KELLY, MARY ANN
Major troubles came to the company when Kelley died (probably of cancer from X-ray exposure) soon after the stock market crash in 1929. Koett, the company’s other cofounder, was at this time approaching age 70. Covington native and long-time company employee George Edward Geise (1889–1958) became the interim president. Another Covington native, Wilbur Stanley Werner (1895–1937), took over and served as president for just three years before dying at age 43. As the company foundered, bank officials on the board of directors took control of the company and also became its financial caretakers. In 1938 one of these men, Donald A. Eddy of the First National Bank of Covington, succeeded Werner as the company’s president. After surviving the Great Depression, as well as the flood of 1937, Kelley-Koett found itself in the hands of officers detached from the company’s core culture. The company still had one great opportunity to turn around and prosper during the 1930s. At the time, cancer rates had been increasing and hospitals worldwide looked for answers. Attempting to capture this market, the Kelley-Koett Company, a deep-therapy innovator, now sold a 250,000-volt unit to the Rockefel ler Foundation for a medical center in China. Other orders followed. Werner supervised custom installation of additional units in the Los Angeles Clinic in California, the Harper Hospital in Detroit, Mich., and the Lincoln Hospital in Lincoln, Neb. At Harper Hospital, the installation, which cost the hospital $50,000, included padding the surrounding walls with 26 tons of lead. At the time of his death in 1937, Werner was installing a 1.2-million-volt deep-therapy behemoth costing $76,000 at the Miller Hospital in St. Paul, Minn. In 1938 the Booth Memorial Hospital of Covington acquired a 200,000-volt KelleyKoett deep-therapy unit. In 1939, thanks in large part to the popularity of its deep-therapy units, the Kelley-Koett Company was recovering financially and 15 percent of its sales were overseas. In 1941 Phillip Meyers, a prominent Cincinnati businessman, purchased the Kelley-Koett Company and appointed an MIT graduate engineer, Adolf Feibel, as president. In the pioneer years for use of X-ray equipment leading up to and through World War II, the Kelley-Koett Company’s X-ray equipment was a standard-setter and enjoyed prominence. From January through September 1941, the company sold 18 different items to the government for $650,000. During World War II, the company sold adaptive industrial X-ray units that were used for testing the integrity of cast-metal airplane propellers and for detecting and helping to disable underwater mines. However, the aggressive Picker X-ray Corporation won a contract for supplying the bulk of the military’s X-ray tables, and Picker’s competitors, including the Kelley Koett Company, were left to sell accessories. The war effort still required Kelley-Koett to expand production, to rent off-site warehouse space, to add a second shift, and to hire women. The company also loaned engineers and factory staff to the military for special assignments and product development. Even without the orders that had been
lost to the Picker X-Ray Corporation, production on a grand scale at the Kelley-Koett Company required many workers. Complex X-ray apparatus there was always assembled by hand. In 1943 the army awarded the Covington company’s officials “E” awards for excellence. After World War II, the Kelley-Koett Company, through a UN relief agency, sold X-ray equipment for the medical treatment of civilian war casualties in the Soviet Union. In the late 1940s, Kelley-Koett still had its business arrangement with the Mayo Clinic and enjoyed good relations with many loyal customers. But the new managers liked to emphasize sales productivity, and many shortsighted marketing initiatives were tried. They included a cheaper X-ray line, consumer products such as electric blankets, and a cold war radiation-measuring device, manufactured at a company facility in Cincinnati for the Atomic Energy Commission’s civilian defense centers. Customers began to sense the company’s instability. Nevertheless, at the end, the company professionals in the old factory in Covington still produced a quality line of products, including a new, sleek, 1950s Fleetwood X-ray table. In 1951 Tracerlab of Boston, Mass., purchased the KelleyKoett Company. After Tracerlab, and then another owner, a French company purchased the business. In 1964 the Covington factory was demolished for urban renewal, but the Kelley-Koett Company’s trademark survived into the early 1970s. Several patents are still held by the KelleyKoett Company and the engineers who worked there. Boh, John. “An International Edge, the Kelley-Koett Company, 1903–1956.” NKH 3, no. 2 (Spring– Summer 1996): 39–51. “Covington Has Reason to Be Called ‘X-Ray City,’ ” KP, March 27, 1927, 10. “A Great Man Passes,” KP, April 25, 1931, 4. “New Company Incorporated,” KP, June 13, 1905, 2. Reis, Jim. “X-Ray Business Put Covington on Map,” KP, August 6, 1984, 10K.
