By Earl Poplin
The day before Veterans Day, the First United Methodist Church in Mt. Gilead received a message from Tyler Kramer, who identified himself as a veteran and an archeology student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu. He had found a WWII dog tag while digging in an area that had been used to dispose of medical waste.
The tag had belonged to Ralph Kelly, Rt. 2, Mt. Gilead, N.C., and listed Charles Kelly as the next of kin. Taryn Thompson Gross, secretary at First Methodist, took the message and asked me if I’d known a Ralph Kelly. My late wife Hilda’s mother was a Kelley who grew up in this area and one of her brothers who lived in Charlotte had a son named Ralph. That Ralph Kelley was a pilot in the Army Air Corps and was killed in 1944 in the Anzio Campaign in Italy. So it seemed we were on the right trail, maybe.
But how about the Charles Kelly whose name was listed on the tag as next of kin? I had known a Ridenhour Kelly – in fact, he was Hilda’s uncle – but the Charles didn’t seem to fit. Since I had access to the Kelley family Bible, I referred to it and discovered that Ridenhour’s full name was Charles Ridenhour Kelley, the uncle of our Ralph. So far so good! Another piece of the puzzle fit. But there were still some questions.
1. Our Ralph Kelley had not served in Hawaii and was still in high school in Charlotte a couple years after Pearl Harbor was bombed.
2. Nor had he ever lived in Mt. Gilead, even though many of his family had.
3. Nor could we imagine why he would have listed an uncle as next of kin when his mother was still living.
At this point my granddaughter Mary publicized the mystery on the internet and it attracted the attention of Josh Blake, who lives in the area. Josh said Ralph Kelly was his grandmother’s brother who was injured in the attack on Pearl Harbor and died in the 1950s as a result of those wounds.
So, after 81 years, Ralph Kelly’s dog tags have been returned to his loved ones. His mother’s name was Mary Kelly. She and another son named George are deceased, but Ralph has two sisters who are very much alive and live near Mt. Gilead.
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