The Alvord District Stadium will bear the name of K.R. Zack Earp. A ceremony is set for halftime of the Friday, Oct. 25, football game. Earp is a former school board member, and district volunteer who helped lead the effort to build the stadium. STAN LIM/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Former Alvord school board member K.R. Zack Earp says his experiences as a Marine wounded in the Vietnam War have defined his life, prompting him to help others, first as a form of therapy. All that good work led the current school board to rename the Alvord District Stadium the K.R. Zack Earp District Stadium during a halftime ceremony Friday, Oct. 25. The festivities will come during the rivalry football game between Norte Vista and La Sierra high schools in Riverside. Earp and co-chairman Getty George led the committee that solicited donations for the stadium, which opened in 2000 on a corner of Norte Vista’s campus. Building the stadium was a project that needed to be done and was a priority when Earp joined the school board. “When I see something wrong, I often wondered why somebody doesn’t do something,” he said. “Then I realized. I’m somebody.” Earp said he learned that lesson in a vet center therapy group and he tried to teach it to his students. Earp, 65, attended Alvord schools and later worked for the district as a campus supervisor, bus driver, instructional aide, special education teacher and principal before being forced into an early retirement because of war wounds. Then he got bored and ran for school board in 1995. After losing a re-election bid in 2007, he didn’t walk away but served on the district’s Citizens Oversight Committee and Alvord Educational Foundation, as well as committees for the city of Riverside. “I’ve done a lot of things, but not because I’m anybody,” he said. “I’m just Zack.” He’s also a distant cousin of the famous Earp brothers Wyatt, Morgan and Virgil, who are best known for surviving the gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Ariz., in 1881. Earp graduated from Norte Vista in 1966, in the school’s third graduating class. He went to RCC for a semester but left and soon got a notice that he was about to be drafted. So he decided to re-enroll at RCC. But while driving his 1961 Chevy up Magnolia Avenue to RCC, Earp changed his mind and enlisted in the Marine Corps instead. It was May 13, 1967. He left home for basic training May 25, his mother’s birthday, he said. On April 14, 1968, in Vietnam, he triggered a small “bouncing Betty” antipersonnel mine. “I have approximately 200 pieces of shrapnel still in me,” Earp said. “They took out the big stuff.” He wears a hearing aid as a result and now uses a walker. Vietnam wasn’t a popular war and Earp said he denied being a veteran for 14 years after he came home with a Purple Heart. He also tried to push back recurring nightmares of his time in combat. In the 1980s, he visited a vet center and realized others had similar problems. He joined Vietnam Veterans of America and became a leader. “It was therapy for us,” Earp said. “I was willing to step out and say, ‘Come on. Follow me. We’re going to do what’s right.’” In April 2011 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and prostate cancer in May 2011, which he said are both related to his exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. More recently, he had a stroke. Alvord school board President Art Kaspereen said that usually, when a school or other facility is named for someone, that person isn’t around to see it. Earp said he was in the hospital when Kaspereen came to tell him the board had voted unanimously to name the stadium after him. “Maybe they thought I was going to die, but I didn’t and now they’re stuck,” he said with a smile. Alvord school board member Ben Johnson said Earp was a mentor to him when they were both elected in 1995 and he sees Earp’s love for the school district. Naming the stadium for him will help educate future students about Earp’s service to his community and nation, Johnson said.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 19:34:10 +0000
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