By Thom Nickels
It took some time to land a phone interview with Fox 29’s traffic guy, Bob Kelly, but when the green light flashed the so called “Dean of Traffic” was more than gracious with his time and energy.
I caught up with Kelly after the Eagles Super Bowl win so he was still breathless from all the activities.
“The past couple of weeks I’ve been going to pep rallies,” he told me. “The Super Bowl really brought people together. It was something to go into a grade school of 700 kids and see how the Eagles brought the kids together, not just the old school Eagles fans diehards.”
Not that Kelly has anything against Eagles diehards or, as some say, “the undeniable attraction of loyalty.
“All of these kids were so passionate about the Eagles even though they probably couldn’t tell you the players’ names. This shows you how one team can unite the city.”
“Look,” he adds, “I’m 55, and some fans waited years for this championship, but my little guy who is six years old has recently been to a Villanova victory parade and now he’s going to an Eagles parade. He doesn’t know what these people who have been waiting for years to go to a parade have been through.”
‘The Dean of Traffic’ lives in Malvern with his wife and his six kids. That’s six kids as in (he jokes) “The Brady Bunch,” because “I like the tax deductions.” Having six kids in a world where two kids is the expected norm is an extraordinary thing, and I tell him so. “My oldest got married in September. My second in line just graduated from Penn State. I have three high schoolers and we have a six year old.”
The Gift of Gab
Kelly’s conversational style is an easy going stream of consciousness roller coaster ride. He never has to grope for words because words come to him like confetti thrown from tall buildings. Some call it the gift of gab. That’s what his mother told him when he was a kid growing up in Bridesburg: “You have the gift of gab!” Kelly, meanwhile, insists that he was a shy kid. A shy kid with the gift of gab is the kind of oxymoron that Philadelphia loves.
Hero: The Geator with the Heater
So how did this shy kid wind up as a media star?
He tells me that when he was a college student he majored in broadcasting at Temple University.
“My dream was to be a disc jockey and my hero was Jerry Blavat, the Geator with the Heater, as well as all the boss jocks on WFIL. I was thinking, ‘You can teach me math or history but I’m going to be a DJ.’ So I worked in the churches in the neighborhood. I had records and all this stereo equipment and one night at All Saints parish the DJ didn’t show up and Sister said, ‘Hey Bobby, can you get your records and start playing some music for the dance?
Can eagles fly.
The dye was cast. “I worked my way through Temple spinning records for dances, proms, weddings and then I went onto the clubs.”
Some people fade away forever in the clubs, but not Kelly. He went on to work for WMGK radio, then one of the city’s most popular stations where he got his first DJ job playing classic hits. “I filled in for Jerry Blavat. We both had this fast talking kind of delivery. Blavat and I are friends to this day,” he adds, the comment reminding me that wise men never burn personal bridges.
The Geator taught him that every person who comes up to you is special. Kelly took The Geator’s words to heart. The advice served him well as he advanced in his career through radio and television.
He became a broadcast superstar although he never lost sight of his Philadelphia roots. Nobody would ever mistake him for one of those inauthentic broadcast people who give the impression that they are full of themselves.
Kelly tells me he’s seen how this type of broadcast star “eventually falls off a cliff.”
His delivery in front of the camera and on radio is unscripted. “I ad lib everything,” he says. “The other folks that do what I do on TV, they write it all down and they hang it all down off to the right and away from the camera and you watch them and they’re always looking to the right because they are reading.”
His DJ years trained Kelly in the art of ad lib. “Really,” he admits, “I don’t consider myself a comedy guy. I always think to myself ‘What is everybody thinking?’ That’s how this stuff comes out.”
The Dean of Traffic
And it is a lot of stuff. Having six kids has helped him come up with ideas to supplement his ‘Dean of Traffic’ reputation. It was Kelly’s idea, for instance, to take the news van into Philadelphia neighborhoods at Christmastime to report on streets that have the best Christmas lights. “A Very Kelly Christmas,” he says, gives people a chance to shake hands with their neighbors and to put their kids on TV. But it’s not just Christmas that gets him traveling all over the city. His experience as a father has helped him to come up with new ideas. “Kelly’s Classroom” has him visiting schools and talking to students. When school is out, he switches into “Camp Kelly” mode, or what kids do at summer camp. “Breakfast with Kelly” brings him to neighborhood diners where he “investigates” Uncle Louie’s or Aunt Marble’s secret pancake recipe. Or that rare sausage treat that Grandma Sue dug out of an 1862 recipe book. “The breakfast event isn’t always good for my waistline,” he quips, though he’s quick to add he’ll head to the treadmill after a breakfast overload.
Bob Kelly is a graduate of Northeast Catholic High School
St. Patrick’s Day Parade
Great as these on-location specials are, no event gets Kelly’s Irish up as much as the Saint Patrick’s Day parade. Kelly covered the parade for 12 years for CBS3 but when he went over to Fox his first year there did not include parade coverage. “I missed covering the parade because it was on CBS3 so I said to Fox, ‘It would be great if we could cover the parade,’ so I did whatever I could to make that happen.”
Fox did get the parade and teamed Kelly up with new Fox employee Kathy Orr, his old parade cohort at CBS3.
“The Irish community is so loyal,” Kelly says. “The parade allows all of the city’s neighborhoods and the surrounding counties to connect on that one day.” Kelly compares it to the feelings of unity surrounding the Eagles and adds that the parade is even more exciting than the Mummers, which he says “is primarily in South Philadelphia.”
Kelly’s coverage of the parade is anything but staid. He likes to say that on the day of the parade he can be found jumping all over the place. “I’m not the kind of guy who likes to sit in a reviewing booth. I want to get out among my people and find a story or talk to the family that’s been coming for 15 years. I even jump over barriers. He mentions the year that he wore a kilt in the parade. “It was kind of windy so after an hour I took it off and put my pants on. I don’t know if I could be 100 percent comfortable walking around all day in a kilt.”
Of course, when you are as popular a broadcaster as Bob Kelly, New York City may come knocking on your door with a lucrative Big Apple Traffic offer. Kelly tells me that a station there did approach him but the offer never got off the ground.
“I thought about it but Philly is my hometown. I know Philly. I know the neighborhoods. I can ‘do it’ like the back of my hand. New York is different. Its all subways and trains, it’s not neighborhoods and it’s not cars. I am very blessed. It doesn’t happen that you get a chance to start in your hometown let alone stay in your hometown. I’m very grateful for that.” ‘The Dean’ added one more thing.
“If you look at some of the people that have left and gone to New York they’re coming back after a couple years. It’s not at all what it was chopped up to be. New York is transient and lonely, they don’t have the traditions that they do in Philly.”