41st Street bridge could be named in honor of fallen soldier

For Pat Murphy, this is a story about payback.

Payback in the form of leaving a small legacy for a friend whose life was cut short. At age 21. On a field in Vietnam.

“I just took it on as my own little project,” said Murphy, who also served in Vietnam.

“I survived. He got killed on his first mission.”

Murphy only knew Kirby Jon Dougherty for a year, when they were sophomores at O’Gorman High School.

But he has spent longer than that trying to honor him.

Tuesday night, the path to naming a bridge after Dougherty will wind through Carnegie Town Hall, when the Sioux Falls City Council will be asked to approve it.

This all started nearly two years ago, when Murphy attended a meeting for disabled veterans and learned the state of South Dakota was interested in dedicating bridges to veterans who had been killed in action.

“Kirby was in my class, and he was probably the only one I knew personally who had been in Vietnam and gotten killed in combat,” Murphy said. “If there was anyone that would be deserving of it, I knew it would be him.”

The state planned to select six that first year, and Dougherty didn’t end up being one of them. Murphy was encouraged to add to the application and try again. But instead, he realized it might be more meaningful to honor his friend within Sioux Falls and not on a bridge along a state highway.

As it happens, the 41st Street bridge is next to O’Gorman.

“I said is there any way we could have the city of Sioux Falls consider doing something similar to what the state is trying to do,” he said.

With help from the city planning and zoning divisions and an ordinance change to allow for the recognition, he’s now positioned to make it happen for his friend.

“I said whatever it is we’ve got to do, I’m willing to do,” Murphy said. “So we got to this point where Tuesday night they’ve got it on the agenda that the City Council will decide if they’re going to approve this as far as place a sign on that bridge.”

Dougherty grew up in Sioux Falls and was an all-star basketball player at O’Gorman, where he graduated in 1965. He was attending SDSU on a scholarship and working at the Coca Cola Bottling Co. during the summer when he was drafted in 1968.

His first mission in the infantry would be his last.

“It was kind of a horrific deal,” Murphy later found out. “They must have gotten ambushed, and as they were retreating, I don’t know if Kirby didn’t get the order they were pulling back, but when the helicopter came to pick them up, he wasn’t there to get picked up.”

He spent the night hiding in a jungle or rice paddy, and the next day a rescue helicopter arrived.

“And he was still alive, and as he was running toward the helicopter, he got shot and killed,” Murphy said.

“As far as I know, he’s the only person from O’Gorman who’s been killed in the military.”

On Sept. 1, 1968, just after the school year had started, O’Gorman students learned one of their own had been killed in the war.

“Kirby just stood out. He was one of those nice guys, just an all-American boy,” Murphy said. “You felt he didn’t really have a chance to live his life. You always wonder what a person would have done if he had survived.”

Dougherty has one surviving sister in Sioux Falls. His mother chose not to have a military funeral in 1968, but in 2019, his sister agreed to allow St. Michael Catholic Cemetery to host one.

“I would say there were 40 former classmates and veterans who knew Kirby who showed up,” Murphy said. “So he got a delayed military funeral.”

And now, he could have a permanent marker on one of the most well-traveled roads in the state, feet from his alma mater.

The PFC Kirby Jon Dougherty Memorial Bridge would have commemorative signage naming the bridge in recognition of Dougherty’s personal sacrifice for our national defense.

“I looked at it as payback,” Murphy said. “He paid a lot more than I did. And I just thought it’s the least I could do.”