TERRE HAUTE — Robert Earl “Bert” Shepard, the native of Dana, who lost part of his right leg during an air mission over Germany during World War II but ended up pitching in the major leagues, died last Monday at a medical facility in Highland, Calif.
The only person ever to play major league baseball with an artificial limb, Shepard would have been 88 years old on June 28.
An all-around athlete at Clinton High School, Shepard played in the Midwest Semi-pro Baseball League at Memorial Stadium in Terre Haute before signing a professional contract in 1939 with the Jeanerette (La.) Blues of the Class D Evangeline League.
After three years in the minors, Shepard enlisted in the Army Air Corps and was assigned to pilot P-38 fighters for the Eighth Air Force out of Wormingford, England. With his experience, Bert was the logical choice to be playing manger of the 55th Fighter Squadron’s baseball team. He helped lay out a new baseball diamond at the camp.
Lt. Shepard piloted 33 successful missions over Germany, including the first daylight raid of Berlin on March 2, 1944.
On Sunday, May 21, 1944, Shepard’s baseball team was scheduled to play an afternoon game so he volunteered for an early morning mission. On his way back to the base through flak-filled skies after a strafing run about 70 miles northwest of Berlin, he felt something “like a sledgehammer” hit his right foot.
That was all he remembered. He later learned that a shell had pierced the cockpit and nearly severed his leg. As he drifted into unconsciousness, another round grazed his chin and his plane crashed near Ludwigslust, a town northwest of Schwerin.
A portion of Bert’s skull was pulverized upon its impact with the gunsight.
Angry German residents tried to finish off the unconscious enemy pilot but an unidentified physician intervened just in time. Shepard awakened in a German hospital as a prisoner of war, his right leg amputated a few inches below the knee.
Bert wandered in and out of consciousness for many days while a German medical team treated his serious wounds. A tantalum plate was surgically inserted to protect his brain. He missed the game but the baseball field later was named in his honor.
Months later Bert was transferred to Stalag IX-C, a prisoner-of-war camp near the town of Meiningen. Fellow POW Doug Erray, a Canadian medic, used scrap metal to fashion a crude prosthesis for him.
During February 1945, as the result of a prisoner exchange, Shepard was sent to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he received excellent medical care and a new prosthesis which allowed him to gain strength through exercise.
When Undersecretary of War Robert P. Patterson visited the hospital a few weeks later, he asked Shepard what he wanted to do with his life.
Bert hardly hesitated:
“If I can’t fly combat missions, I want to play pro baseball and try to make it to the major leagues.”
Impressed with Shepard’s attitude, Patterson began to consider ways Bert could be used to inspire other disabled veterans. Ultimately, Bert made several motivational training films for the Army.
Patterson also called Washington Senators’ owner Clark Griffith. Less than one year after his P-38 was shot down over Germany, Shepard received a tryout at the University of Maryland baseball facility.
Manager Ossie Bluege was amazed. He knew Shepard had an artificial leg. Yet, he watched as Bert ran the bases, snagged fly balls, fielded bunts and slid into base like a seasoned athletic veteran. He also noted that Shepard was “a southpaw with some stuff.” Griffith signed Bert to a contract as a playing coach.
On July 10, 1945, Shepard was the Senators’ starting pitcher in an War Bond exhibition game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Senators won, 4-3, in front of 23,000 spectators. Bert was the winning pitcher, completing five innings while yielding five hits and one base on balls. He struck out three.
Writing in The Sporting News, columnist Walter Haight noted: “It is doubtful if any athlete in sports history has become so famous in such a short time as Lt. Shepard.”
Shepard pitched 51⁄3 innings during a regular season game against the Boston Red Sox Aug. 4, allowing one run on three hits while fanning three. Entering the game in the fourth inning with the bases loaded and two outs, he fanned George Metkovich.
Between games of a double-header against the New York Yankees on Aug. 31, 1945, Bert was presented the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal by Gen. Omar Bradley, Gen. Jacob Devers and then-Secretary of War Patterson.
Bert did not play in any more major league games; his career ERA is 1.69. In 1946, he played on a traveling American League all-star team which included Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. Between occasional surgeries at Walter Reed Hospital, Shepard played (and managed) four more years in the minors.
Retiring from baseball, Shepard sold typewriters for IBM and became a safety engineer with Hughes Aircraft and a motivational speaker. Residing in Hesperia, Calif., he became an superb golfer, winning the 1968 and 1971 National Amputees Golf titles.
Despite his post-war success, Shepard was frustrated by his inability to ascertain the identity of the person who saved his life while he was laying unconscious in a German cornfield with critical injuries on May 21, 1944.
On Christmas Eve 1992, Bert received a surprise long distance telephone call from Dr. Ladislaus Loidl, the German physician who rescued him from certain death 48 years earlier. The call was arranged by Jamie Brundell, an English businessman who met Dr. Loidl during a hunting expedition in Hungary. The doctor was seeking Bert’s fate.
Brundell spent months trying to find a one-legged American pilot with “Robert E. Shepard” on his dog tags. During May 1993, sportscaster Mel Allen and a television crew accompanied Shepard to Austria for a tearful reunion with the humane doctor.
Since that time, Shepard — a member of “The Greatest Generation” — has been featured in magazines, books and several documentary films.
He is survived by daughters Karen of Los Angeles and Penny of Tulsa; sons Justin and Preston of Hesperia; nine grandchildren; and brothers John, Gene and Martin of Clinton.
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HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: The death and legacy of Dana native Bert Shepard
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