CAPTAIN KONSTANTINS A LUBAVS – CLASS OF 1962

CAPTAIN KONSTANTINS A LUBAVS – CLASS OF 1962

Lubavs, Konstantins Adolfs, CPT of Kalamazoo, Michigan

1940 – 1966

Was serving with United States Military Assistance Command (USMACV) Advisory Team #3 at the time

of his death.

Kalamazoo Gazette Feb 10, 1966 by George Jepson staff writer

Local GI Killed in Viet Nam     Lt. K.A. Lubavs was WMU Grad

Army Captain Konstantins A. Lubavs, 26, of Kalamazoo, was killed this week while on a combat operation in Viet Nam.  Lubavs, son of Mrs. Erna V. Lubavs, 726 Rose, was a 1962 graduate of Western Michigan University. He is the first man from Kalamazoo known killed in the Viet Nam War.

Notification of Lubavs death was received by Major Mitchell Mazur of WMU's military service department. He informed Mrs. Lubavs of her son's death.

'Captain Konstantins A. Lubavs was killed February 7 as a result of hostile fire while on a combat operation in Viet Nam'.

Further information was not available. Maj. Mazur said Lubavs had been in Viet Nam since last summer, serving as an advisor to a Vietnamese Army unit.

Lubavs was a distinguished military graduate from Western Michigan University and was commissioned in June of 1962. In April of 1963, he headed a 39 man American guard platoon which took over the guard at the four-power Spandau War Crime Prison in the British sector of Berlin. The guard is rotated monthly among U.S., Russian, British and French troops.

Lubavs was born June 13, 1939 in Dobete, Latvia and came to the United States in 1950 with his family after spending nearly six years in a displaced persons camp in Germany. They were placed in the DP camp in 1944 two years after the death of Lubavs father.

The Lubavs were sponsored by a Watervliet family, where they lived until 1958 when they moved to Kalamazoo.