On Saturday, Feb. 7, family and friends of Don Campbell met at the Checotah Community Center to help him celebrate his 90th birthday. The center was buzzing with laughter and stories of yesteryear as everyone enjoyed birthday cake and punch for a few hours.
Campbell was born in 1936 and grew up in the Checotah area where he graduated from Onapa. At 90 his mind is still sharp and he can even remember picking cotton in western Oklahoma with Wilmatine (Campbell) Griffin when they were just 14 and 15 years old.
After graduating high school, Campbell joined the Air Force in August of 1954, serving in Vietnam for two years. He also did tours in France, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Japan and South Korea, where he met his wife Jeanie, who will celebrate her 79th birthday on Feb. 12.
“When I was in Japan for four years, in the 5th Air Force Headquarters, I was a stringer for the Stars and Stripes newspaper,” Campbell said. “If they needed me to go somewhere and do something, I did. Then the second time I went to South Korea and the base that I was assigned to, didn’t have a base newspaper. So Stars and Stripes picked me up again over there.
“While I was in Vietnam May of ‘66 through May of ’67 I worked for the Military Assistance Command and Public International. I was assigned to an army unit, an advisory team to the 2nd Vietnamese Infantry Division and my job was to cover whatever was going on in that area. They wanted me to do it out of Saigon so that’s what I did. They might send me to some Green Beret camp and I got to ride up and down the river to cover a story.
“I was stationed in Vietnam, but right north of us was a big Marine base and right south of us was a big South Korean military base, so there were a lot of people over there fighting for freedom and trying to survive to tell their stories. Not too far west of us there was a contingent of Australian soldiers too. So when the paper wanted something I got to go wherever. You kind of had a melting pot to choose from so I’d just hop on a helicopter and they would drop me off somewhere. Sometimes I’d stay there overnight. Sometimes I’d be there for four to five days because there were no choppers coming in to take me back. It was definitely educational for an old Air Force boy who’d never done anything like that.
“When I got to Vietnam they gave me a pistol to carry. And the first time I went out on an operation, we were under intense hostile fire of machine guns and everything else and here I lay in a ditch with a pistol. So when we finally got back to point that night I went straight to the headquarters and asked to see my immediate superior, an army colonel.”
“I said to him, ‘Colonel, you may courtmartial me for this but you’re not sending me back to cover this crap with just a damn pistol.’ He smiled and said, ‘Well, let me see what I can get for you.’ And two days later they gave me an M79 grenade launcher. Now they wouldn’t give me an AR-15 or anything like that, but I carried three hand grenades with me at all times. Thankfully I only had to fire it once, and I turned in two shells before I came home. So it was very, very educational to say the least and a lot of what I did ended being picked up in Stars and Stripes.
“The biggest thing I enjoyed doing was covering new troops in the area. They would come in and I would go out to do a story on the new guy then I’d send it down to Saigon and they would send it to his hometown paper. I loved doing that and made a lot of friends over there because of it. Several of them I still stay in contact with today.
“When I was in South Korea I met my now wife of 50 years. And after two years the base commander there at Kunsan Air base decided we needed a base newspaper so we started one and of course we printed in Tokyo at Stars and Stripes. Every Tuesday a shuttle flight would come through Korea and back to Tokyo and I would get on that flight every Tuesday. They would pick me up at Yokota Air base and bring me out to the Stripes and they would print my newspaper. Then I’d catch a flight back on Wednesday and take papers back to them. We did that until we finally became automated and sent everything online. Then they would print and we just had to pick it up from the shuttle flight. But I enjoyed it all and spent 23 years in the service before I retired in June of 1977.”
After Campbell retired from the military he came back to his hometown and worked for Checotah schools for a couple years. But then he returned to his love of journalism and covering local people. That’s when he started covering sports for the McIntosh County Democrat under owner Davie Spindle. Campbell enjoyed covering and supporting Checotah, Eufaula, Oktaha and Council Hill for 25 years before he hung up his hat for the last time. He loved every form of sport from football games to basketball games to baseball games, and was always focused on the student athletes.
Locals can still catch Campbell at the home games during the week or at Walmart getting his “caffeine therapy” and visiting with locals who want to stop and chat. Campbell is a staple in Checotah as is his wife who obtained her citizenship in ’82 and worked at the local Wal-Mart for 30 years before she retired.
But ask Campbell what he is most proud of and he will quickly say his family. His family consist of four children: oldest Marvin Bruce Campbell of Gulfport Mississippi; Donna Campbell Cooper of Natchitoches, Louisiana, Darrell James Campbell (deceased) and Cara Kathleen Campbell of Poland, Louisiana. He also has eleven grandchildren and seventeen great grandchildren and one great great grandchild.
He is proud to have served his country and will be sporting his new birthday vest that has every place he served on it. So stop and thank him for his service to our country and our little town of Checotah, OK, because this man has covered a lot in his 90 years.
