04/14/2026
🇺🇸🇺🇸 This week’s Member Feature honors Jim Keller, whose life of service and perseverance inspired the creation of the Welcome Home Soldier Monument in Albia, Iowa.
🔴🔴🔴 Jim's full story below. It’s worth the read, worth the share, and worth passing along so more people can be inspired by Jim’s incredible story and legacy.
Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1969, Keller served with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam, walking point on dangerous combat missions and earning the Bronze Star with First Oak Leaf Cluster for valor. Like many Vietnam veterans, he returned home without the welcome he deserved, carrying that hurt for decades. After retirement, a simple handshake and the words “Welcome home, Soldier” sparked a vision to create a place honoring all who served. What began as an idea among fellow veterans grew into a remarkable seven-acre memorial built through community support, featuring tribute walls, flags, statues, and spaces of reflection dedicated to past, present, and future service members.
We cannot thank Jim enough for bringing this vision to life and creating a place where remembrance, respect, and gratitude live on for generations. Because of his dedication, every veteran who walks those grounds is finally welcomed home — exactly as they should be.
🔴🔴🔴 Read more about Jim and the inspiring story behind his service, sacrifice, and the legacy he created for future generations:
Jim Keller & the Welcome Home Soldier Monument: A Founding Story
Jim Keller's story begins not on a battlefield, but in a small Iowa town where hardship arrived early. In 1959, at just 12 years old, Jim lost his father in a vehicle accident, leaving the family with very little. "We were so poor the cockroaches moved out," he recalls with a laugh — but he is quick to add, "To this day, my mother is my hero." Even in those lean years, someone was always there when the family truly needed help. That lesson never left him.
A newlywed when he was drafted, Jim entered the United States Army in June 1969 and was sent to Vietnam with the legendary 101st Airborne Division. He walked point — one of the most dangerous assignments in combat — for nine and a half months in the jungles of Vietnam. Around his six-month mark, he was promoted to Sergeant. He served until 1971.
On October 4, 1970, Sergeant Jim Keller proved exactly the kind of soldier he was.
While serving as a rifleman in Company B, 2nd Battalion (Airmobile), 327th Infantry during combat operations in Phu Loc District, Republic of Vietnam, Keller and his unit were set up in an ambush when he spotted a squad of enemy soldiers approaching their position. He immediately engaged. Throughout the encounter, he delivered accurate fire on enemy positions. During a subsequent sweep of the area, he again engaged the enemy and routed them from the area entirely.
For his actions that day, Sergeant Jim Keller was awarded the Bronze Star with First Oak Leaf Cluster — meaning he had been recognized for valor not once, but twice. His official citation reads:
"Sergeant Keller's personal bravery and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army."
Coming home should have felt like a triumph. Instead, it felt like a second wound.
“When soldiers came off the plane in their uniforms, people spit on them and shouted unforgettable words of hate that still touch their mind, heart and soul to this day,” Jim remembers. "I put my uniform away and put the war out of my mind." The men and women who had sacrificed everything were not welcomed — they were shunned. "The same ones that sent us there now abandon us," he says. The years passed. Jim rebuilt his life, spending 34 years with Hy-Vee Food Stores, rising to store manager, and serving communities in Albia and his hometown of Chariton, Iowa. But the hurt never fully faded.
Then came the moment that changed everything.
After retiring, Jim was personally invited to hear speaker, Gerald Coffee, a U.S. Navy pilot who had spent more than six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Before the event, Coffee walked up to Jim, shook his hand, and said words Jim had never heard directed at him before: “Thank you for your service. Welcome home, Soldier."
"That was the first time anybody had ever done that to me — in 34 years," Jim says. "In fact, that's where the name came from."
That handshake lit a fire. Jim returned home to Albia with a vision — not a small gesture, but something lasting. "I never wanted a few rocks, a flag, and a sign that said thank you," he says. "I wanted a monument that expressed the honors you fought for, a place that truly says: Thank you."
Twenty-one years ago this June, Jim gathered a group of fellow veterans at a local bank. They voted unanimously to build a monument honoring all who had served the United States of America — past, present, and future. The planning began immediately, and the Welcome Home Soldier Monument was born.
What started as a dream is now a stunning seven-acre site at 6451 Highway 34 in Albia, Iowa — one that has grown piece by piece through privately funded donations, local grant money, and countless hours of volunteer labor. The monument features a 124-foot black granite wall engraved with the names of those that have served our country, 100 American flags and 50 state flags each dedicated to an individual veteran and representing the entire United States, 21 white crosses symbolizing the 21-gun salute dedicated by the families of servicemen and representing those that will never make it home, buried in a faraway land, three bronze battlefield crosses, a life-size replica of the Iwo Jima statue, a Civil War bugler that plays Reveille each morning and Taps each evening, three bronze life-size soldiers on the Vietnam Veterans memorial surrounded by a granite wall inscribed “We were the best America had. Brothers who fought without America’s support. Brothers who returned without America’s welcome. Brothers who will always be the best America had.”, and a haunting life-size statue of three soldiers protecting each other on the Korean War memorial. “I never wanted this to be a monument for the county or town, I wanted it for the whole United States,” states Keller.
Through legal challenges and critics, Jim has never wavered. When an outside group demanded the removal of the Roman crosses, Jim held firm. The county stood with him. A law firm took the case at no cost. Over 3,000 people rallied in support. The monument endured.
As President Woodrow Wilson said on Flag Day in 1917: "This flag, which we honor and under which we serve, is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation.” For Jim Keller, those words are not history — they are personal.
"The one thing that kept me grounded was my love and respect for our American flag," he says.
Today, Jim's goal remains what it has always been: to create a history lesson for every generation. "We want to tear your heart out," he says with quiet conviction, "and when you leave — we'll hand it back to you."
The Welcome Home Soldier Monument is open 24 hours a day, every day. Come walk the path. Read the names. Feel what it means.
🇺🇸Welcome home, Soldier🇺🇸
