Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
In a world where storytelling has been our link to the past since the days of cave drawings, there exists a timeless tradition. It's the art of passing down knowledge, and for Military Veterans, it's a crucial piece of their legacy. Join us on the Veterans Archives Podcast, where we dive deep into the heartwarming and awe-inspiring stories of those who served, no matter when or where.
Here, Veterans get the chance to be the authors of their own narratives. Through guided interviews in a relaxed and safe environment, they paint their experiences with their own words and unique voices. The result? A memory card in a presentation box, a precious gift they can share however they please.
But that's not all. These stories find a secure home in our archive, a treasure chest of experiences for future generations to explore. The best part? It's all a gift to the Veteran – our way of saying thank you for their service.
Tune in to the Veterans Archives Podcast, where history, heroism, and heartwarming tales come to life.
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Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
Bill Kelley: A Journey of Service and Family
Join us as we dive into the inspiring journey of Bill Kelley, who transformed his life from a childhood spent milking cows on a Michigan farm to serving in the United States Navy. He shares compelling stories filled with nostalgia and humor from his formative years, where hard work and family values shaped his character. Discover how his transition to military life presented challenges and opportunities that resonated throughout his professional journey.
Through captivating reflections, Bill discusses the significance of family, work ethic, and the resilience he cultivated in both his military and civilian life. His experiences highlight the importance of adapting to new situations and the joy of pursuing passions even after retirement. Whether you’re interested in military history, personal growth, or family dynamics, Bill's story offers valuable life lessons that will resonate with listeners everywhere.
Don't miss this chance to engage with Bill's journey and reflect on your own stories. We invite you to subscribe, share, and leave a review to help spread these important messages to a wider audience!
Good morning. Today is Wednesday, February 26th. We're here talking with Bill Kelly, who served the United States Navy. So good morning Bill. Good morning, it's great to see you. Yes, so, like I said earlier, we'll start out real simple Tell us when and where were you born.
Speaker 2:Okay, h-town, michigan, 19, 1932.
Speaker 1:Where's H-Town at I'm?
Speaker 2:not familiar with that. Well, it was horses back then, and even everything they'd done was by hand. So my dad was the hired hand. So was by hand, you know. So my dad was the hired hand. So my sister and I, at eight years old, we were milking cows.
Speaker 1:Did you have to get up early in the morning to do that oh?
Speaker 2:yeah, and before school Then we walked three miles to school. So it was really fun, but anyway, it really wasn't that bad that I think about it now. But there was four of us. I have two sisters, one brother, and one brother is eight years. I think it's eight years younger than my sister who was, I think, six years, but they both have passed away. Yeah were you the oldest son in the family and the kids no, no, my fist, both of my sisters was older than I was. Okay, both girls.
Speaker 1:So you would all get up early and milk the cows and then go to school. And what was school like for you?
Speaker 2:Well, it probably wasn't very good for me because I was kind of the guy that I did the reviewing and that and everybody got a big kick out of it.
Speaker 1:So, after school and all of that, were you drafted into the navy or did you? Did you enlist in the navy? I enlisted. Well, let's talk a little bit of what was that like for you, what, what made you decide to go in the navy?
Speaker 2:well, like I said, uh, I I've heard so much about it. And uh, I said, there's only one way I'm gonna, I going to get rid of this farm.
Speaker 1:You were saying that you were like every day you just hated it more and more, and so that's kind of what drove you to join the Navy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was in the Navy four years. Well, I know I come out in 1954. I know that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you must have gone in right around 1950 then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it would have been about what it was. I was just so glad to get out of there.
Speaker 1:Can you tell me a little bit about? Do you remember going to basic training or boot camp? What was that like for you?
Speaker 2:I went to. Can I turn back and forth on this?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely, this is your story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, jim Crone was a buddy of mine when we were in, well, high school. Were in high school and he went. My folks wouldn't sign for me and so I was 16, so they sent me back to VADACS and told me to get. I was in Detroit then at this time so I figured I'd sneak in through there, but I didn't. They sent me back anyway and there was a, an old fella that was a captain in transportation ships and this gentleman was a, he was in and he lived, he was retired and he lived about, I don't know, maybe three miles from us. So he went down and talked to my parents. So anyway, this captain got me in the service.
Speaker 1:He convinced your parents that it would be okay. That's right.
Speaker 2:Okay and anyway, this Robert Crone and me, and there was another kid, so this kid Wyoming was his name, Not Wyoming here.
