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THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING
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An old friend to be absent at breakfast Kelly to miss St. Patrick's event By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff, 3/18/2006
But one fixture missing from the annual St. Patrick's Day breakfast tomorrow in South Boston has people talking. Absent for only the second time in 27 years will be the stocky former sheet metal worker and two-fisted town defender, James M. Kelly, the city councilor known simply as Jimmy.
Weakened by chemotherapy for cancer in his brain and lungs, Kelly, 65, has been ordered by his doctors to avoid crowds; his compromised immune system cannot risk being exposed to infection. His absence from the head table has added a note of sadness to the rollicking political roast and has led friends, neighbors, and politicians to plan special tributes for the ailing councilor.
One of Boston's most controversial and sometimes irascible figures, opposing busing and gay rights, Kelly has become an object of nostalgia and affection to some as he battles grave illness. That is especially true in his neighborhood, where he has been an unapologetic defender of what he calls ''the old ways.'' Get-well cards are making the rounds after Masses and neighborhood meetings, a motorcade of friends and politicians plans to stop by his house today, and arrangements for Kelly to address the breakfast crowd by telephone are in the works.
''You have to show your loyalty to him,'' said John ''Wacko'' Hurley, 75, the organizer of the annual St. Patrick's Day parade. ''He's a loyal son of a gun.''
Kelly's presence at the St. Patrick's Day breakfast was always freighted with meaning. He started attending in 1978, before he was a councilor, when he won a seat near the head table as a reward from Senate President William M. Bulger, the South Boston strongman, who wanted to thank him for fighting court-ordered busing to desegregate the city's schools. In 1983, when Kelly was elected district councilor, he was moved to the head table, a vaunted position reserved for the governor and South Boston's biggest names.
''He's just a major part of it,'' said state Representative Brian P. Wallace, a South Boston Democrat. ''He's been a major part as long as I can remember.''
Kelly's notoriety came from outspoken defenses of what he called traditional South Boston values, starting with his strident antibusing activism in the 1970s. Twenty years later, he fought to keep gay groups from marching in the St. Patrick's Day parade. More recently, he fought an ultimately unsucessful battle to compensate South Boston residents for big developments rising on the nearby waterfront. People in the neighborhood also remember less visible gestures: the way he promptly answers constituent calls, spends hours at senior centers, and never passes people on the street without saying hello.
''Everybody loves him,'' said Pat Montanino, 68, a South Boston native who was shopping yesterday on East Broadway with her husband, Mike. ''He does a lot for South Boston.''
Such heartfelt affection is unusual in an era when politicians have become symbols of suspicion, often scorned and resented. With his boxy eyeglasses and balding pate, Kelly is seen as the antithesis of the packaged politician. In South Boston, he is regarded more as a neighbor then an elected official.
''Even at the parade, people will miss him,'' Montanino said. ''People all yell to him -- 'Hey, Jimmy!' -- and they run out to him and shake his hand. And everybody loves him.''
Down the street, at Murphy's Jewelry, a small shop of shamrock pendants, claddagh earrings, and Celtic charms on East Broadway, owner Billy Cosetta said the neighborhood is in mourning over Kelly's absence from the breakfast.
''Everyone will be down about it, but he'll be back,'' said Cosetta, 47, a South Boston native. ''He's a Southie fixture. He's done a lot of good things for a lot of people.''
The breakfast, televised and attended by hundreds, tends to reward the sharpest jokes with the biggest laughs. But Kelly prefers puns and jokes that seem lifted from a bygone era, Wallace said. This year, he was asking friends to tell people at the breakfast about a banana he had met in the hospital. The yellow patient kept telling doctors, ''I don't peel too well.''
''He tells a bad joke every year, a different bad one every year, and that's what's so funny about it; everyone waits for Jimmy's bad joke,'' Wallace said.
Kelly missed the breakfast once before, in 2004, when he was battling colon cancer. These days, Kelly goes twice a month to Brigham and Women's Hospital for chemotherapy. In an interview, he said he's feeling pretty good and ''better than I expected.'' He wants to get back to City Hall, he said, and back to the breakfast next year. It's just not the same watching it on television, he said.
''I wish I could go, but I can't,'' Kelly said. ''I have to deal with certain things that I have to deal with. What's there is there, and I look forward to being hale and hearty next year, not only at the breakfast, but marching in the parade.''
This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 3/18/2006.
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