Veteran Highlight: Ken Gellatly

Ken Gellatly joined the Army in 1961.

"I got drafted, but they beat me to it. I was just getting ready to go enlist, but I wasn't sure I was going to go to the Army. I was maybe going to go into the Air Force. I wanted to be a pilot," Gellatly said.

Gellatly served his basic training in Fort Ord, Calif., then got shipped to Fort Campbell, Ky. as a mechanic in the 101st Airborne. "I was in the rec room playing pool the day Kennedy got shot," he said.

After that, he got orders to ship to Korea, where he served as a wheeled vehicle mechanic for 15 months.

"I worked on nearly anything that drove in the Army. I was in the 8th Engineers, 1st Cavalry. Then I got discharged and then I went into the reserves for another six to eight months," Gellatly said.

He considered re-enlisting, however a disagreement with his officers kept him from doing so. "I wanted to go to Germany," said Gellatly, adding that he would have been able to take his wife ReNae with him.

"But I'm bullheaded," he added.

Instead of re-enlisting, Gellatly hired out at Hill Air Force Base, where his qualifications were based on his Army experience, but didn't take into account his experience prior to the service.

"Well, one day, I'm in the motor pool, and the motor sergeant came up to me and said, 'What have you got for experience?' I told him that I used to own a garage and I built cars from the ground up," said Gellatly. "Well, our motor pool building was the next building for the personnel. When we was done talking, he walked right out the door, walked over to the personnel. When he came back in 10 minutes, he handed me a paper. I'd been promoted"

Gellatly's sister DeAnn also worked at Hill Air Force Base, and shortly after she started working there, a round of layoffs was threatened for about 1500 people. "It was ripping my heart out because that job was the only one that was paying her enough to survive. I didn't know what I was going to do, wasn't anything I could do," he said.

About a month later, Gellatly said they heard that if enough people retired, they wouldn't need to do layoffs. So, Gellatly took early retirement in hopes of saving his sister's job. "And maybe if I hadn't a done it, she might have still got to keep her job, but if I had to do it over, I would," he said.

Gellatly and his wife RaNae divorced in 1971, after 11 years of marriage.

"We went our separate ways and she got remarried and I got remarried. Through all that time, she was married 25 years and her husband died, it's probably been about 12 years ago now, maybe more. Me and my wife were married 23 years," said Gellatly.

Around 2012, Gellatly and his wife of 23 years separated and eventually divorced.

"That's when I moved up here with DeAnn,"Gellatly said. By that time, ReNae was living in Utah, and Gellatly went to visit her.

"She packed her overnight bag, and I brought her here to Lincoln, and she said all her life she wanted to live in Montana. And Lincoln has so much to offer, you know. She put her condominium up for sale. I made six trips hauling her stuff. I thought how can one woman own all this stuff," said Gellatly.

On the last trip back to Lincoln, when they stopped for gas in Dillon, ReNae told Gellatly she wanted to get remarried. "She said 'I've given it thought, I know what I want, and I want you,'" said Gellatly.

He called the Butte courthouse to see if they had a Justice of the Peace available to marry them. "They said yes, so we hurried and jumped into the truck," said Gellatly, noting that it was already 4 p.m. "Now, I'm pulling a trailer with all her belongings and I'm 75 miles away and I have no idea where the courthouse is. I made it there and found the courthouse in 45 minutes cuz I was going so fast."

"Now we're remarried again, and it's working out really beautiful," Gallatly said.