Kellen Smith’s family, friends recall his smile, military service in Iraq

Ah oh, smokestack lightnin’

Shinin’ just like gold

Why don’t ya hear me cryin’?

A whoo hoo, whoo hoo, whoo

             – Howlin’ Wolf

People remember his smile.

Four months after Kellen Smith, 28, took his own life after a three-county police chase, friends and family shared stories of the young man whose life touched theirs. They remember Smith as a man who loved to make people laugh, a man who loved his son, his niece, his country, and a man who they believe faced his own demons behind the smile.

On a Friday afternoon, Kellen’s parents, Jeff and Carolee Smith, reflected on their son’s life and ultimately his death.

Kellen was the middle of three children and grew up with a sister, Erin, and brother, Westin. From an early age, he loved being outside. Whether it was swimming, running, jumping off buildings, floating the river or surfing, he thrived on adventure.

“He wasn’t afraid of, shoot, I don’t know, anything,” Jeff said.

“No, he wasn’t afraid of anything,” Carolee echoed as she shared a story of Kellen’s younger years. “He was a lifeguard. He worked at the Point Comfort swimming pool and they used to jump off that roof of the thing at the Point Comfort pool,” she said as she and Jeff chuckled with remembrance.

“They probably weren’t supposed to do that,” Jeff chimed in.

“He was very daring, but he was very athletic,” Carolee said of her son, who was named after football player Kellen Winslow. “He was a very fast runner. When he was little he would say ‘See how many times I can run around the house? Time me mom, see how fast I can run.’

“Even when he was in the service, he could have a cigarette in one hand and smoke the whole time he was running. I don’t know how he did it, but he was quick,” Carolee said.

“He could just light up a room. He had a knack,” Carolee added. “He was one of the funniest men I ever knew.”

“His last birthday we were on the Riverwalk, and we were at an Irish pub, and he grabbed an old lady and danced with her,” Jeff shared with a laugh. “She was like 70 or 80.”

“He tried to dance with me,” Carolee said. “He went and grabbed that old lady, and he was spinning her.”

“Her daughter said it made her night,” Jeff said. “He spun her around, and I was hoping he didn’t pull her arm out of the socket and that she didn’t have arthritis.”

“That was his last birthday,” Carolee said. “He wasn’t a perfect guy, but you would have loved him. He was fun and mischievous. People were drawn to him”

Serving his Country

At 2 p.m., Jan. 1, 2005, Calhoun High School graduate Kellen J. Smith stood amidst 3,000 members of the 56th Brigade Combat Team, 36th Infantry Division as Baylor University hosted the largest overseas deployment of Texas Army National Guard troops since World War II. The troops were destined for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Smith was 19 at the time.

Kellen completed infantry training in April 2004 at Fort Benning, Ga., before spending time at Fort Hood preparing for deployment to Fallujah, Iraq.

Kellen’s army buddies remember him as a fun-loving seeker of truth.

“I am not going to sugar coat it; neither of us were model soldiers,” one of his buddies said in an email to Carolee. “We did our jobs and nothing but that. We asked questions and fought for truth. Kellen had a way over there of lightening some of the darkest moods. He once ordered a kiddie pool, from God knows where, and filled it up with water and was in it in flip flops. He said it reminded him of home. The way he talked about his family and what the coast meant to him made it seem like the coolest place on earth every time he told it.”

Brandon Blain lived and worked along side Kellen in Iraq.

“Me and Kellen made our own fun while we tried to keep ourselves from going crazy,” Blain said.

Kellen and Blain spent many an evening sitting on a little gazebo, smoking cigarettes and watching camel spiders – when they were not challenging others to a little game of two-on-two, that is.

“We played against anyone that cared to challenge us,” Blain said. “That wasn’t a good idea. We were two of the smallest guys there, but we won more than we lost.”

When Blain thinks of Kellen, he remembers a man that was always happy and wanted to help others get happy.

“He had a way with words,” Blain said as he recalled the night Kellen read a letter that a World War II veteran had sent him. “We’re sitting there playing basketball, eating hot wings and someone was complaining about double guard shift, when Kellen says ‘Imagine being 17, dropped in Normandy on hedgerow. We don’t have it bad at all.’”

Blain’s voice choked a bit as he shared more stories.

“One night I had to work the guard tower and Kellen knew that wasn’t my favorite thing to do,” Blain said. “He knew I would be upset. He told me he was ‘coming soon’ and that I would see him.”

