Larry Shaver: Bodyguard to the Stars

By Charlie Souhrada, Honor Flight Chicago Veteran Interview Volunteer

At 17 years old, Larry Shaver enlisted in the Marine Corps and his whole life changed – including his name.

Larry was born September 24, 1947, in Fairmont, West Virginia, the heart of coal mining country. There, his upbringing was anything but conventional. “I was born into a dysfunctional family,” he says. “My mother, Nellie Virginia, was the youngest of nine children and I lived with her older sister, Lucy White and her husband, Bill, most of the time.” He explains his aunt and uncle also had nine children, most of whom were much older. As a result, Larry grew up quickly and became independent at a young age.

“I had my first job when I was 14 years old washing dishes in a restaurant,” he says. “Forty hours a week for $1 an hour.” The restaurant management knew Larry’s situation and looked out for him. “Back then there weren’t any child labor laws. It was a more relaxed time,” he explains. 

Larry admits he missed a lot of school, as a result, and was kicked out of 7th grade when he was 16 years old. “My educational background wasn’t great,” he says.” Around this time, he began picking up odd jobs just to survive, while his stepfather encouraged him to go back to school. “I wasn’t going to go back to junior high school at nearly 17 years old,” he says. Instead, he took a series of tests that placed him as a freshman in the local high school.

“I had my own car, my own apartment … I was on my own,” he says. “I should have been in my senior year and here I was in my freshman year. I told myself, ‘This is just not going to get it.’ It was very uncomfortable, so I decided to get out of there and go do something productive.”

He considered his options and decided joining the military would help him get an education and make something out of himself. He always wanted to join the Marine Corps but assumed his educational record and size – 5’ 4” and 110 pounds soaking wet – would disqualify him. “I just didn’t fit the stereotype description of a big brawny Marine, so I took a chance, poked my head in the door and said to the gunnery sergeant sitting behind a desk, ‘I don’t suppose you’re taking anybody today?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Come on in here son, let’s talk!’”

Larry then took some tests to demonstrate his capabilities and was required to get his mother’s permission to join up due to his age. Through this process, he learned the last name he was using, Shorter, wasn’t his legal name.

“I went to school under the name ‘Shorter,’ and for 17 years, thought that was my name. Then when I went to the recruiter and they did their research, they said ‘Your name isn’t Shorter, it’s Shaver!’, which was my mother’s maiden name. ‘That’s what’s on your birth certificate so we’ve got to go by that name.’ From then on, I was Larry Shaver! It was a little odd at first, but it worked out.”  

The morning of November 30, 1964, the newly rechristened Larry Shaver was all set to join up, but there was one last hurdle – his stepfather refused to give him a ride to the recruiter’s office. Undeterred, Larry walked three miles in six inches of snow and caught a bus to Charleston, West Virginia where he opened a new chapter in his life.

After 13 weeks of training at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island in Beaufort, South Carolina, Larry went to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina for advanced individual training (AIT). There, he received his military occupational specialty, (MOS 3531) motor vehicle operator, and received orders to report to Camp Hansen in Okinawa where he was assigned to “A” Company, 9th Motor Transport, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, 3rd Marine Division.

In summer 1965, shortly after arriving in Okinawa, Viet Cong guerillas attacked the air base in Da Nang. In response, Larry and his battalion were shipped there as part of a battle group to provide relief. He remembers everyone was “green” and time aboard ship was used to educate the new troops on battalion landing practices, live ammunition drills and wet net training.

“Every day it was the same thing,” he says. “We’d go down the nets on one side of the ship, into the landing craft and up the other side, over and over and over again.” Larry explains that nets are hard to climb, especially in full combat gear weighing more than 100 pounds. “It was very difficult for a guy my size to do, especially when you must do it multiple times,” he explains. 

His size also came into play when the troops filled the landing craft and he got stuck in the middle of 39 men which meant he couldn’t see or breathe. “Most of the guys were 5’ 10” or more and it seemed like I was two feet shorter. It was so humid you could drink the air. I was having trouble getting air and couldn’t breathe!”

The troops beached under fire and secured a foothold. Then, Larry’s platoon had to get back on the landing craft and go back out to load transportation equipment and get it on the shore. “It was a long, hard day,” he says. He also remembers it was his first encounter with combat death. On that day, his “B Driver” was in the truck’s ring mount, manning the .50 caliber machine gun, and got shot. “His name was Roland E. Smith and I’ll never forget him.”

Once secured, Larry’s platoon transported the troops and set up Hill 41 outside the air base. From that point on, he moved troops, arms, and ammunition wherever they had to go. “It was our job to get them what they needed,” he says. “Without it, they were done.”

Some trips took an entire day. Each run might be 40-50 miles; the trucks didn’t go that fast, there weren’t highways and travel was dangerous. “If you couldn’t get back before dusk, we had to stay where we were. We were sitting ducks on the highway at night. They could pick us off. We took all kinds of fire.”

