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Famed dance man Kelly recalled as caring
Fred Kelly, a legend in entertainment and dance who family members describe as ”the life of every party,” died Wednesday at his Tucson home. He was 83.
Mr. Kelly would perform anywhere at any time, and his love for dance allowed him to tip toe into the hearts of colleagues around the world, family members said.
”My father didn’t have any hobbies. People were his hobby,” Michael Kelly, Mr. Kelly’s son, said from his home in Valencia, Calif. ”My dad had 25 hours a day for everybody else – the neighbors, the community, the church. That was his hobby.”
While many in the public may have known of his famous older brother – renowned musical and dance star Gene Kelly – family members said it was Fred the community truly appreciated due to his consistent care and service.
For 30 years, while living in Closter, N.J., Mr. Kelly volunteered with the city’s Ambulance Brigade. With his midnight to 5 a.m. shift, Mr. Kelly was often summoned out of bed to assist with car crashes and house fires.
”I watched my dad run out of the house two or three nights a week because he cared about people,” Michael Kelly said.
Born in Pittsburgh, in 1916, Mr. Kelly attended the University of Pittsburgh and received a political science degree.
Not long after, he took a supporting role in ”Time of Your Life,” earning three Tony awards in 1940.
When World War II began, Mr. Kelly was drafted and served as a staff medical sergeant in the U.S. Army.
As he served in London, Mr. Kelly was summoned to Buckingham Palace to teach two young girls to dance. The students : the future Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret of England.
”He was supposed to teach Eisenhower too,” Colleen Beaman, Mr. Kelly’s daughter, said from her Tucson home last night. ”It’s hard to think of something he didn’t do.”
After his discharge from the Army, Mr. Kelly directed many television programs, including ”The Steve Allen Show” and various musicals on Broadway. He also choreographed the ”Colgate Comedy Hour” and the Army’s ”This is the Army.”
Mr. Kelly invented the well-known cha-cha dance and also introduced the mambo to the United States, Beaman said.
While Mr. Kelly and his brother Gene appeared together only once, in the 1954 film ”Deep in My Heart,” they were extremely close, Michael Kelly said.
”When Gene was stumped on a dance routine, he would call my dad. He would help him through it,” Michael Kelly said.
Despite Mr. Kelly’s career behind the scenes, a family friend once told Beaman: ”Unless you went to the movies, you don’t know who Gene Kelly was. But everyone knows Fred Kelly.”
”He didn’t want to be a movie star and he didn’t care about movies. He just loved to dance,” Michael Kelly said.
Mr. Kelly moved to Tucson in 1983 with his wife, Dottie, who died five years ago. Family members said Mr. Kelly enjoyed the city and always found time to continue performing at local venues.
”He would do a show at any place,” Michael Kelly said. ”He would put on a show at the drop of a hat. He did so much for the community he lived in.”
”He picked Tucson, so it must be a pretty great town,” Michael Kelly added.
In 1992, Mr. Kelly put on a Valentine’s Day benefit titled ”For the Love of Weston.”
Two-year-old Weston Wambach was suffering from leukemia and needed a bone marrow transplant that would have given him a 40 percent chance of survival. When Mr. Kelly heard the transplant cost $250,000, he and magician Gene Collins organized the charity event.
Despite the public’s best efforts, Wambach died at age 2 on April 30, 1992.
Mr. Kelly also died of leukemia.
”He was so giving and he thought about the kids. I wish I was more like him,” Michael Kelly said.
Mr. Kelly is survived by his son, Michael, and daughter, Colleen; sisters Louise of Dothan, Ala., and Joan of Pittsburgh, and eight grandchildren.
Family members are hosting a viewing Friday at Adair Funeral Home Dodge Chapel, 1050 N. Dodge Blvd., from 4 to 7 p.m. Services are scheduled for Saturday at St. Pius X Church, 1800 N. Camino Pio Decimo, at 10 a.m.
In lieu of flowers, family members asked that donations be made to the Fred Kelly Foundation, in care of the Dallas Dance Council, Sammons Center for the Arts, 3630 Harry Hines Blvd., Dallas, Texas, 75219.
(Dated Mar 18, 2000)
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Obstetrician, educator Herbert Pollock, 73
Dr. Herbert E. Pollock, an obstetrician who taught medical students about alternative styles of treatment, died yesterday at his home in Tucson. He was 73.
Dr. Pollock was heavily involved with Planned Parenthood and was a strong supporter of women’s rights – including the right to have an abortion, said his wife, Emily.
”He’s always been behind women and their rights to education, and to be strong and independent individuals,” she said.
Dr. Pollock offered his patients choices on their treatment by educating them and not controlling their decisions, his wife said.
Dr. Pollock was born and raised in Ohio.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University and his medical degree at Case Western University.
He spent two years in a general medical practice in Miami, Ariz., before moving to Dallas for a obstetrics-gynecology residency at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
After leaving Dallas, Dr. Pollock in 1962 opened a private practice in Tucson.
He delivered more than 7,000 babies during 25 years of practice, family members said.
Dr. Pollock began teaching a class at the University of Arizona in 1972.
Titled ”Human Behavior and Development,” the freshman-level course dealt with topics that were often ignored in medical school, including alternative therapies, and alcohol and drug abuse.
”There’s nothing wrong with exposing medical students to what the public is hearing,” said his son Dean Pollock.
The UA made Dr. Pollock an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology in 1987 when he left his private practice. He retired completely seven years later.
