Cleland, Joseph Maxwell “Max”

Joseph Maxwell “Max” Cleland

Nov. 9, 2021

Former U.S. senator and Veterans Administration leader Max Cleland of Georgia died Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021, more than 53 years after a live grenade dropped by a fellow soldier in Vietnam robbed him of three limbs. He was 79.

Cleland served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He was fighting in the Battle of Khe Sanh when he picked up a grenade that he thought had fallen off his jacket. The grenade – which was dropped by another soldier who hadn’t secured it properly – exploded in Cleland’s hand. His injuries were so severe that both of his legs and his right forearm had to be amputated. Cleland had to use a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He received honors including the Silver Star and Bronze Star for his military service.

The injuries, however, did not take the unfettered optimism and grit that helped him climb from Georgia politics to some of the nation’s top offices.A Democrat bound to a wheelchair most of his adult life, the 79-year-old Cleland was one of the first veterans from the killing grounds of Southeast Asia to enter American politics. He took a state senator’s seat in 1971, three years after his wounding, and went on to serve as top administrator in the U.S. Veterans Administration, as Georgia Secretary of State, a U.S. senator and an appointee in other federal agencies.

Max is survived by his cousins, Emily Carden Foster, Mercer T. Cleland, Jr., William ‘Bobby’ Cleland, Sara Ellen Cleland Wilkinson, Linda Cleland Breedlove, Brenda Cleland Worthey, Wayne Cleland, Helen Cleland, Wendell Powell, Marcia Kesler Attaway, Phillip William Kesler, Gary Ronald Kesler and lifelong friends to Max and the family, Bill and Betty Chapman, Wayne and Nell Howell, Bill Daniel and devoted friend, Linda A. Dean.