Richard Kelly
Richard A. Kelly
August 26, 1945 - August 10, 2018
Richard A. Kelly’s intellectual curiosity and belief in service started when he was in high school. It was the early 1960s, and he travelled to Harlem to tutor young people. A few years later, he headed to the South to help register African American voters. Looking back, these experiences foreshadowed the life he went on to live. A master teacher, logician, and mathematician, Kelly died suddenly on August 10, 2018 at home in Littleton. He was 72.
He taught thousands of students mathematics, economics, and logic, always encouraging them to “sniff around the problem and be calm.” Outside the classroom, he volunteered his time, serving on a half dozen non-profit boards.
His deep belief in the power of learning and his insatiable curiosity led to numerous grants and awards: In 1990, he received the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Education, and in 1993 was named a SciMath National Fellow. He was an invited participant to the Global Economics Forum, hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and to the Green Economics Conference at Oxford University. He published hundreds of articles on a wide variety of topics ranging from Medieval Latin to Navajo weavings, and from mathematical logic to printing.
Born on August 26, 1945 in New Jersey, Kelly was always in search of a new place and a new adventure. After receiving a BA from Amherst College, he studied mathematical logic and the history of science as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Harvard. Moving to Cape Cod, he worked on a novel for Random House. He then spent nearly a decade in Leeds, England pursuing his doctorate of philosophy in logic.
He came west in 1981 to join Colorado Academy as a math teacher. Though ultimately, he served in a variety of roles over three decades at the school, including working in the Business Office, as chair of the Upper School Math Department, as a Master Teacher of math and economics, and occasionally, as an English teacher.
Coming to Colorado, he married academic curiosity to his love of service. Active in the Denver community, Kelly served, as board chair, on The Colorado Endowment for the Humanities and The Denver Free University, and on the board of the Latin American Research and Service Agency (LARASA), creating a Hispanic Agenda for Colorado. More recently, he joined the Economic Education Advisory Council at Denver’s Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank.
After retiring in 2013, Kelly continued to write and research, focused on paper money and economics. In between, he travelled the world, covering six continents and too many countries to count. He returned repeatedly to the Chilean coast, China, and the Mediterranean. He travelled to Malta for the first time this May, which had been a longtime dream.
But no matter where he went, Ocean Grove, New Jersey was his favorite beach. Every year during the last week of July and the first week of August, he could be found finishing the New York Times crossword, in heated Scrabble matches and jumping the waves.
A celebration of life will be held at 3 p.m. on Saturday, August 25, 2018 at Colorado Academy, 3800 S. Pierce St., Denver, CO 80235. It will be followed by a gathering in his beloved garden, 5750 S. Bemis St., Littleton.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be sent to either St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey Center or the A.J. Musil Scholarship Fund at Colorado Academy. Kelly often remarked that his high school, St. Peter’s Prep, helped build his intellectual curiosities. He hoped to help others find that same kind of opportunity.
He is survived by his daughter, Margaret, his brother, Robert, two nieces, a nephew, and his “bestie,” Isabel.
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