Neel E. Kearby was by all accounts an average, ordinary Arlington man in the early 20th century.
But one day in his life made Col. Kearby a household name in his hometown after he saved unknown American lives in the Pacific theater during World War II.
It was Oct. 11, 1943. Kearby led three other pilots on a recon mission for intelligence on Japanese-controlled, heavily defended Wewak in modern-day Papua New Guinea.
Already done with their surveillance, Kearby and his three other pilots had steered their P-47 Thunderbolts toward home when the colonel spotted a Japanese air formation. Nearly 50 enemy aircraft — 36 fighters escorting 12 bombers — were headed toward American troops.
Low on fuel and outnumbered 12 to one, Kearby led his airmen in an attack. Diving toward the enemy, the flight of P-47s opened fire with their eight .50 caliber mounted machine guns. Kearny confirmed six kills, including two pursuing a fellow American pilot.
His actions met the standard of the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor.
He’s one of more than 3,500 American soldiers, sailors, airmen and coast guardians who have received the Medal since its first recipient, Army Private Jacob Parrott, accepted it during the Civil War.
Now, on the 162nd anniversary of the day the first Medal of Honor was awarded, recipients of the Medal will be the focus of a museum in Kearby’s hometown.
Opening March 25 in the Arlington Entertainment District, the National Medal of Honor Museum will preserve and share Kearby’s story next to thousands of other distinguished recipients.
They’re stories University of Texas at Arlington military historian James Sandy says need to be shared. The tale of Kearby’s actions made an impact on Arlington and the wider American public, something Sandy hopes to see again.
“He’s a regular newspaper kind of story in Arlington and the North Texas area,” Sandy told KERA News and the Arlington Report. “This big mission where he gets six or seven kills is something that gets talked about quite a bit.”
Kearby’s story inspired the folks back home, especially those who knew him as the ordinary boy from Arlington. Sandy hopes the story and others like it will have renewed impact through the Medal of Honor Museum.
Amplifying their stories
Texas is home to other Medal of Honor recipients, like the most decorated soldier of World War II, Maj. Audie Murphy.
At 19, the second lieutenant from Kingston received his Medal of Honor after climbing aboard a flaming and disabled American tank and fending off Nazis as his fellow soldiers retreated.
The list also includes Gen. Richard Cavazos, the namesake for the former Fort Hood and America’s first Hispanic general, who as a first lieutenant led American soldiers in an attack on a heavily fortified North Korean outpost in the last months of the Korean War.
The stories of Medal of Honor recipients inspired Americans as they happened, Sandy said, and he thinks they can still do that today. Sandy hopes the museum prompts visitors to question whether their understanding of military history aligns with the truth of war and combat.
“It is such a complicated, complex endeavor, and it’s so much more than what we call bugles and banners history, where it is the battle and the kinetic violence and things like that,” Sandy said. “This is a history of our culture and our country and very complicated real people and their relationships both with themselves, their country, their military service, and I think the Medal of Honor amplifies those things.”
Cory Crowley, the executive vice president of the museum, said the museum aims to tell recipients’ life stories, from childhood to their enlistment, to their values and actions on the battlefield and beyond.
"We wanted to not be a war museum, not be a history museum — we want to be a biography museum that helps people realize, when they walk in the door, that these recipients were just ordinary people, just like you and me,” Crowley said in a January interview.
Arlington’s new role in veteran community
When Joe Carpenter, an Arlington native, veteran and military historian at UTA, heard in 2019 that the museum was coming to his city, he wasn’t surprised.
“It was a no-brainer for me. It should’ve been in Arlington,” he said. “The military community in North Texas is huge.”
In 2022, 6.2% of Texas’ adult population were veterans, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
He said the museum makes Arlington a kind of “mecca for veterans around the country,” and the city is now a destination for military families.
Carpenter plans to regularly use the museum in his work with UTA and the Texas Veterans Project, an oral history collection aimed at collecting and presenting the stories of America's veterans. He sees it as an opportunity to regularly connect with new veterans.
UTA touts its military and veterans services program, which has earned the university a place in the top five of the Military Times rankings for veterans five years in a row.
Carpenter said he’s seen Arlington’s patriotism grow over the years. He’s more often thanked for his service, and more people understand the sacrifices veterans have made to serve.
