The Kelly Family Olympics
By Bill Kelly
On the Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend, 1965, Mrs. Kelly read the newspaper that included a small, one-column, three-paragraph story with the headline: “Ocean City Beach Riot Injures 12; 15 Arrests,” but the news report didn’t tell the whole story. She just took a sip of coffee and shook her head.
By the time the whole family had assembled they got into a small caravan of cars. Prince Rainier had dismissed the police guards and motorcycle escort and they were not bothered by nosey tourists or neighbors. From the two houses on 27th Street, they drove down Wesley Avenue to 14th Street where they parked and entered St. Augustine’s red-brick church for Mass. While it was crowded, the ushers had reserved a few pews for this family, and the Mass proceeded undisturbed.
Afterwards, while the younger children either went for a walk on the boards or went back to the beach house to play in the sand, the adults went to the 22nd Street restaurant for breakfast. Mrs. Kelly mentioned the riot on the beach the previous day, but the others seemed unaware that it occurred or were uninterested. “Crazy hippies and college pranksters,” she said.
They missed the riot because they had all gone to the movies. The kids went to the Village Theater to see “Beach Blanket Bingo.” The women went to the Strand to see “The Sound of Music,” while the men and some of the boys went to the Moorlyn to see Sean Connery play James Bond in “Thunderball.”
After the movies the previous afternoon, with Don Levine driving, Lizanne, Grace and cousin John Lehman went across the causeway to Somers Point where they would catch the last of the Bay Shore matinees for the Summer of ’65, which was a memorable one. Still a little hung over, the four were quiet as they ate breakfast until Lizanne Levine spoke up.
Grace’s sister Lizanne missed the “wedding of the century” because she was pregnant with her daughter.She remarked that when she finally got to Monaco for the first time she recognized one of Grace’s new responsibilities was the naming of roads, streets, schools, gyms and apartment projects.
She was surprised to see them named, to the mystery of the Monaco citizens – Schuylkill, Conshohocken, Passyunk, Pennsauken, Tuckahoe and Patcong – all American Indian names that only someone from the Philadelphia area would know and recognize.
After breakfast they joined the youngsters at the beach house, and while some of the women began to fire up the barbeque, the rest of the crew played games in the Kelly Family Olympics. Down on the beach, Lizanne sat in a chair under a Bert’s Beach umbrella, keeping score for some of the games that were going on. They were just in time to play a game of co-ed tackle football, serious volleyball, swimming, body surfing and of course, rowing, the sport the family excelled in.
Early in the afternoon Mrs. Kelly came out with three sandwiches and cold bottled ice tea, two for the lifeguards and one for Jim – Barbeque Jim, who was manning Bert’s Beach Stand, renting out beach chairs, umbrellas and rafts. There were other friends of the family there – John Carey the Realtor, Bob Harbough from Bob’s Grill, Kate, the mayor’s daughter, and Greg Gregory, a Somers Pointer Kate knew from school. Greg fit in because he liked to row, and got his chance.
After the lifeguards went off duty, Grace’s older brother “Kel,” a former lifeguard himself, took Grace’s young son Albert and Greg Gregory out for a ride in a beach patrol surf boat, out past the breakers. Mrs. Kelly also kept close watch on the competition, and when she rang the big bell outside the back door of the beach house, everyone knew it was time for a meal, and for Mrs. Kelly to give out the trophies, some new and just for today, and others old and tarnished and passed on to a new champion every Labor Day.
After dark, while Greg was still fishing in the surf, those who were left built a little firepit on the beach, and somebody took out a guitar and they heated up some clams and sat around roasting the clams and marshmallows. Greg caught a striper and quickly cleaned and filleted it and they cooked it on the open fire. Sitting around the fire, Greg looked at “Kel” and asked him to explain to him the significance of the Henley Races in England.
“Go ahead and tell him,” Mrs. Kelly said, so Kel explained that after his father won the Olympic rowing championship, he was refused entry into the Henley Regatta because, as a bricklayer, he worked with his hands and was considered a laborer, not a gentleman.
“So from the time I was christened at birth, it was my duty to win the Henley Regatta that my father was denied, and I did.”
The Kelly Family may have been the most famous family on the island at the time, but they were typical of the hundreds of families who came down the shore from Philadelphia and made Ocean City their second home, or like the Levines, their permanent one.
Before the evening was over, Mrs. Kelly said that she didn’t want any of the children to go into town or even on the Boardwalk because there was a rumor going around that the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang was returning to Ocean City on Labor Day to ransack the town after being evicted earlier in the spring. While people were assured that the city was prepared for trouble, everyone was to stay close to home as something was brewing.
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Next – Labor Day 1965 – Sonny Barger Has His Say and The 99 Percenters Unite.