“He had tied glow sticks to the Humvee,” Blain said with a laugh. “It looked like a UFO. Surprisingly, he didn’t get in trouble for that.”

“Another time, we got grapes, yeast and sugar and attempted to make wine,” Blain said. “Somehow we got the heads up that the sergeant was coming and we got everything slid under the bed, but Kellen was still wearing latex gloves. He said, ‘I was just about to practice giving an IV.’ So the sergeant watched while I got an IV. He was quick-witted and there was never a dull moment.”

“He just liked people to be happy,” Blain said as he recalled the day a supply truck carrying cereal and chips rolled over. “There was Kellen eating a bag of chips, offering them to the Iraqis. He even liked to see the Iraqis smile and laugh with him.”

“I’ll always remember him sitting there smiling and laughing and telling me I needed to go surfing with him.”

“I was shocked,” Blain said of Kellen’s final hours. “I never suspected it. Kellen was always happy. Every time I talked to him he seemed up.”

With sadness in his voice, Blain said, given one more chance to see Smith, he would tell him “I love him and I miss him.” Blaine shared one final story.

“It was pretty stupid, kinda; it was something we would do over there. We would put our left pinky in the air and say ‘pimpin’.”

After the service

Kellen returned home from the service in 2006. The man that returned was a different man from the one who left. While outwardly he still wore a smile and loved to make people happy, inwardly something had changed, his family said.

“In his later years, he was very close to us in a lot of ways,” Carolee said, “But there’s a lot of things, obviously, that we didn’t know that was going on in his brain and I think he got more and more withdrawn in a sense, but in a way was still close to us. I don’t know how to explain that otherwise. He would rather be at home than out running the roads, and of course, he was getting older but he just never really got grounded after that stint. It’s hard to point to one thing specifically, he just never got grounded. There is an order to things he just couldn’t seem to get.”

“He saw some things over there,” Jeff said. “If he sat around too long he would start thinking about stuff. He had friends and comrades killed over there.”

While not referring to Kellen specifically, it is not uncommon for someone who has served in Iraq or other war zones to return a different person than the one that left, said Joe McCracken, M.Ed,, LPC, LPCS. McCracken, formerly of Port Lavaca, is a counselor in East Texas who often works with clients that experienced war or traumatic events.

“They see stuff over there that is unbelievable,” McCracken said. “The ones that come back and don’t talk about it have more trouble readjusting to civilian life and self destructive behavior becomes evident.”

Kellen traveled for his work in oilfield production, but made regular trips home to see to the two youngsters that played an important part in his life – one was his 18-month-old son, Owen, and the other was his 8-year old niece, Kendyl.

“He loved his son, and he loved his niece. He adored them both,” Carolee said.

“Kendyl looked up to Kellen in so many ways,” said Kellen’s sister, Erin Smith. “He made mistakes as we all have, but to her he could do no wrong.”

One place where Kellen seemed to be at peace was at the home of his friends Teri Austin and Megan Wright.

“When Kellen got back from Iraq, he seemed to find peace at our house,” Austin said. “We would always just hang out; he was just like my kid. He was dealing with a lot of things mentally, and sometimes we would get home and he would be there sitting out at the end of our pier. He said that was his ‘peace place.’”

“He said, ‘Teri, my friends don’t understand. They want to celebrate and I have nothing to celebrate,’” Austin said.

“There are so many bits and pieces of things,” Austin continued. “He loved to surf, and he loved the water. He was so excited about taking Owen surfing for the first time. There were so many things he was looking forward to in life.”

“Even though you think you are one of the closest people to him, but still you don’t see the signs,” Austin said as tears filled her eyes. “I think that’s what hurt me the worst is that we were close, and I knew he was going through things, but I never realized it was to that point.”

“I feel guilty that I didn’t see it was that bad. But then after it was all over with, you start saying ‘OK, there it is, there’s the sign, we should have seen it, we should have read more into it, we should have done something, and it’s past that.”

“He was just a great kid. He was always happy; always just made sure everybody was happy around him. That was one of the best things about Kellen, I think. He didn’t like any negative vibes around him. He always made sure everyone around was happy and enjoying life. That’s what he did; he enjoyed life – a very short-lived life, but he enjoyed it,” Austin said.

After his military service, Kellen reconnected with his long time friend, Casey Kartchner, who graduated with Kellen in 2003. Kartchner and Kellen could often be found eating wings and drinking a beer or two at Buffalo Wild Wings.

