Association Business
TLA President Biography: Christopher M. Kelly Steffan Kelly
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hris and I went out to dinner recently and, as we sat down, an elderly couple next to us was getting up to leave. The man saw Chris and walked over to us. “You’re an attorney, aren’t you?” the man asked. Chris looked at him in surprise and said, “I am! How did you know?” It turns out the man was a 91-year-old psychiatrist who had worked for the FBI. He had profiled Chris in ten seconds! I wasn’t surprised that Chris apparently “looks” like an attorney. After all, when he was six years old, he and his friends stood at the end of a driveway and declared what they would do with their lives. Chris had confidently announced he would attend Notre Dame and then become a lawyer. He is a man who has always set goals and worked hard to achieve them. Christopher Mark Kelly was born in January 1972 in Roswell, New Mexico—a town that wanted to be known for its ranching, oil and gas industries, but instead was famous for being the home of the 1947 UFO crash landing. The population of Roswell in 1970 was around 34,000 people, and has only grown to about 48,000 over the last fifty years. So, either people don’t want to move there, or the people who live there are getting abducted by aliens. Chris likes to joke that if the lights go out and you see him glowing, don’t worry. It’s perfectly normal for a Roswellian. Chris is the fourth of five children born to Paul J. Kelly, Jr. and Ruth Ellen Dowling. He calls himself the “Forgotten Fourth” since he was often forgotten, misplaced or skipped over while growing up in his rambunctious family. He spent a lot of time trying to keep up with his older siblings. As a result, he tried harder, learned faster, took more risks and got in more trouble than the average kid. Chris was small, but he was scrappy and knew a lot of bad words. If he couldn’t fight his way out of something, he would use his colorful vocabulary to win his battles. Chris lived in Roswell until he was 11 years old. Accordingly, Roswell in his mind will always be the place of his wonder years. A place where it was Saturday morning all day long and the play continued until after sunset. Where he rode bikes with his gang of friends, played baseball, soccer and basketball, fought imaginary battles with trashcan lids and bamboo swords, and terrorized the cadets at the New Mexico Military Institute by throwing clods of dirt at their cars as they drove by. The furious cadets were the only ones willing to chase Chris and his friends, which only made things more exciting. Chris’ family was tight-knit because all of their relatives were on the East Coast. Chris’s father had moved the family from Long Island to Roswell in 1967, before Chris was born; and although the family of seven did trek across the country in their RV to see the relatives occasionally, they created their own special memories together in Roswell. Chris will always remember his Roswell street address, and every sidewalk crack, tree, yard and house on his block. In 1983, the Kelly family moved to the foothills of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Moving from Roswell to Santa Fe was only a fourhour drive (not long in the West), but culturally it was like moving from Dallas, Texas to Madrid, Spain. Chris was transplanted from the ranching southwest to a place of Spanish blue bloods and tri-cultural intersection. He went from organized city blocks and a fifth-grade class at Washington Avenue Elementary where kids looked like him, to a city of winding one-way roads, walled adobe compounds and a sixth-grade class at E.J. Martinez Elementary where he was only one of three blond, blue-eyed kids in a class of 100. He might not have noticed this but for the fact that his new classmates enjoyed regularly pointing out his differences. Despite this, Chris adapted to Santa Fe and dove right in. He made life-long best friends, grew to love the culture, the art, the mountains, the sunsets and most especially the spicy Santa Fe cuisine. Chris attended St. Michael’s Catholic School for 7th and 8th grade and then attended Santa Fe Public High School. Although he played high school sports, specifically soccer and golf (basketball was not an option for the 5’1” freshman), he fell in love with band. He was selected for his high school’s elite Ambassador’s Concert Band, which allowed him to travel the world with his trombone. The band performed concerts in Beijing, Hong Kong, Sydney and Auckland. Chris paid his own way for the trips with summer job money, which his parents appreciated since they were paying for college and medical school tuition for his three older siblings. In 1990, Chris enrolled at the University of Notre Dame. Two hours after moving into his dorm, he was stepping off with the “Band of the Fighting Irish.” Chris’s trombone continued to take him places while he worked toward a double major in Economics and Russian. He enjoyed all-expense-paid trips to Miami (1990 Orange Bowl), New Orleans (1991 Sugar Bowl) and Dallas (1992 Cotton Bowl). In his senior year, Chris gave up band so that he could be a Resident Assistant and prepare for law school. In 1994, Chris enrolled at Wake Forest University School of Law. After his first year, he spent the summer in Wake’s study abroad
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Transportation Lawyers Association • Canadian Transport Lawyers Association • July 2022, Vol. 24, No. 1
