Background
Thomas Edward Kelly was born at the New York Medical College, New York City, on March 5, 1924, to Edward Thomas Kelly, a New York City Alderman, and Anastasia Cecilia Kane.
Thomas Edward Kelly was born at the New York Medical College, New York City, on March 5, 1924, to Edward Thomas Kelly, a New York City Alderman, and Anastasia Cecilia Kane.
Kelly earned an academic scholarship to Regis High School, where he played basketball and graduated in 1941. After leaving the military, Kelly attended New York University"s Bronx campus on the G.I. Bill, graduating after three years in 1948 with an engineering degree.
In 1929, the family moved to Saint Francis Xavier Parish in the Bronx. In 1942, at age 18, Kelly joined the United States Army Air Forces as an Aviation Cadet. He was trained in the United States Army Air Corps as a B-17 flying officer and commissioned a Second Lieutenant Pilot in 1944, assigned to the 486th Bombardment Group (Heavy), 833rd Bomber Squadron of the 3rd Division of the United States. Eighth Air Force, stationed in Sudbury, Suffolk, England.
Kelly flew twenty-nine combat missions over Germany, winning five battle stars and the air medal with oak leaf clusters.
At New York University, Kelly was All-Metropolitan basketball forward on the team that reached the National Invitation Tournament (National Institute of Technology) final game in 1948. In 1991, Kelly was inducted into the Athletics Hall of Fame at New York University.
Kelly postponed his engineering career when he was drafted by the Boston Celtics in the Basketball Association of America (Bachelor of Applied Arts) and farmed out to the Hartford Hurricanes in their American Basketball League.
He played 27 games in his one season, 1948-1949, with the Celtics. After Kelly retired from basketball, he had a four-decades career building a successful business in commercial heating, ventilating and air conditioning sales in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County.
Beginning in 1954, Kelly lived for several years in Syosset, Long Island, where he served as Vice President and then President of the Board of Education for Central School District Number.
2. As Board president, he was instrumental in the construction of Syosset High School, the first modern centrally air conditioned high school on Long Island. In the late 1950s he assumed management of the New York office of the Trane Company and lived in Shippan Point, Stamford, Connecticut.
He retired to Santa Barbara, California, in 1993.
In 1947, Kelly married Irene McGuire, a Bronx native, at Our Lady"s Chapel in Saint Patrick"s Cathedral, New New York Over the course of his active life, Kelly was an avid golfer, sailor and tennis player. Kelly died in Santa Barbara, California, on March 20, 2008.
He was a member of Tau Beta Pi, the engineering school equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa. He was a member of the Birnam Wood Golf Club, the Stamford Yacht Club and the New York Athletic Club.