Its All In The Name:

I dont know how many of you have seen or heard of the old "Kilroy was Here" doodle that was made famous during WWII. I had heard of it but had no idea of the whole meaning behind it. Some one was kind enough to send me an email which explains the whole "Kilroy was Here" thing. So here you go:

" Anyone born in the mid thirties knew Kilroy. We didnt know why but we had lapel pins with his nose hanging over the label and the top of his face above his nose with hands hanging over the label too. I believe it was orange in color. No one knew why he was so well known but we all joined in! Kind of a war story and now we know!

KILROY WAS HERE!

A carving of "Kilroy Was Here" found on the Washington DC WWII Monument

Who the heck was Kilroy?

In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, "Speak to America," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the REAL Kilroy, offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article.

Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroyfrom Halifax, Massachusetts, had evidence of his identity.

Kilroy was a 46 year old shipyard worker during the war who worked as a checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and check on the number or rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got paid by the rivet.

Kilroy would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would erase the mark.

Later on, an off-shoft inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.

One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about all the wages being paid to the riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then he realized ehat had been going on.

The tight spaces he crawled into to check the rivets didn't lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his checkmark on each job he inspected, but added KILROY WAS HERE in king-sized letters nest to the check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message. Once he did that, The riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks.

Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With the war on, however, ships were leavin the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn't time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced. His message appearently rang a bell witht he servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific.

Before war's end, "Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo.

To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that some jerk named Kilroy had "been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.

Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places imaginable ( it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of Arc De Triomphe, and eevn scrawled in the dust on the moon.)

As the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams routnely sneaked ashore on Japenese-held islands in the Pacific to map the terrain for coming invasions but U.S. troops ( and thus, presumably, were the first GI's there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy troops painting over the Kilroy logo. In 1945, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. Its first occupant was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in Russian), "Who is Kilroy?"

To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought alon officials from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he gave to his nine children as a Christmas gifr and set it up as a playhouse in the Kilroy front yard in Halifax, Massachusetts."

Interesting stuff! I have also found that his name means: Son of Gilroy (red, young). The red and the young part fit just fine...son of Gilroy not so much! We are very mcuh looking forward to our adventures together and yes we plan on leaving little notes saying "Kilroy was here!" as we go along :-) Our version of the old doodle