The distance to the fleeing enemy was about the same as from home plate to second base. “His career as a prosecutor and a judge overrode his military career until ‘Band of Brothers’ came out, and then it just went crazy,” daughter Syndee Compton said.Ī passage in the book recalled the D-Day invasion of France: “Compton had been an All-American catcher on the UCLA baseball team. Ambrose’s 1992 best seller about the unit was made into the 2001 TV series. But it wasn’t until later in life that he became famous for his military service as a first lieutenant in Easy Company after the unit parachuted into France on D-Day in 1944. He was awarded a Silver Star and a Purple Heart during World War II. Kennedy and was appointed to the 2nd District Court of Appeal in 1970 by Gov. He headed the team that prosecuted Sirhan B. Lynn Compton also is remembered for his legal career in California. “To us he wasn’t really a war hero, he was just a hero, period,” Tracy Compton told the Herald. In January, nearly 200 guests, including actors from the miniseries, attended his 90th birthday party, the Skagit Valley Herald ( ) reported. A public services is pending.Compton died Saturday in Burlington, Wash., after having a heart attack last month, the family told the Los Angeles Times ( ) in a story Tuesday. In 1970, governor Ronald Reagan appointed Compton to the bench of the California Court of Appeals, where he served until his retirement in 1990.Ī member of the UCLA Baseball Hall of Fame, Compton is survived by his two daughters Tracy and Sydnee, and four grandchildren. Sirhan eventually was sentenced to the death penalty, but later saved by the State's 1972 commutation of all death row inmates to life sentences. The Democratic Senator from New York was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles while campaigning for president. He served as a Los Angeles district attorney from 1951 until 1970.Īmong his more notable cases, Compton was the lead prosecuting attorney in the 1968 Sirhan Sirhan trial, responsible for imprisoning the man who assassinated Robert F. While attending law school, he got a job as an LAPD officer, later finished his law studies and was admitted to the California Bar in 1949. Before Spring Practice that year, he turned in his uniform to pursue his ambition to attend law school at Loyola. In 2001, Easy Company's heroism was brought to life in the epic HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers.Ĭompton returned to UCLA, and in 1946 was penciled in as the starting guard on a talented Bruins' football team laden with battle-tested former servicemen. He earned more than a dozen medals, among them the Purple Heart, a Presidential Unit Citation with one Oak Leaf Cluster and a French Liberation Medal. He recovered well enough to return to Easy Company in time for the Battle of the Bulge, surviving the frigid winter at Bastogne. Later in 1944, Compton was injured while participating in Operation Market Garden. Compton was awarded the Silver Star for his action in disabling the enemy encampment. Richard Winters, landed near an enemy bunker and rooted a German battery of four 105 mm howitzers that were firing on Utah Beach. Just after midnight on June 6, 1944, Easy Company paratroopers dropped behind enemy lines prior to the D-Day land assault in Normandy, France. In the Army, Compton was assigned to Company E of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. In beating USC, the '42 Bruins also became the first team in the rivalry to secure the Victory Bell. The 1942 UCLA football team became the first in school history to defeat USC (14-7), the first to win a conference championship and the first to advance to the Rose Bowl. In football, he played offensive guard in 1941 and '42. As an athlete, Compton was a starting catcher for the Bruins, playing alongside Jackie Robinson in 1940. He was 90.Ĭompton was a football and baseball letterwinner at UCLA in the early 1940s, before enlisting in the U.S. Lynn "Buck" Compton, who played on UCLA's first Rose Bowl team and later served as a paratrooper for the 101st Airborne Division on D-Day, died Saturday night at his home in Burlington, WA.
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