• Photo

Sgt. Kenneth Darrell Spencer

Sphere IT

Save This Page

Reader Reaction

digg it

Service and sacrifices

By WAYNE QUESENBERRY/Staff

Janice Spencer Sutherland was a junior at Fort Chiswell High School on May 21, 1969. She was in an afternoon class that day when the principal came with the news that her older brother, Kenneth Darrell Spencer, had been killed in Vietnam.
“It was really hard,” Sutherland recalled this week. “It was a week or so before we got the body back. We got a letter and pictures from Darrell on the day he died. He was killed about 1:30 in the morning and we didn’t get word until the next day.”
According to newspaper accounts, U.S. Army Sgt. Spencer was a rifleman with Company A, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry. On May 21, 1969, he was among 21 men of the company serving as security force for a bridge near Landing Zone Liz in Vietnam.
The unit came under an intense North Vietnamese Army sniper attack. The enemy quickly penetrated the defensive perimeter and pressed the attack throughout the security position.
Refusing to leave his exposed bunker, Spencer fired long effective bursts with his M-16 rifle at the enemy. Despite enemy fire impacting all around him, Spencer gallantly maintained the defense of his bunker, according to accounts.
When a small group of the enemy charged him, Spencer enabled the rest of his unit to drive off the enemy and maintain control of the bridge. He lost his life in the process.
“That fall when I went back to school,” his sister recalled, “the homecoming football game was in his honor and there was a memorial service at the game. They presented the homecoming football to me and it was signed by all the players. I was so nervous being in front of all those people but it made our whole family feel so good that the school thought so much of him.”
Spencer, a 1967 FCHS graduate, had played football and baseball at the Fort. He is the only graduate of the school to die in Vietnam.
“He finished school in 1967 and was drafted in 1968,” noted his mother Glenna S. Shelton. “Not because he was my son, but he was a good person. Everybody liked him.”
Spencer’s father Charles Lee Spencer died of a heart attack about five years after his son was killed. His mother remarried over 10 years later.
“I think Darrell’s death took a toll on Daddy,” stated Sutherland. “Daddy owned a farm and a sawmill and Darrell helped him.”
Darrell Spencer has an older brother, Curtis Spencer. He also has two other sisters, Zana S. Stone and Lowetta S. Parnell.
“I think we would have felt better if Darrell had joined the Army,” Sutherland remarked. “It was not really his decision. He could have gone to college of left the country to keep from going to Vietnam but he didn’t.”
She added, “Our uncle was in World War II and he talked to Darrell. He told him to lay low and not to try to be a hero. Darrell wasn’t like that. He went at everything full force. He gave it everything he had. He was promoted to sergeant right before he was killed.”
Spencer was awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal, Vietnam Campaign Ribbon, Combat Infantry Badge and the Sharpshooter Badge with automatic rifle and rifle bar. His posthumous awards included the Bronze Star Medal with First Oak Leaf Cluster for Heroism, the Purple Heart and Good Conduct Medal.
“I still miss him,” his mother stated. “People said he was the best boy around here.”
Charles D. Freeman played football with Spencer and was president of their senior class. He and the Class of 1967 are raising $10,000 for a memorial endowment scholarship to be awarded each year to a FCHS student and plaque for Spencer at the school.
“We’re doing this in his memory,” Freeman commented, “and because of our love for this guy. He was such a good friend to everybody.”
Wayne Quesenberry can be reached at 228-6611 or .