Borough mourns ‘Mr. Collingdale,’ Mayor dies
Served as mayor for nearly 5 decades
Frank Kelly, the popular longtime mayor known as “Mr. Collingdale,” who served Collingdale Borough for decades, died Thursday after being stricken at his home.
He was 84.
Kelly was synonymous with the town he served for nearly five decades. He was just a few months away from marking his 12th consecutive four-year term as borough mayor.
To many, Kelly was Collingdale. The longtime mayor offered this view of the job he held for so long in a 2015 profile with the Daily Times:
“There’s nothing worse than a politician who thinks he is better than the people who elected him,” Kelly said. “You have to treat people the way you’d want to be treated, and you can’t look down on anybody. I think it helps that I worked for a living and put in my 40 hours like everyone else.”
Kelly worked for PECO for 41 years. He was appointed to borough council in 1966 and backed for mayor three years later. He’s held the job ever since.
A viewing will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 29, and 9 to 10 a.m. Friday, Nov. 30, at St. Joseph’s Church,
500 Woodlawn Ave., Collingdale. A Mass of Christian Burial will follow at 10 a.m. Burial will follow at SS. Peter and Paul Cemetery, Marple Township.
Here is the 2014 profile of Kelly that appeared in the Oct. 18, 2014, Daily Times to mark his 80th birthday.
Frank Kelly garnered a couple-paragraph mention in the Daily Times a day after securing his first term as mayor of Collingdale, but the larger type on Nov. 5, 1969 went to fellow Republicans who won races for every county row office and the landslide victory by Philadelphia’s 39-yearold district attorney, Arlen Specter.
After replacing Collingdale’s incumbent mayor, Joseph Graff, on the Republican ticket, Kelly easily defeated the borough’s Democratic Party leader, Edward Harkins, by a 3-1 margin.
Two months later, the
35-year-old PECO lineman took the oath of office for the first time as mayor.
Kelly, who turns 80 today, has taken it ten more times since, making his tenure the longest consecutive mayoral term in the history of Pennsylvania.
“I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it,” he said. “As long as I’m healthy and my wife is healthy, I plan to keep going. I’ve never considered not being mayor.”
This afternoon, a few hundred Kelly supporters will fill the Oaks Ballroom in Glenolden to wish “Mr. Collingdale” a happy birthday and honor him for his
44 years as mayor and 50 years of service to the borough.
“I started planning it in the spring,” said borough manager and former police chief John Hewlings. “I’ve been with the borough for
44 years myself, and we have worked together for long time and known each other even longer through the firehouse.
“Frank has given his whole heart to Collingdale, and we wanted to recognize him for everything he’s done.”
Guests will include family and friends, fellow mayors and state, county and borough officials who have worked with Kelly over the last half century.
“He is 100 percent Collingdale,” said Kathleen Munro, the borough’s longtime council president. “With Frank, it’s God, family and Collingdale. He has been such a fixture for so long, it’s hard to picture what it would be like without him.”
When her family moved to the borough 47 years ago, Munro said it did not take long for Councilman Kelly to show up on her doorstep.
“He was the very first politician who knocked on our door,” she said. “He introduced himself to my husband and myself, gave us his number and told us to call if there was anything we needed. Coming from Philadelphia, I never had a politician do anything like that before.”
Hewlings, who rose from part-time police officer to chief during his 37 years with the Collingdale Police Department, attributed Kelly’s electoral longevity to a willingness to
work with anybody.
“No matter who it is, he’s not afraid to knock on a door, sit down and talk about a problem,” he said. “That’s the way he’s been his whole life. Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, he will try to help you if there’s an issue you care about.”
Kelly graduated from Collingdale High School in 1953, served two years in the Army and married his girlfriend, Janet Glasgow, in June of 1955. He launched his political career nine years later with a successful run for committeeman.
He credits his grandmother, Eurie Howell, who once served as president of the Regular Republicans Womens Club, for his involvement in politics
“She pretty much raised me, and I spent more time at her house than my own,” said Kelly, whose father worked for Sun Ship in Chester. “The conversations were always about politics, and somehow I would work my way into the conversation.”
It was his grandmother’s influence that turned Kelly into a loyal Republican. “She probably would have shot me if I voted for a Democrat,” he said.
In 1964, he worked hard for U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater in his race against Lyndon Johnson.
“And damned if I didn’t think we were going to win,” Kelly said with a laugh. “I think he ended up with about 30 votes in Darby Township and maybe 15 in Darby. The turnout was around 97 percent.”
Kelly was appointed to borough council in 1966 and backed for mayor three years later by William E. Ruthrauff Jr., a former mayor who held a seat on the all-powerful Delaware County Republican Board of Supervisors, better known as the War Board.
