1SG Larkin Leander Witherspoon

1SG Larkin Leander Witherspoon was born in Jefferson, North Carolina on 11 Oct 1918. He was the 8th of 10 children born to Alexander Graham and Geneva Ann (Shatley) Witherspoon. His father farmed near Jefferson but when the sons were old enough to work the farm Alexander took a job working on a local road crew funded by the Works Project Administration (WPA) eventually becoming a foreman and earning a reported $468 in 1939. The family was fortunate to have owned the farm from before the onset of the Great Depression and this may have been what allowed Larkin and his siblings to complete high school and yet Larkin was farming for the family in 1940. 

Larkin, perhaps sensing the coming war, enlisted in the U.S. Army in September 1940. We don't know what duties or assignments he may have had but it is likely that he had not gone overseas before he married Wilma Dare Absher in Jefferson on 27 Jan 1944. 1SG Larkin was sent overseas and  assigned as First Sergeant of Headquarters and Headquarters Company 2nd Battalion 116th Infantry reporting on 4 Sep 1944. However, he was needed in E Company 116th Infantry and assigned to that unit on 10 Sep 1944. He served with E Company until he was killed in action on 22 Nov 1944.

1SG Witherspoon was repatriated in 1949 and re-interred in Friendship Baptist Church Cemetery in Jefferson, North Carolina. 

Larkin and Wilma had a son born in 1944. Brothers Wade Harrison Witherspoon and William Willford Witherspoon also served in the U.S. Army during WW2. Grandfather's William Harrison Witherspoon and Riley Shatley served in the Confederate States Army during the Civil War.