The museum represents “the pinnacle” of the community’s gratitude, and he’s happy to see people excited to attend the museum and thank veterans.
“In our world, we overuse the term hero,” Carpenter said. “A hero is not just anybody — I served, I was an Air Force veteran, I was in Saudi Arabia and served during Desert Storm. Just because I served, that doesn't make me a hero. What makes a hero is someone who goes above and beyond in the interest of helping others.”
Careful storytelling
It’ll be important for the museum to share the tales of Medal of Honor recipients without straying into propaganda, Sandy said.
It can’t be the “bugles and banners” approach, and Sandy would like to see these stories honored, shared and “demythologized” at the same time.
He said he’s confident based on his work with the exhibit through UT Arlington that the museum’s approach will do that.
“I think it echoes on mythology quite a bit,” Sandy said.
The line that separates a biographical museum for Medal recipients from military propaganda is thin, he said.
Condensing stories that could each fill a full biography into an exhibit can be tricky. The expected brevity of most visits demands brief stories.
The Medal of Honor is awarded for extraordinary acts of bravery, courage, valor and, in many cases, extreme sacrifice. Sandy said it would be easy for them to sound fantastical, especially when they’re abridged.
Chris Cassidy, president of the National Medal of Honor Museum, said they paid careful attention to how the stories were presented. The museum isn’t here to glorify war or violence.
“That was very important,” Cassidy, a former Navy SEAL and retired NASA astronaut, said. “We wanted this to be not a military history museum, not a war museum, but a museum about the people.”
The stories are carefully presented in a way that demystifies the people awarded the Medal of Honor and contextualizes their actions within their lives.
“That’s what we wanted to do, is somehow bring the human aspect of their story,” Cassidy said. “Certainly we have to tell about their Medal of Honor action because that’s why they received the Medal, but in many cases that was just a small fraction of a tiny moment in a rich life.”
After the Medal
Many Medal of Honor recipients are often pulled from combat roles after their actions and assigned to publicity or war bond tours, or to train new troops using their experiences.
Their experiences can be valuable to new soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen, but putting them in that position also keeps the recipients out of harm’s way — especially after they have been labeled as national heroes.
That’s what happened with Kearby and one of the most renowned Medal of Honor recipients from World War II, Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone.
But recipients often don’t stay out of combat roles long. Sandy said many who survive the action for which they receive the Medal end up gravely wounded or killed later in the conflict.
“There are so many of them that I’ve spoken to. None of them believe that what they did was anything special,” Sandy said. “I think the special spotlight that the Medal puts on them makes them deal with that acceptance of, whether they got out and someone else didn’t, it pushes so many of them to go back and do more.”
So the recipients, many of whom could decide they were done fighting, return to war.
That’s what happened to Kearby, who was assigned to train pilots but refused to take “no” for an answer when seeking to join his pilots on certain missions. Sandy said that’s what happened on March 5, 1944, when Kearby was shot out of the air and killed in another mission over Papua New Guinea.
Basilone, too, refused to spend the rest of the war training new troops. After multiple requests to return to combat were denied by the Marine Corps, Basilone got approval and rejoined combat on the first day of the invasion of Iwo Jima.
There, he led his Marines off the beach, weathered storms of Japanese fire to single-handedly destroy a Japanese blockhouse and, while still under fire, led an American tank out of a minefield, according to the National World War II Museum.
He died on the beach at Iwo Jima. Sandy thinks Basilone couldn’t stand to know that his fellow Marines were still fighting and he was back in the States. It’s something Sandy said motivates many recipients who return to combat.
“The way it ends for all of them is always a very difficult thing to talk about,” he said. “Whether they got to do enough or they got out and their friends didn’t or something, I think that plays a large part into it.”
After years of construction, the National Medal of Honor Museum will open its doors for a celebration March 22, with speeches from Medal recipients, interactive exhibits, live music and fireworks ahead of the grand opening.
Cassidy said when the museum formally opens March 25, he hopes the experiences of the recipients resonate with visitors on a personal level.
“Every human being, we all love stories,” Cassidy said. “What makes a story even more impactful is when you can relate to it and kind of bring it into your own terms.”
Got a tip? Email James Hartley at jhartley@kera.org. You can follow James on X @ByJamesHartley.
Drew Shaw is a local government accountability for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org or @shawlings601.
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