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VOLUME II, Number 48
10 December 1962
A FAREWELL TO KILROY:
FIND HIM UNDER ' K'
KILROY 60 years old? Far worse - Kilroy dead? Yes, that's the melan
choly truth - news to sadden the hearts of millions of WWII veterans for
whom Kilroy was one of the war's great legends. Wherever American troops
traveled the words "Kilroy Was Here" were sure to turn up - often with
the little sketch of a man peering over a wall. To the illustrious names
that came out of the war - MacArthur, Eisenhower, Nimitiz, King, Bradley -
historians are certain always to add the one and only Kilroy, He was the
U. S, fighting man - everywhere at once.
How did the Kilroy saga begin in the first place? Well, James J, Kilroy,
who died recently in Boston at the a go of 60, got a job in a Bethlehem
Steel Co, shipyard at Quincy, Mass., two days before Pearl Harbor. As an
inspector he began marking "Kilroy Was Here" on equipment so test crews
would know he'd checked it.
It wasn't long before the phrase caught on with the troops and from
then on there was no stopping it - from Guadalcanal to Murmansk, from
Normandy to Okinawa, Kilroy was there.
Today you'll find "Kilroy" in Webster's Third New International Diction
ary as a "transient soldier."
Mr. Kilroy became known as THE Kilroy after the war when the American
Transit Assn, ran a nation-wide contest to learn his identity. Still
employed at the shipyard, Kilroy submitted proof that the legend had be
gun with him. As a prize the ATA delivered a 22-ton trolley car to his
home.
And now that Kilroy's gone the war stories won't ever sound quite the
same because the veterans who swap them will be feeling oh so much older!