“I knew it wasn’t my turn and at first I said no,” Kelly recalled. “But Bill said I needed to do it for the good of the town and that if I didn’t do it, so and so was going to run. Eventually I agreed to run.”
The ‘70s and ‘80s were a hectic time on all fronts. Kelly was promoted to a supervisor position by the electric company, became co-chairman of the local Republican Party and, along with Janet, was in perpetual motion trying to keep pace with their seven children, Jeanette, Frank, Colleen, Kathleen, Brian, Patrick and Kristine.
“He loves dealing with everybody, and he likes to stay busy — that’s his thing,” said Janet, who was a year behind her future husband at Collingdale High. “If he sits around the house, he gets antsy. He is more comfortable when he’s out and about, talking to people. That (arrangement) may not work for everybody but it works for us.”
In the mid-’80s, Kelly passed on the opportunity to represent the 162nd District in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, clearing the path for Sharon Hill Mayor Ron Raymond, who went on to hold the seat for 24 years.
“I turned it down,” he said of the offer extended by Joe Dorsey, who succeeded Ruthrauff as the GOP leader in Collingdale and had a seat on the War Board. “I was Dorsey’s right-hand guy at the time, but all my kids were at home. I was making good money at PE (Philadelphia Electric) and the legislature hardly paid anything.”
Kelly also was still recovering from the September
1983 death of his 19-yearold son, Brian, who was killed in a dirt bike accident in Cape May County, N.J.
Kelly and Dorsey would go to war in 1992 after Dorsey’s son-in-law, Councilman James Powers, was appointed public safety chairman.
When Dorsey and Powers lodged accusations of misconduct against Police Chief Robert Morris and the department, tempers flared, council meetings got heated, and Kelly, a Morris supporter, decided he’d had enough.
Along with tax collector Edward Zuccarini, Kelly formed the New Republican Party and put together a slate that destroyed the Dorsey-backed Republicans in the May 1993 primary.
“It was the hardest campaign in the history of the borough,” an elated Kelly said at the time. “The voters came out and supported us. Dorsey pulled out all the stops, and they rejected him and they didn’t listen. He didn’t win one candidate.” The New Republican council included Munro, Sue DePompeo, Gerald O’Hara and James Bryan, who was sentenced to state prison last week after pleading guilty to stealing nearing $3 million from his former employer. Harkins, the Democrat Kelly beat in his first run for mayor, was elected district justice — a position Powers was being groomed for before the Dorsey/Kelly split.
When the dust settled, the county’s GOP leaders recognized Kelly’s faction as the official Republican Party of Collingdale.
“I consider Frank a true professional and a man of his word,” said former Springfield Republican Party Chairman Charles Sexton Jr. “He was not in it for the money, and he never looked for elected office to be his livelihood. He loved his kids. He loved his wife and those Irish setters, and he was in it for the community.”
A good friend of Dorsey’s, Sexton said he and Kelly “had words many times” but were able to move on after the New Republicans took control in Collingdale.
“It was sad to see him and Joe split but it wasn’t my fight,” Sexton said. “Joe and I were very close but I think he was wrong on the whole thing (and for) pushing Jimmy Powers for the DJ job.”
Since edging Patricia Felker by less than 200 votes in the 1993 Republican primary, Kelly has not faced a serious challenge at the polls.
“A lot of guys miss the action we used to have but I don’t,” he said. “We look back on it as fun, but at the time it was very hectic and it was personal.”
Kelly retired from PECO after 41 years in 1996, spent another 15 years working at the Delaware River Port Authority, and recently wrapped up a 2-year stint as a state committeeman.
He is still an active member of St. Joseph Church in Collingdale, a life member of Collingdale Fire Company No. 1 and the leader of the local chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.
By his count, he has also officiated more than 1,200 weddings.
In his downtime, Kelly likes to golf, watch “Gunsmoke,” keep tabs on his 18 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren and spend time at his old high school, a building he fought to save from demolition that now houses the borough’s municipal offices.
“If anything, he’s even more involved since he retired,” Hewlings said. “These days he is up at borough hall almost every day getting the pulse of what’s going on. He’s always attending affairs for the athletic club or the senior citizens club or something for the church or some other organization.”
A member of council for 30 years and long considered a likely successor to Kelly, Munro laughed when asked whether she still had any interest in being mayor.
“At one time — when I was much younger,” she said. “I thought it was something I might be able to do, but it was never something I had to have.”
In addition to making himself available, Kelly believes his practice of treating people equally has endeared himself to his constituents.
“There’s nothing worse than a politician who thinks he is better than the people who elected him,” he said. “You have to treat people the way you’d want to be treated, and you can’t look down on anybody. I think it helps that I worked for a living and put in my 40 hours like everyone else.
“I climbed a hell of a lot of poles before I got to be a foreman.”