Capt. David E. Van Camp

29, US Army

June 29 marks the anniversary of the passing of Capt. David E. Van Camp, 29, US Army. We Honor him and his late mother Linda Van Camp both of Wheeling WV. David was born Feb 11th 1982 and died June 29th 2011 in Badrah, Iraq, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their unit with indirect fire. He was deployed in support of Operation New Dawn.

Capt. Van Camp graduated from Wheeling Park High School in 2000. He earned his commission as an armor officer from Marion Military Institute in Marion, Al., in 2002 and graduated from Marshall University in 2004 with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice. 

He was the commander of Grim Troop, 2ndSquadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, of Fort Hood, Texas. David previously deployed to Iraq from December 2005 to August 2006 with 2ndSquadron, 4th Infantry Division, of Fort Carson, Colo., where he sustained combat-related injuries. 

While in high school David was a member of Wheeling Park’s baseball team, and his mother never missed a game. “Oh, I went to every game, even if a friend would yell at me because she wanted to do something else. I went to every game,” his mother Linda Van Camp said. “From Little League through high school, I loved watching David play baseball because he loved it so much.

“I told my friends then that I wanted to watch him then because he wasn’t going to be playing for the rest of his life. But he was playing then, and I made sure I was there,” she continued. “He always loved putting on that uniform, and he played the game the way it was supposed to be played. I just knew that he would be going off to do what he was going to do after high school, so I wanted to be there for him while he was still here at home.”

Robby Given was a close friend of David’s, and even during their high school days he noticed that David had set himself apart from his favorite group of friends. “There were seven or eight of us, and it was just like you’ve seen in the movies because we were all together every single day doing whatever it was we wanted to do,” Givens recalled. “And David and I played baseball together, and when I think about Dave back in high school, I knew he was an upstanding guy who was just as ornery and goofy as the rest of us, but there was a difference with him. “He didn’t have the wishy-washy and questionable values that the rest of had at that time. We were still trying to figure out who we were, but he always seemed to already know who he was,” he said. “We all respected that about him. He was already an adult. David was already a man. He carried himself differently, and that’s not something I realized after his death. I realized that even back then.”

Van Camp’s lasting memory lives on through the Captain David Van Camp Memorial Foundation, which was founded shortly after his death. Through the work of the foundation, each year one Wheeling Park baseball player receives a $2500 scholarship to further their education. David was a multi-year letterwinner and team captain for the Patriots during his time there. His affection for baseball made the decision of who to present the scholarship to an easy one for the foundation.

He was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery.

Let us always remember him, his family, and…

Say His name