Tribute to a friend

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following letter is a reprint of an obituary, submitted in remembrance of a childhood friend.

Dear editor:

Victor Kemp, resort Marine, dies in

Vietnam 1967.

Marine First Lt. Robert Victor (Vic) Kemp, 24, a former Trojan football star, was killed Aug. 15, 1967, in South Vietnam while on patrol in the vicinity of Quang Nam. He had been in Vietnam for six weeks.

Kemp, the son of Mrs. Geraldine Colbert and R.V. Kemp, both of Hot Springs, sustained a fatal fragmentation wound from a “hostile explosive device,” the Defense Department telegraph relatives back home.

A graduate of the University of Arkansas, Kemp entered the Marine Corps in March of 1966. He completed Officer’s Candidate School and went to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in early 1967, where he was stationed until June 1967.

He was born in Hot Springs, Dec. 14, 1942, and was a graduate of Hot Springs High School, where he lettered three years in football. In 1960, during his senior year, Kemp was named to the Arkansas All-State grid team. He also lettered in football at Central Junior High School.

Kemp played football on a scholarship at Pueblo Junior College at Pueblo, Colo., and won the Plains and Mountains Heavyweight Boxing Championship at that school. He graduated from Pueblo in 1962.

Before entering the University of Arkansas, Kemp attended Colorado State University at Fort Collins.

Kemp’s mother and her husband, C.C. Colbert, came down from Chicago, Ill., where Colbert was a trainer at Arlington Park racetrack.

Survivors other than his parents included a brother, Stephen Kemp, Hot Springs; his maternal grandmother, Mrs. L.C. Conrad, and his paternal grandfather, R.N. Kemp, both of Hot Springs, and many aunts and uncles. Martin Simanton Hot Springs