Downers Grove’s Dick Cermak says service in Vietnam ‘turned life around,’ still serves as DGS softball coach

Dick Cermak carries two memories he cherishes wherever he goes.

On the middle of his car’s license plate is the word “Evie,” in memory of his granddaughter, who died in 2011 at age 3.

And to the left is the symbol of the Bronze Star, awarded to Cermak for his service in Vietnam.

It’s been almost 60 years, but Cermak remembers the most heroic 15 minutes of his life like it was yesterday.

The 80-year-old Downers Grove man, a father of two, retired software engineer and a softball coach, was a young codebreaker for the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War’s Tet Offensive.

At 4:15 p.m. on an afternoon in January 1968, Cermak and his team intercepted a message that the Viet Cong was launching a rocket attack on an air base at 4:30 p.m. Cermak’s group got the message out and got troops into bunkers. When the rockets came, no soldier was injured.

Cermak was awarded the Bronze Star. He chokes up reliving the memory.

“It was a great moment,” Cermak said, “what you live for.”

Cermak has lived quite a life, and he still does as a JV assistant softball coach at Downers Grove South High School about 30 years after his daughter hung up her softball cleats.

His four years in the service, starting when he was drafted in 1965, turned his life around. Cermak, a native of Stickney, doesn’t want to say he was a momma’s boy, but his mother did everything for him. He flunked out of junior college twice. Finally, she suggested that Cermak take an aptitude test that showed he was good at logic and problem-solving. He got a job as a programmer at Continental Bank before he was drafted in August 1965.

“I got drafted for two years, wound up joining for four years,” Cermak said, “and I’d do it all over again.”

Cermak did a year of training in the U.S. and then went to Germany, where he monitored East German troop movements, deciphering codes as a crypto analytics specialist. He volunteered to go to Vietman and flew into Saigon in June 1967.

“Our mission there, you intercepted these codes, and it wasn’t hard code to break,” Cermak said. “We could know what they said. They are going to attack this air base. It was every day. We worked 12 hours on, 12 hours off, seven days a week.

“I was 22, didn’t have a girlfriend at home, wasn’t married. This was my life.”

Cermak planned to extend his tour, but the Tet Offensive came, and they came under rocket attack every day. He could see the explosions on the runway. Every day, Cermak counted the days until he was to leave, and he did on June 5, 1968, the day Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. He was sent to Japan, where Cermak monitored the South Koreans to make sure they didn’t attack North Korea.

“When I got back from the service, they used to call it shell shock because [post-traumatic stress disorder] didn’t exist,” said Cermak, who said he got prostate cancer from Agent Orange. “When I got back home, the telephone would ring and I would jump. The Fourth of July I’d be hiding under a table. It wasn’t until 30 years later, the late 1990s, I went down to the VA and talked to a specialist and they said, ‘You have PTSD.’ ”

When Cermak came back to the U.S. at age 24, he got his job back with Continental Bank, met his wife in 1970 and got married in 1971.

“It changes your life,” Cermak said of the service. “The one thing that was bad about it, I fell behind. When I got out of the service, four years later, people were ahead of me, making more money. I fell behind. I didn’t resent it, but it was tough.”

A late bloomer athletically, Cermak was cut from every sport he went out for except track. When he got out of the service, Cermak played 16-inch softball at Hutchinson Field in Chicago. His daughter got into fast-pitch, and they needed a coach.

“That’s how I got into it, and I’ve done it ever since,” Cermak said. “I’ve always wanted to keep learning. I’ve coached with coaches that really know the game. There’s always something to learn.”

Cermak started coaching travel ball in 1990, started with the high school team in 2004 and still is at Downers Grove South.

“My daughter got out in 1996, but I just enjoy it. It’s just fun to do and great exercise,” Cermak said. “I wanted to keep doing it until I wasn’t having fun. I’m still having fun, and I enjoy it. The kids are still receptive. My philosophy is to be positive and upbeat.”

Cermak never talked about the war when he first came back from Vietnam. It was an unpopular war, and people called soldiers such as Cermak baby killers. He kept the memories inside for many years.

Now, though, Cermak goes to schools such as Jefferson Junior High and Downers Grove South, and kids ask him what Vietman was like. He brings slideshows of his days in Vietman. He hopes to go back to Downers Grove South to talk with students later this school year.

“My four years in the service, I would do it all over again,” he said. “It was something that made your life. Looking out for other people, watching somebody else’s back – it turned my life around.”