Paul D. Potter was born on April 24, 1945. His home of record is Allentown, NJ. He served in the US Army and attained the rank of First Lieutenant (1LT).
In his yearbook Potter choose “To do him any wrong was to beget a kindness from him” from Tennyson as his quote. His high school activities included: basketball, football, boys’ choral, honor society, nutshell, English plays, Vice-President of the Honor Society, editor of Nutshell. His future plans included college. He left a positive memory for two of his high school teachers: Mr. Theodore Fish and Mr. Martin Brennan. They remembered him fondly as a good student, a fine athlete and most importantly, a very fine gentleman.
Potter was killed in action on August 23, 1968.
When I joined the Army in August of 1964, I sat on the bus from Newark to Ft. Dix next to a guy. He was Paul Potter. We went through Basic Training together in N Company 4th Training Regiment. Paul had enlisted for Airborne and I had enlisted for Airborne Infantry.
Paul was an outstanding soldier. He was big (I think he played a year of football for Rutgers) and always carried himself like a soldier. He looked like he was always at the position of “attention”. Upon graduation, Paul was sent to Cooks and Bakers Advanced Individual Training (AIT) – much to his mortification. Yes, the Army was going to fulfill its commitment and send him to Jump School, but as a cook. I was in Infantry AIT, across the Base. Paul kept trying to get transferred to the infantry, but to no avail. I told him that it was real easy to get into Infantry AIT. All he had to do was go AWOL and they would immediately send him to the infantry. Paul was too good of a soldier to follow my advice.
I lost track of him about the time he graduated in the winter of 1965. I was in Vietnam 1965 – 1966 and got out of the Army in 1967. Obviously, Paul stayed in and went to OCS.
With the advent of search engines that find the names on the Wall, I checked the list. I was devastated to find his name.
If you were to reach into the air and pull out somebody to represent all soldiers, you would pick Paul Potter.
Written by Al Zeller, Friend
Information provided by Al Zeller (friend), Anastasia Essl (Guidance Department at Allentown High School), and NJVVMF.
12/17/2024
