American Martyrs’ Father Tom Kelly has an uncommon understanding of his parishoners because he grew up with them
by Tom Hoffarth
Father Tom Kelly bounds down from the altar at Manhattan Beach’s American Martyrs Catholic Church on a Sunday morning, passing by the traditional elevated ambo where most preaching during a Mass occurs.
He reaches the first bench pew. He puts his right hand on the wooden end piece, hoists himself up onto the padded bench seat, faces the congregation. His eyes dance and he breaks into a giant, sly grin.
Parishioners return the smile. They are familiar with his unorthodox method of talking through his sermons. He will often start pointing out people by name — perhaps someone his parents once recruited as the Kelly family babysitter decades ago.
There’s a good chance Fr. Kelly has sprinkled them with a fair share of holy water during the Gloria part of the Mass, traversing the aisles with his aspergillum in motion.
The 75 year-old, retired priest has come to appreciate, especially two years after experiencing life-altering heart surgery, that celebrating Mass these days at American Martyrs is more than just his way of helping cover the expanding daily and Sunday schedule of services.
No matter what corner of the world he may have been ministering the Catholic faith to over the last 40-plus years – the Middle East, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan and other equally dangerous parts in between – he has always had a home base, and a cherished front-row pew to climb up on, at the sanctuary on 15th Street and Deegan Place in Manhattan Beach.
“Being overseas, and seeing so much, I love to walk through the city now, see the parks where we used to make up games, play Little League,” Fr. Kelly said after a recent weekday Mass. “I am blessed that I can come here and do Mass and enjoy every day.
“This is where I said my first Mass. I buried my parents here. I’ve said funerals for some of my high school friends here. I’ve married two of my sisters here. So much of it has changed physically. But we’ve all changed.”
Duncan and Margaret Kelly met as Navy officers in World War II and moved from their beach bungalow in El Porto to Alma Avenue in Manhattan Beach to set up a home in the early 1950s. They already had a daughter, Patricia, when their one and only son, Tom, arrived in November of 1948, followed by two more sisters.
The Early Years
Margaret was born in Los Angeles and graduated with honors from Mount St. Mary’s College, and worked for the U.S. Navy Women’s Reserves. She was eventually recruited to help rescue the Latin program at Mira Costa High as a beloved teacher.
Duncan, a Massachusetts native who went to Oxford University in Ohio, and played baseball with future Dodgers manager Walter Alston, was a grocery food broker and distributor, and had his own business. He would serve four terms as the Manhattan Beach city treasurer, from 1976 to 1988.
Fr. Kelly recalls their modest house likely cost them about $10,000, paid for with military benefits and loans.
“All their friends said, ‘Don’t move there, it’s too far away from L.A.’,” he said. “Rosecrans Avenue was just one lane going each way. The train was still dropping off lumber at the yard across from Metlox Pottery.”
Tom was baptized and had his first Holy Communion at the much smaller American Martyrs Church on Highland Avenue. As the congregation grew, American Martyrs pastor Edmund O’Donnell secured property just north of there where the church school had been built 10 years earlier.
“I remember my dad telling the pastor, ‘You should build it big so everyone can see it. When my dad saw the plans, he said to my mother, I didn’t think he’d build it this big,’” Fr. Kelly recalled.
To raise money for its construction, parishioners sold bricks for 50 cents, or three for a dollar.
“I went with my dad one time as he was fundraising and we stopped by this business,” Fr. Kelly said. “My dad had just lost his job and was also looking for work. The businessman, who was Jewish, saw the bricks and asked what it was all about. There were a lot of anti-Catholic feelings in the community back then. Someone once told them that if you were Catholic, you couldn’t be elected dog catcher. My dad told the man about all the issues, not just with raising money but also the city needing to put in new roads to access the church.”
Fr. Kelly recalls how the man came back with a $100 check. He went to his Jewish community members and they raised more than $5,000 for the Catholic church – an incredible amount of money at the time.
“My dad told me, ‘Don’t ever be afraid to ask our Jewish friends for help,’” said Fr. Kelly. “We have many of them to thank.”
When the first Mass in the new church was celebrated on Easter Sunday in 1957, some cars were stuck in the mud, and his family had to park by the Manhattan Beach badminton club. His sisters complained about ruining their best clothes, while he delighted in all the mud.
