The Search for Steve Joyner​ 

Former Aztec Football Player, U.S. Marine

Panel 57W Line 027. That’s where the name Stephen Douglass Joyner (’66) can be found engraved on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. It’s there because Joyner died June 15, 1968 near Khe Sanh in Vietnam.

Steve Joyner ('66), 1965 Del Sudoeste photo.

The La Habra native was a 24-year-old company executive officer when he was killed leading a counterattack against an enemy force that had overrun his company's position. A bona-fide war hero, the young lieutenant was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star medal with Combat V Device (for valor) in part for helping evacuate seven Marines wounded in a combat operation earlier that same year.

Joyner’s name is on the SDSU War Memorial, too, which is why last month Dan Moore paid his first visit to San Diego State University. The 71-year-old Ph.D. historian and retired Marine reservist traveled from his home in Virginia to learn more about where, how, and who might have influenced the man he considers “a symbol of a generation.”

Joyner, Moore posits, is emblematic of a segment of the post-World War II generation of young Americans who believed in their country: for Steve, it was “my country, right or wrong.” But in Vietnam he began to question where he fit in as a Marine infantry officer. Doing his best in organized football was more than enough to make him a star in college.  He seems to have thought that doing his best in Vietnam might not have been enough to satisfy senior officers.

Having met, befriended and been impressed by the young officer at the outset of both men’s careers, Moore is now researching a book exploring themes of patriotism, loyalty, leadership, self-doubt and unrealized potential all in the person of Steve Joyner.

Dan Moore at the SDSU War Memorial January 14.

A UNIQUE PERSONALITY

Moore estimates he has already met or spoken with more than 100 of Joyner’s friends, acquaintances and family members, but is looking for more. He hopes to talk with Joyner’s Aztec football teammates, former girlfriends, fraternity brothers – anyone who has a story or remembrance that could reveal additional insight about the man many remember as affable, easygoing and always the optimist.

"Stephen was a unique personality,” said Moore, who has already completed a working draft of his book. “He was a tremendously talented guy as a football player and a team player, but without ego - he never put himself before others.” 

Moore met Joyner in March of 1968 in Okinawa where both young officers spent a month in embarkation school. During their off hours, the two would hang out and take in the sights of Naha, Okinawa’s capital city.

“We talked about the war, what we had experienced in Vietnam, and what we wanted to do in the future,” Moore remembered. “I got to know him well. He had a charisma about him.  He was a friend to everyone.”

Steve Joyner is number 86 in this football team photo from the 1966 Del Sudoeste yearbook.

A memory that stands out for Moore was one afternoon when the two were walking along a street.  Joyner suddenly stopped in front of a store and announced he wanted to go inside.

“It was a custom kimono shop,” Moore recalled. “Steve said, 'I want to be fitted for a kimono,' which I thought was kind of different. So he did that and picked it up the following week.”

UGLY REALITIES

But theirs was not exclusively a relationship of spontaneous adventure. Sometimes their discussions were deeper and darker and Moore said he knew something was bothering Joyner in Okinawa.

Could he for the first time have questioned his ability to lead Marines? Moore recalls Joyner expressing concern about making decisions that would cost lives.

"He appeared not to be a complicated person, but he had started to face some issues in Vietnam,” Moore said. “All the attributes that stood him in good stead as a football player did not work for him in the Marine Corps.” 

Moore theorizes that Joyner may have had trouble managing up. He is exploring the issue through his research.

“He sometimes took the side of his troops over his senior officers and I think that Stephen did not have the support of his company commander and his battalion commander or have the confidence that would have made him more comfortable. He tried his hardest to always remain positive and that's the other thing about his personality - that he was such a positive, can-do guy who sort of sailed through life because of his football prowess, but he ran into an environment in the Marine Corps that was not amenable to his personality or the way he related to senior officers and enlisted men."

Moore recalls Joyner as being conflicted about his strong sense of duty and the ugly realities of waging war.

"Steve never wavered in the belief that what he was doing was valid - his patriotism,” Moore said. However, “he was bothered by the violence and the bloodshed that he saw, but so was everyone.”

A SPECIAL GUY

At the end of the month, the two men returned to their respective assignments in Vietnam, vowing to stay in touch. Moore sent Joyner some photos he had taken in Japan, but their friendship was, quite literally, short lived.

Steve Joyner's sister, Kaaren Joyner Page

“He was killed in June; I learned about his death three or four days afterward when it was published in the ‘Stars and Stripes,’” Moore said. “At that point I said when I get the time, I'm going to write about his life because I think he was so deserving.”

Two summers ago, Moore began researching and writing in earnest. "I'm writing his life story because I'm the best-qualified person to write it,” he explained. “I was a Marine officer, I knew him personally, I’m a trained historian and I have the time.”

