The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
A FAMILY’S LEGACY AND A GRATEFUL NATION
Role models: A father is killed during Korean war, his son is killed in Vietnam Beat goes on: Patriotism in Lester-Brady family tree runs strong through the roots
NORRISTOWN >> A ring. A piece of a uniform.
That’s all that was left of First Lt. William A. Brady, Jr. when he died in a mid-air collision over the Mojave Desert in California.
He had rejoined the Air Force following a decorated stint piloting the “Rosie O’Brady” (part of the 344th Bombardment Group known as the Silver Streaks) for 26 missions – including as the sixth plane over Normandy – during World War II.
But he left behind so much more than those items.
What would have made the heavily decorated airman most proud was a legacy of military service, all within in one large khaki green family tree, with branches still growing to this day.
Brady’s daughter, who was barely a year old at the time of his untimely death, is Mary Jo Lester.
Married young, she was one of the few who never enlisted, instead “going into the baby service.”
But, as the third of the four children of Brady and his wife, Florence, is the keeper of the flame.
For this family, days like Veterans Day – and, sadly, Memorial Day – are not about sales and cookouts.
“Probably, some of it has to do with my father’s legacy,” said Lester of the generational chain of service that later saw additional tragedy. “And the rest of it was how my mother taught us to be.
“She raised us that way, and that’s how we raised our kids.”
Lester’s brother, Cpl. Daniel “Danny” Brady, was killed in action a year after leaving night school at La Salle College (now University) and volunteering for Vietnam.
Her other brother, Tim, had recently enlisted, along with a bunch of buddies from Bishop Kenrick, and was in boot camp at the time.
“They sent him home for the funeral, and told him he could get out, because he was ‘sole surviving son,’ because both my father and brother died, but he stayed,” said Lester, who lives in Norristown. “Instead of sending him into combat zones, he spent three years in Puerto Rico, where he says it was just as bad.”
Meanwhile, her younger sister, Catherine, joined the Navy as a medic – a Core Wave — in 1969, meeting and marrying a sailor, Dave Walsh, while stationed at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital.
In some families, it’s the rebel who joins the military. In this one, it’s the rebel who chooses a civilian life.
“It was either school, the military or go and get yourself a full-time job,” said Lester, who added that classmates from Bishop Kenrick enlisting to “get ahead of the draft” was not uncommon at the time.
She added: “You also have to understand that times were different back then. A lot of our friends went into the service.
“I guess there were a lot of kids hiding, or leaving the country, but not in Norristown. Norristown used to be a very patriotic town. It’s just the way we were all raised.”
The Role Model
Lester can trace the lineage of service to her grandfathers – William A. Brady,
Daniel W. Brady is shown at his graduation at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in Parris Island. Cpl. Brady, a resident of West Norriton, was killed on July 2, 1967 in Khe Sanh, Hill 861.
Sr. (the owner of the Conshohocken speakeasy that is now the Great American Pub) and Bill Davis (the Anglicized alias he used, in lieu of William Drewicz, to sneakily join the Army in his mid-teens and who is believed to have served in World War I).
In addition, her uncle, Jim, was a Staff Sgt. and a gunner on a B-17 in World War II.
However, she credits her mother, Lt. Florence Drewicz Brady, for making country-first a way of life while raising four kids – all a year apart – as a single parent.
“My mother was extremely patriotic,” she said. “She was also a fierce Catholic, too. Maybe that fed into her patriotism. I don’t know.”
She also led by example.
“She went to night school, and got her master’s degree in nursing,” said Lester. “She didn’t sit around feeling sorry for herself.”
Florence and William met at a hospital at Camp Bowie in Texas, where she was an Army nurse while he was being treated for shrapnel in the leg (an injury that earned him a Purple Heart).
In five years of marriage, during which he gave flying lessons at Wings Field between the wars, four children were born a year apart.
“He was the love of her life,” said Lester. “She always said that the bloom hadn’t quite come off the rose yet.”
After the sudden and tragic death of her husband, Florence Brady brought her young brood from the base in California to Conshohocken, as opposed to her hometown of Wilkes Barre, before settling in a home on Marshall Street in West Norriton.
“My father had a lot of aunts and uncles and cousins,” said Lester. “My mother wanted us kids to have a big family to fall back on.”
A Way of Life
Up until the final chapter of her life, the matriarch of the family remained fiercely patriotic.
“Even when she was 92 years old – at the Veterans Center in Spring City – she made sure the flag was flying properly, at the right
Florence was a Lt. with the U.S. Army Nurse Corps when she met William Brady Jr., then a pilot with the U.S. Army Air Corps, after he was injured by shrapnel during a mission and was sent to Camp Bowie in Texas.
“Every year, when we were all very little, she would take us down to St. Matthew’s Cemetery for Memorial Day. That’s where my father was buried, and that’s where my brother is now buried.”
“I guess there were a lot of kids hiding, or leaving the country, but not in Norristown. Norristown used to be a very patriotic town. It’s just the way we were all raised.”
place and at the right time, on Veterans Day and Memorial Day” said Lester. “Every year, when we were all very little, she would take us down to St. Matthew’s Cemetery for Memorial Day. That’s where my father was buried, and that’s where my brother is now buried.