Which goes back to the idea that Fr. Kelly accepts he could be someone labeled as rambunctious or precocious.
“Those are just nice words for adventurous,” he said. “We weren’t getting in trouble. We had good family values. People looked out for each other.”
Dr. Bill Stetson, whose Old Torrance-based family would be intertwined with the Kelly family when his older brother, and Tom’s older sister started a long engagement through their Bishop Montgomery High and college years, loves to relive times he spent being what he called “mischievous.”
“Put it this way: Tom was probably the last person I ever thought would be a Catholic priest,” said Stetson, who is a dozen years younger.
Fr. Kelly’s personality traits could have been his way of overcoming a learning disability that was diagnosed and sent his parents seeking a special curriculum. As a result, Fr. Kelly only went through the first grade at American Martyrs Catholic School.
Sister Clare Miriam Broidy, now 90 and living in Los Angeles, remembers having Tom Kelly as a seventh-grade student at St. Anthony Catholic School in El Segundo.
“I was also the vice principal and I had to be the disciplinarian – so I saw Tom a lot,” she said. “He was this tall kid, always with a football in his hand, waiting to get out on the yard. He had our principal, Sr. Mary Annette, wrapped around his little finger. He loved her so much. I always thought of Tom as being so genuine.”
Sports were his world as he rode his bike around Manhattan Beach with friends before many of the city roads had been fully paved. He was enamored with baseball and football, especially after the Dodgers moved into town, and he was spellbound by the glory days of USC sports.
When the first Manhattan Beach Little League came into being, Fr. O’Donnell took the lead in building the field in Live Oak Park, which had been the place previously just for rec leagues.
“We had no uniforms, just played in our jeans and tennis shoes. Someone had to show me how to put on baseball pants and stirrups,” Fr. Kelly said. “It really brought the community together. I’ll never forget how councilman Tom Foye started a parade of cars that went down by the fire department and took us all to the field for the first time – green grass. It was a wonderful way to unite us all.”
He went to St. Bernard High in Westchester. The school didn’t have a gym yet, and students were always involved in fundraising while watching the expansion of the Los Angeles International Airport nearby. After graduating in 1967, he went to Colorado State University to major in business, living in a fraternity house. His dad was hoping he would help him with his business.
“I hurt my back and ended up laid up for most of my senior year. That got me thinking about life,” said Fr. Kelly. He had a scholarship to go to USC to pursue an MBA.
He also began considering a religious calling.
“There were a lot of negotiations going on between me and the Lord,” Fr. Kelly said, leading him to do more research into attending the St. Thomas Seminary in Denver. “I admit, I tried to get out of it. I had all these excuses. He just persisted by the grace of God.”
After graduating from Colorado State, he came home to Manhattan Beach to discuss his future with his parents and family. He brought with him his sorority girlfriend.
“I had to admit to Kathy I was considering the priesthood, and she was very supportive,” Fr. Kelly said. In his first year at the seminary, he would attend weekday classes and then drive 60 miles to visit her at Colorado State on the weekends. He was eventually told by the seminary he had to decide on one or the other.
Fr. Tom was ordained in 1977. After serving five years at local parishes in Colorado, he started listening more to a seminary vocations priest, Fr. Bob Harrington who had served several tours in Vietnam. Fr. Kelly decided he might be a better fit with the life of a military chaplain, first joining the Air Force reserves.
The Present Years
He started at Lowry Air Force base in Denver, and then went to Blytheville Air Force Base in Arkansas. He said he felt a natural connection to the soldiers, having grown up in a military family.
He was deployed to Turkey during the first Gulf War, and would work in the Middle East, off and on, for nearly 20 years. Occasionally he would return to Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc.
Fr. Kelly often talks about these turbulent parts of the world during his homilies.
He recalled a time in Saudi Arabia during the late 1990s when he was discretely asked by the U.S. consulate if he was willing to meet with them. He was told to dress in civilian clothes and not bring any religious items. They wanted to know if he was comfortable celebrating a home Mass for U.S. families stationed nearby, working for companies based in the Middle East.