Among the people Moore has interviewed is Joyner’s oldest sister, Kaaren Joyner Page.  She provided the author with scores of letters her family had received from her brother during his deployment in Vietnam.

A LOYAL AMERICAN

Page and Moore had been exchanging texts and emails for months before meeting face to face in January. Page said she is thrilled by Moore’s research and has read a few chapters of his work.

“Dan writes so well and I'm flattered he chose my brother to be the subject of his book,” she said. "I am more than appreciative and so happy because Stephen was a special guy.”

Clockwise from left: Childhood photo of Steve and Kaaren Joyner with family friends (courtesy of Kaaren Joyner Page).

Page, who named one of her twin sons to honor her brother, said the division that existed in the country during the 1960s and early ’70s regarding Vietnam was evident, to a degree, in her own family.  She said she and Stephen held different views.

“I was totally on the other side,” she said. “He believed in what he did and my parents raised us to be individuals, so we knew once he made his mind up we weren't going to change it.

“I wished he didn't put himself in harm's way, but he was a very loyal American and a team player kind of guy. I think that's part of the reason the Marines held an allure for him, you know, thinking he was going to have that same camaraderie with the Marines as he did at State on the football team."

DEFINING A GENERATION

The same conversations that were happening around dinner tables across America were also taking place in dorm rooms and fraternities on every college campus. Joe Sullivan (’67), who was a fraternity brother of Joyner’s in Sigma Phi Epsilon, said the war and conscription were top-of-mind among male students.

Joe Sullivan ('67) in front of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house.

“The draft and the Vietnam War defined our generation,” he said. “By 1966, when Joyner went in the Marines and certainly by 1967 when I went into the Navy, it was an incredibly difficult choice that each of us had to make and I believe the more aware you were, the more difficult it became because we were almost certain to be drafted as soon as we graduated college.

“We had those discussions all the time, everywhere - in the fraternity house, in the classroom, in the quad - because all of us were sorting through those choices and looking at what had happened to people who made those choices a year or two ahead of us. After the (draft) lottery came in, those choices were made for people, in a sense. Steve was the kind of person who would do his duty as he saw it."

“THE ONES WE LOST, WE REALLY REMEMBERED”

Sullivan had received an email from Moore about the Joyner project and volunteered to help. He assisted Moore in tracking down Sig Ep brothers for interviews and offered to conduct a tour of Montezuma Mesa during Moore’s visit.

Joe Sullivan finds Steve Joyner's name on the SDSU War Memorial.

Among the stops on campus was the SDSU War Memorial where the pair located Joyner’s name etched in the grey granite along with 234 other Aztecs who lost their lives in service to their country. The two snapped pictures of the monument and posed for photos before moving on to the Sig Ep house.

At the fraternity, Sullivan and Moore went room by room looking at framed images representing groups of fraternity brothers through the decades.  Sullivan shared memories of his student days.

They came across a glass case in the middle of the building. Inside, the pair discovered what they had hoped to find.

Among the certificates, plaques and sports trophies hangs a plaque dedicated to the memory of Steve Joyner. It features two photos; one of Joyner in his Marine Corps dress uniform and the other his fraternity picture from the 1966 Del Sudoeste yearbook.

“It's sad how many we lost,” Sullivan reflected. “The ones we lost, I think, we really remembered."

A TOPPLED PEDESTAL?

Steve Joyner tribute plaque in the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house.

Remembrance, tempered with perspective, is what Moore is looking to achieve. What made Joyner tick?  How did he come to terms with the war?

"What I hope will come out of this is a book about Steve’s life being sort of emblematic, symbolic for a whole cohort of people who went to Vietnam,” he explained. “In a way, his is a very personal story, personal to his family, friends and me, but on another level he is a symbol of a generation that went to Vietnam and the 58,000 who didn't come back.

"He had some difficulties while persevering through combat in Vietnam. His senior officers questioned his judgment and initiative, but I doubt that it was deserved.

“That finding surprised me. I had placed him on a pedestal for 45 years being almost a perfect human being and it threw me for a loop, really, to learn about the leadership issues he had to deal with. In fact, it sort of brought everything to a halt for a week or two for me, you know, and question what I was doing for the past year and a half. Was it worthwhile?

“Although it was a surprise, it did not diminish the incentive for writing his story. Now he's more human, which makes it more interesting. It makes him a more rounded, nuanced person and I always felt he was more complicated, in fact, than he came across to people as the football jock. He was much more than that."

Did you know Steve Joyner who played for Don Coryell’s 1964 and 1965 Aztec football teams (and two years before that at Fullerton Junior College) and have a remembrance to share? Please contact Dan Moore at ivyhillmc@cox.net.