“He was always laughing and smiling,” said Kartchner as he recalled a story about the time Kellen tried to teach him to surf when the two were in high school.

“We went school clothes shopping one year. I had some school clothes money from my parents and some that I had saved up,” Kartchner said. “I did get some school clothes, but I ended up going and buying a surfboard, too. I don’t think my dad knew that, but he might after this. We went and tried to do the surfing thing after that, but I was never any good at it, so I gave up. I gave my board away.”

“There are certain things that happen that remind me of him; maybe a certain song comes on,” Kartchner continued. “I know one song we always listened to together was ‘Smoke Stack Lightening’ by Howlin’ Wolf. I think we played it so much, people started to hate it.”

“He was a big Texans fan,” Kartchner went on to say. “He always went to the games. Every time we tried to go, I was working. I look back at those days and think, ‘Man, I should have just took a day off and went with him.’”

“We always had good times… I still don’t want to believe it,” Kartchner shared.

The final day

Wednesday, Sept. 18, is forever etched is the minds of those who loved Kellen Smith. None of them had any idea that this day would be his last.

That day, Smith traveled to Port Lavaca from his out of town job. At 12:30 p.m. Smith texted Kartchner “Headed to PL, got a visit with little man from 4 to 8.”

“He loved his son very much he would do anything in the world to be with that boy,” Kartchner said.

Kellen texted Kartchner again at 3 p.m. and asked if Kartchner wanted to get together after the visit. The two texted about plans to get together later that evening, Kartchner said.

Kellen then dropped by his mom’s office.

“We had a really good visit. He was really happy he was going to meet his little boy at McDonalds,” Carolee said.

Kellen went on to McDonalds and the scenario that unfolded was one that no one that knew him ever anticipated.

“I had just heard from Kellen on my cell phone and he goes, ‘Mom we are getting some chicken nuggets and I’ll do Facetime in a little bit,’” Carolee said.

“He put the baby on the phone for a minute and then he said, ‘I gotta roll, we’re gonna get some chicken nuggets.’”

“Someone knew he had a warrant out,” Jeff said. “And we were told that someone called in and said he was at McDonalds.”

Kartchner was driving into town from the Six-Mile area about 5 p.m. the last time he saw Smith.

“As I was headed into town on 1090, I passed by him he was going about 100 mph with police cars on his tail.” Kartchner said. “We looked at each other.”

That brief moment would be last time Kartchner would see his friend. “I called his mom and then turned on the scanner on my phone and I listened to a play-by-play until Jackson County,” he said.

According to police reports, after receiving a tip that he would be there, officers were at McDonalds to arrest Smith on a warrant for violation of probation when he fled in his 2006 Red Dodge pick up.

“I’m not sure how he got out of there,” Jeff said.

According to Port Lavaca Police Chief James Martinez, the pursuit entered Victoria County at approximately 5:15 p.m. and at 5:27 p.m., Smith entered Jackson County, which is where Port Lavaca police discontinued pursuit.

“We determined from our perspective that it was too dangerous for us to proceed, so we stopped and we headed back,” Martinez said. “After that, Jackson County and DPS took over the pursuit, and it ended in Jackson County.”

“The lady police officer called Carolee and said ‘Just tell your son to pull over,’” Jeff said.

“I had a lot of thoughts when he took off,” Carolee said. “Obviously something crazy happened but I never dreamed that, and it happened that quick. I was in a panic and said, ‘We’ve got to do something.’”

“I tried to call and text, but he wouldn’t answer,” Carolee said. “There was no communication.”

“He was going like a hundred miles an hour. I don’t know how he made a couple of those turns he was going so fast,” Jeff said.

At 5:33 p.m. Kartchner texted Smith these final words, “Just stop, dude.”

Texas Department of Public Safety trooper Gerald Bryant said in September that DPS and Jackson County Sheriff’s officers were waiting at the intersection of FM 234 and Hwy. 59, where they spotted Smith’s vehicle. Bryant said FM 234 North hits Hwy. 59 in a horseshoe shape approximately 10-miles long, and the Edna Police Department and JCSO successfully spiked the front two tires of the vehicle approximately nine miles into the road.

“After the spikes, the vehicle continued for approximately another mile,” Bryant said at the time.

At 5:37 p.m. the pursuit ended.

Bryant said the vehicle came to rest in the yard of a resident of Jackson County. When an officer approached the vehicle he noticed that Smith had a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head by use of a revolver. Edna Emergency Medical Services transported Smith to Citizens Medical Center in Victoria before being transported by helicopter to Memorial Hermann Texas Trauma Institute in Houston.

