Help us please!

We need your help in gathering information about the men from Panola County killed in the Vietnam War. We want to know their stories.

There are twelve names listed on the Batesville Exchange Club?s monument downtown, and before these men become too dim in our collective memory, we would like to gather this information for recording on the pages of this newspaper and perhaps elsewhere.

We know about too few of them. Johnnie Earl Smith may have been the first from Panola County to die in Vietnam. Already a veteran of World War II and Korea, Smith died in 1966. Perhaps the last to die in that war from Panola was Jimmy Hinton. Later, in 1985, the remains of Melvin Wayne Finch were recovered a decade after the war?s end and returned to Panola for burial.

Their names are etched near the base of the monument on the Square. They are:

Ralph V. Dye
Johnnie Earl Smith
Jimmy David Hinton
Lynn Spann
Clarence Jones
Lee Curtis Taylor
Robert Shelton King Jr.
Hazell Calvin Turner
Willie Clyde Kuykendall
Charles Watson Willingham
Johnny Lee Robinson
Melvin Wayne Finch

If you are related to any of these men or know someone who is related to them or who served with them, please contact us. We want to know about them. We would like their photos. Help us spread the word.

Bring or mail your information to The Panolian, 363 Highway 51 North, Batesville, MS 38606. Email it to publisher@panolian.com. Or call us at 563-4591.