Reservist killed in Iraq never forgot local roots
Associated Press
LAHAINA, Maui — He had moved with his wife and young son to southern California, but Sgt. 1st Class Kelly Bolor never lost touch with his native Hawai'i, and the first thing he planned to do after returning from Iraq was to visit the place where he was born and raised.
"He said after everything was done, he wanted to come home and relax," recalled his brother, Conrad Bolor.
Sgt. 1st Class Kelly Bolor was born in Wailuku and raised in Lahaina.
Bolor will come home, but in a coffin. On Saturday, Bolor's family will bury him at Maui Memorial Park in Wailuku.
The 37-year-old soldier was among 17 people killed on Nov. 15 when two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters plummeted to the ground in the northern Iraq city of Mosul.
Bolor, who was born in Wailuku and raised in Lahaina, was the third-oldest child in a Filipino family of five boys and a girl raised by their mother, Annie, after her husband died in 1968.
She put her children through Sacred Heart School by working in the cafeteria there.
Bolor was on the wrestling team at Lahainaluna High and joined the Army soon after graduating in the hope it would lead to a better education and better life, Conrad Bolor said.
Soon after enlisting, Bolor met his wife, who also shared the name Kelly, and the two eventually moved to Whittier, where they lived with their 3-year-old son, Kyle. He eventually became a member of the Army Reserve's 137th Quartermaster Company stationed in El Monte, Calif.
Bolor was called to active duty in January and deployed to Iraq in February, family members said. His job was to ferry supplies to soldiers on the front lines.
He told his brother in one letter of witnessing the aftermath of a battle that reminded him of the devastation portrayed in the movie "Black Hawk Down."
"He said everything was just demolished," Conrad Bolor recalled. "He told me that his soldiers would never forget what they saw."
