Author Dominic Kelly shares his life of adventure

By Ginny Privitar
Chester — Author and Chester resident Dominic Kelly has penned a memoir of his extraordinary life, “My Hall of Memories: From the Clydebank Blitz to TWA Flight 800,” as told to writer MJ Hanley-Goff. Recently, an appreciative audience at the Chester Senior Center got to hear him speak about just some of his adventures.
Kelly was born in 1930 in Dalmuir, Scotland, a suburb of Glasgow, on the river Clyde. Nearby Clydebank was a major shipbuilding center, where the Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary were built. During World War II, many warships were built there, including the biggest battleship of the war, the HMS Vanguard. There were factories, too, devoted to the war effort, and the area became a target of the Germans.
Kelly's book begins with a boy’s happy childhood, even in the midst of the Depression. But at the book-signing, in his soft Scottish burr, he spoke mostly about the horrific bombing he lived through, when the German Luftwaffe destroyed the town. About 260 bombers attacked on the night of March 13, 1941. Over a nine-hour period, they dropped high-explosive bombs, incendiary bombs, and land mines. Kelly and his family survived in an air raid shelter, but not everyone was so lucky. Three generations of a family he knew were killed, along with many others.
“The gunfire was unbelievable," he recalled, "the shells going over the top of the building … I don’t know how we made it to this day, but I can assure you, everybody in that shelter was praying to somebody.”
Kelly called it “an absolutely terrible night ... That bombing never stopped,” he added. His book describes the scene the next day as an inferno of fires, rubble, and death.
The next night, 200 bombers returned to finish off the town. In the span of two days, 528 civilians were killed and 617 were seriously injured. A total of 48,000 civilians lost their homes and were displaced, including the Kellys.
A member of the audience, who was born in London in 1937, described being sent to an area just a few miles away, “because we thought it was safe in Scotland.”
In 1947, Kelly joined the Royal Air Force and was attached to the U.S. 8th Air Force 301 bomb group at Scampton, England, where he served for two years. Later he would also serve in the U.S. Army.
In 1952, Kelly emigrated to the U.S., where he met his bride-to-be, Bronx-born Mary Catherine Crean. They raised a family of two daughters, Christine and Mary Catherine Jr., and one son, Brian, in the Fordham section of the Bronx. His reminiscences of the neighborhood and iconic places, like the Lowe’s Paradise Theater, and the parishes of Our Lady of Mercy and St. Nicholas of Tolentine will bring smiles to the faces of other transplants from the city.
Kelly's engineering skills eventually led him to a job at TWA Airlines, where he became crew chief of the TWA maintenance hangar at JFK Airport.
Denise Donaghy, a family friend at the book-signing who worked for United Airlines at JFK at the time Kelly was at TWA, across the service road, recalled that he was quite a prankster. She said one day, Kelly and another man from TWA came in and started measuring everything with tape measures. Someone asked what was up. Kelly replied, “Haven’t you heard, TWA bought United.” Concerned employees ran to a back office to tell her. Suspecting what was happening, she asked, “Is Mr. Kelly out there again?”
Kelly loved working at TWA and worked there for 40 years. In 1996, TWA Flight 800 exploded in air off Moriches, Long Island, killing all aboard. Kelly was asked to be part of the trauma team that assisted the families of those killed, while the crash investigation and recovery of bodies took place. The center of operations was a hotel. Kelly’s book touches on his encounters at the time with notables who came to comfort the grieving, including Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Father Michal Judge, and President Bill Clinton.
Kelly and his wife, Mary, now live in Chester. His book “My Hall of Memories: From the Clydebank Blitz to TWA Flight 800,” which details these and other interesting episodes from his life, is available for $10 from Amazon.com.