This story ran in our local paper for Veterans Day. I pray that our returning Vet’s have the help and compassion that this poor Hero never had.
Forgotten soldier
BY CHRISTOPHER BOBBY Tribune Chronicle
Very little is known about how the Illinois-born son of a Mississippi River fisherman ended up in Warren after serving his country. There are only stories about his divorce and how he never patched things up with his two teenage kids, who now would be in their 30s.
The 59-year-old Specialist 4th Class infantryman with B Company of the U.S. Army’s First Cavalry Division was found dead in his sleep July 27 inside a cramped camper parked on a friend’s property off Choctaw Street S.W.
Kelly — a one-time roofer described by a handful of friends as honest, happy and a true survivor — lived a simple life and died homeless and, for the most part, penniless.
Those friends who believe Warren lost a war hero now want to formally remember Kelly for service to his country rather than as a vagrant destined for a pauper’s funeral.
Linda Parrack of Warren’s southwest side had been checking on Kelly periodically, which is how she found his body in July. She called authorities and then offered shelter to the man’s dog — a small pit bull mix named Patches — perhaps the closest friend Kelly had in his final years.
‘‘Last winter, Rickey was living in a cardboard box by the railroad tracks near Deemer Park. I told him he could stay here until summer, and he did. He drank a lot and wouldn’t take a bath, so I had to tell him to leave,’’ Parrack said. ‘‘Don’t get me wrong, Rickey was a good guy ... good-hearted. He would do anything he could for you.’’
A Trumbull County coroner’s report, which spells his name two different ways, says Kelly died of clogged arteries, and there was evidence of pneumonia.
The infantry veteran didn’t look that well the winter of 2005 when Howland Detective Al Sprockett and Vince Peterson, a local probation officer, were hitting the streets looking for fugitives with the U.S. Marshals Task Force.
‘‘He was huddled up inside two sleeping bags, sound asleep, with his dog curled up between his legs. He was outside a vacant storefront that was a Laundromat over on McMyler Street N.W.,’’ said Peterson, who came back a day or so later with some warm clothing for Kelly. ‘‘There was a bundle of hay and some personal belongings there. He had an old TV he was using as a table. Other than that, he looked like a homeless guy out in the freezing cold.
‘‘He told me, ‘You can arrest me if you want, but I’ll just come back. I have nowhere else to go,’’’ Peterson said. ‘‘I tried to talk him into going to the mission, but he said he already checked that out and they wouldn’t take him and the dog. But the guy never really bothered anybody.
‘‘I really think some of the problems Rickey had with the way he lived his life came from being that survivor. He was only among seven out of 33 in his unit who made it out of Vietnam,’’ the investigator said.
He said 28 of the 33 were enlisted men — a group made up of ‘‘blacks, whites and Mexicans, just thrown together and led by Lt. Joseph Anderson, a West Point graduate. Rickey always said Anderson was the one who kept him alive.
‘‘Rickey told me he was always messing up over there, so he would get told to walk the point. He said he used a .45 (caliber) and a grenade launcher when he did that. That’s what he preferred,’’ Sprockett said.
After Kelly mentioned it to him once, the detective tracked down a 1967 Academy Award-winning documentary done by a French filmmaker who spent six weeks with Kelly’s unit.
The piece is named after Anderson, who now sits on the board of directors of Rite Aid, and it introduces many members of the unit. Scenes depict the fighters pinned down while under heavy attack and even shows a wounded Kelly getting bandaged by a medic.
The film also shows the men in the unit taking time out, once roasting a pig they bought in a village and later offering help to the displaced civilians in the war-torn country.
Sprockett admits he took to the guy.
‘‘He really didn’t talk about Vietnam that much at first. He would do some odd jobs for people for some money. Sometimes they fed him. He never really complained about anything though,’’ he said.
‘‘He used to say he was a survivor. He told me that a few times. And he liked to drink what he called Wildcat,’’ said Sprockett, acknowledging that he even bought his buddy Rickey a few ‘‘40-ouncers’’ because it would help him get to sleep at night.
