Bert Shepard; Amputation Didn't Stop MLB Pitcher

It was Mr. Shepard's one moment of major league glory. The next season, the war was over, and able-bodied players were returning to action. Mr. Shepard failed to make the Nats' roster and was sent to the minor leagues.

He occasionally competed against big leaguers in exhibition games -- he struck out Stan Musial and Yogi Berra and once got a hit off Bob Feller -- and always hoped to get back to the majors.

"I don't want sympathy," he told The Post in 1947. "All I want is a chance to play."

Robert Earl Shepard was born June 28, 1920, in Dana, Ind., and grew up mostly in Clinton, Ind. He worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps during high school and hitchhiked to California when he was 17.

He worked in a tire plant while playing semiprofessional baseball, returned to Indiana for his high school diploma and then played for several years in the low minor leagues. He volunteered for pilot training during World War II, even though he'd "never been near an airplane," he said.

After his short stint with the Nationals, Mr. Shepard returned to Walter Reed in 1946 for additional surgery. Complications forced him to be on crutches for more than two years, but he returned to baseball in 1949 as a player-manager with a team in Waterbury, Conn. He continued to play in the minor leagues until 1955.

He sold typewriters for IBM for a while, then became a safety engineer for Hughes Aircraft and for insurance companies in California. He worked in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for several years and became an advocate for the rights of disabled workers. He retired in 1982.

Mr. Shepard, who settled in Hesperia, Calif., became an excellent golfer and won the national amputee golf championship in 1968 and 1971. He also designed an artificial ankle that allowed greater range of motion.

On May 21, 1993, exactly 49 years after he was shot down over Germany, Mr. Shepard went to Vienna, where he was reunited with the Austrian doctor, Ladislaus Loidl, who had amputated his leg. Loidl revealed that German farmers who came upon Mr. Shepard's crashed airplane were preparing to kill him. Loidl held them off at gunpoint until an ambulance could take Mr. Shepard to a hospital.

When he regained consciousness after two weeks, Mr. Shepard looked up at the German hospital workers and said, "Thank you for saving my life."

His marriage to Betty Shepard ended in divorce.

Survivors include four children, Karen Shepard of Los Angeles, Penny Shepard of Tulsa and Justin Shepard and Preston Shepard, both of Hesperia, Calif.; three brothers; and nine grandchildren.