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MY HERO: Wounded Vietnam Veteran Inspired Me to Live Life This Way

Losing a leg and an eye in battle didn't hold back Clebe McClary

spinner image a marine attends a football game
Richard Shiro/AP Photo

Paul Lessard found his lifelong hero at a summer sports camp for teenagers in Black Mountain, North Carolina. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran named Patrick Cleburn “Clebe” McClary III had been invited to address the students.

spinner image people hold up a welcome home sign as someone from the military stands before an american flag. the words aarp veteran report appear above the flag
Getty Images/AARP

You can subscribe here to AARP Veteran Report, a free e-newsletter published every two weeks. If you have feedback or a story idea then please contact us here.

Clebe McClary had one eye, one arm and a badly disfigured face — the result of a nightlong battle on a hillside in Vietnam in 1968 during which he and 10 recon Marines fought off an enemy battalion.

Ramrod straight in his dress blues, the Southerner spoke of duty and responsibility and dedication to God, country, family and community.

Lessard, the son of a Marine, was mesmerized. He waited until the other boys had left and approached the veteran. “My name is Paul Lessard,” he told McClary. “I am 17 years old, and when I grow up I want to be like you.”

That was in 1975. Some 18 years later, at 6 a.m. on April 16, 1993, Lessard was driving near his home in High Point, North Carolina, when he saw a car get washed off the highway into a creek swollen by overnight rain.

Ella Mae Bowman, 62, was inside the vehicle as it sank. Lessard swerved to a halt, swam to the car, broke its rear window with a hammer and, with the help of a Connecticut man driving past, pulled Bowman from the car to the creek bank, where he gave her CPR.

Lessard was awarded the Carnegie Medal for saving Bowman’s life that day. He used the award grant to establish the Lighthouse Project, which is dedicated to helping young people build character. The first person Lessard invited to speak was McClary.

“Clebe shaped who I became,” Lessard told AARP Veteran Report. “He is not only a Marine Corps hero and patriot but a hero to me — the ultimate mentor. He made me want to be everything I could be.”

The story of Clebe McClary, who was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts, is the stuff of legend.

A college football star, he enlisted in the Marines in 1967 after witnessing a student burn the American flag on a football field. He told AARP Veteran Report that he informed his coach: “I’m outta here. I can’t be watching this when my country is at war.”

McClary joined the Marines that day. His potential was spotted almost immediately and after being sent to officer school he was soon in Vietnam. Bullets and shrapnel cost the lieutenant his left arm and left eye in that fateful March 1968 battle, in which two of his Marines were killed.

After a year in hospital back in the U.S., he decided that God had a plan for him to recount his experiences to the world. For the past five decades, he has accepted an average of 250 speaking engagements a year, traveling to every state and more than 40 countries.

McClary talks about leadership, patriotism, God, country and fighting on that hill, telling his story in schools, prisons, churches, military bases and corporate boardrooms. His message is amusing, self-deprecating and inspiring. Refusing to limit himself, he plays golf, hunts and lives on Pawleys Island, South Carolina, where he grew up.

Lessard recalls that one of the things McClary told students at the 1975 camp was to close their eyes and pretend to be at their own funeral listening to what mourners were saying about them.

How did they want to be remembered? The students then had to write their own epitaphs and put them on the bathroom mirror. Lessard wrote, “Good father, good husband, contributed to community and country.”

Lessard, 64, has certainly lived up to that description. A husband, father, soccer coach and a Marine reservist, he still runs the Lighthouse Project and is president of the philanthropic High Point Community Foundation, which has raised $200 million.

“Without the influence of Clebe in my life I am not sure I would ever have had the self-belief to raise that amount of money,” he said.

McClary, who is now 82, puts it all down to God’s plan. “The lesson is we should bear witness whenever we can, be it at a sports camp, a football team or a Rotary Club,” he said.

“You never know when you are going to touch someone. I did not know Paul back in 1975. He was a high school kid. But because of the influence I had on his life he has since got me in to speak to hundreds of schools, clubs and companies and maybe we changed some lives there too.”

You can subscribe here to AARP Veteran Report, a free e-newsletter published every two weeks. If you have feedback or a story idea then please contact us here.

Do you have a veteran hero whose story might be a MY HERO story in AARP Veteran Report? If so, please contact our editors here.