Speaker 1:That was just his name, though Wyoming, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:And so he was just old enough, he was just 18. And they took him in. And they took him in. So I just have to tell you this, you know, because it was at that time it was just I couldn't hardly stand it that I found he went in the Marines. And I think I went about six months behind him. He was on a destroyer also, but then he—I don't know just how it worked, but anyway he ended up, he re-enlisted and he went in the Marine Corps. He was and I'll tell you where I went through basic, not trying to get two roads together. You know, I don't mean to do that. No, you're fine, you're fine. So when I was coming back from Korea, his mother the Whirly, his mother the Worley, his mother wrote me a short letter.
Speaker 1:Sorry, you're fine. You're fine. I know this is hard. Good boy. Yeah, those memories can sneak up on you, can't they?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so what had happened to him? Yeah, he was. He re-shaped. I'm not real sure whether he was killed in Korea or if he was caught. I don't think he was in Vietnam, but his mother said that he had been killed. So that was tough, yeah, because, uh, him and I got thrown off the bus and we'd have to walk three miles so.
Speaker 1:So why'd you get thrown off the bus?
Speaker 2:Throwing spit balls and that stuff. All kinds of fun stuff. And then the teacher caught us behind the stove chewing tobacco. That wasn't very nice either.
Speaker 1:Can we jump back a little bit to your time in the Navy? Oh, okay, so you were on a destroyer, right, and you ended up in Korea, yeah. And so tell me about your experience in the Navy. What was that like for you? And you were a gunner's mate, right? Yeah?
Speaker 2:gunner's mate. A gunner's mate, right, yeah, gunner's mate. And sometimes I would be on a 20 millimeter and some of the time I would be on a 40 millimeter, and sometimes I'd be a houndsman and sometimes I'd be the nutsy orator.
Speaker 1:You know about that.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes I do so the captain. I think every time we would come in port he'd come back. He was drunk, oh no. So anyway, when we got underway, almost every time he was drunk. When we went to sea the one time, it was really funny. It was pretty nasty and the waves were pretty high. But right in that area where CREA I don't know if you're real it came up and then it backed and then it went back up this way.
Speaker 1:You've probably seen that. Yes.
Speaker 2:Yep, so you know. So I said whenever, when I got out, I was going back in the Navy, you know. And so 1955, I tried to go back in the Navy and they kicked me out. I mean, of course, when I, when I left, you know, say you know I was 55, that was in 1955, that I was trying to enlist they wouldn't let me. I was, they could reenlist. But when I tried, they said no. I said well, why? Because you said I was reelected. They said no, no, because you have a child and a wife. Oh, that's what happened right there so you got married.
Speaker 1:Did you get married while you were still in the navy?
Speaker 2:okay, yes, I did. Yep, I I've uh, my son. I don't know if you want me to get into that. It's just a short part. I don't know, it really don't mean that much, but I went through basic at.
Speaker 1:So you went. Did you go to Great Lakes or did you go to St Great Lakes? Okay, that's where I went. And what time of year was it Cold? I mean cold. Everyone I talked to went there in the winter time. Oh boy.
Speaker 2:Camp Dewey. That's where I went.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how was that for you?
Speaker 2:Oh it was tough, and then it didn't matter that I don't know about you, but a Marine taught us the small ammunition yeah. Okay, and it went down on your elbows. They almost killed you, oh my God, but anyway.
Speaker 1:So is that where you had to crawl and they would shoot ammo over you? Yeah, yeah so.
Speaker 1:So anyone listening to this but my, my father, served in the marine corps, okay, and during basic training he did that training, yeah, and a friend of his got caught up in the barbed wire so he went over to help him, ended up getting shot across the back during training because they were using actual ammunition. Oh yeah, they used to fire ammunition over the top of you to get you used to that situation. Yeah, so I didn't realize that they did that in Navy basic training, oh yeah, okay, about 12 weeks.
Speaker 2:That's what it was 12 weeks yeah 12 weeks and then so you were up, you were in, up in the upper admiral. You were, or you, I was enlisted in the Navy.
Speaker 1:I was a first class petty officer. I was enlisted in the Navy. I was a first-class petty officer. When I got out of the Navy, oh, that's great. And then I joined the Army. Of all things. I actually retired as a captain in the Army.
Speaker 2:That's fine. That's as far as I got. Yeah, that's pretty far.
Speaker 1:That's pretty far. I only got to third class, Okay. But that's the third class yeah.
Speaker 2:And you were. So you were one guy that they shot over us and then we had more problems with tornadoes than anything. So tell me about that. We figured we were hit with the tornado in 1952. We were just hit. It was in the strike and we were not blowing up. We were hit just in the fantail. Exactly where we were hit. And you know as much as I know that that was the boiler people. Maybe they were using, maybe I don't know what else they were using at that time, but you know we carried so many. You know 5-inch 38 we carried and the Hedgehog we carried that.
Speaker 2:And like I said 40 millimeter, but boy that, 20 millimeter. You didn't. A lot of times you didn't shoot it by seeing a shell. A lot of times it was, you followed it.
