Don Carlos Hempstead

One of three siblings, Don Carlos Hempstead was born in Spokane on August 23, 1920 and graduated from Lewis and Clark High School in 1938.

Upon graduating high school Hempstead entered the U.S Marine Corps officer-training program, which allowed him to complete his college education while serving in the Reserves before being called to active duty.  Hempstead entered WSC in 1940.  Records from the Evergreen and the Chinook show that the Electrical Engineering major lived in Stimson Hall, was a member of the Montezuma Club, and excelled at intramural baseball.

In 1941 Hempstead was called to active duty with one of the Marine Corps’ historic units, the 1th Battalion, 22nd Marine Reinforcement, Active Component, Fleet Marine Force.  On February  18-19 and 22, 1944, Second Lieutenant Hempstead led his platoon in one of the early American attacks on the outer ring of Japanese island defenses in the Central Pacific, an assault on Engebi and Parry Island on Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands.  Although he fractured his foot upon landing, Hempstead led his platoon in two separate, ferocious, hand-to-hand engagements against numerically superior Japanese defenders, continuously exposed himself to enemy fire, refused evacuation even though he himself was wounded in the fighting, and even saved a wounded fellow officer under attack, killing four of the enemy and driving off the rest with grenades and carbine fire.  Hempstead’s wounds were so serious that he died five months later, on July 26, 1944.

Hempstead was awarded the Navy Cross (the United States Navy’s second-highest military award for valor) for his actions.  He is buried at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Francisco, California.  His name is inscribed on remembrance plaques at both Lewis and Clark High School and at the Veterans Memorial on the WSU campus.