Arts of War on the Web

Michael “Machine Gun” Kelley, a nationally renowned Vietnam veteran artist and writer, died December 24 at his home in Sacramento, California. He committed suicide. Kelley was 65 years old and had been suffering from physical and emotional problems for several years.

“Mike Kelley was a force of nature,” said Marc Leepson, The VVA Veteran’s Arts Editor. “He was severely wounded in Vietnam, but through drive and determination he recovered and became a first-class artist and a forceful writer.

“And he was an untiring advocate for Vietnam veterans. Mike’s legacy will be the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which he helped get built, and his Where We Were in Vietnam, the invaluable book he worked tirelessly on for many years and one that belongs on every shelf of Vietnam War reference books.”

Michael P. Kelley was born in Van Nuys, California, and grew up in Montreal and Sacramento. He graduated from California State University, Sacramento, with a degree in fine art. After receiving his degree, Kelley volunteered for the draft. He was inducted on June 10, 1969, had Basic Training and Infantry AIT at Fort Ord, and landed in Vietnam on November 10, 1969.

Kelley did an eleven-month Vietnam War tour as a machine-gunner with Company D, 1st Battalion/502nd Infantry of the 101st Airborne Division. His tour ended in September 1970 when Kelley suffered severe injuries—including the loss of a lung—in a landmine explosion.

He was medivaced to Japan, then spent eight months recovering at Letterman Army Medical Center in San Francisco. Kelly was retired on medical disability in May of 1971.

Sometimes calling himself  “Machine-gun Kelley,” he went back to college and received his Masters in Fine Arts. Beginning in the early 1980s, Kelley became one of California’s most forceful and effective Vietnam veterans’ advocates. Among other things, he served as an Associate Member of the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission from 1984-1991. He donated his print “Extraction From a Hot LZ- Leaving Behind a Classic Ford and Our Innocence” (above, top) to the Commission, which used it as a fund-raising poster.

Mike Kelley’s artwork hangs in museums and private collections throughout the world, including at Vietnam Veterans of America’s headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland; the Oakland Museum of California; and the National Veterans Art Museum in Chicago.

His articles on Vietnam veterans’ issues appeared in The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun Times, and Vietnam Magazine, among other publications.  Where We Were was published in 2002.

“Mike Kelley has done everyone who served in Vietnam a great service with his monumental research for Where We Were,” the noted Vietnam War correspondent Joe Galloway said of the book. “Veterans and military historians alike will benefit from his Herculean efforts to nail down precisely where everything was and where everything happened in America’s long war in Vietnam. If you can’t find it in these pages, it can’t be found.”

A memorial service was held on January 15 in a most appropriate location, the California Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Sacramento’s Capitol Park in front of the State Capitol. Contributions to the Michael P. Kelley memorial fund can be sent to 1617 Porter Way,  Stockton, CA 95207

For info, call 209- 403-6303

“Into Sunlight,” the dance piece created last year by the Robin Becker Dance group in New York, will have its Washington, D.C.,  premiere on Friday and Saturday, January 20 and 21, at 8:00 p.m. at Georgetown University’s Davis Performing Arts Center’s Gonda Theatre.

The work was inspired by the journalist David Maraniss’s excellent 2003 book,They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace: America and Vietnam, October 1967. In it, Maraniss examines  two events that took place that month: the decimation of a battalion of U.S. Army First Infantry Division troops in South Vietnam, and the violence that ensued on the University of Wisconsin campus during a student protest against the Dow Chemical Company.

At both D.C. performances, Maraniss will be on hand to introduce the dance and take part in a post-show discussion with the artists and audience.

Tickets are $18 for general admission and $10 for students and veterans. For info, go to http://performingarts.georgetown.edu or call 202-687-2787.

“Fly Marines! The Centennial of Marine Corps Aviation: 1912-2012″ is the name of a new exhibit that opened on January 14 at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. The exhibit is made up of 91 works of art—mostly depicting Marine Corps aviation subjects— selected from the Marine Corps Art Program, which began in 1942 during World War II to “keep Americans informed about what ‘their Marines’ were doing at home and overseas.”

Included in the Smithsonian exhibit are several works from the Vietnam War, such as a still life of a bullet-riddled helicopter pilot’s seat and a painting by LCPL James Butcher of a Marine sitting alone waiting for a flight at the air terminal at Phu Bai in 1967.

The entire Marine Corps art collection is made up of  more than 8,000 works. It is housed at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia, and  worked with the Air and Space Museum to produce the exhibition.

“If you come here today looking for pretty airplane pictures, you are going to be hard pressed to find but a couple of those,” Lin Ezell, the director of the National Museum of the Marine Corps, told The Washington Post. “The show is a celebration not about the form of the aircraft itself, but the function of aircraft in war, and that always has to do with people.”

This exhibit will be on display for a year. For info on the museum’s hours of operation, go to Air and Space’s web site.

There is an interesting interview with Pat Sajak  in The New York Times‘ on line blog about his interest in the National Hockey League. Sajak, the popular host of Wheel of Fortune, is a Vietnam veteran who received the VVA Excellence in the Arts Award at the 2009 National Convention in Louisville.

Since then, Pat Sajak has been a big supporter of Vietnam Veterans of America. He has donated his time to narrate VVA public service announcements. And in 2010 he named VVA as his charity on Celebrity Jeopardy, winning a large amount of money for our organization.