Physician, Author, Humanitarian. Best known for his philanthropic work in Indochina. Born in St. Louis, MO, Dooley served as a medical officer in the U.S. Navy after graduation from St. Louis University Medical School. In 1954, he was assigned to the USS Montague, which was traveling to Vietnam to evacuate refugees. While with the Navy, he organized refugee camps in Vietnam where he developed strong anti-communist sentiment. His experiences there are related in his first book, "Deliver Us from Evil: The Story of Vietnam's Flight to Freedom". In 1956 he left the navy to start a private, mobile medical unit in Loas. He helped found the Medical International Cooperative Organization (MEDICO), a non-profit organization dedicated to providing medical aid for developing countries. Dooley personally raised nearly $1 million for MEDICO through his television appearances, lecture tours and books, including "The Edge of Tomorrow" and "The Night They Burned the Mountain", both about his experiences in Laos. In 1959, Dooley returned to the U.S. for cancer treatment. He died in 1961 from malignant melanoma. Dooley was awarded the Legion of Merit, the National Order of Vietnam, and posthumously awarded a Congressional Gold Medal. After his death there were unsuccessful efforts to have him canonized as a Roman Catholic saint. Dooley's example was cited by President John F. Kennedy when he launched the Peace Corps.∼Dr. Thomas Dooley, 34, the famed "jungle doctor" of Laos and author of the best - selling "The Night They Burned the Mountain," is dead of cancer. His health had failed rapidly in the past few days and he died in his sleep Wednesday night in Memorial Hospital, just-a day after his birthday. He had continued his fight against disease in primitive areas until his own illness forced him to a painful halt last month. He entered the hospital Dec. 27.

President Eisenhower, in one of the hundreds of birthday messages sent to him, said: "It must have been a source of heartened gratification to realize that in so few years you have accomplished so much for the good of distant peoples and have inspired so many others to work for all humanity."

Francis Cardinal Spellman had visited him Wednesday. Dr. Dooley received the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church from the Rev. Francis Xavier Senniger about 10 minutes before his death. A solemn pontifical funeral Mass will be conducted in the St. Louis, Mo., Cathedral Monday at 9:30 a.m. by Bishop Leo C. Byrne. Burial will be in Calvary Ceme tery.

Dooley was a co-founder with Dr. Peter Comanduras of Wash ington, D.C., of MEDICO (Medical International Cooperation Organi zation), a nonprofit, nonsectarian health service. Dooley's dedication to adminis tering to the ailing in remote areas began in 1954, when, as a Navy doctor, he witnessed the plight of refugees evacuated from Communist North Viet Nam.

Clipped from The Decatur Herald, 20 Jan 1961, Fri, Page 22