Celebration of life set for Camp Hamilton founder Glenn Denton Jr.
The public is invited to a celebration of life in honor of retired U.S. Marine Master Gunnery Sgt. Glenn Denton Jr., who was fatally injured Nov. 25 when the pickup he was driving veered off Interstate 80 and crashed near the town of Evanston in southwestern Wyoming.
Bea Ramirez, secretary of the nonprofit camp’s governing board, said the celebration of life is scheduled to begin at noon on Jan. 27 at Camp Hamilton, 34999 Lerdo Highway, about 1 mile west of Highway 65.
“We posted (event information) on social media, but many people who have known Glenn for years are not on social media,” Ramirez said.
She said she hopes a newspaper story would help notify those who may have missed news of Denton’s death or information regarding his celebration of life.
The seed of the idea to create a veterans park some 12 miles north of Bakersfield was first planted in the 1970s, board President Mark Marquez told The Californian in November.
Denton, a Vietnam War combat veteran, originally acquired the parcel about 7 miles north of Bakersfield as an investment.
He had come to Bakersfield as a Marine recruiter, and would eventually make the city his home. But a promise to his comrades in the 1st Marine Division not to forget 122 Marines killed during a multiday battle in the summer of 1969 caused Denton later to rethink his investment.
The original promise was made on Aug. 24, 1969, when eight Marines, including Denton, set out to retrieve the remains of those killed in action the previous day. The squad leader poured a packet of Kool-Aid he always kept in his helmet band into water, and shared it with the squad.
That group of young Marines came to be known as the Kool-Aid Kids — and they made a promise to one another to remember and share the names of those whose bodies they retrieved from the battlefield.
At first, the parcel of land off Lerdo Highway was used by Denton and his Marine friends as a place to gather, socialize, camp and play.
But then Denton started talking about forming a nonprofit and transforming the 10 acres into a park where hundreds of trees would be planted, each dedicated to a service member who was killed in action, died after a long life or died by suicide.
Today, the parcel of land stands transformed, where hundreds of trees have replaced the tumbleweeds.
It is a place where the memory of those who served in olive green and desert camo is preserved.
“It’s kind of an oasis in the oil field,” Denton told The Californian in 2018.