“It was a terrible chain of events,” Martinez said. “It was a tragedy.”

As Jeff and Carolee tried to determine what was happening, they were receiving calls from friends and family as events were also played out on Facebook. The couple knew things had turned terribly wrong when they received a call stating that Kellen was being flown to a Houston hospital.

“We just thought he had been in an accident,” Carolee said. “I think it was a fireman that called me. He said there’s been an accident, and they’ve flown him to Hermann Trauma.”

Jeff and Carolee did not know Smith had shot himself until they arrived at the hospital. Smith was kept alive long enough for his parents to make the trip from Port Lavaca to Houston.

“He was gonna die. When we got to that trauma center, I knew this wasn’t good. To me it didn’t matter it was a car accident or whatever, we knew that he was going,” Carolee said. “She (the doctor) said there’s nothing we can do.”

Smith was pronounced dead at 10.20 p.m.

Moving on

“After all this was said and done, I got that (police) report that went moment by moment from ‘anonymous caller called in’ and it goes on moment to moment to moment,” Carolee said. “I also listened to the audio clip which I never should have done. And I’m thinking, ‘What the hell was he thinking during that ride?’”

“We’re glad he didn’t hurt anyone else,” Jeff said. “I don’t agree with what he did, but I wasn’t in his shoes.”

“He was tortured,” Carolee said. “Honestly, after thinking about it and having a few months to think about it, he was tired. He didn’t want to disappoint us anymore and his family. I know that meant a ton to him, what we thought. Even though he was in trouble with the law here and there, I know deep, deep down, disappointing us was not what he wanted to do. He wasn’t thinking right.”

Carolee and Jeff retraced the route that led to their son’s final moments.

“I wanted to know exactly where he died,” Carolee said.

Since Kellen’s death, life has been a series of good days and bad days for Jeff and Carolee.

“Those first few weeks I guess you are just really numb, but this town, oh my God, so many people have been really really nice to us.” Carolee said. “And they were before, anyway, but… a lot of support; many people have contacted us saying they are thinking of us.”

“You don’t know what you are going to be like from one day to the next,” Carolee said as she shared a story of visiting a tattoo shop with plans to have a surfboard tattoo that Kellen had duplicated on her arm.

“Jeff was trying to decide what he wanted. Jeff is real particular and not quite sure what he wanted. I knew already, I knew all I wanted was that picture off Kellen’s arm, and I knew I was going to put it in the same spot. So I sat there, and then I said, ‘I’ve got to go, I’ve got to get the hell out of here.’ And Jeff said ‘I guess we’ll come back.’ So off we went, and then the next day, I went right back and got it by myself. It was just one of those days; you just don’t know what you are going to be like.”

“But today was a good day, real good,” she said.

Carolee said she often sees signs of Kellen.

“Kellen was one of those kids that if he didn’t get his way he would nag you until he did. Jeff thinks I’m crazy, but sometimes when he leaves for work in the morning, it’s like, ‘Mom, mom, mom, mom,’ I’m telling you I can hear him just as if he is right there. I carry around a shirt of his in my car, just because it is his and it is my car.”

“I hear him,” Carolee said. “I do. And I talk to him. I feel like he is with me a lot.”

Carolee is not the only one who sees signs.

Just before Christmas, Austin shared a story that she believes was a sign of Kellen.

“I walked down to the beach and when I got about 20 feet from the beach I noticed an empty water bottle under the palapa,” Austin said. “I took a few steps to go and retrieve it and noticed Kellen’s flag on the hill in the grass. I picked it up and was headed to pick up the water bottle. It was gone. I thought I was going crazy. Flag in hand, I headed to the palapa to put the flag back up and the bottle was dancing in the water. It was the craziest thing. It kept dancing back and forth near the shore just out of reach. I watched it for a long time and then took a few steps down the beach, turned around and it was gone.”

While there are good days and bad days, the sadness is sometimes overwhelming.

Carolee said for her there is no particular time when she feels the loss.

“But for Jeff, it seems like we’re off… I don’t know, but we can look at each other, and you just kind of know,” she said.

Church has helped the Smith’s cope with the loss.

“I’m glad we go,” Carolee said. “Not that it makes us perfect Christians, I don’t mean that, but if we didn’t go I don’t know what kind of shape we’d be in. Because I know where he is, and I have peace with that now, but you do wonder that; you wonder. We’ll make it, though.”