MAUPIN: LIFE PHOTO ANCIENT PAST

JACKSON -- Wayne Maupin doesn't like to talk about his days in the Marines, particularly the special assignment that landed him on the cover of the March 20, 1964, issue of Life magazine.

He says it's ancient history and nobody wants to hear a 30-year-old story.

But some people do. Friends and teachers often spot Maupin on the yellowing copies, discovered in vintage book and magazine stores. Some purchase them as gifts for the school superintendent and ask how he came to be in pre-Vietnam War Saigon.

The cover picture is of two corporals, Maupin and Bob West, flanking Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam. Cabot smiles broadly -- West and Maupin look resolute.

Just a few days after he graduated from De Soto High School in 1960, Maupin was in Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego. He and two high school friends, George Patterson and John Frazier, thought world turmoil would result in their being drafted, so they decided to enlist.

Patterson and Frazier stayed stateside and eventually returned home to De Soto. Maupin had bigger plans. A "spit and polish Marine" with a love for the uniform, he dreamed of seeing the world and asked to serve at a U.S. embassy somewhere, guarding ambassadors.

Maupin received a favorable recommendation and attended Marine Security Guard School in Washington, graduating near the top of his class. Good students got to pick their assignments.

"I took out a globe and selected India," Maupin said. "I felt it was the farthest point from the United States and would allow me to see as much of the world as possible."

He spent 1962 and 1963 in New Delhi guarding John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and ambassador to India.

The embassy Marines lived more like civilians then, wearing dress clothes and operating under the State Department instead of the military. Maupin spent his free time traveling to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nepal, rarely feeling any homesickness for De Soto.

After two years, most embassy Marines were told to return home, but Maupin asked for and received a year's extension. Ready for a change of pace, he accepted an assignment to the U.S. embassy in Saigon.

"It was curiosity more than anything," he said. "Things were just starting to heat up in South Vietnam, and military advisers were coming to the country then."

Maupin arrived in South Vietnam in late 1963, when Lodge was the ambassador. He was there Nov. 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Following reports of the president's death and New York Times articles about racial turmoil, Maupin wondered what was becoming of his native country.

In early 1964, photographer Larry Burrows was in Vietnam recording the escalating tension between factions there. He was a common sight around the U.S. embassy, and no one was surprised when he asked to take Lodge's picture while the ambassador walked to his car.

"It was totally set up," Maupin said. "Usually, just one Marine would walk the ambassador to his car while the other waited inside the embassy. Larry thought it would look better to have Marines on both sides."

The photographer ducked down in a gutter and snapped the picture as Lodge and his entourage walked by. He told the group it would probably run on the cover of a major national magazine.

Weeks later, it did. Maupin quickly received a copy.

"We felt pretty good about that, being on the front page of Life," he said.

The feeling changed a few days later, when Maupin's commanding officer received a letter from the Marine commandant. It criticized Cpl. West for his mismatched uniform -- khaki pants with a cream-colored shirt -- and Maupin for his excessive weight.

"I thought it would be a nice letter of commendation," Maupin said. "Instead, I ended up on a fitness program. I weighed 190 pounds at the time, and I'm not very tall."

He went on to guard the next ambassador to Vietnam, Maxwell Taylor. Conflicts got worse in the country, and Maupin's home was destroyed in an air raid. The corporal spent many nights on the embassy roof, watching skirmishes on the streets around him.

He was called back to the United States in late 1964 and was discharged from the Marines shortly after.

But Maupin didn't forget his personal experiences in New Delhi and Saigon, where he spent much free time volunteering at schools. He enjoyed working with the children, who loved the American's attention.

Thanks to the G.I. Bill, Maupin went to college at Southeast Missouri State University and became a teacher in the Jackson R-II Schools.

He will retire in June at age 53 from his position as superintendent.