Why it has will be addressed Saturday when a retired Air Force and professional fighter pilot and test pilot from Springfield speaks at the opening of what’s expected to be a permanent exhibit about Neal in the military gallery of the Clark County Heritage Center.
Joining Paul Metz will be Kelley Neal Gray, a daughter from Neal’s first marriage, who will discuss how her father’s difficult childhood, military service and two years as a prisoner of war may have influenced her and her brother’s lives.
Free and open to the public, the program will last from noon to 3 p.m. Remarks by Metz, Gray and the Heritage Center’s Natalie Fritz are scheduled at 2 p.m.
As the exhibit is dedicated, construction continues the 509-foot Arleigh-Burke Class Flight III destroyer George M. Neal at Huntington Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Miss.
A model hero
Neal was awarded his Navy Cross, a medal second only to the Medal of Honor, as the result of his efforts to rescue of Marine Corps pilot Capt. James Wilkins, who had been shot down at dusk on July 3, 1951.
Dispatched from an Australian ship that was part of the United Nations combined forces, Neal and helicopter pilot Lt. J.G. (Junior Grade) John Kelvin Koelsch were able to find Wilkins. But as they tried to lift off, enemy fire disabled the helicopter and further injured Wilkins.
After managing to remain undetected for 10 days, they were captured and taken to a prisoner of war camp, where “they were poorly treated to say the least,” Metz said. “Very little food to eat, usually rice with bugs in it… Koelsch refused to talk at all, which is why they beat him severely.”
Koelsch ultimately died of those beatings and was recognized with a Medal of Honor and the naming of a Navy frigate in his memory.
Neal and Wilkins survived two years in the prison and were released in a mass prisoner swap.
Since learning of Neal’s story from a friend who builds dioramas of heroic war scenes, Metz has been indefatigable in amassing 1.8 gigabytes of material about the event and its background.
“You won’t find a fighter pilot in the world who’s not grateful for the rescue missions,” he said. Neal’s being from his own hometown gave Metz additional motivation.
Saturday, he will delve into the challenges the rescue crew faced as it searched for a lost pilot in the pioneer days of combat search and rescue and with helicopter that had limitations. Among challenges was a lack of onboard lighting either to illuminate a search area or make it possible for the pilot to read the vehicle’s gauges.
While Metz chides himself when he fails to call Neal “Milton,” the middle name he went by, the Heritage Center’s Fritz, says that without all of Metz’s work, there would have been no exhibit.
“I didn’t know — and the staff didn’t know — about the story” until he stopped at the museum as part of his research, Fritz said.
That research revealed that, 70 years earlier, the story was not just known, but celebrated.
“One thing I found was a TV show called ‘Navy Log 55-58,’” he said, which dedicated one of its 126 episodes to the story.
That nationally known story had already hit home in Springfield.
Orphan and ward
When 23-year-old Neal was released in the prisoner swap, a Springfield News-Sun reporter went to East Euclid Avenue to share the news with Emma Williams, whose family had fed, clothed and cared for him.
Gray’s brief biography of her father says both of his parents had died by the time he was 10. Neal, along with his three siblings, experienced another loss when they were separated into different homes for the remainder of their childhoods.
Because Williams and her husband had other children to feed, Gray said, “George grew up in a home with love, but little else.”
“After returning from the military,” she continues, “George graduated from Springfield South High School and became a U.S. Postal carrier. George married Barbara Trimble in 1954, and Van Eric and Kelley Elaine were born from that union. At the end of that marriage, George moved to Los Angeles to be closer to his siblings.”
The return to his siblings naturally distanced him from then 6-year-old Gray and her 8-year-old brother, Van, who had visits with their father, but wouldn’t reconcile with him until they were adults, when they began thinking about the burden his childhood struggles and time as a prisoner of war must have been.
Happy family
Gray, whose initials were etched into USS George M. Neal at a ceremony in December of 2023, expects the exhibit opening to have the same kind of family reunion feel.
“My dad’s siblings and all of their kids in California and Texas, they’ll definitely going to be on Zoom”, she said.
As celebrations of family pride, the events have helped to solidify her and her brother’s sense of reconciliation with their father.
On the horizon are two more ceremonies, one for the ship’s christening, and finally its commissioning. On that day, the name George M. Neal will again be actively involved in service to the nation.
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