In the fall of 1967, a land mine in Vietnam killed a Fort Mill teen, husband and expectant father on his first patrol as a Marine.
A month later, another mine killed a Rock Hill soldier with 10 siblings back home and a week left on his tour of duty. A former all-conference high school quarterback from Clover died that same year, after leaving school early for the Marines.
Last month marked 50 years since Saigon fell, ending the Vietnam War two years after American troops withdrew. Most if not every year since, the names of more than 58,000 Americans killed in that war have been read aloud or searched for on stone memorials across the country on Memorial Day.
The Herald wants to go behind the local names this year.
A review of historic news reports, local memorial walls and state archives offer glimpses into the lives of 40 men who left York County for Vietnam. None of them returned from their final missions.
Those names include two men related to Catawba Nation chiefs. One belongs to a Brazilian. Many others graduated from segregated schools that don’t exist anymore. One name belonged to a World War II and Korean War veteran who went back to fight in Vietnam.
Four of the men killed in Vietnam were 18 years old. The oldest was 47. The average age of those from York County who died in Vietnam was 23. Those men left behind at least 13 widows and more than 20 children. Most also left behind parents, and many left grieving grandparents.
Military records may list veterans from areas where they enlisted, even if they grew up or lived here. Some news reports are more complete than others. The following accounts are compiled by our review of Herald archive coverage, and confirmed with sources like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.
Here, on Memorial Day weekend, are the stories of more than three dozen veterans who lost their lives while serving their country.
The fallen of York County from the Vietnam War
Jesse Lewis Adams
Army Pfc. Jesse Adams earned his Parachutist Badge after a three-week airborne course at Fort Benning, Georgia, in the summer 1968. He was killed in Vietnam the following November at 19. The Emmett Scott High grad from Rock Hill left behind a wife, Kathryn, and a son born while Adams was away serving in the Army.
Vincent Norvell Banks
Pfc. Vincent Banks worked at Discount Supermarket on Main Street in Rock Hill for eight months after graduating Emmett Scott High, then joined the Marines in May 1968. The Rock Hill native spent three months in Vietnam before he was killed in February 1969 at age 20. He’s buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Roy Grant Barnette
Lance Cpl. Roy Barnette trained at Parris Island and had been in the Marines for eight months before he was killed in January 1969 in Vietnam, at 21. The Sharon native, one of seven children in his family, had trained in masonry at York County Technical Education Center before volunteering for the service.
Roger Dale Bell
Pfc. Roger Bell finished basic training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in late 1967 with an expert rating with his M-14 rifle. The Clover native was assigned to infantry duty. A former National Guard member who volunteered for the Army, Bell left behind two children in Charlotte when he was killed in 1968, at age 24.
Sam Henry Boyd
Army Cpl. Sam Boyd received that rank posthumously, after he was killed in May 1968. He was 20 years old. The rifleman was a Fort Mill High grad who had worked in construction then enlisted in 1967 for a three-year term, where he’d planned to continue with airborne training. Boyd was only in Vietnam for a month before he was killed.
James Steven Camp
Pfc. James Camp was an all-conference quarterback at Clover High who left midway through his senior year for the Marines. He graduated from training at Parris Island in May 1966 and left that Thanksgiving for Vietnam. He was killed during a defensive action in January 1967, at age 19.
James Alvin Carpenter
Some military records list Rock Hill as the home of Pfc. James Carpenter, who was killed in March 1969 at age 18. The Herald reported at the time of his death that the Marine lived in Chester, where he was survived by a wife, Sharon, and both parents. Earlier reports listed him as living for a time in Rock Hill.
Howard Chisholm
A football standout and band member at Emmett Scott High in Rock Hill, Army Spc. Howard Chisholm was killed engaging an enemy bunker in December 1966. He was 22 and had been scheduled to be rotated home in January. He was survived by his parents, seven brothers and four sisters.
George Lee Cobb
This Memorial Day marks 57 years since the death of Army Pfc. George Cobb. The Roosevelt High grad from Clover was drafted in the fall of 1967, spent nine weeks in infantry training in Louisiana and went to Vietnam in March 1968. His May 26, 1968, death at 23 left behind a wife, Dorothy, a son and two stepdaughters.
Johnny Phillip Costner
A York High grad raised by his aunt and uncle, Army Sgt. Phillip Costner spent 13 years serving in Germany, Korea and Vietnam. He died in November 1970 at age 31. Costner was survived by his father and a stepmother, his foster mother, a brother, two sisters, four half brothers and four foster siblings.
