July 19, 2000

Cop Family Mourns Son

Long-dreaded phone call follows fatal crash

By MICHELE McPHEE
Daily News Staff Writer

Marge Kelly trembled when she got the call at her upstate home. Her son John, a city police officer, had been in an accident.

Minutes later, the phone rang again. It was her oldest son, Tommy, also a cop, and what he said scared her nearly to death: He was coming in an NYPD helicopter to get her.

"I knew it was bad when I got the call," Marge Kelly told family members. "But I knew it was really bad when Tommy said he was going to fly up and pick me up."

They were the calls Kelly — matriarch of a family of seven boys, four of them cops — had dreaded for years, the fear in the back of her mind whenever she kissed each son goodbye and said "be careful."

This time, a mother's kisses and prayers were not enough.

At 4:55 p.m. Monday, just after Marge Kelly rushed into the emergency room at St. Vincent's Medical Center on Staten Island, her son John Kelly, 31, died. The eight-year veteran had slammed his unmarked car into a light pole as he chased a motorcycle with stolen plates.

Marge Kelly had always been proud her sons were cops, but the loss changed everything. "I wish they would quit," she said. "I don't want to lose anyone else. It's too much."

If she'd had those feelings before, she had kept them to herself.

"My mother was quiet about the concerns she had when we all went to work," said Bobby Kelly, 28, owner of Kelly's Tree Service. "She tried not to think about the dangers."

Yesterday, neighbors stood in front of the small brick house on Dalton Ave. in Oakwood where the boys grew up, laughing and wiping at tears as they traded stories about the Kelly boys.

They were the ones who delivered the paper in the neighborhood. First Tommy had the route, then Jimmy, then John, then Mike, then Bobby, then Danny and finally Pat.

Tommy became a police officer 14 years ago. John and Danny entered the Police Academy together in 1992. Two years later, Jimmy became a cop.

Today, Tommy is an officer in the scuba unit, Jimmy is a detective in Staten Island narcotics and Danny is an officer assigned to Manhattan's 1st Precinct.

"It doesn't surprise me that four of the Kelly kids became cops," said Joni LoDolce, a neighbor who watched John Kelly grow up. "They were always helping everyone out. It was natural they would get into jobs helping people."

John watched out for the younger kids, she said, telling them the Cookie Monster lived in a tree in the family's front yard and teaching them secret handshakes.

"John really had such a good sense of humor. He was crazy, in a wonderful way," LoDolce said. "We all loved him."

In April 1996, John married Patricia Duffy, a detective at the 120th Precinct. Two of her brothers also are cops, and her sister retired from the job. Another brother, Timmy Duffy, is a firefighter.

John Kelly began fishing with Patricia's dad, John, who died a year ago, and became as close to her brothers as he was to his own. His own father, Thomas, died of cancer two years ago.

"We're all very tight, so it's hard. But my sister is a tough girl, she's holding up. She has us, and she has them," Timmy Duffy said. "We'll get through this together."

The dead cop's children — Sean, 3, and Christopher, 9 months — were their dad's passion. His locker is plastered with their pictures.

"Now we're telling Sean his daddy is a hero in heaven," Duffy said. "He doesn't understand. He keeps asking why there are so many police cars and fire trucks outside."

Kelly will be waked today and tomorrow at John Vincent Scalia Home for Funerals in Staten Island. A funeral Mass will be said at 11 a.m. Friday at Our Lady Star of the Sea Church at 5371 Amboy Road — where John Kelly and Patricia Duffy married.