Doug Holder was taught when growing up the right way to treat people, but that lesson was reinforced in an unusual way and in an unlikely place when he was a young adult.

He and a number of other men filed into the provost marshal’s office in Saigon in 1969 as he began his stint in the military police during the Vietnam War. A large board at the front of the room read, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

The men sat for a few minutes until the colonel who was their commanding officer entered the room. “I guess you’ve had a chance to read this,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

He flipped it over and the other side read, “Untruer words have never been spoken.”

The colonel went on to explain that each of them, in nearly every situation they faced, would have the ability to escalate or de-escalate it by what they said, how they said it and how they acted. He emphasized the importance of this when dealing with the Vietnamese people.

“We want to make friends, not enemies,” he said. “We’ve already done too good a job making enemies.”

Holder never forgot that conversation.

“I’ve repeated it to a lot of people,” he said. “It is so true of everybody today, not just law enforcement but people. If they would just think that way, we wouldn’t have nearly the trouble we have.”

He entered military service the same way many others did at that time – not by choice. He was drafted at nearly 25 years of age, when he had been teaching and coaching in Locust Grove for three years at what was then called a grammar school, grades 1-8.

“Back then the grammar schools played each other in football, basketball, baseball and softball,” he said.

That model was eventually discontinued, but Holder recognized his ability when it came to working with young people. “It was a calling,” he said.

He spent 23 years coaching more than 30 youth league sports teams, and in the mid-1970s he took a job with what is now known as the Department of Juvenile Justice.

“I was a juvenile court counselor, probation officer, everything under the sun,” he said of his time working in Henry and surrounding counties until he retired in 2000 with more than 34 years of state service.

Back when he was teaching, he typically worked with multiple classes in multiple grades during the day. That led to interactions with scores of students over three years, and they did not forget him when he shipped out overseas.

“When I was in Saigon, I averaged several letters a day from those students,” he said. “I lost count. But there were letters every day. A lot of letters.”

His duty in Southeast Asia consisted of a great deal of office work, although he rode the streets of Saigon in the wee hours with a duty officer on a number of occasions, navigating areas with very few streetlights and no stoplights. They also kept an eye on some of the local bars that had a great deal of activity. 

He spent 19 months in Vietnam and then left military service as an E-5, a sergeant’s rank, upon his return to the United States because of a lack of need for stateside duty at that time. That was in February of 1971.

Holder still stays in touch with some of his comrades from basic training and Vietnam. In 2008 he started a group known as Veterans Serving Christ for veterans in the area. It lasted about a decade, as many of the active participants passed away or got older and it was difficult to get younger veterans to engage.

“It was a tight-knit group. We did a lot,” he said. “Speakers would come in, although our best meetings were when people stood up and shared about their own experiences. A lot of different professionals came in and gave advice.”

Today he enjoys his retirement as much as possible, living halfway between Locust Grove and Ola “a little more than a Babe Ruth home run” from where he lived as a child, as he put it. He and his wife Jill have four children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

“A lot of parts have worn out and need to be replaced,” he said with a laugh about his condition at 77 years of age. “But I am very blessed compared to so many.”

He received an Army commendation medal decades ago that wound up in a crate shipped back home, and he promptly forgot about it. A few years ago he mentioned to his wife that he just saw something in his military paperwork about the medal, and she informed him that their children had found it in the crate in the basement.

“My parents never saw it and I regret that,” he said. “because it reflects what they always taught me about doing your best and going above and beyond.”

The house burned in early 2020 but the medal was protected from fire and water damage, and he still has it. He is not letting it get misplaced again.