John F. Kelly (Marine)
John Francis Kelly (born May 11, 1950) is the fifth and current United States Secretary of Homeland Security. He is a retired United States Marine Corps general and the former commander of United States Southern Command, the Unified Combatant Command responsible for American military operations in Central America, South America and the Caribbean. Kelly previously served as the commanding general of the Multi-National Force—West in Iraq from February 2008 to February 2009, and as the commander of Marine Forces Reserve and Marine Forces North in October 2009. Kelly succeeded General Douglas M. Fraser as commander of U.S. Southern Command on November 19, 2012. Kelly was succeeded by Navy Admiral Kurt W. Tidd on January 14, 2016.
Kelly became Secretary of Homeland Security in January 2017 under President Donald Trump.
Kelly was born on May 11, 1950 in Boston, Massachusetts into an Irish Catholic family. He grew up in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston. Before he reached the age of 16, he hitchhiked to Washington State and rode the trains back, including a freight-hop from Seattle to Chicago. He then served for one year as a United States Merchant Marine, where he says "my first time overseas was taking 10,000 tons of beer to Vietnam".
In 1970, when his mother told him that his draft number was coming up, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. He was discharged from active duty as a sergeant in 1972, after serving in an infantry company with the 2nd Marine Division, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He was commissioned on December 27, 1975 as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps via Officer Candidates School. In 1976, he graduated from the University of Massachusetts Boston and, in 1984, he received a Master of Science degree in National Security Studies from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.
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