Discovering Doug Hagen

On July 1, 2020, I stumbled across an Ebay listing that lead me to discover the incredible legacy of Doug Hagen, who was the Student Council President in 1964, one year ahead of the Class of 1965.

First the listing:

It is interesting what you can find on eBay. The selling of a rather beat up 1964 Douglas MacArthur Yearbook for $199, plus shipping seemed high. But the listing caught my eye. The listing and description said:

This yearbook features Steve Hunter, Loren Douglas Hagen & Loren Coleman
1964 Douglas MacArthur High School in Decatur, Illinois IL 64
Douglas Hagen was a US ARMY special forces officer who received the Metal of Honor for his act of Valor during the Vietnam War.
Steve Hunter is an American Guitarist (Musician) who worked with Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Mitch Ryder, etc.
Loren Coleman is a cryptozoologist and author who has written over 40 books.

The Yearbook belonged to Larry Swartz, according to the embossed name on the cover.

Steve Hunter

Wikipedia listings and google searching gave instant results on Steve Hunter. 

Hunter in March 2013.

Stephen John Hunter was born in Decatur, Illinois, on June 14, 1948, and raised in Decatur. Hunter was in the Class of 1966 at Douglas MacArthur High School, and would have been a sophomore in the 1964 Yearbook.
Hunter is an American guitarist, primarily a session player. As noted in Wikipedia, he has worked with Lou Reed and Alice Cooper, acquiring the moniker "The Deacon." He also worked with Mitch Ryder, Detroit, Peter Gabriel, Julian Lennon, Bette Midler, Tracy Chapman, David Lee Roth, and John Sauter.

While Hunter returned to Decatur during his career, he apparently presently lives "in Altea, Spain, with his wife, Cornish singer/songwriter, Karen Ann Hunter. He suffers from pigmentary glaucoma, which has rendered him legally blind," according to an August 27, 2013 article in Herald de Paris.

Loren Coleman

Also mentioned in the entry is Loren Coleman, a member of the Class of 1965, and someone of whom I'm familiar (here, here, here, and here).

Doug Hagen

The mention of Doug Hagen, Class of 1964, opened up many documents in tribute to a familiar face to several of us. Since his father was name "Loren Douglas Hagen," at MacArthur the younger Hagen was known by "Doug." But online, Hagen is recalled in news articles and Medal of Honor remembrances as "Loren D." or "Loren Douglas Hagen."

Hagen's Wikipedia entry is rather complete, as are his military entries, such as this one.

Lt. Doug Hagen 

One of the most moving articles about Doug Hagen was carried in the Decatur Herald and Review, on May 26, 2016. It was written by Theresa Churchill, and is reprinted here so as to be easily available for you to read.

Home at last: Killed in action 48 years ago, Decatur soldier to be laid to rest 

DECATUR – You hardly ever saw Alan Boyer without Doug Hagen, each new to MacArthur High School their junior year.

That's how Steve Pyle, another member of the Class of 1964, remembers the two friends, even though they were about as different as they could be.

“Doug was liberal, Al was conservative, and if you were on the student council, it was a big deal,” said Pyle, 69, a photographer who moved from Decatur to Bowling Green, Ky., five years ago. “Our senior year, Doug was president, and Alan was vice president.”

Each promising young life ended tragically in the Vietnam War; Boyer vanishing March 28, 1968, and Hagen killed Aug. 7, 1971, while serving in the same special Army operations unit Boyer had been in.

Hagen wanted to find out what happened to his best friend, but he never did.

Indeed, the first indication Boyer was dead did not come until 1973, when his name did not appear on a list of 591 American prisoners coming home after the war was over.

“They found no blood, no bodies and no personal effects, so I thought, 'OK, he's been taken prisoner,' ” his sister Judi Boyers Bouchard said in a telephone interview from her home in Licklog Ridge, N.C. “For five years, I held onto that hope.”


The mystery “shaped a whole lot” of her life, starting at age 19 when her big brother disappeared and continuing until March 7 of this year, a couple weeks after she turned 67 and on the eve of what would have been her brother's 70th birthday.

The U.S. Army telephoned to say his remains had finally been identified.

“It absolutely knocked the wind out of me,” Bouchard said. “The news is bittersweet, and I wish our parents had lived to see it.”

Charles Boyer, who worked at Borg-Warner when the family lived in Decatur, died in 1994, and Dorothy Boyer, who taught at Brush College School, died in 2013.


The Boyers, originally from suburban Chicago, settled in Rockford after their son graduated from high school in Decatur, and it was in October 1967, during Bouchard's first semester at the University of Montana in Missoula, that she last saw her brother.

It's not surprising she chose the same university he was attending when he decided to enlist in the Army to save the world from communism.

“Alan was the quintessential big brother that I absolutely adored,” she said. “He was the one who taught me how to ride a bike when I was about 4, never believing in training wheels.

“He also taught me how to drive when I was 16.”

Sgt. Alan Boyer and two other soldiers were conducting a reconnaissance patrol in Laos on March 28, 1968, when they encountered an enemy force and radioed for evacuation.

The seven Vietnamese with them escaped safely, but heavy fire forced the helicopter to leave without the three Americans, first listed as missing and later as presumed dead.

