Denver Kelly graduates more than 70 years after his class at Oberlin High

When the Ober­lin High School class of 2012 walks for their com­mence­ment tomor­row night at Finney Chapel, it will be the cul­mi­na­tion of a jour­ney that, for many, will seem like it took for­ever. For one grad­u­ate, though, it may seem like it took even longer than that.

Fri­day night, Den­ver Kelly, 91, of Elyria, will finally offi­cially grad­u­ate from Ober­lin High School.

Kelly took his last high school course in 1941, but when his class took part in their com­mence­ment exer­cises, he was in Fort Hayes in Colum­bus in basic train­ing after enlist­ing in the National Guard.

After train­ing, Kelly was sched­uled to arrive in Africa, with the rest of the 190th Field Artillery Group in the thick of World War II. They never made it there.

“We were told, after we got ready to go to Africa, that all of our stuff was sunk,” Kelly said. “So they sent us over to Scot­land. We never made it to Africa because we had nothing.”

Kelly and the rest of his unit went to Belfast, Ire­land, with only the equip­ment they were car­ry­ing. They had to sur­vive on what they had until they were able to recoup equipment.

While he was in Ire­land, Kelly received a let­ter inform­ing him he had been drafted for the war.

When he enlisted in the mil­i­tary ser­vice, Kelly was des­ig­nated as a cook, due to his expe­ri­ence in Oberlin.

“I went to Green Acres Children’s Home when I was 12 years old. My mother couldn’t take care of us after our father died,” Kelly said.

While in high school, Kelly began work­ing at Gibson’s bak­ery half a day and went to school the other half. He ended up liv­ing with the Gib­son fam­ily after awhile, and did so until he left Ober­lin for the war.

His work­ing expe­ri­ence in a bak­ery was enough for the National Guard to des­ig­nate Kelly a cook.

“I don’t think I did any cook­ing at all in the ser­vice,” Kelly said.

Instead, Kelly said he was a gofer while in the National Guard. He did what­ever was asked of him, which actu­ally turned out to be a lot.

While in the United King­dom, the 190th Field Artillery Group acted as a decoy, mov­ing from place to place all over the islands to make the Ger­mans think the Allies had more troops and equip­ment than they actu­ally did. Dur­ing that time, Kelly spent most nights sleep­ing under the stars in numer­ous places, includ­ing Stonehenge.

The decoy work lasted a few years, until the Allies were ready to attempt an inva­sion. In June 1944 the 190th headed to Nor­mandy to take part in the largest amphibi­ous inva­sion in his­tory; Kelly was with them.

On the sec­ond morn­ing of the inva­sion, Kelly was aboard a Land­ing Ship Tank, or LST, and was dropped off with the rest of his unit at Omaha Beach.

Kelly was dri­ving a Cater­pil­lar trac­tor, pulling heavy artillery onto the beach, when he struck a land mine, destroy­ing the trac­tor. He had to walk the rest of the way on the beach, with bul­lets zip­ping past him on all sides.

Once he got inland, he was once again with­out much equip­ment. He spent five days liv­ing in a hedgerow.

Dur­ing his time in the hedgerow, he met a French fam­ily — a father, mother, and two daugh­ters — who were hid­ing in the same hedge. Kelly still has let­ters sent from the daugh­ters that he received after return­ing from Europe after the war.

Soon after, Kelly and his unit met up with Gen­eral George Pat­ton and the Third Army and marched all the way to Czecho­slo­va­kia with them. Dur­ing that time, Kelly was caught in the Bat­tle of the Bulge, where he remem­bers see­ing Ger­man para­troop­ers who were so close he could reach up and grab them.

In Octo­ber 1945, Kelly returned to the United States. He said he never thought much about not hav­ing received his high school diploma, until recently.

“I never actu­ally gave it any thought at all, until some of my fam­ily started push­ing me to do it,” he said. “In a way it is excit­ing for me. I’m finally get­ting my diploma, which is some­thing I thought I should have got­ten a long time ago.”

Posted by Scott Mahoney on Jun 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.