SGT, U.S. Army — Vietnam War
Leonard B. Keller was born on February 25, 1947, in Rockford, Illinois. Drafted into the Army in the spring of 1966, he deployed to Vietnam as a sergeant with Company A, 3rd Battalion, 60th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division.
On May 2, 1967, in the Ap Bac Zone, Keller’s unit was sweeping an area where an ambush had occurred earlier when it came under intense automatic-weapons and small-arms fire from multiple enemy bunkers, with snipers firing from nearby trees. Keller and a comrade, Specialist Four Raymond R. Wright, leaped onto a dike and launched a two-man assault: Keller systematically attacked the bunkers with a light machine gun while Wright threw grenades. Together they destroyed seven bunkers, drove the snipers from the treeline, and forced the enemy away from their unit — then, when their ammunition ran out, returned to help evacuate the wounded. Both men received the Medal of Honor for the assault, presented by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 19, 1968.
Keller was discharged in August 1968 and settled in Milton, Florida. For more than two decades he worked in the supply department at Naval Air Station Whiting Field, then as an inventory management specialist at the Naval Supply Center, retiring in December 2008. On October 18, 2009, he was fatally injured when his three-wheeled motorcycle rolled on him as he left a veterans’ club in Milton. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on November 30, 2009.
Sources: Wikipedia · Congressional Medal of Honor Society