Remembering a fallen soldier

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PHOTO GALLERY: Honoring Michael Campbell

He was the older boy, the one with the big eyes who pinned his gold class ring to her blouse to prove they were going steady.

Marjorie Farnum liked that Michael Campbell was laid back and respectful.

They went to the movies and danced at the socials. He bought her a pearl ring with diamonds, and a gold watch from a downtown jewelry store, using money he saved mowing lawns.

When they weren’t together, Michael was playing sports. He wore jersey #41 as a guard on Booker High’s basketball team and played on the baseball team, too.

Michael Campbell died  when sniper’s bullet had found him on Oct. 14, 1965, during a search-and-destroy mission in Vietnam.

Michael Campbell died when sniper’s bullet had found him on Oct. 14, 1965, during a search-and-destroy mission in Vietnam.

The son of a construction worker and a house cleaner in a blue-collar family with six siblings, Michael was not one to pick fights or get into trouble. He was an average student — quiet, observant, unassuming. He told Marjorie he wanted to be a barber like one of his brothers.

Marjorie was pretty, bubbly and outgoing, attributes that helped her win the Miss Booker High crown in her senior year.

“He loved Marjorie,” says Michael’s close friend, Johnny Hunter Sr. He called Michael “Kaydo,” and the two played pingpong and shuffleboard at the Newtown rec center.

Michael would tell his friends he planned to marry Marjorie one day.

First, however, he joined the military a week after graduating from high school in 1964, following in the footsteps of his father, a World War II veteran.

At that time, Michael and his classmates felt that going to war was just about inevitable. Joining the military was also a way to leave Sarasota, and Campbell figured he could save some money for college.

“The military was a way of getting out, an opportunity,” says Hunter, a 1966 Booker High graduate who is now the publisher of the African-American newspaper “The Tempo News,” published in Sarasota.

For only the second time in his life, Michael left his home and traveled to Georgia for Army training with the 101st Airborne Division.

At age 19, Michael Campbell, the youngest in his platoon, deployed to Vietnam as a paratrooper.

***

Back in Sarasota, Marjorie, who was two years younger than her boyfriend, kept busy to distract herself.

She practiced twirling the baton as a majorette in the marching band. She listened to records and had sleepovers with friends. She focused on school.

Marjorie Farnum Sandee    Photo courtesy Marjorie Farnum Sandee

Marjorie Farnum Sandee and Michael Campbell dated in high school, an planned to marry. ( Photo provided / Marjorie Farnum Sandee

Marjorie was one of the few high schoolers dating a military man. The other girls didn’t ask many questions about how she felt, but her mother sensed her sadness. She worried Marjorie was too young.

“I thought about him a lot. I really missed him,” Marjorie says.

Every week, Marjorie and Michael Campbell wrote letters, saying how much they missed each other.

Campbell sent photos of himself in uniform. But he didn’t want to tell Marjorie when his leave was; let that be a surprise.

He confided that he didn’t want to be in the war, that he wasn’t sure if he would come back alive.

“I just felt so hopeless there was nothing I could do,” Marjorie says.

***

The phone call came on a school day, just short of Campbell’s 80th day in Vietnam.

Campbell’s sister delivered the news: A sniper’s bullet had found him on Oct. 14, 1965, during a search-and-destroy mission.

Marjorie couldn’t cry. She was numb.

“I told my parents,” she remembers. “The next morning, I got up to go to school. My mother called me into her room and she was talking to me about what happened and how I felt about it, and she kept going on and on. Finally I started crying. That’s what she was trying to get me to do. I was too quiet. I hadn’t processed what happened.”

Howard Gore, who served with Campbell and thought of him as a younger brother, wrote to the fallen paratrooper’s family. “I was less than 15 feet from him when he was killed. And you might like to know that he didn’t suffer and he wasn’t alone,” Gore wrote.

Another letter came for Marjorie.

Campbell talked about her often to his fellow soldiers, and promised them that one day he’d marry her, the letter said.

Campbell’s death was deeply felt in the close-knit community of Newtown, as residents mourned one of Sarasota’s first casualties of Vietnam.

“It was pretty rough when one was lost,” says Floyd Sheffield, a classmate of Campbell’s who now lives in Union City, Georgia. “It was devastating for the entire community.”

Marjorie didn’t attend the funeral.

“That young, you don’t know how to handle something like that,” she says.

She wished her classmates would stop hugging her in the hallways. She wanted to be left alone.

She never went to Campbell’s grave.

