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James Alexander Stark served in the United States Air Force with the 1876th COMM SQDN, 14 AF. His grade at loss was E4, and he held the rank of Sergeant.
His name is listed on the Washington, D. C., Vietnam Veterans Memorial Virtual Wall on Panel 35E, Line 27. His name is also inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Clock Tower at Marina Bay, Quincy.
The details on the Wall do not make sense to me, but here they are as recorded:
Start Tour: 03/16/1967
Casualty Date: 01/24/1968
Age at Loss: 21
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Alfred F. Johnson
I have held off from making a comment about Jim Stark assuming that somebody who knew him better would do so. I knew Jim slightly in school and around North Quincy. You know, we maybe played some pick-up game, or hung around together for a minute. Better yet gave each other the guy nod in the corridors. That nod recognizing a guy’s guy-ness without being a fellow corner boy.
I will place here what I wrote about Dave Meagher in his In Memory section-
I agree with Professor Garland that my brothers, and they were mostly brothers then before everybody got a chance to go to war, who did not make it back from 'Nam (or name your war), or came back broken and hurt, or who could not adjust to the "real world " and took to drugs, alcohol, the road (and I don't mean the storybook road of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" but the Sally shelters, the railroad hobo jungle camps, the ravines, and under the bridges of this country) deserve respect and honor. As a result of my own military experiences I am now an active member of Veterans for Peace whose goal is to make sure that our sons and daughters, our grandsons and granddaughters, Jesus, our great-grandsons and granddaughters in some cases, are not used as cannon fodder for some ill-conceived military adventure. Whatever differences we have on the questions of war and peace it was guys like David [Jim], guys from old working-class towns like ours,, the ghettos, the barrios, and the wheat fields of Kansas, who did their duty as they saw it, maybe kicking and screaming, maybe gladly, whose names are now honorably etched for all eternity on that black marble down in Washington and on the Quincy memorial over at Marina Bay.
I have posted a YouTube link to Bruce Springsteen's "Brothers Under The Bridge" that brings a tear to my eye every time I hear it.
Donald M. Patterson
The two dates indicate 1) when Jimmy started his "tour" in Vietnam (a tour in those days was a sweaty, bloody year in the sweaty, bloody fight or in support of the fight) and 2) when he died trying to do what he was sent there to do.
Here's to you, Jim, a quiet guy who never forgot a friend. We played ball at Mass Fields, joked at Central, and suffered through North. You were a better man than me or any of us.