by Daniel "Bear" Kelley
One of the earliest remembrances of my father, Robert A. Kelley, was him reading to us. It was a tradition in our home that "Dadz" would read aloud to us kids almost every evening. We’d all pile sideways onto my parent’s bed with my father laying in the middle, and he’d read a chapter or two of some book. Usually, one of us perched on his back. When we were living in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania one year, my sister, Sue, received “The Hobbit” for Christmas… I believe it was from Aunt Virginia (Aunt Vir), but I’m not sure about that. It could have been from my “Aunt” Eunice, who lived in New York. (She was some relation, but not really my Aunt) In any case, that became one of the favorites for read time, and was followed quickly by “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. My love of fantasy fiction stems from this, and my ability to follow many characters in a story also stems from that. Getting back to the point, my father’s reading voice is extraordinary, it is crystal clear and has considerable authority behind it. He enunciates his words well, which seems to be a rare gift these days. [I am pleased that my nephew, David McQuade, seems to have inherited my father’s ability and authority at reading aloud. I heard him once, in grade school, read the bible readings in church, and was extremely impressed! But I digress…] My father has quite the voice for public speaking, and has quite a command of the English language. I am absolutely sure my sisters and I acquired our love of books from my father, and I don’t think there is a greater gift out there. My sister, Marilyn McQuade, edits highly technical college and post-graduate text-books. My sister the sister, Barbara Kelley (Order of Preachers, Dominican Sisters), edited newspapers and was in charge of media relations for quite some time. My sister, Sue, and I are notorious book worms, and my wife has acquired the habit, too. Many nights are pleasantly spent by my wife and I reading in bed.
My father is a professional student. Even in retirement, he takes tax courses every year. I am not sure of all his degrees, but he has one in applied math. He has one in business administration, and a Ph.D. in Computer Sciences—and that Ph.D. was in 1969 (or thereabouts) when computers were mysterious black boxes that ran the space program. I still remember the day my father received his Ph.D. (1972?) It was absolutely inspiring. My sister Marilyn got the idea of running down to where he was sitting to exclaim “Daddy! Daddy! I only had one cavity!” (a take-off of a toothpaste commercial that was playing back then.) Of course, the rest of us kids had to follow suit. My father had the good fortune of sitting beside someone who was receiving a Ph.D. in Egyptology. So, he asked the gentleman, “Just what do you do with a degree in Egyptology?” and he received the immortal reply, “Teach other Egyptologists!” I think this is why my family all found itself with practical degrees.
This education habit has rubbed off on us kids as well. A college education was a given in my
father’s household, and we kids were expected to get the grades necessary to get us there. My sister
Marilyn has a Masters degree in Nuclear Engineering from MIT. My sister Barbara has a Masters degree
in Theology. My sister Sue has a J.D. (Law) degree, and I earned a Masters in Project Management.
The in-laws are not immune from this, either. My brother-in-law Pete McQuade has a Ph.D. in Aerospace
Engineering. My wife earned Bachelors in e-Business and is already planning on getting her Masters degree.
I’m toying with the idea of a Ph.D. in something completely impractical, like Ancient History, just to be
different.
I think all this starts from early memories of my father pouring over books at his small desk in the master bedroom. Almost every evening, he would come home from work, announcing loudly:
“Kids! Dogs! People! Various creatures of assorted sizes and shapes! All Hail!”
Then, he’d sit down with my mother for a glass of sherry and a game of Cribbage at the kitchen table.
Dinner would follow shortly thereafter, and all us kids were expected to be at the table! Then, my father
would retire to the master bedroom for several hours of study. There was very little excuse for us kids
not studying, when my father spent hours each night doing the same thing! And of course, once you get
into the studying habit, it is virtually impossible to stop. The evening would wind up with Mumbz and
Dadz at the kitchen table, usually with my sister Marilyn, playing Scrabble. (Hint: Never play my sister
Marilyn in Scrabble, unless you like to lose badly.
Hobbies were something my dad encouraged. My big hobby was model trains. My sister Barb’s hobby was books. My sister Sue raised pigeons, which was interesting. My sister Marilyn crocheted all kinds of things. (She used to sit in a tree, watching the world go by, while crocheting all kinds of things.) My mother had a ceramic shop, and my dad had his wood shop. I learned about wood working from him. He always wanted to build a sailboat, and even had our home in Pennsylvania modified before construction to allow him to build a hull in the basement and still get it out. I feel very sorry that he never got to build that boat, and now seems to have given it up. I also feel sorry that us kids consumed so many resources that his wood working was always limited by the quality of his tools. His drill press and radial arm saw were incomparable, but that table saw of his never could hold a set. You could actually see the blade drop and tilt while it was running. He never got a router. Despite the limits to his tools, my father managed to create some wonderful things. He still has a desk he made from plywood cubes. (My mom designed it… I think) He built Sue’s pigeon coop. He built a really cool roller coaster for my sisters’ imaginary villages. He built me a Great Lakes ore freighter out of a 4x4 for me to float in my bathtub. (Funny, the Great Lakes always seems to pop up in the Kelley family.) He also built my train tables, and piles of shelves for my mother’s ceramic shop. He instilled in many of us a love for Gilbert & Sullivan light operettas, a love I have tried to share with my wife (poor lady!).
