Hi,
Does anyone have any pictures of my dear friend Elizabeth Brenden Kelly? I went to Lower Merion High School, in Ardmore, PA. We swam on the swim team together. I graduated in 1975. She was a year behind me. Liz was an amazing swimmer, she was so talented. She swam for Versper's Swim Club, and Lower Merion High School Swim Team. Liz was extremely intelligent she graduated with a 4.0 from high school and went on to Harvard.
I will always remember Liz. She was so kind and quiet. I found the newspaper article below in the Inquirer.
Fondly,
Joan
By Gayle Ronan Sims INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
POSTED: May 27, 2006
Elizabeth Brenden Kelly, 47, a baker and restaurant owner and member of the renowned Philadelphia Kelly family, died of cervical cancer Thursday at home in Center City.
Miss Kelly was the daughter and granddaughter of Olympic scullers and bricklaying businessmen, civic leaders and social constants.
A 1977 graduate of Lower Merion High School, she was a member of the swim team of the Vesper Boat Club. She earned a dual degree in 1981 in English and archaeology from Harvard, where she swam on the all-Ivy League team and ran a catering service.
"I really didn't know what do after graduation. I usually spent the month of August in Monaco," where her aunt, the former Grace Kelly, lived as Princess Grace, Miss Kelly said in a 1988 Inquirer profile. "Aunt Grace said, 'What do you want to do?' She suggested I come to Paris, stay with her and learn French. So I lived in her Avenue Foch apartment and took French lessons. One of the girls in my class was working in a restaurant and I got a job there, waiting tables."
She wound up running the kitchen for 18 months at Lord Sandwich, a Parisian eatery run by Swedes that served American pastries.
When her aunt died in 1982, Miss Kelly got her own apartment and taught English for two years at the American Center in Paris.
When she returned to Philadelphia, she was a breakfast baker at the former Commissary before becoming head baker in 1986 at the former Chameleon.
Miss Kelly was not happy. She tried baking at Le Bec-Fin, but that lasted only two weeks. "The pace was too slow," she said. She went back to Chameleon.
That job paid well, but "I didn't need the money . . . I got no recognition for what I was doing," she said.
Yearning for a place of her own, Miss Kelly opened Brickworks in 1988 at 119 S. 19th St. It was a simple bakery and lunch cafe named after the industry in which her grandfather, John B. Kelly Sr., thrived.
Growing up in Wynnewood, Miss Kelly learned to bake from her nanny. "I often cooked for the entire family as well as family cocktail parties," she said in 1988. "In the sixth grade I did a sit-down dinner for 30 of my friends."
She worked from 3 a.m. until 7:30 p.m., seven days a week at Brickworks, baking award-winning fig bars and rich Chocoholic cakes.
She gave up annual fun while running the cafe. "I have a good time when I'm in Monaco," she said in 1988, "but there's only so much dancing and lying in the sun that I could take."
She closed the cafe in the early 1990s.
Miss Kelly, who resembled her father, John B. Jr., with blond hair, broad face, blue eyes and swimmer's shoulders, was "plagued by health issues in the 1990s," said her brother John B. III.
She earned a nursing degree at the Community College of Philadelphia in 2004 and worked briefly as a nurse at the Fountains at Logan Circle.
"She became too sick to work in spring of 2005," her brother said. "She was diagnosed with cervical cancer last summer."
"She was one the wittiest people I've ever met, always the most fun to be with," said her sister Margaret Christina "Buttons" Kelly.
In addition to her brother and sister, Miss Kelly is survived by her mother, Mary Freeman Spitzer; stepfather, Alan Spitzer; sisters Ann Ogle, Susan Von Medicus and Maura Casey; stepmother, Sandra Kelly; and several cousins.
A private burial is today.
Contact staff writer Gayle Ronan Sims at 215-854-4185 or
gsims@phillynews.com.
from what I understand she is a real estate agent in Philadelphia where she lives with her second husband Hugh. She has 5kids and five grandkids. Some of the kids are from her first marriage.