He also explains that truck drivers were often pulled into service to complete a patrol if a group was short of men. “We didn’t mind because we were young,” he says. “We’d go out on search and destroy, then get back to camp, catch a couple of hours sleep, then get a radio message telling us where to go next.”

On August 24, 1965, one month before Larry’s 18th birthday, he was called into his company commander’s tent who said: “Shaver, we’ve got a problem. You’re not supposed to be here because you’re only 17 years old. We’ve got two ways to handle this: we can put you on a plane and you can sit in Okinawa, or you can sign this paper and go back to work.” “That’s a no-brainer, sir, I’m not leaving my unit,” Larry replied. He signed the paper and turned 18 in a foxhole. 

Around that time, Larry accepted a temporary duty travel assignment suited to his size. “My CO called me into his tent and brought in this civilian who was in uniform without markings, which meant he was a CIA agent,” he says.

They explained the enemy was operating underground tunnels and asked Larry if he was willing to handle secretive documents. He took the assignment, was given top secret clearance, and went to explore enemy tunnels for information armed with a .45 pistol and a combat knife. “I didn’t know at the time all that was involved with the tunnel system,” he says. Some tunnel walkways were no bigger than three feet. Others were elaborate rooms filled with caches of weapons, battle plans, medical supplies, even hospitals. One time, he even discovered a room filled with tons of bags of rice, a lot of them with markings from Shreveport, Louisiana. “I found things down there that people just wouldn’t understand. There were tunnels that were nearly three stories high and about 4-6,000 feet square. One tunnel even had a gold pagoda set on one side almost touching the ceiling!”

For nearly four months, Larry’s job was to get whatever he could back to the surface, set charges and blow the tunnels. “I still remember my first encounter with the enemy underground,” he says. “Firing a firearm in an enclosed space will shake your brain.” In January 1966, he had enough and told his handler he couldn’t do it anymore. “Mentally, I was in bad shape,” he says.

Officially still classified as a truck driver, Larry was reassigned to the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force at Da Nang, where he helped start a motor pool based in an old monastery with one Jeep, one five-ton truck and one, non-working “deuce and a half” truck.  “There wasn’t much for us to do because we were waiting for equipment, so I was put on the general’s staff.”

In this new role, Larry’s size once again played a part. As a rule, an E5 was the lowest rank authorized to drive a general; Larry was an E3. The general, Keith B. McCutcheon, however, was about 5’ 5”, hated people looking down on him and was known to bust officers for such an offense. “Since we were about the same size, he liked me, and when he came into town, he’d say, ‘Where’s Shaver?’ and I became his bodyguard and driver.” Through this assignment, Larry also became “bodyguard to the stars,” driving celebrities such as professional golfer Billy Casper, and Robert Mitchum during USO tour appearances.

In May 1966, Larry’s time in Vietnam was up. He flew back to the states still wearing his utilities and muddy jungle boots. “I literally had nothing,” he says. “No civilian clothes or toiletries. I went to the PX and bought toiletries, a pair of black dress pants and a white dress shirt. I stuffed my things into my seabag and went home to West Virginia on 30 days leave. While on leave Larry received orders to report to Headquarters & Support Co., Camp Lejeune. There, he was quickly promoted to Corporal E-4 and assigned as a troop handler/instructor where he taught Marines the ins and outs of Combat Transportation.

After the death of his stepfather in 1966 Larry put in for, and was granted, a hardship transfer to the Ready Reserves.

Now struggling for something to do at barely 19 years old, Larry considered his options – go to the coal mines or try to get a railroad job. “I’d been underground all I wanted, and the railroad didn’t interest me,” he remembers. After a brief stint as a mechanic, Larry moved to Chicago in search of better job opportunities. In Chicago, he met and married his wife, Garnett, earned his CDL license and built a career as a truck driver until 2002 when health issues took him off the road.

That year, after spending nearly a month at Edward Hospital in Naperville, Larry regained his health and went back to school to get a computer science degree. He then opened his own business, Maplebrook Computer Services, building and repairing computers. In 2017, he partnered with his daughter, Lynda, to purchase a gaming business, which they now run together, Veteran’s Premier Charity Raffle, in Bolingbrook.

For most people, that would be enough, but not for Larry. He also helps run a charity he formed in 2009, American Veterans Helping Veterans, Inc. NFP, and is a NRA and USCCA certified firearms instructor and certified range safety officer.

Most importantly, he takes pride in his family, which includes his daughter, step-children Kenneth, Dennis, and Donna, 13 grandchildren and five, step great-grandchildren.

Thank you for your courageous service, Larry! Enjoy your well deserved day of honor on Honor Flight Chicago’s 102nd flight.