The portrait shows a youthful, handsome Marine in his dress blues, a slight smile surrounded by his square jaw and bright eyes conveying pride and determination. That’s the way his parents wanted to remember him when they commissioned Washington County artist Nat Youngblood to paint the image of 2nd Lt. Leo J.
Kelly III of Bethel Park. Jack, as he was called by family members and friends, lost his life to an errant mortar shell on May 19, 1967, near the ostensibly demilitarized zone once separating Hồ Chí Minh’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam from its U.S.
-aligned neighbor to the south. Two days after Jack’s death, a pair of Marines arrived at the Kelly house in the Brookside Farms neighborhood to deliver the news. “I was playing at a friend’s house across the street, as we’d always do on a Sunday, and we were going to celebrate my birthday that day,” his brother Brian said.
“I remember getting called home. I saw my dad on the phone. I didn’t see my mom anywhere.
And I think my dad took me down into the backyard and told me what happened.” With Brian’s assistance, the memory of his brother is being preserved at the Bethel Park Municipal Building. In a display case just inside the front entrance are items of Jack’s such as his Marine hat and sword, medals he was awarded, photographs and news clippings, and the U.
S. flag that was sent to his family. The planned eventual destination for the memorabilia is the Bethel Park Historical Society’s milit.
