You have to be a little older but you no doubt have heard of Kilroy. Kilroy was a figure sort of graffiti that could be found almost everywhere. It was easy to draw because it was like a bald headed man with big eyes and a long nose, peeking over a wall with both hands showing. Inscribed below the picture was "Kilroy Was Here".
He was as popular as any cartoon figure could be. The strange part was he wasn't really a cartoon figure. He was very much real. Recently my favorite cousin, Jim, sent me the real story of Kilroy and it goes like this.
Even if you never heard of Kilroy before, for the WWII generation, this will bring back memories. For the younger folks, it's a bit of trivia that is a part of our American history. Anyone born in the teens, ‘20s, and mid-‘30s, is familiar with Kilroy. People didn't know why, but they had lapel pins with his nose hanging over the label and the top of his face above his nose and his hands hanging over the label. No one knew why he was so well known, but they all joined in!
So who the heck was Kilroy?
In 1946, the American Transit Association, through its radio program, "Speak to America," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the real Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article. Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax, Massachusetts had evidence of his identity.
Kilroy was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. Rivets were on piecework and he got paid by the rivet. He would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark. Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.
One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then he realized what had been going on. The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk.
He continued to put his checkmark on each job he inspected, but added “KILROY WAS HERE” in king-sized letters next to the check, and eventually added the sketch to the chap with the long nose peering over the fence, which became part of the Kilroy message. Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks. Ordinarily, the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint.
With the war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced.
His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific. Before war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo. To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery. All they knew for sure was that someone named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming Kilroy was already there when they arrived.
Kilroy became the U.S. super G.I. who had always "already been" wherever "GIs" went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable (it is said to be atop Mr. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of I'Arc De Triomphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon.
As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there.) On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo!
In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. Its first occupant was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?"
To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters to prove his existence. He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy front yard.
So, now you know the story.
Birthdays and anniversaries:
• Thursday, February 2nd: Kia Jayann Buendorf, her 4th; Matt Davis, Addie Farr, Joey Farr, Michael Farr, Butch Otteson, John Fornberg, Robert Hanson, Jim Motz, Karri Bangert, Lillie Fenney.
• Friday, February 3rd: Bowen Gregory Jensen, his 6th; Lily Neitzel, Julie Hanson, David Johnson, Sherry Misgen, Tara (Stollard) Richards, Francene Pittman, Jeremy Hanson.
• Saturday, February 4th: Aaron Duane Bauers, Tyler Cerney, Tyler Sorenson (1994), Waylen Busho Jr., Billy Glynn, David Newgard, Roy Jensen, John Lent.
• Sunday, February 5th: Lila Long, Crystal Simonson, Blanche Kasper, Darrell Howell, Randy Reese, Ericka Johnson, Kylee Jace Wilson, Wesley Schoenrock.
• Monday, February 6th: Jean Klocek, Carolyn Hanson, Dean Jensen, David Kelly, Martin Bartness, Colleen Borchert, Troy Haddy, Jean Clausen, Sonja Thompson, Megan Stephoni, Todd Nelson, Brooke Burns, Kay Swenson.
• Tuesday, February 7th: Cheryl Boettcher, Ted Pelzl, Kelly Simon, Emma Lorraine Klemmensen, Karissa Dolan, Dorothy Katz
• Wednesday, February 8th: Lainee Ann Krohn, Erin Thompson, Terry Wacek, Dennis & Cheryl Sauke.
Let the good times carry you away on your special day.
