ALBANY COUNTY — Terry Kindlon and his son Lee Kindlon, both prominent Albany attorneys, are also third- and fourth-generation combat veterans. They will serve as grand marshals of Albany’s Veterans Day Parade on Monday, Nov. 11. 

First in the family to serve was Terence’s grandfather Leander Bartlett, a “muleskinner” under General John J. Pershing, first during the Mexican Punitive Campaign and finally in France as part of the American Expeditionary Force during World War I. Following his service, Bartlett marched in an Armistice Day Parade every Nov. 11 throughout his life. 

His grandfather was “an enormously patriotic guy” who took Terry, when he was a young child of 4, to the parades, carrying him on his shoulders, Terry Kindlon recalled on Friday. 

Next was Terry’s father and Bartlett’s son-in-law, Edward Kindlon, a highly decorated World War II Army infantry sergeant who barely survived grave wounds he suffered while fighting fascists on the battlefields of Italy. 

Terry Kindlon said his father never spoke to him about his service but did tell Terry’s brother that he had been left for dead on the battlefield. When he woke up the next morning, Terry Kindlon related, Edward Kindlon was lying on his stomach, wounded, with his rifle stuck into the ground beside him and his helmet placed on top. “Someone clearly thought he was dead,” Terry Kindlon said. 

Eventually someone swooped in and picked him up, said Terry Kindlon, and he then recovered and stayed in the military through the end of the war. 

Brothers Bryan and Terry Kindlon both joined the Marines after graduating from Christian Brothers Academy a few years apart in the mid-1960s. Bryan Kindlon was a sergeant in the Mediterranean with the Navy’s Sixth Fleet. Terry was a “grunt,” he said, in Vietnam until he was wounded during the 1968 Tet Offensive.Terry Kindlon received a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star with a combat “v” for valor. 

There was no pressure to join, Terry Kindlon said. On the contrary, his father told him he was “nuts” when he announced his intention to join, but Terry Kindlon was young and full of testosterone, he said, and could not be dissuaded. He was accepted to flight school and had passed all the tests but insisted on being sent to Vietnam, he said. 

After his injury, he was asked what he wanted to do and he said, “Stay in.” That was not an option, he was told, so he said he would like to become a lawyer but couldn’t afford law school. The Veterans Administration’s Disabled Veterans Rehabilitation Program put him through law school, paying “every dime,” Kindlon said. Kindlon worked as a criminal-defense and civil-rights lawyer until his semi-retirement a year ago. 

A licensed pilot, Kindlon flies a twin-engine Cessna and volunteers with Angel Flight Northeast, which helps patients who need transportation to medical treatment far from home. 

Trial work is stressful, Kindlon told The Enterprise, and to relax he goes up his plane during bad weather to “fly around in the clouds,” because that requires him to be “totally present in the moment.” 

Lee Kindlon joined the Marines in 2000, while a law student. He was deployed to Iraq in 2005 as a Battalion Judge Advocate with the 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines. Terry Kindlon said his son found out his wife was pregnant with their first son just a few days before leaving for Iraq and returned home just days before his birth. 

Lee Kindlon is now a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Reserve. He is the founder of the Kindlon Law Firm based in Albany, which focuses on complex criminal defense, civil litigation, and appellate work.