Priscilla Richardson

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My two uncles on my mother's side saw the worst of World War II in North Africa, Italy and Germany. We would ask them about their experiences but they steadfastly refused to talk.

Now that I've seen the horrors shown in Ken Burns' series about World War II, I have a better idea why they both wanted to forget.

Troutville's Genevieve Goss had a similar experience with her family. But her next-door neighbor, Herman Odell Kelley, she said, "always likes to talk about the war."

So as we honor veterans on Sunday, Kelley's story reminds us of those long-ago days -- days when heroes and heroines made war successfully, and then came home to make peace and prosperity.

Kelley, 87, came out of a Troutville family that boasted six sons.

After graduating from Troutville High School, he was thinking about a career.

"There was nothing much going on in Troutville around 1940," he said. "You could work on a farm, but not make much money.

"One of my brothers already was in the Navy and he liked it so much I decided to join. I liked it pretty good till the war came along, but I'd signed up for six years anyway."

Kelley stayed in, fulfilled his enlistment and did his duty. Unhappily, his brother perished doing his.

It turned out Kelley also had signed up for a lifetime in another way, because he met his future wife soon after entering the service.

"When I was first in, I was transferred to the New York World's Fair. They had about 50 Army, 50 Marines and 50 Navy in one camp, Camp George Washington, right inside the fair. I still have tickets; I'm holding onto them for the grandchildren.

"While I was there I met a girl in Flushing, Long Island. We went together for six years and married in 1946. I've been married to Gloria for 61 years and loved every minute of it."

But the Navy soon sent him elsewhere. Aboard an oil tanker, the USS Laramie, he heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor.

At that time, the ship was in Greenland, north of Canada. He appreciated the Navy's clothing rules.

"We had to make about six or eight trips in the winter, but the foul weather gear kept us nice and warm when it was wet and cold."

He obviously didn't sit on his hands to keep warm. He went in as a seaman, like everyone else, but came out as chief boatswain mate, in charge of the deck force.

After three years of work on the tanker and several months' training, Kelley was assigned to an attack force ship, the USS Andromeda.

"We went to Africa and then made three invasions, one was Salerno, then France and Sicily. I stayed on the boat. My section was in charge of the cargo, taking it off and putting it on boats and getting it ashore. After we left there, we went through the Panama Canal to Honolulu and worked on our last invasion, Okinawa."

At the end of the war, Kelley suffered from a lung disease, which kept him in the hospital for several months. Mustered out, he went -- guess where? -- to New York to marry his sweetheart, attend technical college and start his family of two daughters.

"We lived there for about five years, and then moved down here to Roanoke. I talked my wife into coming."

He had a job for a few years, then opened his own television and electronics store, which he closed in 1972. They eventually moved to Botetourt, where "we try to do a lot of volunteering, and taking care of people in the neighborhood."

What does he think about going into the armed forces today?

"It's a good idea for young people. Now they send you to school to start with when you go in. I'm for that."

So let's give a hip, hip, hooray for Kelley -- and a bunch more hoorays for all of those veterans who served us in all of the armed forces, in all of the wars and in peacetime, when called upon.