Jimmy Don Lester was engaged to Karen Gale Bunch. The two had formally announced a wedding date of July 12, 1969, to be held in the Blue Spring Baptist Church, Eldon, MO. Floyd Killough Collection
For 33 years, a blank space under “Vietnam” on the Collingsworth County Veterans Memorial echoed a statement in a Nov. 16, 1989, Wellington Leader article, “there were no local deaths in the Vietnam conflict.” When it was learned that two men from Collings worth County, Jimmy Don Lester and Phillip Wa r re n To m p kins, had made the supreme sacri fice in Vietnam, Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) Po…