Speaker 1:Like kind of tracers. That's how you would.
Speaker 2:That's it, that's it right there, like tracers yeah.
Speaker 1:So you didn't really aim you sort of that's right, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's right. And when you was on that 20 millimeter, that was dangerous, excuse me. We had a shield on each side, on each side over here, and then you had the magazine which was about this big around, and you set it up on the top. I don't know if you had any of that experience. No, I did not. I seen that one time. Oh my God, I don't know how the kid didn't didn't get killed, but uh, uh I've never, uh, I I never was hit and it's just a miracle.
Speaker 1:But so every once in a while that 20 millimeter gun would get hit. Is that what would happen? Yeah, sure, wow, okay.
Speaker 2:And I was one of the first ones that got on it and, like I told you about them, shields on each side and the guy putting that big round hell, he was more more damage than me, right? Yeah, because I had a little bit of shield, yeah, so, uh, then a lot of times, uh, a lot of times, we'd get in fights. Oh yeah, and this one kid, he was the torpedo man, this guy here, and they always thought they were tough. Well, I don't want to get into looking like I'm a hard guy, you know, not really a great fighter but I wasn't bad at it either.
Speaker 1:So this guy wanted to fight. Is that what happened here?
Speaker 2:That's what he wanted to do, this kid. I always kind of took care of this kid because at that time I weighed around a hundred and I'd say a hundred and sixty, because when I come out of the service. I weighed about a hundred, and maybe a hundred and fifty-5 or something like that yeah. So how big was this kid? Oh, this kid was probably, I'd say, 160, something like that.
Speaker 1:Oh, so you were pretty evenly matched.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was built, Not like you you know, but I was built pretty good up here. In fact I still. They get a big kick out of that. I'm in a home now and because I couldn't walk anymore, so but it's not a big deal, because I do almost what I want. You want me to go to that area, or not?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Is there anything else you want to tell me about the Navy, or is that on? No, no, this is really your.
Speaker 2:Oh no. I can go more than that. Like I said, I was on the USS Rich 820.
Speaker 1:That was a DLG right. Is that what they called them?
Speaker 2:No it was a DDE. Oh, a DDE. Okay, yep, we did a lot of shooting crap, everything that was bad. We did it mm-hmm. Cuz who, you know who the hell cared? Because we didn't figure you know, young, a lot of young, yeah, yeah, because they were.
Speaker 2:you know, things were not good back then right, so I was so happy to get out of there. But then I think of it now and I helped my folks and it was it was tough but I helped. I helped my mother because my father he died. He had died at 49.
Speaker 1:So, uh, I worked for, uh, us steel and national steel so when you so, when you got out of the navy, I just I just wanted to kind of make the story. So you got out of the navy, you tried to go back into the navy. You couldn't because you had a wife and a son. Is that when you went to work for us steel or for, yeah, I worked eight years for us steel. Okay, and where? Where did you work for us steel?
Speaker 1:and and Gary, gary Indiana yeah, and so did you have any more children in that time?
Speaker 2:No, I had two after that, after I was out, but just your son is the only one you had at that time? Yeah, I had at that time. Okay.
Speaker 1:All right. So what was it like in Gary Indiana?
Speaker 2:Crazy. I don't know. I can't really talk that much about that place because I don't know much about it.
Speaker 1:So you got out of there then after eight years, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And then where did you go after that? My wife and I lived there, of course, and I got laid off when I was in Gary, and then I moved to Portage Indiana. And I moved to Portage Indiana because I had worked in, like they called it, the National Steel.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And so I worked there, so you were in Portage, indiana. Is that where you stayed the rest of your career?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 31 years. Okay, and of course, you know, national Steel is Grand Rapids. Yeah, I'm not getting ahead of myself. Yeah, grand Rapids, I spent 31 years and the last 17,. Yeah, the last was 17.
Speaker 1:So you were going to tell me about your son?
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's a medical doctor school and her sister and her both moved to. It was in.
Speaker 1:So are they still in Michigan? No, so they move out west somewhere.
Speaker 2:They moved to—oh my gosh. Anyway, they left and moved to—first they moved to Arizona. So I went there and I drove bus. I was about that, a guy by the name of Bob Lively who had moved up to a officer. But they're not.
Speaker 1:Oh, like a warrant officer. That's it, yeah a warrant officer. That's exactly.
Speaker 2:And they were pretty high up, especially in where the bad areas are, because I knew a couple of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the warrant officers are kind of the experts in their field sort of people that's right.
Speaker 2:If they made an officer, like in your area where you was at. There wasn't that many of them.
Speaker 1:No, there was not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I knew about that.
Speaker 1:So you said you had four children. No three, oh, three. Okay, so two girls and a boy.