“All of us, we grew up with it. It was a way of life. We never thought we were anything special or different, it’s the way it was.”
After losing one of those children in Vietnam, Florence was undaunted.
Her patriotism was never in doubt, even when it would have been understandable.
“No,” confirmed Lester. “In fact, when my brother was killed, there was a lot of protesting going on – in Washington, D.C. and other places. The protesters, who my mother called Hippies, would hold up placards with the names of those killed in action, with their names on it.”
A level of resentment built up toward the protesters.
“We wrote letters to everyone we could think of,” said Lester. “We understood they were against the war. It’s not that we were for the war, but we didn’t want my brother’s name used to make that connection.”
And the Beat Goes On
Lester’s husband, Edward, Jr., who grew up in the East End of Norristown, is the son of a World War II paratrooper, Edward, Sr., in the Philippines during World War II), and a National Guardsman for eight years.
Together, they have eight children – not to mention 14 grandchildren and five great grandchildren.
The second child, Kathleen,
enlisted in the Navy – serving in Naples, Italy on a joint base with NATO – while the fourth, Rebecah, was an Army medic stationed in upstate New York and married a medic, Ryan Clark, after which they were stationed in Levenworth and Germany.
The eighth, Daniel, a multi-sport athlete at Norristown Area High School, joined the Marines, and was deployed five times into war zones. A sergeant, he trained Iraqi troops and was embedded in the mountains and caves of Afghanistan.
Grandchildren? The oldest, Laura Ortlip, joined the Navy after high school and is a master at arms (equivalent of the military police in the Army).
“She guarded and protected the presidential Air Force plane in Travis Air Force Bases out in California,” said Lester. “We used to tease her. She got to fly all over the world, but she never saw anything because she was never allowed out of the plane.”
In the National Guard are Gregory Ortlip (Army ROTC at Temple) and Molly Ortlip (EMT for Montgomery County).
“For my grandchildren, it’s more of an educational experience,” said Lester. “It’s how they are paying their way through school.
“Molly is due to be deployed in March to Kuwait for eight months. She’s really looking for to it.”
Her grandmother? Not so much.
“I keep telling her that I’m not letting her go,” said Lester. “The whole Middle East, I don’t know. The older I get, the more I worry about them.”
A Day That Lives in Infamy
When it came to a father she barely remembered, Lester lived with the largerthan-life immortalization of a man who left Drexel to enlist and whose honors included the Distinguished Flying Cross.
She had grown up with her siblings, all close in age.
“Our mother used to tell us to stick together, because we were all we’ve got,” recalled Lester.
Losing her brother was like losing a piece of herself, and it is still hard to talk
about – especially considering he put aside college to join the Marines, who are known as the first to face enemy fire.
“Back then, during Vietnam, you only got a letter every three weeks,” she said. “You just waited for that call. It was like a way of life.”
In 1967, the worst fears were confirmed. On July 2, on Hill 861 in Khe Sanh, Danny was killed in action.
“There was a group of Marines who went up and tried to take this hill, and they were all wiped out,” said Lester. “The second group went up. That was my brother’s group. They went to get their buddies and bring them down, and they all were killed. The third group went up. Some of them were killed, but they finally got the bodies down. It took that long, though.”
It took two more weeks, from July 2 to July 16, for the body to arrive home in a sealed casket.
“They tell you not to open the casket, that there is nothing to see, and we didn’t,” she said, while noting the bitter irony that there was nothing left of her father, either. “They said it was mortar fire to his chest area. Who wants to see that?”
Lester had been working at a summer camp in Elverson, Pa. for the mentally disabled, and was home just the day before to celebrate her birthday.
Back at the camp, a nun there pulled her aside.
“The sister came in and said my mother had called and said that they need me home right away,” she recalled. “I asked what was wrong. She told me that my mother didn’t say, but just to wait for her if she’s not home. I knew that was very out of character for my mother. I figured something happened.
“I got home. My mother wasn’t there. My sister was upstairs, asleep. I woke her up, and she asked what I was doing there. I tried to call my mother at work, and they said she just left with a priest.”
There was an ominous feeling in the air.
Then a car pulled up with her mother and a distraught priest.
“We just knew,” said Lester.
They knew, and carried on. And on. “That went down to my kids,” she said. “Some of it is still patriotism, but it was also opportunity.”
And Lester always admits to some shades of gray amid to red, white and blue.
She learned from her son’s first-hand accounts of serving in Iraq and Afghanistan how the enemy could be anyone – women, children, old people – at any given time.
She knows, even going to back to friends who came home from Vietnam and were struggling to assimilate, about the effects of war.
Even her mother, as patriotic as she was, would sometimes refer to Danny as “the lucky one.”
Statistics show that 20 veterans a day commit suicide, and only seven of those were even receiving treatment.
“The way things are going now, I’m changing my view a little bit,” she said. “I don’t want my kids hurt.”