Boyer's body, in possession of remains traders in Laos, recently ended up with a peace activist who turned it over to the U.S. government. The Army confirmed his identity by comparing the DNA to samples given many years earlier by his mother and sister.

“I was told it's the strongest DNA match they have ever seen,” Bouchard said. “There is no doubt it's Alan.”

The Army awarded Boyer the Silver Star and Purple Heart posthumously.

Today, Bouchard is preparing to lay her brother to rest on June 22 in Virginia's Arlington National Cemetery, where Hagen is buried, and with full military honors.

“He's probably up there shaking his head,” she said, “but this is what our mom and dad wanted if and when they ever found him. It's going to be a wonderful tribute.”

But Bouchard hasn't forgotten all the other people she met over the years who continue to wonder what happened to their loved ones.

“Please remember all the POW/MIAs who remain unaccounted for,” she wrote to conclude a letter of thanks to friends after her brother was found. “Their families still wait.”

Sgt. Alan Boyer

Bob Dondeville's Vietnam Art

MacArthur 1965 graduate Bob Dondeville was filmed in a series of Herald and Review videos discussing how his art relates to his Vietnam experience:  

 You can click on the entire series of "parts" at the end of viewing the above segment.

Lynn Calhoun: Victim of Vietnam

Tomorrow is Flag Day. Let's revisit a soldier classmate of ours today.

For the Class of 1965, perhaps one of the most overwhelming background bits of noise that remains in our lives is that we existed in America during the Vietnam War. No reason to be political about this; it is merely a fact of being a child of those times. In one way or another, we made life choices due to Vietnam, and probably knew someone tragically touched by the war. It is a fact that is hard to avoid.

For some of our classmates, the War lives on in their day-to-day existent. I'm going to look at one such person today: Lynn Calhoun, whom Donna Camp tracked down. First a little info on the syndrome.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS) was conducted by the U.S. government to better understand the psychological effect of being in the Vietnam War. The findings from this study were more shocking than what people were prepared to hear since it was only a decade after the end of the war. Among Vietnam veterans, approximately 15% of men and 9% of women were found to currently have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Approximately 30% of men and 27% of women had PTSD at some point in their life following Vietnam. This comes about through a variety of manifestations. Nightmares and anger are examples that are constantly mentioned; there are others. If you happened to have a precondition vulnerability to mental health issues, you might be predisposed to suffer PTSD even worse than others did.

In addition to psychological treatments for PTSD (for example, cognitive-behavioral therapy), medications have also been found to be useful in treating the symptoms of PTSD. A number of factors can interfere with the treatment of PTSD, such as stigma, avoidance, and other disorders, as well as substance use disorders, depression, and anxiety disorders.

In the time leading up to this posting, various people have talked to Lynn about his troubles, and he has given permission for me to share some insights and information with you. I'll be very honest with you. This is another moment in our "reunion" history where a simple card or note from you, Lynn's old Mac '65 classmates, might do a world of good for Lynn.

First, do you remember Lynn? He is recalled as a great guy around school, a big part of Mac.



Lynn Calhoun's Cadet sketch tells of him playing football as a freshman and sophomore, four years of baseball, playing in the student faculty game as a freshman and senior, and helping out with the Big Mac Assembly as a freshman, sophomore, and junior. Indeed, as a junior, Lynn was heavily involved at school with the Homecoming Queen Committee, Homecoming Assembly, Spanish Club, Student Council Alternate, Class Council Alternate, Student Council Assembly, Spanish Club Float, and Homecoming Float. His senior year, Lynn was back working on the Homecoming Float.

But what happened to Lynn, after graduation?

Here is some of what Lynn shared with classmates, which has been sent on to me, with his permission to send out his call for communications.

First of all, Lynn Calhoun went to Vietnam and was injured in some way there, mostly mentally. He has been a disabled vet for decades. He has been in and out of the VA in Danville, on at least an outpatient level.

Lynn has had a rough time, since Vietnam. In 1976, his mother died by suicide, and one of his two sisters was in and out of institutions. All of this, of course, impacted Lynn greatly, troubling his mind, and ending his marriage (there were no children).

For Lynn, the Vietnam War lives on, and in the recent past he tried to share reading material and military photos with a neighbor about this period of his life, causing concern for him from folks who didn't quite understand what was going on. Lynn sometimes constantly reads the Bible too.

Today, Lynn is diabetic, fights his weight, has a congestive heart ailment, and has been given a schizophrenia diagnosis, mainly due to episodes he has when he goes off his medications. He knows he shouldn't do that, and perhaps that is behind what has recently happened to Lynn.

Lynn said that he has been at a nursing home (Arcola Health Care Center) since September 26, 2008, when he refused to take his meds.

His sister recently passed away, and he is now feeling more and more isolated. Lynn told Keith Rogers who talked to him that he would like to talk to anyone! He needs his old classmates to send him cards! He can go out on passes...he can walk but really needs a wheelchair, just in case. His appearance might shock a few of his old classmates: he has a full head of white hair and a long white beard.

Lynn is at the Arcola Health Care Center
422 E. 4th Street South
Arcola, Illinois

His mailing address is

Lynn Franklin Calhoun
P.O. Box 70
Arcola, Illinois 61910

He'd really like to hear from you, if you'd like to contact him.





The P.O. Box number is where you send him mail.

Help out a classmate; please send him a note!!