By Stephen Smoot
In recent years, historians such as Brenna Mitchell in Pendleton County and Rick Shockey in Hardy have spent years putting together the stories of the veterans of World War I and II. One of the most remarkable recurring themes comes in the recounting of those who grew up in the small towns, ridges, valleys, and hollers of West Virginia and found themselves in places they probably never imagined going in their childhood, areas such as Flanders, Morocco, or in the case of Franklin resident Ed Keller, New Guinea and the Philippines.
“I was born in Durbin, West Virginia” stated Keller as he shared his own remarkable journey from the Mountain State timber town to the jungles of the eastern Pacific Islands and back.
Along the way, Keller worked to support United States operations while also finding a bit of mischief here and there along the way.
Keller came into the world, as many did in his day, in the home of the local physician, Dr. A. E. Burner. His home and offices now serve as a bed and breakfast in the town. According to a Pocahontas Times article on Keller from 2014, written by Suzanne Stewart, the Burner house was split in half between the doctor’s family and the Kellers. “So when Doc was ready to deliver one of the Kellers,” Keller told Stewart, “all he had to do was walk from his back door over into our back door.”
Later in his childhood, Keller “moved to the end of the street to a little cottage. We walked across Heiner Hollow to school. He told of growing up in Durbin, saying, “It was very nice. We were just kids. We walked to school.”
Keller’s childhood also included excursions to the Civilian Conservation Corps camp at Thornwood, a few odd jobs, and typical teenage hijinks.
After rising through Durbin Graded School and graduating a year early from Green Bank High School, Keller made the lengthy (in those days) journey to the county seat of Marlinton where he enlisted in the United States Navy. From there, he went to Clarksburg where the Navy officially processed him.
Keller recalled that upon entry, the Navy asked him what he wanted to do in the service. He had joined the Seabees (Naval Construction Battalions) and replied to them that he wished to operate a bulldozer. Work in the United States Forest Service prior to the war piqued his interest in heavy equipment.
During his time in the Pacific Theater, the Navy asked Keller to go to different places and do different things, but not one of those involved him driving a bulldozer.
Part of that, alas, was on Keller. At one point a superior asked if “anyone here wants to run a grader.” Refusal of that one offer “changed everything that followed,” Keller said.
He did not volunteer for that task at the time and, as a result, ended up in communications. During his service, Keller spent much of his time in the vital work of stringing telephone lines.
After training in Richmond, Virginia, and more in Rhode Island, Keller and his fellow servicemen boarded a converted ore ship and made their way south along the East Coast to the Gulf of Mexico and the Panama Canal.
After Christmas in dress blues ashore at the Panama Canal, the ship made its way across the Pacific Ocean. The passage must have been less than pacific, because the ship had to stop in New Guinea short of its final destination at Finschhafen. Keller shared that the ship had to halt there because so many got sick on the passage across.
His group ended up being assigned to one of the several United States Army bases in New Guinea at the time. While the Army and Navy have always had a service rivalry, Keller said that was not as significant where he was stationed. “We got along pretty good,” he stated.
In his group, he added, “We had pipefitter, carpenters. We put in a filtration plant.”
The West Virginia native, from time to time, got himself into mischief. Once, he drove a Jeep a bit too fast through a mudhole by a line of men trying to get chow. He splashed many of them with mud, one of two times that he earned extra duty.
As the three area commanders, Admiral Chester Nimitz, General Douglas MacArthur, and the British “Supremo” (all top service ranks combined into one) Lord Mountbatten eroded Japanese positions from three directions, Keller and his unit went to the Philippines near Subic Bay to set up vital communications infrastructure for operations there.
There, Keller remembered seeing the massive U.S. operated Clark Air Force Base and encountered the remains of a Japanese airplane shot out of the sky. As the war wound down, home called. Keller boarded an escort carrier that took him back to the United States. He remembered the feeling of home as the ship passed under San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.
“That was something,” he remembered.
Keller boarded an eastbound antiquated troop train that brought him nearly 2,700 miles to Ronceverte, where he then made his way back home.
Civilian life in one way resembled his military service in that he started work for the telephone company in Pocahontas County. By 1948, he took employment from the area power company and four years later transferred and moved to Franklin.
“Just before I got here, they were adding a line from Ruddle across the mountain to Riverton,” remembered Keller. He took over a small mountain cottage from a supervisor transferring out of the area and lived there for about two years.
Keller is a character among characters, always ready with a story, a joke, or a line. He recalled a night of hunting with his friend with only kerosene lights to cut through the darkness. His friend “slipped on a rock and fell down the cliff.”
“Are you hurt Gilley?” Keller shouted into the night.
“I dunno! I ain’t done falling yet!” came the response.
Three decades after he first moved to Pendleton County, he married his wife, Helen, who was born with the family name Pitsenbarger.
Today they still live in their home on Main Street, seeing visitors, enjoying the memories of a life well-lived. On one of his last days before turning 100, Keller would be honored by American Legion Post 30 for his service, for reaching 100 years of life, and for remaining a fun and vibrant part of the Pendleton County community.
