On this Independence Day 2022, pause to remember three Americans who died in Vietnam 50 years ago on July 4, 1972. During the course of the war, 167 Americans were killed on a Fourth of July. The worst years were 1967 (49), 1968 (41), and 1969 (31). By the summer of 1972 the war was winding down. Three men died on that Fourth of July, one killed in action and two in accidents.
Marine Corporal John Edward Parton, 24, grew up in Sheridan, Wyoming and had also lived in Arizona. He was killed while making an assault with the 1st Vietnamese Airborne Division in Quang Tri Province. Corporal Parton had a daughter and a son. He was the last U.S. service member to die in combat in Vietnam on a Fourth of July. (The last to die on a Fourth of July perished in an accident in 1973). He is interred at Custer National Cemetery in Big Horn County, Montana.
Navy Storekeeper Stephen Michael Brumfield, 20, of Wytheville, Virginia, was killed in a forklift accident aboard the heavy cruiser USS Newport News. Friends say he drove a hot-rod Plymouth, played the drums, and was a DJ on the ship’s radio station. He is interred at the Sunrise Burial Park in Fairlawn, Virginia.
Army Specialist Fourth Class Robert David Hamilton, 18, of Pasadena, Texas, a heavy construction equipment operator, was killed when a vehicle overturned in Bien Hua Province. His unit built artillery fire bases and other facilities. He joined the Army when he was 17, and his family knew him as “Bubba.” He is interred at the Forest Park East Cemetery in Webster, Texas.
