Thomas Vincent Kelly

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Thomas V. Kelly, 86 Washington journalist and
Capitol Hill resident Thomas V. Kelly dies at 86

Thomas V. Kelly, 86, a Washington journalist whose
home on Capitol Hill was such a community hub that
he came to be known as the mayor of the
neighborhood, died June 17 at George Washington
University Hospital after a heart attack.

Mr. Kelly lived for all but 11 years of his life on the
same block of Constitution Avenue on Capitol Hill.
He was the husband of Marguerite Kelly, who has
for many years written the "Family Almanac" column
in The Washington Post's Style section, and the father of journalist Michael Kelly, who was
killed in 2003 while covering the U.S. invasion of
Iraq for the Atlantic Monthly.

Tom Kelly worked for the Washington Daily News
during the 1950s and '60s, covering the Eisenhower
and Kennedy administrations and Sen. Joseph R.
McCarthy's hearings into alleged Communist
subversion in government. He also covered local
news, and his stories about mismanaged funds and other administrative misconduct at
D.C. General Hospital led to sweeping changes there.

In 1962, one of Mr. Kelly's tough questions earned him a sock in the left eye from former
Army Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker, who aspired to be governor of Texas and who helped
organize protests against the use of federal troops to enforce racial integration at the
University of Mississippi.

Walker was leaving a testy Senate hearing when Mr. Kelly approached him. The reporter
asked for a response to a statement by American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln
Rockwell, who had praised Walker.

Walker answered with a punch that made headlines around the country. "My eye doesn't
hurt much," Mr. Kelly said afterward, "and I don't plan any action."

Mr. Kelly left the Daily News in 1965 and later became the editor of a monthly Canadian
magazine and a freelance writer for publications including the New York Times, People
and the Nation. In the 1990s, he worked as a feature writer for the Washington Times.

He had a reputation for clever turns of phrase. In a profile of a Louisiana governor, he
wrote, "Gov. Edwin Edwards is so cold, if you put a pat of butter in his mouth in the
morning, it would still be there when he went to bed at night."

He wrote an occasional series on intriguing murder cases for the Washingtonian
magazine and in 1983 published "The Imperial Post," a scathing history of The Post that
was not well-received by those inside the paper who found it unfairly critical.

In Washington, the Kellys were known for hosting large parties inspired by Marguerite's
New Orleans heritage, featuring Dixieland bands and Crawfish. Ken Ringle, a retired Post
reporter, wrote in an e-mail: "Their enormous dining room has always been a genuine
salon where ideas were bandied about and joyously debated while Tom gestured from his
end of the table and told stories with his memorable snorting little Irish laugh."

Mr. Kelly, a diminutive Irishman who reminded friends of a mischievous Leprechaun, wrote
annual Christmas plays in which he cast scads of neighborhood children. The plays,
children's stories with dialogue that doubled as political commentary, were always staged
in the Kellys' backyard before a crowd of parents.

Thomas Vincent Kelly was born in Washington on Aug. 2, 1923. He graduated from
Gonzaga College High School (1941) in the District and had his first newspaper job as
a copyboy at The Post before he enlisted in the Navy during World War II.

"I knew nothing about the Navy. I thought it consisted mostly of battleships," Mr. Kelly said
in a 2001 interview with The Post. "I'd seen a Fred Astaire movie where sailors sang and
danced on the quarterdeck. I figured that was the kind of service I could handle."

He served on the Navy's last sail-powered warship, the triple-masted USS Guinevere,
which escorted supply convoys across the Atlantic.

"We were supposed to patrol for U-boats, but we stayed just out of sight of the convoys,"
he said. "It would have depressed the merchant sailors too much to think that all that stood
between them and Hitler's navy was a sailing ship."

After the war, he earned a journalism degree at Pennsylvania State University in 1947. He
went to work as a reporter at the Baton Rouge-State Times and later the New Orleans
Item, where he met his future wife. They moved to Washington in the early 1950s.

In addition to his wife, to whom he was married 57 years, survivors include three
daughters, Katherine Kelly Bottorff and Meg Kelly Rizzoli, both of Washington, and Nell
Conroy of Darien, Conn.; and eight grandchildren.

At the time of his death, Mr. Kelly was finishing a book about the life and death of his son.
Michael Kelly once wrote that he had decided to become a reporter because of deep
admiration for his father, whom he described as an unfailing optimist.

"What a good father is supposed to do for the people he loves is fix whatever goes wrong
with them," Michael Kelly wrote in a 2001 Post column. "So, happily, it was for me. In the
house where I was lucky enough to grow, the weather was always balmy, rain or shine.
And life was always good, good or bad, and the children were always successes,
succeed or fail. And the experiences were always marvelous."
The photo was taken shortly after
Mr. Kelly was punched in the left
eye by former Army Maj. Gen.
Edwin Walker. He objected to a
question asked by the reporter.
(Associated Press)
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