On December 21, 2020, a great man peacefully slipped away from us. To call Mark Kelly “great” isn’t vague, blurry-eyed mushiness. The long-time journalism teacher would have taken a red pen to any unearned sentimentalism, especially concerning himself. Nor does it refer to chest-thumping pride, which the irreverent man would have scoffed at.
No, the greatness of Mr. Kelly was quieter than that, yet tangible all the same. It still glimmers in the Panther Press’ many awards, which blanket the walls at Jefferson High School. It’s there in the stories of his family and friends, who describe his personality as utterly singular. And, most importantly, it’s reflected in the successes of his students, many of whom deem him the most influential teacher they ever had. Mr. Kelly might have shuffled his steps and taken long, searching pauses in the middle of stories, but his greatness was apparent to those who sat in his classroom or warmed the bar stool next to him.
Mr. Kelly brought deep dedication and unforgettable style to his four decades of teaching. His style was bigger than one paragraph will allow, but for now, picture Hawaiian shirts in January, clouds of Camel smoke, and a cheekiness that ended classroom discussions with: “Like a condom, let’s roll on.”
His bravery was evident from the many years he spent as a driver’s education instructor. He stomped the “chicken brake” when required but otherwise remained cool and collected as 15-year-olds lurched down the highway and skittered around bends.
As to his dedication, he once told his friend Gayle Stubblefield, “Sometimes people don’t understand there’s a difference between educating and teaching.” And educate he did. While Mr. Kelly certainly taught the basics of reporting, literature, parallel parking, and more, students also left with life lessons and new ways of thinking.
Mr. Kelly gave a voice to students, never treating them as lesser because of their age. Adults were to be respected but not blindly followed. This was especially evident in his role at the Panther Press. When he started teaching English at Jefferson High School in 1975, the school had a few mimeographed sheets masquerading as a paper. “Putting out a paper that really stunk didn’t sit well with me,” he said. At his instigation, a team of students built something ambitious yet joyfully youthful. An early masthead lists editorial positions like: “Food Taster,” “Cynic at Large,” and “Editor of Pornography.”
As for Mr. Kelly’s position on the masthead? “Zoo Keeper.”
Irreverent attitudes didn’t preclude a dedication to strong reporting and high standards. Box cutters, small strips of print, and marked-up drafts littered the thin plastic desks when the Panther Press was going to print. As students bustled back and forth to lay out the paper, Mr. Kelly leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on his paper-riddled desk. Holding a book open in one hand, he absently licked his thumb before turning a page and pondering aloud to whichever student he had called to his desk. Every story draft came back covered in red ink with grammar corrections and various musings.
Under his guidance, his students won countless awards from the Montana Interscholastic Editorial Association, and The Panther Press won the Pacesetter Award for best high school news-paper many times. Mr. Kelly was listed in Who’s Who Among American Teachers and on the Honor Roll of Outstanding American Teachers. He gave many commencement addresses. Always modest despite all of the plaques, Mr. Kelly once told a reporter, “I accept none of the credit and less of the blame.”
He vehemently opposed any attempts to censor his students. “Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose,” George Orwell said. Mr. Kelly embodied those words in mind and practice. He took legal action to prevent censorship when the school board, in reaction to a Panther Press story about labor negotiations with teachers, asked to review and approve any related stories. Mr. Kelly prevailed in keeping the board from stifling the free expression of his students. He showed up for his students at disciplinary hearings and supported them whenever they faced backlash over a story. And although Mr. Kelly was a proud Democrat and widely known for those beliefs, he cultivated all opinions and viewpoints in the paper’s editorial section, whether or not he personally agreed with them.
But that was Mr. Kelly’s dedication to truth and journalism. He was strongly dedicated to art and literature, too.
Freshman English class is a hellscape for even the most patient teacher. Each day, 14-year-olds sprout fresh pimples, crushes, and outlandish ideas. And the topic at hand couldn’t be more charged, either. Discussing literature means grappling with vulnerable subjects like love, family, and government. This could make for a spirited debate around, say, the dystopian novel. More often, though, the teacher’s questions are met with a chorus of titters. Timeless stories are ignored or openly dismissed. Teachers must decide how much rib-poking, note-passing, and Orwell-mocking to tolerate. They bring structure to the realm of ideas and discipline to the hormone-pulsing world of young miscreants. It’s more tangled than geometry; more pungent than a chemistry lab.