Fr. Kelly said he arrived at a house with about 50 people who were having a pot-luck dinner party. They had a Catholic stole ready for him to wear. He had no prayer books, so he recited the Mass from memory. They had baked special bread for the occasion and somehow were able to smuggle in wine.
“They were so appreciative because no one had said Mass for them in more than a year. I said Mass for them several times before we had to stop because it was deemed too risky. I asked about what happened to the previous priest who had been saying these home Masses. I was told it’s a big desert out there. I got the message.”
Fr. Kelly recalled discussions at other military bases with doctors having to work on war victims. “None of this was like watching M*A*S*H on TV,” said Fr. Kelly. “I had a tremendous appreciation for the doctors and nurses. It was a wonderful blessing for me in many ways to be with people who made so many sacrifices. When you hear some people complaining about things happening in their lives, it can seem pretty trivial compared to this. It puts things into perspective.”
In eastern Turkey, once a part of Armenia where the genocide had taken place, he was invited to dinner by an Armenian military contractor.
“He asked if I could bless the graves of his ancestors,” said Fr. Kelly. “I went out and started looking for gravesites, but I didn’t see any. I asked him where they were.”
The Armenian man just held out his arm and motioned in the general direction of the entire field they were looking out on.
“That whole area was where they had been killed and left,” said Fr. Kelly. “It was very sobering sprinkling holy water on the piles of dirt and rocks that were still there.”
By the late 1990s, Fr. Kelly was back most often at Vandenberg Air Force Base, but his returns to Manhattan Beach were more frequent. His mother’s health was failing and he was allowed more time with her. Margaret Kelly would pass away in 2009. His father Duncan died in 1988.
The Health Scare
On Dec. 14, 2021, a dreary, gray rainy day, Fr. Kelly was preparing to drive to his apartment in Lompoc. He had been at American Martyrs the night before for a communal penance service. That morning, he stopped at the National Cemetery in Westwood for a ceremony, then got on the 101 Freeway heading west.
He would make one more stop, to have lunch with longtime friend Frank Provenzano at his home in Simi Valley. By the time he got there, Fr. Kelly wasn’t feeling well. He looked in a mirror and realized he didn’t look all that well either. Pains in his chest got more intense.
Provenzano, a retired police officer, gave him two aspirin and took him to Los Robles Regional Medical Center, a renowned heart facility in Thousand Oaks.
“Without Frank having given me that aspirin, I’d be dead,” Fr. Kelly said.
At the hospital, Fr. Kelly kept his sense of humor. Asked by the staff what he did for a living, he said he was a Catholic Monsignor.
“I’m in jeans and a sweatshirt, so if I’m going to die, I might as well go out on top,” Fr. Kelly said.
The cardiologist told him he needed a triple bypass heart operation as soon as possible. There was no time to transport him back to Torrance Memorial Hospital as he had asked.
“I didn’t need a second opinion,” Fr. Kelly. “I’m lying there in bed the night before the surgery, making funeral arrangements.”
Dr. Stetson talked to the cardiologist by phone and confirmed that Fr. Kelly had “a pretty serious” situation after learning of the angiogram.
“It was strange because I just saw him a couple days before and everything seemed fine,” said Dr. Stetson.
Fr. Kelly recalls feeling a connection with his surgeon, a Palestinian whose father was also a doctor. They had lived for a time in Kuwait, but were driven out by Iraqis, fled to England and came to the United States to study at UCLA. Suddenly, Fr. Kelly’s world was small again.
Recovery as Christmas approached would take time, so Fr. Kelly said he knew he could not stay by himself in Lompoc. He arranged for several friends in the medical field to help him rehab in Manhattan Beach.
Soon, there was a night when Fr. Kelly recalls sitting in bed, closing his eyes and hearing a voice.
“It’s time to go,” he said the voice told him. “I’ve come to take you home. Don’t be afraid.”
At that point, Fr. Kelly said he could sense looking down at himself from above. He said he began pleading: “I need more time to tell people how much I appreciate and love them. I need to say goodbye to a few more people.”
The voice answered: “You’ve done so much already. They know you love them. Your loved ones are waiting for him. They’ve been praying for you.”
“So there I am negotiating with the Lord again, asking for more time,” said Fr. Kelly.
Then he woke up.
“You know, there are dreams, and then there are real dreams, and then there is something more,” he now says.
