Oldest Marine Corps CC to celebrate 102nd birthday, May 24th

By GySgt Norbert J. Malecki, USMC (ret)

John L. Hampton, the oldest member of the Joe Rosenthal (San Francisco Bay Area) Chapter of the USMCCCA will celebrate his 102nd birthday on May 24th, 2009. He is still going strong, though a bit slower than the pace he set while on active duty as a Marine public affairs officer during and after World War II.

Hampton is a founder of the USMC Toys for Tots program. In 1947 as a public affairs officer in Los Angeles, a fellow Marine officer, Maj. Bill Hendricks, offered and idea to set up barrels at movie theaters in Los Angeles to collect toys for needy children. The barrels were marked "Toys for Tots."The next year, the program went nationwide and became an "immediate success," Hampton recalls. Marines and everyone who became involved were "fascinated with the concept." The whole Marine Corps helped out and it "snowballed over the years" into the program it is today because "Marines have a soft spot for children in need." Hampton smiled.

Before Hampton became a Marine Officer and served in the Pacific during World War II and in China at wars' end, he was a career journalist who worked for his Texas hometown newspaper, the Waco Times-Herald, The Borger Daily Herald and the bureaus of the United Press International wire service in New Orleans, Kansas City and Dallas.

Hampton was an early participant USMCCCA activity with the San Francisco Bay chapter, later renamed the Joe Rosenthal Chapter, in honor of the Pulitzer Prize winning  Associated Press photographer who captured on film WWII's best photo of Marines raising the Stars and Stripes during the battle for Iwo Jima in February 1945