When Virginia Kelly was in her 20s and announced she was a Democrat, “her stepfather thought she’d joined the Communist Party,” said Kelly’s daughter, Nora Virginia Kelly of Denver.
Nothing slowed Kelly in her constant efforts to promote Democratic causes, especially those focused on women’s rights.
Kelly was 83 when she died following a stroke at her Denver home Oct. 13.
Kelly worked constantly for the party but actually “was pretty shy,” said her daughter, and never considered running for office herself.
For years, she escorted patients into a Planned Parenthood clinic where abortions are performed.
The escorts were, and are, used because often there are anti-abortion activists surrounding the building yelling at the patients.
“She got yelled at, spit on, insulted and called disparaging names” and once was pinched, said Nora Kelly, but her mother “was very passionate” that the rights of people be protected.
In election years, Kelly loaded her four kids, and any neighborhood kids she could find, into her red station wagon “loaded with boxes of campaign literature,” and they’d distribute election materials to each house, recalled Kelly’s son Sean Kelly of Austin, Texas.
“Mom had it all carefully worked out how to hit each house and neighborhood,” said Sean Kelly. The reward was “a cool mug of root beer. We loved it.”
Virginia Kelly “wanted to see a woman president and was a Hillary Clinton supporter,” said her daughter.
Virginia Whitlock Elliott was born in Denver on June 3, 1927, and lived in Park Hill until she was in high school, and then the family moved to Wheat Ridge, where she graduated from high school.
She attended the University of Colorado.
She married Allen Lee Kelly on Aug. 22, 1952. A longtime teacher in Denver Public Schools, he died in 2000.
In addition to her daughter and son, she is survived by two other sons, Norden Mackenzie Kelly of Mountainair, N.M., and Thomas Howe Kelly of Bozeman, Mont.; and one grandchild.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
