Daily Hampshire Gazette — A Childhood Friend Remembers Chester Kmit
Paraphrased from Emily Thurlow's Daily Hampshire Gazette article on a Haydenville-led effort to restore sunken and overgrown military memorial plaques at St. Mary of the Assumption Cemetery in Leeds, MA. Among the volunteers was Russ Warriner, a Vietnam veteran, who pointed out several childhood friends and classmates memorialized there, including Chester Jon Kmit.
Warriner recalled crossing paths with Kmit unexpectedly, in-country, on the very day Kmit died — he did not learn of the death until he returned to his own unit. In his own words:
"I ran into him in Vietnam the same day he was killed." — Russ Warriner, quoted in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Oct. 16, 2022
This is the first personal, named recollection on file of anyone who crossed paths with Kmit in-country. It does not describe the circumstances of Kmit's death itself, and it does not confirm whether Kmit has a memorial marker at this specific cemetery — only that Warriner, a fellow Hampshire County native, considered him among the friends being honored that day.
