navy.

''My brother was very comfortable with the Lord leading his life,'' Edward Hartman said. ''He just took it as part of the career he chose.''

Eventually serving on the USS Orlansky in the South China Sea, Hartman flew bombing sorties over North Vietnam with his squadron, the Ghostriders.

In July 1967, five days into his second tour of duty, he was shot down during a bombing run over railroad bridges in Nam Ha Province. After heavy anti-aircraft fire set his plane on fire, he ejected and parachuted safely, landing on a hillside in the dense jungle. Hartman made radio contact with his squadron and a Navy helicopter was sent into the area, now swarming with North Vietnamese troops and antiaircraft guns, to rescue him. But the helicopter was shot down, killing all four men aboard, and leaving pilot Lt. Dennis W. Peterson missing in action to this day.

Not willing to risk more casualties, the Navy called off the search.

The next day, two Navy officers appeared at the Koch home in Clark . With tears in his eyes, James Koch told his son Jim the news: ''Our boy's been shot down.''

For nearly four years, his family thought that Richard Hartman was in a Vietnamese prison, injured, perhaps, but safe. They went to POW and MIA rallies and prayed daily for his safe return. But in November 1970, they learned that their prayers had gone unanswered.

In unofficial correspondence with an American peace activist coalition, the North Vietnamese said that Richard Hartman had died as a prisoner in a hospital from an infection. But with no sign that Hartman was injured in the days after ejecting from his plane, the Hartmans believe that he was shot when captured.

''I went off to college believing he was coming home,'' said Jim Koch. ''Then we realized he had been dead all that time and we didn't even know it.''

In March 1974, Hartman's remains were returned to his family and buried at Arlington National Cemetery . But by then, his family had scattered across the country, his uncle and father having died years earlier. His name was on the tombstone in Arlington and on Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington and Holmdel, but there was no permanent tribute to Hartman in Clark , the one place he called home.

Duffy, a lifelong Clark resident, couldn't let a Clark veteran go unacknowledged. He came across Hartman's name and indications that he was from Clark . But because Hartman did not grow up in Clark, go to school there, or own property in Clark , Duffy couldn't document the connection.

Duffy, Union County American Legion commander, spoke with a Gertrude Street neighbor of the Koches who remembered Hartman visiting the family. That neighbor connected Duffy with a Koch family friend who was able to put Duffy in touch with Hartman's surviving family members.

''He just doesn't want these men to go by the wayside and be forgotten,'' Edward Hartman said of Duffy. ''I commend him.''

After countless phone calls, emails and express mail packages, the Hartmans and the Koches will return to Clark to meet Bill Duffy for the first time, and thank the man who worked for so many years to honor the memory of their beloved son, cousin and brother, a man Duffy never knew.

But Duffy will continue to make sure Clark remembers its veterans, tending the township war memorial and visiting school classrooms every year with the photographs and stories of township residents who died for their country, Hartman only the latest to be added to the roster.

''They're heroes,'' Duffy said. ''Every one of them.''