Doctor Kelly's Husband Part 1

My father wasn't always Dr. Kelly's husband.  But when I was growing up, that was what people called him.  It seemed to me that everyone knew my mother; she was a woman doctor in a time when there were very few women doctors.  She graduated from medical school in 1943.  As one of her two daughters, I was very aware of her importance in our community.  We couldn't go to the grocery store without what seemed liked hundreds of people coming up to us with, "Dr. Kelly!!!  Dr. Kelly!  Do you remember me?  You delivered my babies!  Oh, are these your daughters?  Aren't they pretty!  You look great, Dr. Kelly!  I am so grateful to you for all the care you've given me and my family.  Blah, blah, blah..."   But this blog isn't about her; it's about Dr. Kelly's husband, my father, Cyril Francis Kelly.

My father insisted that my sister and I call him Papa; he thought that Daddy sounded too much like Dada...and that really bothered him.  It's what babies said, "Dada, dada..."  Anyway, when I try to understand why he was the way he was, I always think about his childhood, what little I know of it, and how gruesome it must have been. 

Whenever I asked Papa about his life and his family, he never wanted to talk about it.  I mean he REALLY did not want to talk about it.  After a while, seeing how upset he became, I stopped asking.  

Writing this blog has prompted me to do some serious searching in Ancestry.com.  After beginning my research into Papa's life, I realized quickly why he didn't want to share all of that with me.  There is little in his story worth celebrating; it's actually somewhat amazing that Papa was fairly normal after all of that.  He did drink a lot and he smoked three packs a day of Pall Mall unfiltered cigarettes, so it's also amazing that he lived to be 81 years old.  I like to think that my mother, my sister, and I brought him some joy; he had very little of that growing up. 

My father's parents, Margaret Trower and William Kelly, married in 1908 in Elkton, MD.  Margaret was 19 and William was 21.  Their son Cyril was born in 1909 in Baltimore.  I couldn't find much information about their lives in Maryland.  The 1910 census shows that they lived in Elkton, that William worked on bridges, and that Margaret had never attended school.  

I found my grandfather's obituary through Newspapers.com.   William Kelly died in his room at the Hotel Wilmington in Wilmington, DE.  In morbid detail the newspaper reported that William Kelly had moved the hotel bed close to the unlit gas burner and laid his head directly under the gas so that he could inhale the fumes.  Yes, suicide was suspected. The newspaper also named my grandfather's employer.  He worked for McClintic and Marshall Company, a bridge building company based in Wilkinsburg, PA.  My grandfather died on December 22, 1916.  He was 31 years old.  My Nana was 29, and Papa was 6.  I don't know what happened to my grandfather's remains.  Most of my ancestors from Papa's side of the family are buried in a Catholic cemetery in Havre de Grace, MD.  Suicide was considered a mortal sin by the Catholic Church, so William T. Kelly could not be buried there.  Of course, if anyone knew where his body ended up, they weren't telling me.

When my grandfather died, Papa and his mother Margaret (Nana) were living in Wilkinsburg, PA with Nana's parents, Lee Trower and Mary Catherine Trower (nee Brown). I have no idea why they were there while my grandfather was in Maryland.  As I said, Papa didn't want to talk about it.  Actually, nobody wanted to talk about it.  I wonder if my grandfather traveled to Maryland to spend his final days in the area where he was raised.  As far as I have found, his family was based in Maryland and most of them were buried in the Havre de Grace cemetery near the remains of Papa and Nana.