One of Warren County’s few surviving veterans of World War II, Marvin Emmett Kell, Jr, passed from this life Sunday morning at Willow Branch Health & Rehabilitation Center In McMinnville

The Van Buren County native celebrated his 101st birthday Feb. 14.

Friends and admirers remember Kell’s personal virtues, notably his modesty, humility and deference toward others.

“He was as fine a man as you could ever hope to meet,” his first cousin Charles L Smith, 98, affirmed at his residence at Webb House retirement center.  Kell and Smith both served in the US Navy in the Second World War.  

“A very kind and gentle person,” retired Warren County Executive Herschel Wells said of Kell, a native of Van Buren County and longtime employee of the former Genesco shoe manufacturing plant in McMinnville.

“He never wanted to be first,” Wells added.  “Mr Kell was a very respectable, gracious and humble person.”

Tommy Savage, a member of the Warren County Commission and decades-long friend of Kell’s, offered the perspective that Kell “showed everybody you don’t have to be loud to commend respect.”   On the contrary, Kell earned the attention and respect of peers by his gentle spirit and the value of his principles.   “He was a pleasant person” whose nobility of character and genuine concern for the wellbeing and feelings of others radiated a uniquely positive influence.

“He was a Southern Christian gentleman,” Savage commented, noting, “he was a thinker who considered his words before he spoke.”

                Kell served from 1943 to 1945 on newly commissioned troop transport and destroyer escort ship USS Jordan operating in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.  Many of the troops the Jordan ferried from US ports to Europe would participate in the monumental D-Day Invasion of France commending June 6 1944.

In addition to her transport service she played a central role in experiments with new technologies for detecting German submarines that were inflicting heavy losses on Allied shipping of troops and war supplies to the Nazi-dominated European continent. 

See the full obituary on page 2A.