Jack Kelly Sr. (rower)
American Olympic rower (1889–1960)
John Brendan Kelly Sr. (October 4, 1889 – June 20, 1960) was an American triple Olympic champion, the first in the sport of rowing. The Philadelphia-based Kelly was a multimillionaire in the bricklaying and construction industry, and was involved in politics, serving as Pennsylvania secretary of revenue and running unsuccessfully for mayor of Philadelphia in the 1935 Philadelphia mayoral election.
Kelly had four children. They included actress Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco (thus Kelly is the maternal grandfather of Albert II, Prince of Monaco), and Jack Kelly Jr., an accomplished rower who served as president of the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Early life
Kelly was born in Philadelphia, one of 10 children of Irish immigrants John Henry Kelly (1847–1917), who emigrated from his homestead near Newport, County Mayo, in 1869, and Mary Ann Costello (1852–1926), who arrived in the U.S. in 1867. He attended public schools and at night attended the Spring Garden Institute.
In 1907, he began bricklaying in Philadelphia as an apprentice at his brother Patrick's construction firm. Standing 6'2", he was a gifted athlete and competed in football and basketball in addition to rowing, which he learned on the Schuylkill River. By 1916, Kelly was a national rowing champion and the best sculler in the United States.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jack Kelly Sr. (rower)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.