Remembering Eddie Kelly

Edward Eugene Kelly, who taught history for 37 years, made every student believe that they could succeed, a former student recalled.

By Darrell Horwitz/The Charlotte Ledger

A GREAT TEACHER CAN have a big impact on your life. For 37 years, students that took one of his history classes at Charlotte Country Day School were fortunate enough to have such an instructor—who prepared them not only for his class, but for the future. Edward Eugene Kelly, who passed away on March 13 at 77, was that kind of teacher.

J.D. DuPuy ’92, who as a ninth grader met Kelly, felt the weight of speaking at his memorial service on March 25. A friend told him, “No pressure, you’re just speaking on behalf of thousands of students who were positively impacted by this great man in countless ways.”

According to DuPuy, to say Mr. Kelly was hard, strict, or demanding would be an understatement. “There was no time for daydreaming in his class, as your hand would be cramping from so diligently taking notes.”

Kelly’s two most popular courses were European History and Ancient Medieval History, but he didn’t just teach history. He brought it to life in his classroom.

A fellow educator, Brad Touma, said Kelly was a mentor who taught him what it takes to be a good teacher. “The one thing students always talked about regarding him was he was so well-versed when he was talking on the Second World War, he would break into a perfect impersonation of Winston Churchill and recite one of his speeches, or he would break out in German when he was speaking about Otto Von Bismarck,” Touma recalls.

Kelly minored in German and majored in history at Pfeiffer College, where he was influenced to become a history teacher, according to his brother, David Kelly. “Eddie would go into an empty classroom at night to prepare for his exams or his weekly assignments and he would go through the material and do it out loud like he was teaching a class.”

Stuart Richards Pfeifer ’95, another of Kelly’s students, knew him most of her life because her mother was a teacher at the school and also a friend. She remembers a time when she was 12 years old, and Kelly was tasked with watching her while her parents went on vacation. Upon hearing, “Eddie is going to stay with you for the weekend,” she thought, “That doesn’t sound like a ton of fun. I mean, he was a pretty stern guy.”

“I came home from school and everything I thought the weekend was going to be like changed in an instant. He was in our kitchen cooking dinner and singing,” she recalls. “We watched ‘Halloween’ and it went like this moment in time where he went from this stern teacher to seeming like a human being. We had so much fun, and I think our relationship was different after that.”

Pfeifer, who took his European History class said, “He taught a very complex class that was super challenging, but he made every single student feel like they could succeed in that class if they just put the effort in. To do well in his class, there was no better feeling. You felt like you summited Mount Everest when you made him happy and you succeeded by mastering the material.”

That mantra was prominently displayed in his classroom with the words his students would never forget: “If you have thoroughly mastered the material, you will do well.”

He gave them the tools to do that by creating a handbook for writing a term paper that they still use at Country Day. His brother David mentioned if students misplaced or lost their copy, they would request another one so they could use it to prepare for research papers.

Regarding his methods of learning, DuPuy said, “I can tell you hands down, not one single person who ever had his class would deny that he, more than any other teacher we had, prepared us for actual classroom work at the collegiate level. I marched into Davidson using his methods to write my term papers while my contemporaries from other schools were saying, ‘How do I do this?’”

Pfeifer remembered when she and DuPuy took him out to lunch for his birthday, maybe three or four years ago.

“He wanted to go to this particular restaurant because he had seen it on “Charlotte Talks.” Eddie was fully fluent in German, and this poor waiter has no idea what’s getting ready to happen and he orders the entire meal in German. It was just hilarious.”

Pfeifer said he made every student feel special. “He had a way of when he was with you, he was just with you,” Pfeifer said.

DuPuy explained, “He had this way of making you feel like you were the only student in the world that mattered to him.” He said that seeing so many former students relaying memories on social media about how Mr. Kelly impacted their lives triggered a little jealousy. “Wait a minute. That was our thing. I was the special one!”

The outpouring of affection for him on the Legacy obituary website demonstrated how special he was. Marcelle Gorelick ’84 said, “Whenever I write or organize a history paper or any detailed research, I try to do it ‘Mr. Kelly’ style. What he taught me got me through law school and continues with me through my life.”

Stephen Embree ’98 said, “I realized only later that he was teaching more than just history.”

None of us know how long we will be here, but it’s the legacy we leave with others that withstands time. Edward Kelly made his mark on so many lives, as former student Mary Beth Tice McIntyre ’90 so well describes:

“He taught us how to think, how to study, and to believe in our capabilities. His legacy will continue far beyond the days.”

This article originally appeared in the Charlotte Ledger’s Ways of Life obituaries newsletter.