Mr. Kelly taught Freshman English over and over. Like Sisyphus pushing that old rock up the hill, Mr. Kelly put his shoulder to getting young minds to think, debate, and grow. He watched as students finally fell in love with writing or at least developed a healthy respect for a book or two. And every year, the rock tumbled back down. Each fall, he walked into a room of new faces. He was met with shifty eyes, arrogant skepticism, and the freshly miserable. He took a long pause and got to pushing again.
This isn’t to suggest that Mr. Kelly was saintly. He dropped misbehaving students’ books out the window. He told titterers to take a hike. He used those phrases that he knew would grab attention, like “off like a prom dress.” The epitome of unorthodox, Mr. Kelly might wander out of the classroom in the middle of a lecture, finishing his thoughts aloud to himself as he meandered down the hallway, his smiling students peeking out the door and wracking their brains for what lesson they should be grasping. And, during breaks, he smoked by himself in his car. He encased himself in steel and smoke and ignored the students giggling at the window. But he almost always returned, whereas many a saint would have put that gold car in reverse.
But describing his dedication and ability only goes so far. Mr. Kelly’s red notes hover in these margins, urging to show not to tell.
One day, Mr. Kelly read a favorite short story out loud. Stephen King’s “The Last Rung on the Ladder” is told from the perspective of a successful lawyer reminiscing about his childhood in rural Nebraska. “Favorite” can only be fact-checked by how much love he gave to every sentence in that story. He read each line like it was his own bittersweet recollection. Soon his students’ murmuring and poking ceased. A dozen 14-year-old faces turned up to quietly listen.
In the story, the young narrator and his eight-year-old sister spend a long afternoon playing in the barn. They climb a rickety old ladder high into the loft. When they reach the top, they fling themselves to the center of the barn, where a deep pile of hay cushions their falls. As Mr. Kelly read, the blackboard and desks faded. Swallows circled and hay dust drifted down. In the story, the sister goes for one last jump, but when she’s near the top, the ladder splits. The little girl is left dangling and crying. She is certain to splatter if she drops sixty feet onto the hard barn floor.
At the height of this tension, Mr. Kelly seemed to slow down his reading. Some teenage eyes screwed shut while others fixed unblinkingly on their teacher. He stood by the window and kept his eyes on the page, a little smile for the impatient and the freshly converted to literature.
In the story, the narrator tells his sister to hold on. He rushes back and forth with armfuls of hay, hoping to cushion her fall before the rung gives out. Finally, it cracks. The narrator tells his sister to fall straight. She drops like a stone into the waiting pile below. The sister survives with a broken ankle and tells her brother that she didn’t know what he’d been doing below. She’d just held on and trusted him. The rest of the story is much sadder, a cautionary tale of what happens later in life, when brothers get busy and stop piling up hay to cushion their loved ones’ falls. Mr. Kelly’s students were at the beginning of their lives, but we felt the emotion and magic created by a favorite story.
As to Mr. Kelly’s story: John Markel Kelly was born in Butte on October 9, 1951 to John J. “Mudro” Kelly and Ruth (Markel) Kelly. His family moved to Reno, Nevada, when he was eight. The family moved back to Three Forks in 1961. When Mark was 16, he lost his father to a heart attack. He graduated from Three Forks High School in 1969 and Western Montana College of Education in Dillon in 1973. His sophomore year of college he married Mardi Elford and the two had a son, Shawn Mark Kelly, who lived with his mother in Twin Bridges after Mark and Mardi divorced. He began his long, storied career at Jefferson High School in 1975. He was a proud union member. He married Valerie Meiers in 1993 and became a father to her daughter, Katie. Mark and Valerie divorced in 2001. Mr. Kelly retired from teaching in 2016. He died from COVID-19 complications in Butte.
Mr. Kelly was preceded in death by his close friend Denise Sutherlin and his parents. He is survived by his daughter, Katie (Mike) Dupio; his son, Shawn Mark Kelly; and his grandchildren, Ed-die and Kiki Kelly. He is also survived by Ray Noble, his good friend since 1961, and Judy Uhlrich, the love of his life. He was close to her family, especially Judy’s grandkids Wylder and Violet Zitnik.
Those are facts, but pull up a bar stool in Boulder when it’s safe and there will no doubt be endless Mark Kelly stories to be told. That might be all Mr. Kelly wrote, but countless others continue to write, read, and laugh at themselves because of him. His greatness will radiate out from Boulder for years to come. Mark Kelly, 1951-2020. Like a condom, he’s rolled on.
Services will be held in Boulder in the spring or summer or whenever large gatherings of people are safe again. Memorials may be sent to Montana Community Foundation, PO Box 1145, Helena, MT, 59624 for the Mark Kelly Scholarship Fund in Memory of Ruth Kelly or online at mtcf.org/giving/give-now.
