Army Spc. Clinton Upchurch

Garden City, Kansas

January 7, 2006

31, of Garden City, Kan.; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Ky.; killed Jan. 7 during patrol operations when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee and enemy forces attacked using small-arms fire in Samarra, Iraq.

After Spc. Clinton R. Upchurch was killed in Iraq, a boyhood friend called Upchurch’s mother and said that in school Clinton was always the protector.

“He was the biggest kid, so you would’ve thought he was the bully. But he wasn’t. He was always protecting everyone else,” Cynthia Upchurch said.

And that’s how on Jan. 7, 2006, he died, as a gunner on a Humvee escorting high-ranking officials in the predominantly Sunni Arab town of Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. A roadside bomb exploded and enemy forces fired on him.

“He protected the guys he was with. No one else was killed,” said his mother.

He was 31.

Clinton Upchurch had been a fourth-generation Garden City resident, graduated from Garden City High School in 1993, earned an associate’s degree at Garden City Community College and served as jailer, then deputy in the Finney County Sheriff’s Department, from January 1997 to June 2004.

He was married to Kari and had two stepsons.

But the military was in his blood. His father, Gregory, served in Vietnam. His grandfather and great-grandfather were also veterans.

Since he was 17, he wanted to enlist.

“I talked him out of it several times, but I knew that was his heart’s desire,” Cynthia Upchurch said.
He finally enlisted in the Army in 2004 and became a military policeman.

Cynthia Upchurch says she still supports the war, but has reservations.

“As an American we have to do what we have to do. As a mother, it’s a whole different ball game,” she said.

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Credit: Lawrence Journal World

As an American citizen I thank you, Clinton Upchurch, for your courage and your sacrifice. I thank your family for all they have given for the cause of freedom. I will remember you, and I will teach my children to remember you. We are forever in your debt. -

Carolyn