Despite enjoying a good deal of success given the strict academic nature of the school, Regis is not known as an athletics powerhouse. Regis has no athletics fields to call its own and its two small gyms are modest resources to field teams and hold practices, not establish a vaunted program that churns out Division I athletes. This of course is not the purpose of the school, but it does serve to make the athletic accomplishments of alumni that much more inspiring.
Alumni of a certain vintage may have heard the name of Tom Kelly ’41. At Regis, Kelly was an integral member of the 1941 team which was then regarded as one of the best basketball team in the history of Regis. Under the tutelage of legendary coach Don Kennedy, the 1941 team assembled a record of 16-2, losing the two games by a combined margin of only 3 points and routinely thrashing rivals such as Fordham, Xavier, and Brooklyn Prep by 20 or 30 points.
The 1941 Regian remembered Kelly’s contribution to the team this way: He “showed his athletic qualities by stepping into the fray when 'the heat was on'. Tom filled in at center in mid-season and finished up remarkably well. Both in the Fordham and Georgetown games, his work in recovering the ball under the basket seemed to be the spot for which he was best fitted. This style of play is an art in itself.”
Kelly was one of at least two players on that 1941 team who would go on to play college basketball. He played for NYU, while classmate Frank McDermott ’41 suited up for Georgetown. Kelly would eventually be drafted by the Boston Celtics, but the distance between the Boston Garden and the court at East 84th Street greatly exceeded the 225 highway miles.
Before Kelly had the opportunity to soar toward the rim for the NYU Violets, he had a different kind of soaring to do, courtesy of the U.S. Army Air Corps. After graduating from Regis, Kelly entered the United States Army Air Force as an Aviation Cadet. He was trained in the United States Army Air Corps as a B-17 flying officer and commissioned a Second Lieutenant Pilot in 1944. He was assigned to the 486th Bombardment Group (Heavy), 833rd Bomber Squadron of the 3rd Division of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, which was stationed in England. Lt. Kelly flew twenty-nine combat missions over Germany, winning five battle stars and the air medal with oak leaf clusters, all prior to his twenty-first birthday. At the conclusion of his tour of duty, he decided to resume the education which the war had interrupted.
Like so many returning veterans, Kelly attended college under the G.I. Bill of Rights. He decided to pursue an engineering degree at the uptown campus of NYU. His thirst for education equaled his desire to return to the basketball court. As a "walk-on", he would make the varsity team at NYU, which featured all-time NYU and NBA great, Dolph Shayes, among other talented players. In his final year at NYU he made the All-Metropolitan team.
Kelly’s Regis academic training stood him in good stead at the Engineering School. He graduated in three years while playing varsity basketball, and managed to secure admittance to the engineering school equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa. Graduation presented Kelly with a career choice: pro-basketball or engineering. His choice was an easy one.
In 1948, Kelly was drafted by the Boston Celtics. Kelly was initially farmed out to the Harford Hurricanes in the old American Basketball League. Soon enough, the reports came back that Kelly was not just the athletic firebrand he had been stereotyped as, he could also score in the pros. In fact, he was leading the American League in scoring with a 21.4 point per game average. He was called up to the Boston Celtics much to the delight of Boston sportwriters who loved the idea of a tall, Irish-American playing for the Celtics.
After a few games, Kelly made such an impression that he found himself in the Celtics starting lineup. On Sunday evening, January 2, 1949, Kelly put an exclamation mark on his season when he scored 26 points and led the Boston Celtics to a 96-69 victory over the Fort Wayne Pistons. The 26 point performance was the most of any Celtic in a single game that year. That performance inspired a sports cartoonist to enshrine him in most of the major daily newsprints the next day. The Boston media also lauded him as a contender for Rookie of the Year.
Above: The Boston Post cartoon highlighting Kelly's breakout performance on January 4, 1949. His 26 points were the most by any Celtics player that season.
Following his rookie season with the Celtics—where he played 27 games averaging 7.1 points per game—Kelly left Boston and played at Patterson in the American League and at Scranton in the Eastern League. Although the reasons why Kelly departed from Boston are unclear, it is as good a guess as any that money or quality of life was better outside of Boston. In 1947, Kelly had married a fellow Bronx native, Irene McGuire, and family and economic considerations were certainly on his mind. Salaries were meager and, according to basketball legend Johnny Bach (a rookie teammate of Kelly’s on the Celtics that season), “It was a Spartan existence.” In the book Boston Celtics: Where Have You Gone, Bach recalls the scene around the gym in Boston University where the team practiced, and some of the players were housed: “We paid two dollars a night to rent a cot. You’d get up in the morning, have some cereal, walk about 20 steps and start scrimmaging.” After a few additional seasons of basketball post-Celtics, Kelly hung up his sneakers following the birth of his third child.
Kelly and his wife went on to raise 10 children, and Kelly started a professional career in the heating, ventilating and air-conditioning business. By 1961 he had become the manager of the New York office of the Trane Company, a position he held until retirement in 1993. Under his leadership, the company became the largest air conditioning sales and service company in the metropolitan area.
Kelly spent the last 14 years of his life retired in Santa Barbara, California before passing away on March 20, 2008. Despite the number of talented hoopsters who have worn Regis Red, none have equaled Kelly's career performance nor have any played at that level since.
Note: The majority of text and content for this article were compiled using two archived alumni news stories. "Regis' Man in the N.B.A." appeared in the Spring 1997 edition of the Regis Alumni News Magazine (Volume 62 | Number 3). "Thomas E. Kelly '41: Regis' Only NBA Player" by Ted Stenger appeared in the Spring 2009 Regis Alumni News Magazine (Volume 74 | Number 3).
