By Joe Pisani
John “Chick” Donohue of Old Greenwich always had a flair for the outrageous. Just ask his friends. But nothing compares to that night in 1967 at the height of the Vietnam War, when he was sitting in Doc Fiddler’s neighborhood bar in Inwood with his buddies, and a bartender known as “The Colonel” said, “I’d like to go over to Vietnam and track down all the boys from the neighborhood and just give them a beer.”
Chickie, 26, promptly responded, “I can do that.” A few moments later, as his friends assessed his sincerity, not to mention his sobriety, he rose triumphantly from his stool, raised his bottle and yelled, “I’m going to Vietnam and I’m bringin’ em beer!”
The rest, as they say, is history, all of which is recorded in his book, “The Greatest Beer Run Ever: A Memoir of Friendship, Loyalty and War,” which was made into a movie starring Zac Efron, Russell Crowe and Bill Murray. (To see trailer, go to https://youtu.be/NqxziDlZOIo)
It tells the story of the time Donohue left his home in upper Manhattan on a mission of charity to bring beer and encouragement to the guys from his neighborhood serving in the military.
“I wanted to show them that somebody back home was still behind them,” he recalled.
A merchant mariner, Donohue got a list of names, packed his duffel bag and set out on an old cargo ship to Vietnam.
It was a four-month ordeal, sailing from New York to Qui Nhon, sneaking into the country with a duffel bag of Pabst and Schlitz, and tracking down his buddies from the north to the south, to bring them support during a divisive time in our country’s history.
The outrageous mission had him dodging the Viet Cong, not to mention the military brass, got him caught in the middle of firefights, and found him trapped in Saigon during the Tet Offensive on January 31, 1968 — the deadliest day of the war for the United States, when 246 Americans were killed.
“I thought it would be impossible,” Donohue said during a phone interview. “But I had to try and if I failed, I failed.”
At the time, there were some 500,000 soldiers and Marines in Vietnam, and his four friends were in different units. However, using his street smarts and perseverance, he managed to find them all within four months to give them beer and encouragement from their family and friends back home.
‘There are no coincidences’
Donohue, 81, is a veteran of the U.S. Marines who worked for many years as a union executive. Since spring of 2020, he has lived in Old Greenwich with his wife Theresa “Terri” Donohue of more than 52 years, so they can be close to their grandchildren.
When he looks back on it all, he comes to one simple conclusion: “I don’t believe in coincidences anymore.” He’s emphatic when he says that someone has always been looking out for him. How else can you explain that he managed to find his four friends in Vietnam, who were scattered from the north to the south, and that they all returned home safe … and decades later, their friendship still endures.
“Somebody wanted it to happen,” he says. “I don’t believe in coincidences. Everything happens for a reason.”
These “non-coincidences” have occurred throughout life. How else can you explain his association with Pete Jones, who with director Peter Farrelly and writer Brian Haynes Currie, wrote the movie script. And that Pete Jones’ brother should happen to be Fr. Michael Jones, pastor of St. Mary Church in Greenwich, where Chickie regularly attends Mass when he’s in Connecticut. And that their mother, Nancy Jones, should be the extraordinary minister who gives Chickie Communion at St. Gabriel Parish in his winter home in Pompano Beach, Florida.
Writing the script
Donohue has a gift for storytelling, and some of them seem unbelievable, until you realize they’re true. For years, his tale circulated throughout Inwood, from bar to bar, until it became part of the local lore.
“From the very beginning, I wanted to have it recorded for my children and grandchildren to know the true story,” he said. In 2015, his memoir, written in collaboration with New York Daily News reporter J.T. Molloy, was published and served as the inspiration for the movie, along with a documentary produced by Pabst Brewing Company.
Pete Jones often collaborates with director Peter Farrelly, who won an Oscar for his movie “The Green Book.”
“I got a call from Farrelly, who said, ‘I think I have a project you were born to write,’” Jones recalled. “Then, came the punch line. It was about a guy who has a hair-brained idea that he’s going to Vietnam to give his buddies beer and thank them for their service to their country when public opinion against the war was escalating.”
