Richard Coffelt: A Private Life for Public Good

BY ROBERT WILHELM

Richard Coffelt lived quietly in Hays, Kansas, for nearly his entire life, and his neighbors knew nothing about his secret passion. They had no idea he worked diligently through Vietnam War chronologies cataloging American casualties. They had no idea he was the architect of a document that veterans, their families, and friends will use for decades to come. They didn’t know because he was an intensely private man who talked with almost no one about his work, other than his wife.

He was not motivated by ego but rather by curiosity about a local man who died in the war. That curiosity, however, grew to include the many who perished. “I never thought anybody would ever be interested in this,” he once said. But the full story of Richard Coffelt and what has become the “Coffelt Database of Vietnam KIAs” might never have come to light were it not for a member of VVA’s Hays, Kansas, Chapter 939, his dog, and their daily walks.

Gary Brown moved to Hays in 2002 and began walking his dog around his neighborhood where, by chance, he met Coffelt walking his dog. Striking up a friendship, they walked together, sometimes as often as three times a week, talking of many things, including their jobs—Richard an attorney and Gary the city fire chief—and their military service—Richard in Korea, Gary in Vietnam.

In 2004 Chapter 939 was formed, and chapter members decided to have guest speakers at their monthly meetings. Coffelt was not among the first. In fact, it would be six years before the chapter learned his story.

In 2009 Coffelt developed Lewy body dementia complicated by Parkinson’s disease. The following year his condition worsened to the point he could no longer walk his dog, so the chore fell to his wife, Jo Ann Jennings. As her husband had done earlier, she met and talked with Brown during these walks.

One day Brown wore his Chapter 939 polo shirt with the VVA logo, and Jennings—who had not known he was a Vietnam veteran—asked if he knew about the work her husband had been doing. As she told him about Coffelt’s thirty-year odyssey documenting Vietnam War KIAs, Brown was flabbergasted. In all the years they had walked their dogs, Coffelt had never hinted at his project. Brown asked if Coffelt would speak to the chapter. He agreed, but his illness left him with an inability to speak for any length of time, so his wife became his voice. They appeared at the meeting on the evening of January 25, 2011.

When Coffelt began his research in the early 1980s, he considered it an obsessive hobby. But in 2001, when he deeded his database to the National Archives and Records Administration, he finally realized the significance of his work. “I never imagined it would be this important,” he said.

Chapter 939 decided to create a tribute to Richard Coffelt and display it prominently. The spot chosen was at the Hays Regional Airport. It was dedicated June 11in front of a crowd including his wife Jo Ann, Chapter 939 members, Hays city officials, and many friends and family.

Coffelt never lived to see the tribute. He died on January 25, 2012, exactly one year after speaking to the chapter. But the Coffelt Database lives on at the National Archives website, free to all who wish to use it, just as its creator wanted, at www.nara.gov or www.coffeltdatabase.org/about.php