It turned out his heart was filling with fluid. Without immediate treatment he would have died.
“In my 30 years of practice with patients, I have heard of these out-of-body experiences,” said Dr. Stetson. “For Tom, it was obviously real. When that happens to anyone, it changes their lives and perspectives.”
Fr. Kelly has told parishioners this story many times over the last two years and has always imparted what he took away from it.
“You realize how quickly things can go, and you can’t wait to let people know how much you love them,” he said. “Especially the people who have helped you in tough times. Don’t take people for granted. Life is fragile.
“I think that was a beautiful experience. Knowing our loved ones are praying for us and that whole sense of the communion of saints and the faithful departed. I’m sure we will see them again.”
When Fr. Kelly used a recent homily during a noon weekday Mass to retell that story – on the two-year anniversary of his heart attack – the congregation stood and applauded.
The Homecoming
Monsignor John Barry has been the American Martyrs pastor for more than 40 years, but he said, “Fr. Tom has a bigger footprint in this parish than me.”
Fr. Kelly, in turn, constantly reminds parishioners of how he is proud to see how this church community his parents helped build has thrived since Msgr. Barry’s arrival. So much praise, Msgr. Barry jokes, that “I sit in the pews and, hearing my own eulogy over and over again, and you’d think I was dead.”
Msgr. Barry knew both Duncan and Margaret Kelly, and co-celebrated their funeral Masses. Margaret Kelly was also famously good friends with Msgr. Barry’s mother, Julia.
“What I’ve always admired about Fr. Tom is his commitment to the Mass,” Msgr. Barry said. “He’s a man who wears many uniforms – he loves his Air Force connections, and he’s always an active, loving priest in this community. That goes to his personality. He may not always care for strict liturgical rules. He’s not into formalities. But he has a love of the Eucharist and of the Mass. I consider him a good friend of many people, as well as my good friend.”
Dr. Stetson said there was a 20-year-period between Fr. Kelly ministering oversees, and returning to care for his mother, when the two didn’t see each other.
Dr. Stetson not only named his second son Thomas in Fr. Kelly’s honor, but also had him become his son’s godfather. Fr. Kelly had long ago married Bill and Erica Stetson.
“I’m happy to see that someone who’s always been a no-nonsense guy and a family friend for more than 50 years hasn’t changed since the heart attack,” said Dr. Stetson.
Fr. Kelly says he truly appreciates having “been given some overtime.”
Parishioners see him working out at the local Air Force base facility in El Segundo, wearing his Torrance Memorial Medical Center heart patient T-shirt. He frequently gives out blue and gold keepsake medallions with the Virgin Mary on one side and a cross on the other side, with the words: One Family, One Mission, One God.”
During weekday and Sunday Masses at American Martyrs, he takes every opportunity to remind people how fortunate they are to have this cohesive community of support, led by Msgr. Barry. At the end of every Mass, Fr. Kelly also leans into his military background and reminds the congregation to appreciate their religious freedom and liberty.
Fr. Kelly says he is constantly reminded about something his father once told him: So many people who come to church are having a tough time. Give them support and encouragement.
During a recent weekday morning Mass Fr. Kelly, wearing his purple Advent vestments, finished a Gospel reading from Luke. It was a story about how Jesus healed a man confined to a stretcher that had been lowered into a room through the roof, to the surprise of the Pharisees who considered his work blasphemous.
Fr. Kelly’s homily – this time, standing in front of the altar instead of on the bench pew – focused on the idea of perseverance.
As he talked about the Gospel, he could have been summing up his whole life as a priest.
“Perseverance in our lives and in our faith is one of our biggest struggles because it is so easy to get discouraged,” he said. “Unfair things happen. We go back to our Catechism classes and think about maybe we’re being punished for something.
“Perseverance is something we have to remind everyone about, especially to others who are struggling. Give them a helping hand. A phone call. A kind word. Tell them not to give up.
“Life isn’t easy, right folks? There are a lot of things going on in the world, such and such and so and so. We thank the doctors and nurses and health care providers. We thank the first responders. We pray for those in the Middle East and in the Ukraine. And we thank you all for being here in prayer and gathering together in community. Today there’s no greater perseverance than the Holy Eucharist. We are a community that supports each other as best we can.” ER
