Cpl. Harold P. Keller – Brooklyn, IA - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

How does one obtain his fifteen minutes of fame? For Cpl. Harold Keller, it occurred during World War II when, as part of the detail atop Mt. Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945, he helped raise an American flag attached to a 100+ lb. piece of pipe. This combined with a fortuitous gust of wind at the moment photographer Joe Rosenthal tripped his shutter and voilà! instant immortality. Except that in the case of Cpl. Keller, it took about 75 years to realize that fame.

In their haste to exploit the popularity of Rosenthal’s photograph, the U.S. Marines Corps incorrectly identified three of the soldiers involved with the flag raising. One of these was corrected quickly but the other two mistaken identities have only recently been rectified. In Harold Keller’s case, it wasn’t until 2019 that he was definitively recognized. (The Marine in the photo had been previously identified as Pfc. Rene Gagnon.) In the chaos that was Iwo Jima in 1945, some confusion is understandable, plus, only Keller’s knee and right hand are clearly visible in the photo. Of the six Iwo Jima flag raisers, only three survived the war to return home.

Description: Harold Paul Keller was born in Brooklyn Iowa and spent his entire life there. He served in the Marines during World War II from 1942-45 entirely in the Pacific theater. During a furlough in 1944, Keller married Ruby O’Halloran with whom he had three children, two sons and one daughter. He died of a heart attack in 1979 at the age of 57. (Sources: Marine Corps Times, USA Today, Des Moines Register.) Date of birth: 08/03/1921 Date of death: 03/13/1979 Area of notoriety: Military Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link] Visiting Hours/Restrictions: Not listed

Visit Instructions:
To post a visit log for waymarks in this category, you must have personally visited the waymark location. When logging your visit, please provide a note describing your visit experience, along with any additional information about the waymark or the surrounding area that you think others may find interesting.

We especially encourage you to include any pictures that you took during your visit to the waymark. However, only respectful photographs are allowed. Logs which include photographs representing any form of disrespectful behavior (including those showing personal items placed on or near the grave location) will be subject to deletion.

Recent Visits/Logs:

Date Logged Log   06/30/2023 wanderfish visited it