The former leader and biggest booster of the Fox Valley Veterans Breakfast Club, based in Montgomery, died last week in his new home of little more than four months, Charlotte, Tenn.. He had moved from Montgomery where he lived with his wife, Eva. They had a house built in the country near Charlotte, Tenn..
In is duties with the Fox Valley Veterans Breakfast Club in which he took leadership in 2008, his drive brought the Vietnam Moving Wall (left frame) to Aurora at West Aurora High School in 2013. In June 2014 he was selected as the Illinois Department Veteran of the Month for Illinois.
He made 25 trips to Washington, D.C. as a guardian of the World War II veterans and was an ambassador and fundraiser.
In June 2017 he helped bring the Vietnam Moving Wall to Oswego. More than 175,000 visited with more than 700 volunteers offering assistance.
In 2019 he was chosen as one of 200 veteran honorees for the State’s Bicentennial Anniversary.
He was born in Ardmore, Okla.. Following high school graduation he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and completed boot camp at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in northeast Illinois. He met Eva Davenport while at Great Lakes and later they were married.
December 23, 1966, while on the USS O’Brien in the Gulf of Tonkin, Vietnam, the vessel received three direct hits. Following his discharge in December 1967 the married couple returned to Illinois.
Survivors include wife, Eva, sons Glenn Luckinbill (Cassandra) of Aurora, Brad Luckinbill and Stefanie Stack of Yorkville, two brothers and a sister in Oklahoma, six grandchildren, and one great-grandson.
—Luckinbill family and Spann Funeral Home