Army Staff Sgt. Russell J. Proctor

Remember Our Heroes

Army Staff Sgt. Russell J. Proctor, 25, of Oroville, Calif.

SSgt Proctor was assigned to 4th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas; died June 26, 2011 in Diyala province, Iraq, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device.


Russell J. Proctor, 25, of Oroville was one of two soldiers killed by an improvised explosive device in Iraq's Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad.

By Jason Song, Los Angeles Times
September 18, 2011

When Russell Jeremiah Proctor was a child, his father often pushed him to excel because he thought his son could grow up to be a leader, according to family members.

Proctor, 25, of Oroville, north of Sacramento, eventually joined the Army and became a staff sergeant.

He was on his third deployment to Iraq when he was killed in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, on June 26. Army officials said Proctor and another soldier were killed by an improvised explosive device.

Proctor was assigned to the 4th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division at Ft. Hood, Texas.

His sister, Charia Brott Murphy, paid tribute to her brother soon after he died.

"He was the type of person who made you want to be something more, made you want to be a good person," she wrote in a statement published in Proctor's hometown newspaper, the Oroville Mercury-Register.

Murphy and other family members declined to comment for this article.

Proctor was adopted as a child by a Rio Linda family, Murphy told the Oroville newspaper, but reconnected with his birth family later in life, according to other reports.

In an interview with the Mercury-Register, Proctor's birth father, also named Russell, said his son enjoyed singing, football and playing the guitar.

"He loved the Army and he loved his job," he said.

Proctor graduated from Rio Linda High School in 2003 and enlisted in the Army two years later. He was married with a young child, media accounts said.


In online forums, Proctor's fellow soldiers praised him as a good leader and friend. "You motivated me like no other," one person wrote.

Proctor's sister wrote in the Mercury-Register that he was looking forward to making his mark on the world.

"If you're content with just sitting back in the darkness, not being remembered, then fine," he said, according to Murphy. "But I'm not."

Army Staff Sgt. Russell J. Proctor was killed in action on 6/26/11.