Sammy Coker - He Died Twice for His Country

Part II in our Memorial Week series:

Samuel Earl Coker died for his country in the jungles of Viet Nam in 1965. Thirty-seven years later he died again in the 2002 HBO production Path to War, a docudrama depicting the wartime struggles of President Lyndon Johnson, "warts and all." During one pivotal scene, the camera pans away from Michael Gambon's Johnson to focus on a document the chief executive has just signed. Prominently displayed is a letter of condolence to Coker's parents who then lived on Reeder Street in East-Central Florence.

Even in 2002, Coker's death in an unpopular war caused controversy. Was he simply a forgotten casualty, as Florence's TimesDaily chose to depict him, or did he represent something more? Several individuals disabused this idea in letters to the local paper; here are excerpts from two of them:

"I’m not going to college. I’m going to join the army," he told me. He would, he said, learn a trade and get paid while he was learning. When he got out, he’d go to work for Reynolds or TVA. He’d make more money than anyone in his family ever had, he said. He’d buy a car, then a house.

But Sammy’s dreams died with him in South Vietnam in 1965. By the time I read in the newspaper of his death, I had already formed the beginnings of strong opposition to the war, opposition that would grow in the years that followed, even though others I had known were also dying in Vietnam: Joel Forrester, a fourth-grade classmate; Robert Lee McCaig, another classmate at Appleby; Bob LeCates, who lived down the street; Chad Barber, whose family’s home overlooked the creek where I swam as a child. I had to separate the warriors, whom I had known and cared about, from the war that I could not understand.

Linda Quigley

*****

I did not know Sammy, and I am fairly sure he did not know me. But I have been aware of and reminded of his sacrifice all of my life - how he left Florence, Alabama, and died 10,000 miles from home; how his death affected his family and friends for the rest of their lives; of the terrible cost of war.

Sammy Coker, therefore, affected the lives of people he didn’t know, and far from being forgotten, he left a legacy of service and sacrifice for us to remember.

Tony Riley

I think Mr. Riley summed it up pretty well...