Speaker 2:My boy is a doctor. Yeah, is he a doctor here in Michigan.
Speaker 1:Or Is he a doctor here in Michigan, or was he a doctor here in Michigan?
Speaker 2:No, he was in Fort Wayne Indiana.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:That's where he lived, in fact. And the youngest daughter? She was in the Air Force my youngest one another devil. And my youngest daughter, kathy, she went 40 years in the Air Force and then she got out of the Air Force so she could go to school.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:So I don't know if she's still teaching it or not. So I don't know if she's still teaching it or not, but when I last talked to her she had three more years and she was going to retire, so and she taught business in high school. So you know, I went in the I had in the National Steel. When I worked there I had 31 people that worked for me.
Speaker 1:So were you a foreman, yes, so you still worked on at the mill itself. You still worked the floor.
Speaker 2:The first years I started in that kind of work was I worked in a tin mill first and well, that was a dangerous thing. Oh crazy Boy, that was a dangerous thing.
Speaker 1:Crazy.
Speaker 2:But anyway, I worked on them 10 mil and I was still, I was thicker and when the steel broke off and come out of that thing. But I'll get off this subject just to tell you a little bit about the oh yeah you're fine, because I'm sure you don't know a lot about Maybe you do.
Speaker 1:I worked in a lumber mill.
Speaker 2:There you are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I remember when you would rip the lumber if you didn't have your guard on the saw. I remember a guy uh, it kicked back and put the put the board right through his leg. Oh, yeah, so I think it's probably similar, not the same, but I understand the danger there.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yep, we've had. Well, we had.
Speaker 2:Uh, well, we had in National, I know we had one that took part of his head, right off him. So I remember that one. In fact, I was just coming out, I was working daylight at the time, and so I saw that when it happened, but boy, that was terrible. So anyway, yes, they built a finishing mill. The finishing mill, they built a coal row. That was like I said, it was a cold roll, and they shipped what they called the hot band, and so that's just was a. They shipped that in from Granite City in Detroit. They sent that from Granite City, and so they had trucks that hauled that in that belonged to National Steel at that time, so they would ship it from Granite City to Portage, indiana, then, where you were at.
Speaker 2:Okay, I was there then, but I wasn't. I was moved up. I was moved up to to a supervisor or foreman. Yeah, that's when I was, that's when I was. Well, you know to them. Okay, I want to.
Speaker 1:I want to shift gears a little bit. I want to ask so you were married to your first wife, you said for 55 years. Can you tell me how did you two meet? Did you work together or how did you meet her?
Speaker 2:She never worked. I met her at her age. She was four years older than I was. Okay, her age was. She was four years older than I was. Ok, we had a great relationship, her and I, and I always say within 55 years. It was when she lived with me, some of the steel mills, and so she was sure a good wife. But when I'm married to her now, I've been married for 17 years to this girl here and we've done well and I took a good, good pension from National. But I probably would have been in, but there was eight or nine of us I don't remember all that, but we knew that National Steel was going to go belly up, going out of business, so we had enough time that we could get out, you know, yeah, so that's why I took it.
Speaker 1:But then I so did you retire? You must have retired in the late 80s or early 90s then 1992 is whenever I retired. Okay, okay. So you've been retired for about 30 some years.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, wow, but I worked more places for the steel mills.
Speaker 1:So you, after you retired, you went back to work, you just kind of on your own terms at that point.
Speaker 2:I worked at every place there was. We bought a motorhome, and so that was another venture.
Speaker 1:You traveled all over the country with that.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we did. Oh my gosh over the country with that, oh yeah we did, oh my gosh and when I bought that I went deeper than I should have. Yeah, yeah, it was a bad deal I did and I think that's the worst bad deal that I did, but you can make you can make mistakes and and cover them.
Speaker 1:I was really lucky sounds like all three of your kids pretty much did okay for themselves. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they did. My youngest daughter. She showed me she has three years and she'll retire from high school. You know, taught high school.
Speaker 1:Really, I just have kind of one last question to ask, and so that is. You know we've talked about a lot of stuff. You raised a family, you had a great career, you got to do some traveling after you retired. It's not many people that stay married for so long and then are able to find someone else, so these are all, I think, good things. So when someone listens to your story in the future, what would you like them to take away from your life and from our conversation today? What message would you like to leave people with?
Speaker 2:The stories that I left, and with a lot of people and a lot of people. I happy with the people that I met and I put this out to everybody and they'll tell you. They're here at home and you're a very neat person too. I think you're one of the best that I've been around.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2:And I'm so proud that I met a Navy guy that I'm really proud of.
Speaker 1:We've got to stick together, us Navy guys, yeah that's right, that's for sure you got it yeah.
