A military man, family man and active veteran, 83-year-old Henry Dors’ life has been colored by camaraderie and loyalty.

Dors, born in 1932, spent most of his young life in Brockton. With the Korean War raging, a 19-years-old Dors decided to follow in the footsteps of his military family and enlisted in the Marines in 1951.

“I said, ‘Well, I better go and do my duty,'” Dors said. “So I did. I wanted to be someone who fights.”

Dors descends from a long line of military men, though most of his predecessors were part of the Navy Corps. As a family they were quite fortunate, Dors said.

Despite being eligible for officer school, he was placed in the infantry due to the lack of gunrunners. Fortunately, he said, he loved it, especially the deep sense of solidarity.

“The beauty about me and the Marine Corps was that I knew if I got hurt or got hit, nobody would leave me behind,” Dors said.

Dors was discharged after three years of service, but said his time in the Marine Corps was one the most definitive parts of his life. After returning home and taking a job with New England Telephone, he never found any cause to regret leaving, but he often wonders what it would have been like if he stayed.

Though he was no longer on active duty, Dors said he never stopped giving back to the military community. He was active in a number of veterans services throughout the years, including the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion Veterans Organization. In 1956, he joined the Marine Corps League veterans organization in Brockton and eventually become the Chairman of the Veterans Council.

It wasn’t until 1992, after his retirement, that Dors and his family moved to Onset. They revamped their then-summer cottage to fit their six kids: Steven, Shelley, Susan, Stacy, Stephanie and Sharon. He continued his service to veterans by becoming the veterans graves registration officer and was responsible for setting and removing the flags on veterans’ graves.

Dors also began volunteering his Fridays at the Navy League Sea Cadets at Mass Maritime, training cadet hopefuls between ages 10 to 12. Though the program trained kids all the way through 17 years old, Dors said he was particularly fond of the younger kids, who knew him only as “Sarge.” He continued training them throughout the summers, too, becoming an active participant in the cadets’ summer camp program.

“[The kids] were challenging but good,” Dors reminisces.

Even now, kids jump at the chance to get into Dors’ good graces.

“They’ve come up to help me put flags out at all the cemeteries in Wareham – I have eight hundred flags,” Dors said.

Dors said he works tirelessly for veteran causes because he wants people to remember “this country was made great with the help of so many citizens going into the military to protect the country.”

Though Dors takes things a bit more slowly these days, he’s happy to say that in a life filled with so many what-ifs, he has no regrets.