Robert Burch Eldridge
Army 1st Ltn. Robert Eldridge graduated from Rock Hill High and the University of South Carolina before his commissioning. Hospitalized in Vietnam and evacuated to Walter Reed Memorial Hospital, he died in November 1969 at 26. His parents and both grandmothers survived Eldridge, who earned nine posthumous honors.
Charles Reginald Ferrell
Two years after surviving a Christmas Eve wreck in North Carolina that took the life of a local teen, Army Pfc. Charles Ferrell was killed at age 20 while patrolling a demilitarized zone in Vietnam. His August 1967 death came two years into his service there and eight months into his Army airborne division service.
Earl William Foster, Jr.
Emmett Scott High and Friendship Junior College grad Army Spc. Earl Foster, Jr. earned a Purple Heart before his January 1966 drowning in Vietnam. He fought three battles in five months there. Foster, 26, left behind a wife, Ida Marie, and a large extended family. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Robert Saye Good, Jr.
Army Spc. Robert Good, Jr. was 20 years old when he was killed in Vietnam. Good was from York, and is buried at Mt. Zion AME Church. He had five sisters and one brother at the time of his March 1971 death. Good also was survived by his parents.
Charles Melvin Goude
Army Cpl. Charles Goude was 30 years old when he was killed in Vietnam in November 1966. Goude was a Lancaster native but lived in Fort Mill before his service. He worked at Springs Mills in town and is buried at Unity Presbyterian Church cemetery. He left a father, stepmother and five siblings.
Richard Lamar Hannon
Military records list Army Cpl. Richard Hannon, though at his April 1969 death at age 22 he was a private first class. Some records list him from Rock Hill. Reports at the time had Hannon and his wife, Mary, living in Clover. They had a son and daughter, with extended family in the Clover and Belmont, North Carolina, areas.
Abraham Harris
Army Pvt. Abraham Harris was killed in October 1967 at age 22. The Jefferson High grad from York was one of 13 siblings — seven sisters and five brothers. Harris was the first of three York natives killed in Vietnam. The rifleman who served 10 months there is honored on York and Fairfield county memorials.
Carl Elbert Harris
Army Sgt. Carl Harris, the son and grandson of Catawba Nation chiefs, was the first York County casualty in Vietnam. Harris was killed by a grenade in November 1965 at age 28. He left behind a wife, Ann, along with a son and two stepchildren. His name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial appears in the Mel Gibson movie “We Were Soldiers”.
Jerry Donald Helms
Army Sgt. Jerry Helms died in May 1971 in a Vietnam hospital, a month after his injury. He was 23. The Fort Mill High grad married his wife, Sharon, the prior summer. Helms enlisted in 1967. The helicopter door gunner received the Air Medal for flying more than 25 missions one month to support ground troops.
Larry Keith Henson
Military records list Marines Pfc. Larry Henson from Rock Hill, but news reports of his May 1969 death list him from Clover. Henson graduated from Rock Hill High. Henson was 18 and served three months in Vietnam. News reports had Henson as the second Clover casualty within a four-day span.
James Montgomery Johnstone
A month after learning his plane was shot down and he was missing, Army Capt. James Johnstone’s family was notified of his November 1966 death. The Fort Mill soldier, 28, trained at Fort Benning and Fort Knox. Around the time he earned his captain’s rank, wife Jan gave birth to twins — a boy and a girl.
Jerry Jones
Army Pvt. Jerry Jones grew up in Rock Hill and graduated from Emmett Scott High. Military records list him from New York. Jones, who had a brother and six sisters, was killed in September 1968 at age 21. In Army communications almost a year before his death, Jones is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Raymond Ervin Long
Lance Cpl. Raymond Long enlisted in the Marines in 1966. He was in Vietnam just 13 days before a land mine caused his death in October 1967. It was his first patrol; Long was 19. The Fort Mill High grad left behind a wife, Judy, who was expecting their first child to arrive that December.
John Davis McCarty
Army Spc. John McCarty died in January 1967. Born in Panama to Maj. and Mrs. Paul McCarty, he lived with the family in Rock Hill. John McCarty, 20, graduated from Kershaw County schools and later moved to Florida. His listed home in military records is Tampa, Florida, where he is buried. A grandmother in Rock Hill and a great-grandmother survived him.
Bennie Eugene McCorkle
A Fort Mill native who lived most of his life there, Army Spc. Gene McCorkle moved to Tennessee with his wife, Ruby, in 1963. McCorkle enlisted that year and went to Vietnam in December 1967. He was killed the following February at age 26. McCorkle was one of two Fort Mill soldiers killed the same week.
