1LT - O2 - Army - Reserve
Length of service 2 years
His tour began on Feb 25, 1968
Casualty was on May 2, 1968
In HUA NGHIA, SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
ARTILLERY, ROCKET, or MORTAR
Body was recovered
Panel 54E - Line 12
More information on May 2nd 1968
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Small story on Jimmy Molpus. He was a senior and
we were expected to win the football district
championship that year as we were the most
complete team...offense and defense. This was
going to be our year. I was a junior. Our junior
quarterback would go on to win the National
Championship for the Texas Longhorns as their
quarterback in 1969. Well, we lost a very close
game at our house that would've given us a good
start for district play....it started a slide of
closely lost games in district. On the way
back to the field house our coaches yelled at us
to shut up and there would be hell to pay for
letting that one get away. I was upset right
along with everyone else and cursing my
play...even though my football uniform was
pristine and I hadn't see a second of play at
132 lbs. and considered too small to play in 4A
football which was the largest classification in
Texas football at the time.
Jimmy Molpus, a muddied,
bleeding and bruised starter, was watching me as
I berated myself and finally leaned over from
across the aisle and asked why I was upset
seeing as how I didn't play a down. I told him I
was upset because I could've pushed the starters
harder at practice...I wasn't giving 100 percent
to make them better and I felt the loss as
acutely as those who started or played. He
stared at me a moment then slammed both fists
down on my shoulder pads (the most contact I had
all night there on the bus). Jimmy told me with
that attitude I should be starting the next year
and gave me a little pep talk about not giving
up. I will always remember Jimmy for those words
of encouragement. The next year I was allowed
to be on the Special Teams running down on
kickoffs and nothing else. I think the coaches
measured football players by height and weight
and not their heart.
One good thing came out of
playing football. Both my coaches were former
Staff NCOs in the Marine Corps so our practices
were kind of harder than most I would guess.
They kept at me to quit the team as I was
holding down a spot as an undersized senior the
next year...but I kept thinking I would let
Jimmy down if I quit. I didn't quit and took my
minor position on the team in stride and even
suffered a comment from a gal who asked me at
the local hangout on a Friday afternoon if I was
going to the football game that night. I said I
was as I was on the frickin' team. She asked me
what position I played and I told her mainly the
bench. Oh, yeah, the good thing that came out
after all was that the defensive coach/ex-SNCO
Marine came up to me at the end of track season
and congratulated me for sucking it up and
almost winning the district meet's mile
run...came in second and qualified for the
Regional Meet in Fort Worth at TCU. He wanted to
know where the guts to do that came from. I
looked him right in the eye and told him in
front of my track/football teammates, "Coach,
I've always had those guts. You just never gave
me a chance." He stammered and walked away as my
guys slapped me on the back for talking back to
him and putting him down. The
last good thing is that at Marine enlisted Boot
Camp I was selected for the Enlisted
Commissioning Program and became an officer in
the Marine Corps...outranking my two hard-nosed
SNCO coaches back in Longview. That kind of
warms the cockles of your heart.
So you see Jimmy Molpus put me on a path to accomplish all that by those simple words of encouragement. Don't ever underestimate the power of a few encouraging or discouraging words. And that's how I remember Jimmy Molpus.
Dan Kellum 1stLt., USMCR, Echo Co., 2nd
Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, Vietnam 1970 |
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