Peter "Pete" KELLEY

Peter J. D. Kelley

Pete's 2011 Autobiography

In my youth I attended a total of TEN schools! After Greens Farms, Saugatuck El and Assumption, I left Westport in 1952 when in fourth grade. My father, a journalist, was posted to Rome, Italy by the New York Herald Tribune. I attended two schools in Rome, one school in Paris, two years at the ancestral boarding school in England, and one in New Hampshire, before returning to Westport to finish tenth grade at Staples in 1959.

In Mr. Downing’s Home Room I reconnected with old pals from my earlier Westport days, and met many new ones as well. Then I started at Fairfield Prep that fall for my Junior and Senior years. Social life in Westport involved every Friday night at the Staples Canteen sock hops, dates with girlfriends, attending other Staples and Prep events, and time with my friends for those last two years of high school. Fond memories!

After graduation from Prep in 1961, I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force with two Class of ’61 Staples buddies, Rod Hurtuk and Peter Grieves. We went to Basic in Texas together, and then all went our different ways. I was sent on to electronics school at Lowry AFB in Denver for a year in 1962 for the USAF B-52E bomber’s Radar Bombing and Navigation System. All that I had NOT learned in high school algebra, geometry, calculus, chemistry, and physics was quickly evident. Quadratic equations, trigonometry, Greek letters and elusive scientific principles in physics and chemistry came to life: it was the Cold War and the USAF was dead serious. So I studied hard in all-night sessions with my classmates to make up for all those high school C’s.

I then spent three years at Walker AFB in Roswell, NM, on a large SAC base, surrounded by giant B-52 bombers and KC-135 Tankers. Black Boxes, missiles and big nuclear weapons and surviving an airplane crash in the mountains of Southern Colorado during the winter of 1964 were all exciting parts of my Air Force experience. I skied all over the Rockies and made some great lifelong friends. But I can assure you, nobody I met then in Roswell had ever heard of any aliens!

While at the USAF Bomb/Nav school in Denver in 1962 I met a beautiful young woman at a summer-stock theatre: Pat was a budding singer/actress from Chicago, who wanted a career on Broadway and she became the love of my life. We kept in close touch during my New Mexico USAF years, visiting often, while she toured the US and Canada in various musical/theatrical and industrial productions. Released from the USAF in late 1965, I returned home to Westport. I soon moved into New York City to rejoin Pat and attend Columbia University. Pat and I were married in 1967 while I was in New York finishing up college. This December will mark 44 years of happiness together.

I graduated from Columbia University with a BA in Economics in 1970, and joined Chase Manhattan Bank in their Management and Credit Development Program. My career at Chase for the next 16 years involved various Credit Officer positions in the Western Hemisphere/Latin America Group, handling Commodity Finance accounts, Correspondent Banking accounts, Credit Controls & Administration, and Project Management to computerize international credit operations, all with frequent overseas travel to the Caribbean, and Central and South America.

We moved in 1980 from Manhattan to Centerport, on Long Island’s North Shore. I left Chase in 1986 to begin a second career as a Yacht Broker for large power and sailboats until the recession of 1991. I rejoined Chase and over the next 17 years managed the Bank’s Retail Investment Program in its North Shore branches in the Huntington and Northport-East Northport communities. I retired in 2007 as a Vice President of Chase, then managing a portfolio of over $30 million in client assets, having started my career on Wall Street exactly 37 years prior.

We have three children: Elizabeth (now 33) is Deputy Chief of Staff for a U. S. Senator in Washington DC. She has one child (our first grandchild) Evelyn. Margaret (now 29) is an Assistant Radio Producer at NPR and also has her own budding Floral Design business in the DC area. Peter Jr. (now 28) after a stint on Capitol Hill, works in International Public Relations in London. They all grew up here in Centerport, spending their summers on our Bay and Sound beaches and on our sailboat.

In a sense, I never really left Westport until the last of my parents passed away in 1999 and we sold the house there. We had kept our sailboat in the Westport/Norwalk area for the many years Pat and I lived in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. We would come over from Long Island to Westport often for weekend visits with my retired parents. We’d park at the cannons, walk Compo beach, visit the Nature Center, shop in town and eat in Westport restaurants. And I’d tell the kids some of my Westport stories. Thus our children grew up with an affinity for Westport. We’d even cruise the boat occasionally the 7 miles across the Sound, over to Cockenoe Island to anchor overnight!

I’ve been retired from the Bank for four years and Pat from her fund-raising job at the Townwide Fund of Huntington for two years. We have fun with our many interests and hobbies, traveling to Washington to see our daughters and grandchild, as well as getting to Florida and other points south in the winters. In summers we tend the garden in Centerport, work on the boat, and sail the Sound out of Huntington Harbor. We will begin doing some world travels very soon, visiting our son in London as a base for further adventures.