Tim Doughtie | Share the Love...

Dear friends,

This site is dedicated to Tim Doughtie and his family. We are collecting stories and pictures of your experiences with this remarkable man to share with other friends.

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Matt Doughtie

Grace Doughtie

Collins Doughtie

The Memorial Service for Tim Doughtie
A Meditation by John M. Miller

Phil Porter | Photos from Phil

Maggie Rojas Westbury

Jennifer Asnip Quattlebaum

Peter C. McDonald

I met Tim at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia in 1966 while we both worked as spies for the Air Force. We’d both flunked out of college a year or so earlier, and rather than be drafted and sent as cannon fodder to Vietnam, we accepted what Tim would call “four-year McNamara Scholarships to the YOO-nited States Air Force.”

We discovered some odd coincidences that would bind us together for the rest of our lives. One was that Sally – Tim’s mother – and Pat Converse – my mother – had been roommates at Chatham Hall in VA as teenagers. Both had later contracted polio. And both were close friends with a man named Bill.   The more we learned about each other’s upbringings, the more we understood each other.

We also quickly discovered similar interests -- drinking beer and staying alive, being two that come to mind immediately.

To that end, when rumors begin circulating that our squadron would soon be shipped en masse to a place called Ton Son Nhut Air Base outside of Saigon, Tim and I decided it would have to do without us. The next day, without telling anyone in our squadron, we went over to the base personnel office and requested 3-year tours of duty in Germany.

An old rummy staff sergeant there just laughed at us: “You guys – you think you’re gonna get out of goin’ to Nam? Slick,” he said to Tim, “we’re all goin’ to Nam.”

Remember, by now it’s 1967.

We filled out the paperwork anyway and gave it back to him. And just to make sure the papers got processed expeditiously, Tim suggested the sergeant might appreciate a gift – and knew exactly what it should be. The next day, we went back to base personnel, this time armed with two bottles of the most expensive scotch we could afford on Airman Third Class pay.

It must have worked because six weeks later, everyone in the squadron received orders – to Vietnam. Except two of us. Our orders read Wiesbaden, Germany. Three years. Thank you Johnnie Walker – and Tim Doughtie.

Thus it was that our interests in beer and staying alive were fulfilled – thanks to Tim’s brilliant insight into human nature and how to get things done.

Tim was best man at my wedding in Wiesbaden. He wore a fire-engine-red sports jacket that clashed perfectly with the maid of honor’s orange dress. Because my fiancée’s maid of honor couldn’t get to Germany for the wedding, the substitute maid of honor – don’t tell Betsy – was a young lady Tim had picked up the week before in one of our favorite bars along the Rhine River. He was always a very creative problem-solver that way.

By the time our first wedding anniversary came along, Betsy had arrived on the scene, and she was a delight. I honestly think she thought Tim could walk across the Rhine River were he so inclined. She also egged him on, encouraging his creative ways. For instance, the morning of our first anniversary, we awoke to find our brand new Volvo 122s completely paper-machéed in several still-wet issues of the International Herald Tribune. Including the radio antenna. That had to be Betsy’s touch.

The best we could do on their first anniversary was to sneak into their apartment the night before their first anniversary and fill their bathroom to the ceiling with crumpled up German newspapers.

Then there was the time Tim got our Dalmatian, “Blue,” so excited that the dog jumped out of the 2nd story window of our apartment trying to get to Tim. And he did, landing squarely in Tim’s arms. I’m not sure who was more surprised, man or dog.

Much later in Hilton Head, Tim and I worked together at Sea Pines, and he introduced us to that magical place. He also introduced his knobby-kneed surfing basset “Rumples” to our delicate and lovely “Eloise.” The cad had her with pup(s) in no time.

I last saw Tim and Betsy about two years ago. They showed us around Hilton Head (which I’d not revisited at all after moving back to New England in 1976). I was appalled, of course, but Tim saw the good as well as the ugly, and made sure we saw it too. The remnant of Charlie Fraser’s dream – and Tim’s -- is still there. The signs Tim designed for Sea Pines’ roads and buildings still grace that community. His touch, his influence, was all over the best of the island. Bad as it might appear to some, I am quite sure Hilton Head would look something like Atlantic City today were it not for Tim.

His touch is also in my heart and memory, in who I am. I am a better person because of Tim. He simply had a way of rubbing off the best of himself on to those who knew him.

I will always be grateful that Tim Doughtie and I were friends.