Farrelly told Jones, “It sounds like something you would have come up with back in the day.”
Jones read the book and then went to Florida to meet Chickie and his family. During their conversations, he learned that Chickie lives near Nancy Jones, whom Chickie described as a “tough lady” and “the only Eucharistic minister who will give me Communion on the tongue.”
Throughout the two-year project, Jones said it was especially important they “get it right” for Chickie and his friends.
“Our guiding light while we were writing the script was that we wanted Chickie and the guys who served in Vietnam to appreciate the movie,” he said. “We didn’t want to mess it up. We were writing for an audience of one…and that meant Chickie giving us a thumbs up.”
The most difficult task for him as a writer was capturing the changing tone of the story. The three writers, who worked together in the past, have a natural instinct for humor, which is evident in the first half of the movie. However, when they confronted the atrocities of the war — including Chickie’s experience in Saigon during the Tet Offensive — they had to avoid forcing a narrative.
“At that point, there wasn’t anything funny because Chickie’s life was in danger,” Jones said.
Looking back on the experience, he said: “There are certain people who are so charming and — I mean this in the most complimentary way — so full of it that I just hit it off with him right away. I loved his humor. I loved his heart and I thought to myself, ‘I hope I do right by this guy.’” And he did. Chickie was overwhelmed with their work and honored to assist in the project.
Father Michael Jones, who has his own Chickie stories, recalls their first encounter, when priest was inside St. Mary Church after 10:30 Mass, and he heard some yell, “Call your mother!” Then, again, “Call your mother!” It was Chickie, who approached him and said, “Call your mother. She hasn’t heard from you in a while.”
Father realized he “had been a bad boy” and that Chickie was on another mission of charity. “No matter who you are or how old you are, all mothers treat their sons like they’re 15,” Father says, “Especially when they have five of them.” Father Jones is the oldest of five sons, of which Pete is the youngest, followed by their sister.
A friendship developed between Chickie and the priest, who he says, “looks just like Spencer Tracy.”
“Chickie always sits in the second pew right in front of me at the 10:30 Mass,” Father said, “And when the movie came out, I introduced him at Mass, and the congregation gave him an ovation.”
Return to Vietnam
During his four months in Vietnam, Chickie saw a lot that changed his attitude about the war. Things weren’t as simple as he originally believed, and what he witnessed led him to question what the government was telling the American people.
He returned to Vietnam twice, seven years later and in 2018 on the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive. He found the tree he hid behind when he watched the attack on the U.S. Embassy unfold, although what he saw differed from the account later issued by the government. While he was there, he also prayed for both the MPs and the Vietnamese who were killed during the firefight.
“They were both fighting for their country,” he said. “They were both right and they were both wrong, and they were both dead.”
Today, Chickie says, “You’re talking to a guy who has had one miracle after another — not in the sense of a religious miracle but what has happened in my life. You’re talking to a guy who has a graduate degree from Harvard, and you’re talking to a guy who has had many, many uncharted experiences and always came out smelling like a rose, and I don’t know why. Somebody’s looking out for me. It’s as simple as that.”
He credits his late mother, Catherine Delaney Donohue, who he believes is praying for “her poor son Chickie” and interceding for him with his Higher Power.
Since the movie was released, he is occasionally recognized on the streets of Old Greenwich. “Some people realize who I am, and it’s quite a compliment,” he says. “Even the guy who makes my sandwich at the local deli recognizes me. But I don’t think I did anything exceptional.”
When he’s asked what the moral of the story is, he becomes reflective and then responds, “I think the moral of the story is what my father told me as a young lad: Always do the right thing. And keep it as simple.”
When Chickie asked him, “How am I supposed to know what the right thing is?” his father, Charles Thaddeus Donohue, gave him an affectionate slap across the face and said, “Of course you know what the right thing is. You have a mother and father who raised you.”
“So in my life,” he says, “that’s what I fall back on all the time.”
