Dartmouth-Hitchcock physician also treats wounded soldiers as National Guard surgeon

NASHUA – Dr. James Kelly joined the Army National Guard at age 58 because of something his son told him. But the motivation to serve came not from a younger generation, but older ones. “Soldiers are bleeding, and we need docs,” Kelly’s son, a soldier in Iraq, told him in 2007. As he considered offering his services, Kelly thought of servicemen and women who paved the way for the freedom he now enjoys. Kelly was able to attend medical school in Italy in the late Cold War era “because of lines of people who stood on the wall and said to the Soviets, you are not going beyond this line,” Kelly said. Likewise, Kelly and others can travel the world, drive a Toyota and watch a Sony television because of “long lines of people” who made the skies safe for air travel and the seas safe for shipping, he said. So Kelly, who practices family medicine at  Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, decided to enlist. He first eyed what he calls “the big Army” but found the route easier if he went through the Army National Guard. Another Dartmouth-Hitchcock staff member, Dr. Abe Timmons, is an Air Force flight surgeon and the clinical chair of the medical center’s Occupational Medicine Program in Nashua. “What the big Army couldn’t do in three years, the Guard did in six months,” Kelly said. Kelly is a brigade surgeon for the 197th Fires Brigade .