Ken Kelly ’57 Provides Opportunities to Future Generations of Lowellites

Rally committee, dance committee, executive committee, track, football, Block L Society (with three letters), president of Big Brothers, president of Silver Spikes, and, to top it all off, four years of Latin! Those were just some of the myriad experiences that Lowell offered Ken Kelly, from the Class of June 1957. 

Polytechnic was Ken’s neighborhood high school, but he and his family sought the enhanced opportunities for academic success at Lowell that he credits with changing his life’s trajectory. As he recalls, “Without the diversity and intensity of my Lowell education, it would have been much harder for me to make it to UC Berkeley or to obtain the college scholarship that made attendance possible.” 

Personal relationships at Lowell were central to Mr. Kelly’s rich Lowell experience, from the many Grattan Elementary School friends who joined him at Lowell and his other classmates from around the city to the various faculty members that he got to know as classroom instructors, athletic coaches, and mentors—including Lowell legends Bob Anino, Ernie Feibusch, and Ray Milton.

With a graduating class of about 300, Ken truly enjoyed the family atmosphere on campus. And he has continued to foster strong connections among his classmates as a principal organizer of class reunions (with his good friend from elementary school days Pati Murray Boyd) and quarterly informal class gatherings.

By including the Lowell Alumni Association in his estate plan, he hopes to ensure that Lowell will offer future students a similarly rich variety of academic and extracurricular opportunities. Ken considers it his responsibility to pay forward the many benefits he received from his Lowell years. Showing off some of the high school Latin he learned from the great Cornelius McCarthy, Ken considers Lowell High School to be a sine qua non of academic and professional success for him and thousands of his fellow alumni.