Charles Elvin McDowell
Staff Sgt. Charles McDowell enlisted in the Army alongside seven other Rock Hill men in October 1960. He was killed in Vietnam in February 1968. The Herald had no details at the time and few in the decades since, but the Wall of Faces project by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund show McDowell at age 28 at the time of his death.
Jesse J. Miller
A land mine killed Army Pfc. Jesse Miller in January 1966 at age 23. His Rock Hill grandmother, Frances, who raised him, learned Miller died in a battlefield road clearing operation via telegram. The Emmett Scott grad and Winthrop kitchen worker was drafted in 1964. He had five months left on his service.
Charles Lewis Morgan
Lance Cpl. Charles Morgan was 18 years old when an explosion killed him in Vietnam. Morgan attended Rock Hill High and worked at an industrial plant before joining the Marines. Eight times since his May 31, 1968, death, Memorial Day has fallen on the last day in May. It will again in two years.
Freddie Joe Phifer
Lance Cpl. Freddie Phifer was born two days before Christmas. And at 19 years old he died in Vietnam less than two weeks before Christmas 1967. He was shot while on patrol in Vietnam. The Fort Mill native is buried in town at the Unity Presbyterian Church cemetery.
Norman Lee Plemmons
Army Sgt. Norman Plemmons died in May 1969 when two helicopters collided near Saigon. He was 22. Military records of his five-year service list him from his native Mount Holly, North Carolina, but The Herald reported his death as a Clover man. Plemmons and his mother are buried on a family plot in Clover.
Johnnie Wylie Potts
Army Pfc. Johnnie Potts graduated from George Fish High in Fort Mill, went to a trade school and an interior decorating school. He was drafted into service two years before his February 1968 death in Vietnam. Potts was 24. He and his wife Betty lived in the Paradise neighborhood with their two children.
Clyde A. Rhinehart
Army Cpl. Clyde Rhinehart from Rock Hill spent five months in Japanese and Pennsylvania hospitals for facial wounds he suffered in Vietnam, in July 1967. He returned to combat in December. Two months later, Rhinehart was killed by an enemy rocket. He was 19 years old.
Lawrence Edward Scott
Military records list Army Spc. Lawrence Scott from Fort Mill, but news reports after his December 1970 death at age 25 list a Rock Hill residence. No other Vietnam casualty occurred after that date among service members from Rock Hill. Scott spent seven years in the service., and was one of seven siblings.
Garold Ray Simmers
The grandson of a Catawba chief, Pfc. Garold Simmers enlisted in the Marines in the summer of 1968. The Rock Hill High grad and former downtown mill worker spent two weeks in Vietnam before his February 1969 death due to small arms fire on a search-and-clear mission. Harris was 20.
Albert Ward Smarr, Jr.
Army Col. Albert Smarr, Jr. fought in World War II and the Korean War before becoming the last York County fighter to die in Vietnam. The Hickory Grove native, who is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, died in a February 1972 helicopter crash at age 47. His military career earned numerous awards and teaching positions.
David Wesley Smith
The son of Methodist missionaries in Brazil and a Pfeiffer College soccer standout, Army 1st. Ltn. David Smith followed a college friend home to Fort Mill. His citizenship exempted Smith from the draft. But at 25 he led a platoon near the Cambodian border where he was killed the day before Thanksgiving 1968.
Andrew Springs
Pfc. Andrew Springs was in the Marines about a year and in Vietnam for six weeks when he was killed by rifle fire in March 1968. The Rock Hill Marine, 20, was the oldest of 10 children who all still lived at the time with his mother, Mary, a Winthrop College maid.
Lindell Ray Stegall
Pfc. Lindell Stegall was 18 years old when he was killed in April 1967. The Fort Mill High grad and Marine was about a year out of high school, where he was an officer in Future Farmers of America, football team manager for three years and a student school bus driver.
David Tucker
Army Spc. David Tucker was a week from ending his tour of duty when the Rock Hill soldier was killed by a land mine in November 1967. He was 20. Tucker had seven sisters and three brothers, all but one of them still living at home. Tucker graduated from Emmett Scott High.
Libert James Weldon Jr.
The family of Army Pfc. Libert Weldon Jr. learned he was missing when a transport plane crashed in December 1967. Within days news came that he had not survived. Weldon, 26, went to Emmett Scott High and worked in North Carolina before joining the Army. He was one of 11 children.
The Herald visuals journalist Tracy Kimball contributed to this report
If you have additional information to share on these men or any others from York County who may have been killed in Vietnam, email [email protected].
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