John Eade is a Toledo original. He grew up here and went to DeVilbiss High School. He has lived all over the United States, indeed in several parts of the world. Now he lives outside of Boston, where he has been based for many years. But he still considers Toledo home. And he was here recently to visit family.

Mr. Eade calls himself a wanderer who has had “serial careers.” He has been a political operative, a teacher, a public official. He went back to school relatively late in life to become an architect and had a practice for a while in Cambridge, Mass. He says he regrets that he did not focus more on that discipline.

He worked, many years ago, with Peter Ujvagi and a young Baldemar Velasquez on what was called the National Committee on Neighborhoods. The idea was to do what needs doing again: Reclaim cities for livability and reclaim the middle class for itself.

What he doesn’t tell you is that he is a war hero. He doesn’t tell anyone about that and we met, a few days ago, on the condition that it not be our major topic that day. But Mr. Eade survived one of the most ferocious battles of the Vietnam War — the battle of la Drang Valley, in 1965. Two-thirds of the soldiers in his unit were killed and all of the rest of his own fire team of four. Much of that fight, initially, was hand-to-hand combat — with knives and hands around necks. Not the stuff of Hollywood movies. Sergeant Eade was the lone survivor in his band of brothers. He saw his three friends and comrades die. He told Boston journalist Jules Crittenden that he thinks about them and misses them every day of his life.

When he worked for the city of Boston, as chief of inspections, few saw any hint of this. They knew that Mr. Eade wore an eye patch but they didn’t know why. They knew he was intense, brutally honest on all levels, and a taskmaster. They knew he was soft-spoken and private, even by New England standards. But almost all his remarkable life he kept to himself.

He wears an eye patch because he was shot in the head by the Viet Cong.

“Why would I want to talk to a journalist when I have spent my whole life trying to be anonymous?” he asked me. But it was not hard to get him to talk about the things he cares deeply about — politics, public policy, Toledo, the country.

When he came back from Vietnam, he went to rehab in Valley Forge for a year. But after that, he became another kind of warrior. He managed political campaigns — all kinds, at all levels. He was good at it. That’s how he got to Boston, where politics flows in the veins of every sentient man and woman and is played out as blood sport.

Mr. Eade started with George McGovern in 1972 and is a devout liberal Democrat. He feels strongly that the North American Free Trade Agreement destroyed cities such as Toledo, with few repercussions for the leaders who acceded to it and little understanding by the public. Leaders don’t lead anymore, he said. Americans want fair play but our politicians do not champion it, or explain their self-interest to working people. He told me Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson were two leaders who stood for something and debated each other on the merits. He thinks it has been downhill ever since.

He makes an exception for Marcy Kaptur, whom he deeply respects. She truly knows and cares for the people she represents, Mr. Eade said. She stood up alone on NAFTA and she paid a steep political price.

According to Mr. Crittenden’s account, when John Eade was finally rescued by American medics in the jungles of Vietnam, he asked for water. He was told he could not have water. He was shot in the chest. He then asked for morphine. He had given his to his fallen brothers. He was told he could not have morphine, for he was also shot in the head. “Then give me a cigarette,” he said. He’d not been a smoker before. He has been one ever since.

And ever since, he has hated war.

“We just keep doing the same stupid stuff over and over again,” he said of U.S. foreign policy. Bombing and killing people to set them free and bring them “democracy” — in places we don’t begin to understand.

In his little town of Winthrop, Mass., he has long worked alongside other volunteers packing boxes to send to our troops overseas, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, of course. I asked him if he gets into discussions with other volunteers, or fellow vets, about the recent wars. “How stupid do I look?” he answered. His voice lowered to a near-whisper: “They know how I feel.”

He has kept his hand in politics. He is consulting a bit for the new mayor of Boston. “Keep your eye on him,” he advised. He likes Liz Warren but fears she is too inexperienced. He wishes Jerry Brown were younger. He dealt with him once and found him “thoroughly honorable.”

“I’m not sure an old guy talking about himself is a good thing,” Mr. Eade wrote to me a few days after our meeting.

But we didn’t talk about him. We talked about the republic for which he stood.

I have met some extraordinary people in my life, only a few of them famous or powerful. John Eade is a quiet man, very quiet. He is slight in stature. But he is a mighty force. He is so direct and unvarnished that it feels, undeniably, like you are in the presence of human greatness. And goodness.

“Public service is what has meant the most to me in my life,” he said. “I always felt like whatever my country asked of me, it was my duty to give.”

Keith C. Burris is a columnist for The Blade.

Contact him at: kburris@theblade.com or 419-724-6266.

First Published November 16, 2014, 5:00 a.m.