***

Michael Campbell's grave and headstone along with the original tin marker that Debora Livingston tripped over that helped her find his grave.   (Staff photo by Rachel S. O'Hara)

Michael Campbell's grave and headstone along with the original tin marker that Debora Livingston tripped over that helped her find his grave. (Staff photo by Rachel S. O'Hara)

It’s easy to miss Galilee Cemetery.

The dead — a great football player whose nickname was Dust because he ran so fast; a pastor; the publisher of an African-American newspaper; the city’s first black police officers — rest in the historic black cemetery that’s tucked alongside a rental car business and a recycling center off U.S. 301, just south of Myrtle Street.

Galilee is only a few blocks from where Michael Campbell grew up. He is buried in the back, next to his parents.

For nearly 50 years, a temporary marker resembling a license plate was all that identified the site. For whatever reason — money, his family’s grief — no headstone was placed there.

His mother, Mary Jane Campbell, tended to his grave until her death in 1996. After that, the grass and Earth swallowed up most of the vault.

“You’d never know he was there,” says Debora Livingston, a Newtown historian who visited the cemetery one day, about two years ago, and stumbled on the site. “There was a bed of grass over him. He was overlooked. That’s when I went to work.

“I know how to make phone calls.”

***

Debora R. Livingston  (September 24, 2014) (Herald-Tribune staff photo by Rachel S. O'Hara)

Debora R. Livingston is a Newtown historian who took steps to make sure that Michael Campbell's service was remembered. (Staff photo by Rachel S. O'Hara)

Livingston, who graduated from Sarasota High in 1972 and now substitute-teaches, knew the name Michael Campbell. Indeed, she met Campbell’s mother back in 1992 while working on a historical project honoring Newtown’s legacy.

Mary Campbell gave Livingston a photograph of her son. In it, he was dressed in his uniform and combat helmet, holding a pack, his expression solemn.

Livingston never forgot that face.

“He was just a kid,” she says.

Now, Livingston was on a mission: Campbell deserved a real headstone.

The challenge was finding his kin, most of whom had died or fallen into bad health over the decades. But Livingston found two brothers, who gave her permission to replace the headstone.

Livingston also found Don Terry.

Terry runs All Veterans-All Families Funerals & Cremations and is well-versed in Veterans Affairs paperwork. He helped her contact the Veterans Administration to ask for a headstone.

“She’s a woman of strong determination. Let me put it that way,” Terry says about Livingston.

Last month the government paid for the headstone and shipped it to a company in Bradenton, Helm Vault Services. Workers delivered it to Galilee and installed it for free in mid-September.

“In this business, there’s times when you just do things because it’s the right thing to do,” Terry says.

***

Marjorie Farnum Sandee holds the watch her high school sweetheart, Michael Campbell, gave her before heading off to Vietnam. Campbell was killed in action in 1965. Sandee kept that watch all these years, and it still works.    (Photo provided by Marjorie Farnum Sandee)

Marjorie Farnum Sandee holds the watch her high school sweetheart, Michael Campbell, gave her before heading off to Vietnam. Campbell was killed in action in 1965. Sandee kept that watch all these years, and it still works. (Photo provided by Marjorie Farnum Sandee)

On a recent morning, Livingston places a bouquet of fake red flowers at Campbell’s grave. Through the fence, workers can be seen by the heaping piles of cardboard at the recycling center. Trucks rumble by on busy U.S. 301.

In the historic cemetery, where some graves are unmarked, the pearly white headstone stands out. American flags decorate the veteran’s grave.

The headstone reads:

Micheal Campbell

PFC

US Army

Vietnam

June 23 1946

Oct. 14 1965

Purple Heart

A few moments later, Livingston realizes the mistake.

The name, Michael, is misspelled. She isn’t sure what happened, if she made a typo on the application. She just knows she has worked so hard over these months to get Campbell recognition.

A few days later, Terry notifies the VA. The headstone will be replaced within about six months, he is told.

 

SNEWVIETNAM14Far away from her hometown, Marjorie Farnum Sandee, who eventually got married, had a son and is now 65, lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

When she hears songs from the 1960s, the ones played at those dances in her youth, she thinks of Campbell.

The gold watch he gave her is still ticking.

All those years, she didn’t know her old love’s grave was without a headstone.

“He gave his life to the country,” she says. “He deserved a proper headstone.

“It’s a long time coming.”

This story was written based on interviews with Michael Campbell’s classmates and friends, longtime Newtown residents, and archived newspapers

Last modified: January 17, 2015
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