A man will go to New York next week to retrieve a long-lost memento of his father’s. It is the latest chapter in the story of a father’s legacy, a son’s strength, and tiny miracles.
Lance Corporal Daniel Kelley lost his Zippo lighter when he fought in Vietnam in 1969. Nearly 50 years later, it came into the possession of a veterans’ support group in Buffalo, New York, and it used Facebook to connect with Kelley’s son, Josh.
“I didn’t even know what to think,” Josh Kelley said when he got the first message about the lighter. “I thought it was a joke at first.”
LCpl. Kelley worked in aviation ordinance, stationed with VFMA-115 at Chu Lai Air Base from 1969-70, part of his six years in the Marines. Josh Kelley said Wednesday that his father would only talk about his service on occasion.
“Sometimes he would just sit there and not say a word,” Kelley recalled. “Like, if you would bring it up, he would just, like, shut down completely. And then, other times, he would tell us all kinds of things about when he was there.”
But LCpl. Kelley’s Vietnam experience was ever-present in their lives. Josh was born with deformities in both arms and one of his legs, which doctors traced back to his father’s exposure to Agent Orange (), an herbicide used during the war that is blamed for negative health effects in millions of Vietnamese and Americans.
“He was working a lot when I was a kid, because I was born like this from Agent Orange, from his service over there, and he used to work all the time because my prosthetics were extremely expensive,” Kelley mentioned. “So, he spent a lot of my childhood working, trying to make the money to pay for my prosthetics, and doctors’ visits, and therapy, and all that stuff.”
LCpl. Kelley died in 1997. His son said he has only a couple mementos from his military service.
“I have one medal that he had from over there,” Kelley said, “and then I have his military records, and his flag, and that’s about it.”
But on June 18—the day after Father’s Day—KIA Memorial Roadmarch posted on its Facebook page that one of its supporters found a Zippo Lighter and asked its members to help find its original owner. The lighter had D.L. Kelley and his unit’s logo engraved on one side, and a map of Vietnam with Chu Lai 69-70 written above it on the other side.
Within one day, the power of social networking connected the lighter to Josh Kelley.
“It’s just crazy,” Kelley said, “because, like, when my dad died, I was 21. And here it is, almost to the day 21 years later that message showed up on Facebook.
“For the right person to get it, and be willing to return it and all that—because some of those lighters are worth kind of a lot of money—so, for somebody to have it and have something that’s worth money, and would rather give it back to the family that it should be with, I mean, that’s kind of saying something.”
Jason Jaskula, the founder of KIA Memorial Roadmarch, raised more than $1,000 and invited Kelley to Buffalo, NY to receive the lighter in person. He will also be honored at the organization’s annual 10k fundraiser. The fundraiser, coincidentally, will take place on August 18, which is Kelley’s birthday.
“I don’t know what it’s gonna be, exactly,” Kelley said of the moment when he receives the lighter, “but I know it’s probably gonna be pretty emotional, because my dad’s been gone for 21 years, now. And I thought that Zippo was gone, and I’d never get a chance to see it, ever, in my whole life. And then, there it is, it just pops up out of nowhere.”
Kelley said the disabilities caused by Agent Orange have led to some struggles in his life, but he has mostly-positive feelings about the Vietnam War and its outsized influence on his life.
“I’m proud of (my father’s) service,” he said. “I mean, yeah, I wish that he hadn’t have gone, because all the family and stuff that I have, they say that he was a completely different person when he came back, which, I can totally understand anybody that goes through something as awful as a war, when they come back, I’m sure that they’re not going to be the same. Because, the things that you see and have to do, and things like that while you’re over there would change anybody.
“And, I mean, in a way, the way that it’s affected me, I could probably sit back and say, “oh, poor me,’ or whatever,” he continued. “But then again, at the same time, it’s given me an opportunity to help a lot of different people and bring awareness to a lot of different things, too.
“Like, when we went to Vietnam a few years ago, I got to meet a bunch of the other victims of Agent Orange from Vietnam. And some of them, their conditions are so bad that they really don’t have a voice for themselves," said Kelley. "Like, there was this one girl that we met, and she just, she couldn’t speak or she couldn’t sit up. She couldn’t talk, she couldn’t feed herself, she couldn’t do anything. And she was almost, like, 48 years old, 45 years old, and she had never spoken a word in her life, or anything. She just laid on the floor in an orphanage her whole entire life. And, I guess, me being born like this, that gives me the opportunity to speak up for people like that.”
Kelley flew to Vietnam to take part in a documentary about the effects of Agent Orange. He has also been to Capitol Hill twice to lobby Congress for better medical benefits for children of Vietnam War veterans.
While he prepares for his trip to Buffalo, Kelley said he already knew what he wants to do with the lighter.
“I’m probably going to carry it with me for a while,” he said, “because I don’t want to set it down somewhere and have somebody walk off with it, or it get lost, or something again. Because I don’t think it’ll show back up again after this time if it gets lost again.”