Well another year is working its way through and now upon us is Memorial Day. I know it will be celebrated with lots of grandeur and most of all the memory of our loved ones who have passed on before us.

As I get older I read, watch documentaries and have many longing thoughts of our men and women who have ventured in harms way.

I miss my first hand of information of none other then my late Mother and Father, Eleanor, and PFC First Class Aviation Fire Fighter Kenneth Kelley.

Both were influential in my now daring study of United States history. Both of them were responsible for answering my many questions on what was the war like.

What was it like on board a ship going across the Atlantic Ocean during WWII?

Then I would turn to my mother who had worked at Miss Lambert’s dress shop in downtown Ironton during the war in the early 1940’s and ask what it was like here on the home front.

Neither one of my parents got short with me with my many questions. They were willing to talk about it and I heard many interesting stories.

I loved hearing the firsthand accounts of their oral history and how I miss them telling about it.

I had several uncles who served the military during WWII and even after the war. On my father’s side there were Orlyn Kelley, Robert Wilson and Walter Boggs.

Then I had two first cousins —Charles Fayne serving in India and also known to be one of the best turtle soup makers in the county, and Ed Fayne who was a prisoner of WWII during the Battle of the Bulge. They too have passed. Ed would be liberated nine months later.

Ed did not talk about it not until just a few years before he died.

My mother’s side there was Uncle Paul Bonnett served in WWII and Uncle George Myers and George “Buddy Unrue” who served the military after WWII.

I think just in family members alone there were a lot of people in my family who were called to duty to serve their country.

There are other family members who have served in other duties for the military I am sure and I would not leave them out on purpose and if I have I apologize and thank them for their service to their country.

I think it’s overwhelming what a generation of men and women and what they accomplished through the Great Depression and World War II. Tom Brokaw called it right. They are America’s Greatest Generation.

They have set the bar really high for future generations to overcome, so let’s celebrate Memorial Day with remembrance of all of them who have passed on and who are still here with us and the ones who are overseas still serving.

God Bless America.

Brian Kelley

Ironton