Aside from his professional career, Dr. Pollock was an avid sportsman, playing football, baseball, basketball and tennis.
He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, but family members said the military wanted him to play exhibition baseball against the U.S. Army for the troops.
”He was such a good athlete that they put him on the Navy National Baseball Team,” Dean Pollock said. ”He played to raise morale, but he was always upset about the fact that he didn’t get to fight.”
George Rosenberg, Dr. Pollock’s father-in-law, said the doctor loved competition.
”He fed on his children’s athletic life and his sons’ baseball and basketball. He loved to see them compete and compete well,” he said.
In his later years, Dr. Pollock acquired a love for golf and poker. Dean Pollock said his best memories are of golfing trips with his father.
Dr. Pollock received several awards, including the University Foundation’s Creative Teaching Award in 1976 and the Distinguished Citizen Award from the UA Alumni Association in 1994.
Planned Parenthood will bestow the Henry Quinto Award for Outstanding Service on Dr. Pollock posthumously in May, Emily Pollock said.
In addition to his wife, Dr. Pollock is survived by former wife Elaine of Tucson; brothers Harlan of Dallas and Sanford of Scottsdale; daughter Kacey Sisco of San Diego and sons Dean of Oakton, Va., Terry, Max and Noah of Tucson, and Philip Rosenberg of New York City.
Funeral services will be held Sunday at noon at Evergreen Mortuary, Cemetery & Crematory Chapel, 3015 N. Oracle Road.
(Dated Mar 17, 2000)
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Attorney William E. Morris
William Eric Morris created opportunities for people who didn’t even know he existed, friends and colleagues said.
They described the Tucson lawyer as a crusader for the rights of the underprivileged and underserved.
Mr. Morris died Saturday from heart failure. He was 50.
Focusing most of his work on equal treatment in schools for children, Mr. Morris’ impact was felt on the local, state and national levels, friends and associates said.
The class action lawsuits he filed throughout his 25-year career here were responsible for a wide range of public education and social service reforms.
”Bill was the kind of guy who took a lot of brains and wit and power, and put it behind people who didn’t have a voice,” said City Magistrate Margarita Bernal .
”He was someone who quietly went about changing a lot of things for a lot of people,” she said.
He came here in 1975 with a now-defunct federal program, Volunteers In Service To America.
As a VISTA volunteer, Mr. Morris was assigned to Southern Arizona Legal Aid Inc., a publicly funded agency that handles lawsuits for the underprivileged.
When he started with VISTA, he subsisted on food stamps given to him by the program, said Gail Schuessler, Morris’ domestic partner of 15 years.
He became a full-time attorney at the legal aid program in 1977 and worked there for the next 20 years.
During his time at the program, Mr. Morris influenced the careers of many local lawyers, including Bernal and City Attorney Tom Berning .
”He’s somebody who cared deeply about the clients he represented,” Berning said.
In 1978, Mr. Morris filed a suit with another lawyer on behalf of prisoners at the Pima County Jail.
The suit claimed inmates were subjected to inadequate space, inadequate sanitary conditions and insufficient staff, and it was instrumental in forcing the construction of a new jail, Berning said.
A suit Mr. Morris filed against Tucson Unified School District in 1987 accused the district of providing schools which had predominantly minority enrollments with inferior facilities and equipment.
That suit and others like it won increased funding for schools, said Paul Julien, executive director of Southern Arizona Legal Aid.
Mr. Morris also dedicated himself to opening TUSD’s program for gifted and talented students to more minorities.
He achieved that goal in 1987 when the federal government ordered the district to increase minority enrollment at University High School, its school for gifted upper-level students, by 20 percent.
And his efforts resulted in a January federal court ruling that Arizona is providing an inadequate level of funding for bilingual education programs, leaving students instructed by unqualified teachers.
Many people who have benefited from Mr. Morris’ efforts aren’t aware of his work, Julien said.
”If everyone who was impacted by Bill’s work was to come to the memorial service, we’d have to have it at the (University of Arizona) football stadium,” he said.
”He set the standard so high for an unselfish commitment to the people who most need help in the community,” Julien added.
Mr. Morris was born Feb. 7, 1950, in Salt Lake City.
He received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Washington in 1971, graduating Phi Beta Kappa.
He graduated at the top of his class from that university’s law school in 1975.
He was a member of the Reginald Heber-Smith Fellowship Program, a highly regarded distinction, from 1977 to 1980.
Mr. Morris never desired personal acclaim, but was motivated by a sense of charity, Schuessler said.
”He wasn’t looking for anybody to pat him on his back,” she said. ”He just felt that it was a person’s duty and obligation to help others.”
Mr. Morris, who avoided computers, wrote all of his briefs by hand, a nightmare for his secretaries, said Marilyn Draving, his secretary at Southern Arizona Legal Aid from 1988 to 1995.
”He had sent several secretaries into tears” when she first met him, she said.
Although he had no children of his own, Mr. Morris helped raise Schuessler’s two children.
He is survived by his father, Glen, stepmother Charlotte, and brother Walter, all of Albuquerque, N.M. ; and Schuessler, of Tucson, and her children, Leslie, of San Francisco, and Michael, of Mexico City, Mexico.
Memorial services will be held Saturday at 10 a.m. in the auditorium of Tucson High Magnet School, 400 N. Second Ave.
The family suggests donations be made to the Arizona Justice Institute, 33 N. Stone Ave., Tucson, Ariz. 85701.
(Dated Mar 14, 2000)
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