The investigator befriended the loner and even put him up for a time in his Shaffer Drive N.E. rental property.
That didn’t work out for Kelly, who seemed to prefer to be on the move with his dog and only a few of his worldly possessions.
Sprockett, who even had Kelly over to his home for dinner and took him to church on occasions, is somewhat embarrassed to show a mug shot of Kelly taken at Trumbull County Jail.
‘‘They wanted to charge him with breaking and entering, but all Rickey was doing was trespassing when he was finding another place to live,’’ he said.
Sprockett introduced Kelly to Michael Psznick, director of Trumbull County Veterans Service Commission.
‘‘Rickey was certainly a friend of mine. When Al (Sprockett) brought him in here, all I knew was he was homeless and from Illinois. He never had anything. He just kind of went through life. I think he hung drywall for a while,’’ said Psznick, who found out soon enough what type of combat Kelly had seen serving in Vietnam while in the service from Aug. 30, 1965, to Sept. 3, 1968.
‘‘He had medical issues with his heart and lungs. He had a Purple Heart. We opted to try and get him a pension, rather than go for disability benefits. He wasn’t getting what he was entitled to,’’ he said.
‘‘This guy had seen some major combat. He was there early on when they were still making the fatigues out of plain cotton,’’ Psznick said. ‘‘That First Cavalry once lost 265 guys in one day.’’
The county official found out Kelly had stepped in a booby trap and a punji stick covered with poison pierced his foot.
Later in battle, Kelly tossed a grenade that was thrown back at his unit, injuring a sergeant and driving shrapnel into Kelly’s side and arm.
‘‘Rickey was just a good guy. I could tell he was a combat vet. He was totally happy with his life. Money didn’t seem to mean anything to him,’’ said Psznick, who remembers getting retroactive pension benefits for his new friend only to hear about him giving a lot of it away.
Psznick and Sprocket got Kelly set up in a government subsidized apartment behind the Hot Dog Shoppe in downtown Warren only to hear later that problems with the dog and filthy conditions got him evicted.
Psznick smiles, though, recalling the Memorial Day parade of 2005 when he met Kelly at the downtown Burger King and bought him some pop and stuck him in the back of a dune buggy.
‘‘We rode the whole parade route. I told him just keep smiling and waving to everyone, and that’s what he did,’’ Psznick said.
After Kelly died, funeral director Brian Borowski volunteered his services, arranging for cremation and still has possession of Kelly’s ashes.
Kelly’s obituary, which also spells his name two different ways, mentions there will be no visitation. It mentions his two children, who never showed up after the death. It says simply that Kelly was of the Protestant faith and that he was a veteran.
‘‘The Coroner’s Office and police I guess tried to get a hold of his kids, and I heard they sort of disowned him. We just went ahead and did what we had to,’’ Borowski said. ‘‘I’m saddened that I didn’t know him like Al and others. I only heard this guy told some stories. He was just a guy left to the streets after the war I guess.’’
But Borowski, Psznick and Sprockett are awaiting Kelly’s official discharge papers that will entitle the soldier to a final resting place in the Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery in Rittman.
‘‘Once we get the paperwork, myself and some of the other officers here want to go up there for our own little service. It’s sort of like a branch of Arlington (Cemetery). Rickey deserves that much,’’ Sprockett said.
The detective and fellow members of his local FOP also plan to take up a collection and remember Kelly with a brick containing his name in the proposed Wall of Honor in the Trumbull County Veterans Memorial that will be built downtown in Memorial Park.
Sprockett and the others want to remember Kelly as the one feeding broth to the sick Vietnamese child shown in the documentary film.
They want to remember him for his love of his canine friend, Patches.
They want to remember him for his Purple Heart and the shrapnel he carried in his body until he died.
http://www.tribune-chronicle.com/news/articles.asp?articleID=24713
Rest in peace Rickey Kelly, you are home.
