Paying respects long overdue

To his hometown, he is the name on a sign that overlooks the high school football field. To the world, he is a name on a famous wall. To our country, he is a hero. If you try to find out why, you will be surprised to learn that there is very little information available to tell the story of John Thomas DeBarber.

I know this because last week I tried to hunt down the details of what happened to DeBarber on Oct. 17, 1966. That was the day he died serving his country in the war-torn jungles of Vietnam. 

You would think you could simply “Google” him and find a host of links containing news stories about him, or other mentions from the past 45 years that would offer a glimpse of this brave young soldier’s life.

Sadly, shockingly, this is not the case. Perhaps this is not uncommon for many of our soldiers over the years. Considering the conversations I had this week in pursuit of DeBarber’s story, I will suggest that it seems to be the case for many soldiers who served in the Vietnam War. 

DeBarber was 21 years old when he was killed in action in the Long An Province of South Vietnam. For the past nearly 45 years, he had been an unsung hero of his hometown of Seymour, Connecticut. 

Anyone who has ever been to watch a home game of the Seymour High School Wildcats will have seen his name on the sign that stands tall overlooking the field. For all the “familiarity” of the name, there may not be as many who know that DeBarber was the first Seymour soldier to die in the Vietnam War. 

For that matter, there were only two Seymour boys to be killed in action in that war -- the second, Ronald M. Randall, 19, died May 21, 1968 serving in the United States Marine Corps. I might never have known that either, had I not started asking around about John  DeBarber. 

His friends called him “Ace,” and he wore #43 as a runningback for then-coach Joe Gesek’s Wildcats. DeBarber loved football, and even noted it as one of two “ambitions” in his high school yearbook listing (the other was to be a test pilot). He was a bit of a free spirit, preferring hanging out with his friends to hitting the books, and he talked about traveling. 

He helped out at his family’s gas station, “Duke’s,” and worked at the defunct Klarides supermarket -- each a stone’s throw from the family home on West Street. A smalltown boy with big dreams. You might say that DeBarber had that “fire” of youth: the desire to see the world, have adventures. He wanted to really live. 

So it was just after graduation in June 1963 that DeBarber took that step, signing up with the U.S. Army at a time when the Vietnam War was heating up thousands of miles away from his little hometown.

He was assigned to Charlie Company, 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division. Known as the “Lightning division,” these are the soldiers portrayed in the 1986 film, “Platoon.” 

Their mission was search and destroy, DeBarber’s younger brother Louis said. “They would look for rice paddies, water buffalo, destroy whatever they found. He wrote letters back, there were many missions with his guys, and many of them got killed. It was fierce fighting going on.”

This was a war in which the guerilla battle tactics of the Viet Cong included replacing land mines with artillery, according to Wikipedia. John DeBarber was the victim of this battle tactic, according to accounts of his family and a posting on www.VirtualWall.org from a soldier who served with him.

“John was a good Sgt. [acting] He liked to walk point. He worked with you in details. He watched over you in combat. He was a good manchu. He has been in my memory for all this time. The night he became a KIA was sad. The platoon walked into an ambush...”

DeBarber’s sister, Kathy Gabianelli, said her brother had two weeks to go on his tour of duty. “He was looking forward to getting out,” she said.

He came home in a glass coffin. The line of mourners who came to pay respects at the Upson-Ward Funeral Home (now Miller-Ward) was never ending. “It was two days for the wake and funeral, and it was nonstop people from the time it started to the end,” Gabianelli recalled.

With Memorial Day approaching and his life story on my mind, I visited DeBarber’s grave site this week. As an American soldier killed in action, he could have been buried in Arlington National Cemetery, but his family chose to keep him close.

Arthur Paquette, caretaker for St. Augustine’s Cemetery, observed the grave marker, noting that DeBarber was a foot soldier. “He was right in it,” he noted. Then he paused. 

“Those boys from Vietnam really took it on the chin,” Paquette said. “They took it from the Viet Cong over there, and when they came home, they got it from the American people.”

There are many who agree with him. The Vietnam War was unpopular with many Americans who felt the U.S. should not have been there. 

Maybe that’s why I couldn’t find any stories in the local newspaper about DeBarber’s death. What little there is, gave too little detail to respect a young man who made the ultimate sacrifice. 

For DeBarber’s family, their memories are of a young man who took them fishing at Hoadley’s Pond, or was caught skipping school to play golf at the old Great Hill Golf Country Club. “He was kindof a renegade,” Louis DeBarber said. That renegade was awarded three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and several other medals in recognition of his service to his country.

“There are certain times you remember,” Louis DeBarber said. “Every so often, I think of how old he would be. The rest of my life, it’ll be there. It’s never gonna disappear.”

DeBarber’s name is on Line 081, Panel 11E of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. It is also on a memorial in Seymour’s French Memorial Park, and the simple military grave marker in St. Augustine Cemetery where he was laid to rest. To those who knew and loved him, he was much more than a name on a wall. To the rest of us, he is an American hero.

**Look for John DeBarber's story in Sunday's Waterbury-Republican American newspaper.

Copyright 2011 by Marianne V. Heffernan

Copyright 2011 By Marianne V. Heffernan