John Boh
KELLY, ADAM DAVID (b. July 19, 1860, Carthage, N.C.; d. February 26, 1934, Covington, Ky.). Physician Adam Kelly attended public schools in North Carolina and then entered Bennett College in Greensboro, N.C., receiving his AB in 1892. He married Mary Wendell in Nashville, Tenn., and in 1896 graduated from Nashville’s Meharry Medical School. That same year, he moved to Covington, Ky., and established his practice of general medicine and surgery. Kelly became the second African American medical doctor in the city. He was well known throughout Kenton Co. In May 1912, Kelly was an organizer of the State Medical Society of Colored Physicians, Surgeons, Dentists, and Pharmacists, who had gathered in Covington. Kelly also presented a paper, “Progress of Medicine since the Civil War,” at that meeting. On July 23, 1919, tragedy struck Kelly and his family. An intruder shot Kelly and his son in their home at 514 Scott St. while they were sleeping. Kelly’s four-year-old son, Garland, died while on the operating table at St. Elizabeth Hospital (see St.
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Elizabeth Medical Center). Dr. Kelly recovered from his wound and continued his medical practice. No one was ever charged with the shooting. Kelly was a trustee of the Ninth St. Methodist Church and an active member of the local Republican Party. He was also involved with various fraternal organizations: Freemasons, the Eastern Star, the Knights of Pythias, and Odd Fellows. He died at age 73 and was buried at Linden Grove Cemetery in Covington. “Colored Medical Men Meeting in Covington,” KP, May 10, 1912, 11. Dabney, W. P. Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens. Cincinnati: Dabney, 1926. “Death,” KTS, March 1, 1934, 2. “Investigation into Slaying of Physician’s Son,” KTS, July 24, 1919, 24. “Negro Doctor and Son Shot by Intruder,” KP, July 23, 1919, 1. “Physician and Son Were Shot as They Slept,” KTS, July 23, 1919, 18.
Theodore H. H. Harris
KELLY, MARY ANN (b. September 15, 1925, Los Angeles, Calif.; d. June 20, 2001, Edgewood, Ky.). Mary Ann Kelly, a television writer and advertiser and an author, was the daughter of John Joseph and Mary “Mayme” Farrell Kelly of Ludlow, Ky. She graduated from the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati and did graduate work at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wis., and at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Kelly authored three books, traveled the world, and was already employed as a television program writer at WLW in Cincinnati when the television station went on the air in 1948. She wrote screenplays, conducted advertising campaigns for the Ralph H. Jones Company (Crosley Broadcasting’s advertising firm in Cincinnati), and never failed to have a perspective on an issue or an outrageous tale to contribute. Kelly’s books summarize her style; The Trouble Is Not in Your Set is almost an autobiography of her 40 years in journalism. While at WLW television, she worked with Rod Serling, later the writer of television’s The Twilight Zone, and with Earl Hamner, the creator of the television series The Waltons. Kelly was a pioneer woman in the written media, in advertising, and in the broadcast world in the region. In her spare time, Kelly wrote songs and was a professional toy creator (see Toys). She was a member of the Mother of God Catholic Church in Covington. Kelly never married. After her death from heart trouble in 2001 at St. Elizabeth Medical Center South, her body was donated for medical research. Billman, Rebecca. “Mary Ann Kelly,” CE, July 3, 2001, 4B. “Her Book Tunes in Early Days on Air of Cincinnati TV,” KP, December 15, 1990, 1K. Kelly, Mary Ann. My Old Kentucky Home, GoodNight. Long Island, N.Y.: Exposition Press, 1979. ———. “Rex” and the Single Girl. New York: Exposition Press, 1978. ———. The Trouble Is Not in Your Set. Cincinnati: C. J. Krehbiel, 1990.