This from the Jesuit magazine America. It's a great short article. An excerpt below the link.
Kilmer studied at Rutgers College Grammar School, where he was the editor of the school’s paper. He went on to Rutgers College and Columbia University, graduating in May 1908. He married Aline Murray in June, and they would eventually have five children. In the following years, Kilmer became a well-known poet, literary critic, journalist and editor. He started teaching Latin at Morristown High School in New Jersey and writing essays, poems and reviews for several publications including The Nation and The New York Times.
He and Aline moved to New York, where he held several jobs, including working for Funk and Wagnall’s defining words for The Standard Dictionary. In 1912, the Jesuit priest James Daly, a professor of English at Campion College in Prairie du Chien, Wis., wrote to Kilmer to discuss literature. The two began exchanging letters, and a friendship developed that intensified when Kilmer’s fourth child, baby Rose, was stricken with polio and lost the use of her limbs. His relationship with Father Daly led Kilmer and his wife to become Catholics in 1913, the same year Kilmer published “Trees.” Kilmer would write to Father Daly on Jan. 9, 1914:
I believed in the Catholic position, the Catholic view of ethics and aesthetics, for a long time. But I wanted something not intellectual, some conviction not mental—in fact I wanted Faith....
Well, every morning for months I stopped on my way to the office and prayed in this church for faith. When faith did come, it came, I think, by way of my little paralysed daughter. Here lifeless hands led me; I think her tiny still feet know beautiful paths. You understand this and it gives me a selfish pleasure to write it down.
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In April 1917, the United States entered World War I. Kilmer enlisted, joining New York City’s “Fighting 69th” infantry regiment: “I was Irish and Catholic and would go to France sooner.” The 69th was led by Major “Wild Bill” Donovan, and the chaplain was the Rev. Francis P. Duffy. Shortly before Kilmer left to go overseas, his daughter Rose died. In France, Kilmer was a dedicated and courageous soldier, often undertaking dangerous reconnaissance missions. A fellow soldier, Sergeant Major Ester, described Kilmer:
He would always be doing more than his orders called for, i.e., getting much nearer to the enemy’s positions than any officer would be inclined to send him. Night after night he would lie out in No Man’s Land, crawling through barbed wires, in an effort to locate enemy positions and enemy guns, and tearing his clothes to shreds.
The German sniper brought him down on one such mission, and he was buried in France. He was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre. Father Duffy’s heroic efforts in the war, such as going into battle to carry back the wounded, would lead him to become the most decorated cleric in the history of the United States Army. A statue of Father Duffy stands in Duffy Square at the north end of Times Square in Manhattan.
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