My father is also quite a lovable character. I still remember him outside, mowing the lawn. He would wear blue and white boldly-striped shorts, with a yellow/orange plaid shirt and a big sombrero to keep the sun off his face. Sometimes, he would wear golf shoes to aerate the lawn. He got me hooked on puns and silliness. I developed my philosophy of “The world needs more silly” from him. He loves to laugh, and his laugh is a rich hearty one. He would bring my mother a cup of coffee while sneaking around on tip-toes with a huge fake grin on his face and with his pinky finger extended to the side in a faux-genteel gesture. We tended to play family games every so many Saturdays, and would usually bet peanuts. Somewhere is a priceless photograph of my father mourning over his last peanut. There never seemed to be a shortage of peanuts to eat after a game. There is another photograph somewhere of my father sitting at a card table in his pajamas, running my electric trains.
He has an extraordinary stoicism in the face of adversity. I remember once, late in my high school career, when our big 1971 Chevy Impala had a balky starter. My girlfriend and I found ourselves stalled out on one of the big roads of Bloomington, Minnesota. A few moments later, some drunk lady slammed her car into the back of the Chevy at 30mph or greater. The impact threw the Chevy sideways and bent the whole back of the car under itself. The car was absolutely a total loss. The next day, when we went to the tow truck storage yard to remove the personal effects, the only thing my father said about the wreck was “Don’t ever let your mother see this car.” He never shouted at me about the car, or scolded me or anything like that at all.
One thing for which I am very grateful, that I received from my father, is the willingness to go where the jobs exist. If you can’t get work here, go wherever there is work. If the mill closes here, find another town with a mill and move there. I would not be as happy as I am today, had I stayed in one place. As a side benefit, I have seen much of the country up close and personal. I was born in L.A., when my father had a job with Sperry Univac. Sperry moved my father to Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. He later found a job in Massachusetts with Data General. Business was not good for Data General, so he found a job with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. He taught for a few years with the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. The next stop was Honeywell in Bloomington, Minnesota, where I graduated High School. After I graduated college and got a job, Honeywell transferred him to Clearwater, Florida. When that job went away, he commuted to a job across the state at Harris in Melbourne, from which he retired. He taught me that upward mobility required mobility. He also taught me to love all regions of this country.
There are thousands of little things that my father did that are memorable. He has a talent for carving creative pumpkins at Halloween. One memorable one was a solid geometric, an oval in the center for a nose, with a concentric ring containing the eyes and mouth. Another time, he carved a pumpkin upside down, just for the fun of it. My mother, who handed out the candy, heard “Mrs. Kelley, your pumpkin is upside down!”—ALL night long! It is a real pity that kids can’t enjoy Halloween anymore. He built a nice shutter-like arrangement for our downstairs bathroom for our home in Pennsylvania. It consisted of wooden paint stir sticks attached to two wooden runners. The sticks were cut to a point at the top, and when the thing was painted, it looked just like a little picket fence. He hung it to the window frame on hinges, so the fence could be swung aside for cleaning the windows. The top runner of this fence was drilled every few inches to receive plastic flowers. Once he used aluminum gutters as forms to create a cement border around my mother’s flower beds. The resulting border was arrow straight. He loved to take the family on “Fall Walks” to see the colors of the leaves changing. Unfortunately, in Florida where he lives with my mother, the leaves never seem to change colors. Hmmm.
One of my most memorable evenings occurred sometime in my college career. I was home for the summer (for one of the last summers), and just sat down to watch “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.” It was close to 11pm or so. What made it memorable was that my father just came in from jogging, and I asked him to join me for the movie. He said he’d watch a few minutes with me. Several minutes into the movie, he called my mother in to see it with us. My sister Barbara joined a few minutes later. For those who don’t remember, that move is over 3 hours long, and with late night commercials and such, the broadcast was considerably longer. Around 2:30 in the morning, the movie finally ended, but in the meantime, it had been one of the lovliest little family get togethers. We simply spent time together, enjoying each other’s company, laughing at the movie, having pop corn that my mother made, and chatting in the commercials. Now, that’s what the word “Family” is all about.