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Son Of War Hero Followed In Father's Footsteps

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By STEVE TURNER

sturner@tampatrib.com

Published: December 23, 2008

In the dark days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, America needed a hero.

They found him in Capt. Colin P. Kelly Jr., a 26-year-old B-17 bomber pilot from Madison, near the Georgia border.

The story goes that on Dec. 10, Kelly and his crew dropped bombs on a Japanese cruiser off Luzon in the Philippines and then came under attack by Japanese fighter planes. Trying to maintain control of his crippled bomber long enough for his crew to bail, Kelly died when the B-17 exploded.

The details of what happened that day are still debated, but the story of self-sacrifice was embraced by a grateful nation. In time, there would be a government building, a school, a street, a monument and a transport ship named after Kelly.

He left a wife, Marion, and a 11/2-year-old son, Colin P. Kelly III, known as Corky. On Christmas morning 1941, The Tampa Morning Tribune asked its readers to remember that fatherless child by supporting a fund to help with the boy's education.

"There are other heroes, of course," the Tribune wrote. "Yet Colin Kelly was the first."

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was also thinking about Corky's future. On Dec. 17, he took time out from war matters to write a "letter to the future." It was addressed to the president of the United States who would start his term in 1956. It asked that future commander in chief to give Colin P. Kelly III an appointment to his father's alma mater, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., should the boy want it.

That future president turned out to have his own distinguished World War II record: commanding general of the victorious U.S. forces in Europe.

Corky Kelly Earns His Spot

President Dwight D. Eisenhower read the letter in 1956 and was ready to honor the request. But Corky Kelly had other ideas.

"I felt I should be able to get in on my own merit, or I didn't belong there," says Kelly, now 68 and living in Los Alamos, N.M. "So I didn't take that appointment that was offered by President Roosevelt."

Instead, he decided to compete for a spot at West Point, which he earned, and graduated with the Class of 1963.

Going to the Point might have been inevitable, he says.

"I felt a responsibility to do that. From the time that I was a year and a half it had been my calling to do that, if you will. And I'm very glad that I did," he says, citing friendships, a great education and the opportunity to serve his country.

After a four-year stint in the Army, which included deployment to West Germany as a tank commander, he went on to divinity school and eventually returned to the Army as a chaplain.

"The Lord called me when I was 14, but I believed I was called to complete my West Point opportunity first."

After he retired from the military 25 years ago, Kelly and his second wife, Sue Ellen, looked for a church in need of a pastor. They found Trinity on the Hill Episcopal Church in Los Alamos - home to Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Manhattan Project, and the atomic bombs that ended WWII in the Pacific theater.

Between them, the couple have five children, all in their 30s and 40s. There is no Colin P. Kelly IV.

Growing up, Kelly says his mother and stepfather were careful how they spent the war bonds that made up much of the fund started by the Tribune. Some went to private school tuition and a year at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania before he entered West Point. The rest he got upon his graduation from the military academy and his first marriage.

'I Learned A Lot About Him'

Too young to have memories of his own, Kelly has an image of his father painted by those who did know him. His mother, his father's parents, whom he visited each year in Madison, and the people of the small Panhandle town all contributed.

"I learned a lot about him from them and from being in the town where he grew up and from the other people in the town," he says.

"He was a character in his own right. It's good to be able to have known him even though it had to be through others instead of in person."

As for Corky Kelly, the little red-haired, freckle-faced boy peering out from the front page of the newspaper 67 years ago may have followed in his father's footsteps. But he made his own way in life.

Reporter Steve Turner can be reached at (813) 259-8435.

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