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Damn; I remember him reporting on the Viet Nam war on the nightly news.
That's going back 50 years!
RIP
Black space engineer, housing advocate Ken Kelly dies at 92
AIR AND SPACE
by: MICHAEL WARREN, Associated Press
Posted: Mar 12, 2021 / 06:42 PM EST / Updated: Mar 12, 2021 / 08:51 PM ESTThis Nov. 2020 photo provided by Ron Kelly shows Kenneth C. Kelly in Sherman Oaks, Calif. Kenneth C. Kelly, a Black electronics engineer whose antenna designs contributed to the race to the moon, made satellite TV and radio possible and helped NASA communicate with Mars rovers and search for extraterrestrials, has died. The 92-year-old also worked to erase race barriers in the Navy, in California housing and on the newspaper comics pages. Kelly had Parkinson’s disease before his death on Feb. 27, 2021 his son Ron Kelly said. (Ron Kelly via AP)
Kenneth C. Kelly, a Black electronics engineer whose antenna designs contributed to the race to the moon, made satellite TV and radio possible and helped NASA communicate with Mars rovers and search for extraterrestrials, has died. The 92-year-old also worked to erase race barriers in the Navy, in California housing and on the newspaper comics pages.
Kelly had Parkinson’s disease before his death on Feb. 27, his son Ron Kelly said.
Kelly was awarded more than a dozen patents for innovations in radar and antenna technology, work that appears in peer-reviewed journals from 1955-1999. His early work at Hughes Aircraft helped create guided missile systems and the ground satellites that tracked the Apollo space missions, he said in an oral history recorded by his family.
His two-way antenna designs at Rantec Microwave Systems enabled consumers to have DirecTV and Sirius XM connections, and are featured in the massive Mojave Desert radiotelescopes that search for signs of life in space, his son and JPL colleagues said.
After many years working on deep space missions through NASA subcontractors, Kelly worked directly for JPL from 1999 until retiring in 2002, helping to design robotic antennas for the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, according to Joseph Vacchione, who manages the JPL’s antenna test range.
Kelly appeared in an Associated Press article in 1962 after he moved his family into Gardena, a middle-class suburb that had excluded Black people. To overcome a racist covenant and the repeated refusals of real estate agents, he had to ask a white colleague at Hughes to make the purchase on his behalf.
“We have pretty much the same hopes, fears, ambitions, strengths and frailties that have typified all of human existence,” Kelly wrote in a letter his white neighbors, urging them to set aside “stereotyped notions,” according to the AP story.
Kelly and his wife Loretta later moved near California State University-Northridge, to be closer to his job and have their children attend better schools. According to the2017 oral history, the agent wouldn’t sell him the lot, so he had to repeat the demeaning experience of having white friends buy it for him before signing over the mortgage.
Kelly became president of the San Fernando Valley Fair Housing Council, testing listings to prove discrimination, lobbying authorities and going to court to prevent whites-only advertising. To do more from the inside, he became a leading Realtor, helping many Black families move into new suburbs in the 1970s.
Kelly had another role in promoting racial harmony after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. A white ally of the Kellys on the Fair Housing Council, schoolteacher Harriet Glickman, had been corresponding with cartoonist Charles Schulz, urging him to add a Black character to his comic strip. At the time, Black people were all but invisible in mass media.
Letters published by the Charles M. Schulz Museum show the cartoonist was reluctant, fearing the move would seem patronizing to Black people in the wake of King’s death. Glickman recruited Kelly to persuade Schulz otherwise.
Kelly urged the cartoonist to treat the Black character as a “supernumerary” — just another member of the Peanuts gang. Franklin soon appeared on a beach, helping Charlie Brown build a sand castle.
Born in 1928 in New York City and raised by a single mother who worked as a live-in maid, Kelly began living at 13 in the Harlem YMCA, where he was mentored by older black men including photographer Gordon Parks. He tested into Brooklyn Tech high school, then enlisted in the Navy to be trained as an electronics technician. Told he could only be a steward to white officers, he wrote to the chief recruiter and was allowed to take the engineering exam just when President Harry Truman was moving to desegregate the military.
“I think I’m a crazy optimist,” Kelly said in his oral history. “I’m definitely the half-full glass person. I meet lots of people who are so pessimistic. I always thought I could.”
Kelly’s Navy training helped him excel at Brooklyn Polytechnic College and get a job at Hughes Aircraft in 1953. He later learned that his white colleagues had been polled to see if they’d work with a Black man; the few who said they’d quit were told to do so.
Kelly and Loretta were members of the Ethical Cultural Society for decades. He also formed a society of Black scientists and engineers who launched science fairs and outreach programs to minority students in Los Angeles, which was booming with Black people fleeing the South in the post-war period.
“I think the more contact between the ones who have been successful in what they’re doing and the ones who are several steps down the line, the better,” he said.
Kelly felt racism’s sting repeatedly in life, but was determined to overcome it.
“We have a terrible real history of defeat, horrible conditions, death, rapes, just a hell of a history of Blacks in this country, but I don’t think knowing it is that valuable unless it encourages you do more to beat it somehow, and I think we can,” Kelly said in his oral history.
Kelly was predeceased by his first wife, Gloria White, and his son David. He is survived by his ex-wife Loretta Kelly, his third wife Anne Kelly, his son Ron Kelly, his stepson Steve Kelly, their wives and two grandchildren.
Boxing great Marvelous Marvin Hagler dies at 66
Marvelous Marvin Hagler, the middleweight boxing great whose title reign and career ended with a split-decision loss to “Sugar” Ray Leonard in 1987, died Saturday
By TIM DAHLBERG AP Boxing Writer
March 13, 2021, 6:55 PM
• 6 min read
The Associated Press
FILE - In this April 1987 file photo, "Marvelous" Marvin Hagler, left, moves in on "Sugar" Ray Leon...Read MoreMarvelous Marvin Hagler stopped Thomas Hearns in a fight that lasted less than eight minutes yet was so epic that it still lives in boxing lore. Two years later he was so disgusted after losing a decision to Sugar Ray Leonard — stolen, he claimed, by the judges — that he never fought again.
One of the great middleweights in boxing history, Hagler died Saturday at the age of 66. His wife, Kay, announced his death on the Facebook page for Hagler's fans.
“I am sorry to make a very sad announcement,” she wrote. “Today unfortunately my beloved husband Marvelous Marvin passed away unexpectedly at his home here in New Hampshire. Our family requests that you respect our privacy during this difficult time.”
Hagler fought on boxing’s biggest stages against its biggest names, as he, Leonard, Hearns and Roberto Duran dominated the middleweight classes during a golden time for boxing in the 1980s. Quiet with a brooding public persona, Hagler fought 67 times over 14 years as a pro out of Brockton, Massachusetts, finishing 62-3-2 with 52 knockouts.
“If they cut my bald head open, they will find one big boxing glove,’’ Hagler once said. ``That’s all I am. I live it.”
Hagler was unmistakable in the ring, fighting out of a southpaw stance with his bald head glistening in the lights. He was relentless and he was vicious, stopping opponent after opponent during an eight year run that began with a disputed draw against Vito Antuofermo in 1979 that he later avenged.
He fought with a proverbial chip on his shoulder, convinced that boxing fans and promoters alike didn’t give him his proper due. He was so upset that he wasn’t introduced before a 1982 fight by his nickname of Marvelous that he went to court to legally change his name.
"He was certainly one of the greatest middleweights ever but one of the greatest people that I’ve ever been around and promoted,'' promoter Bob Arum said. ``He was a real man, loyal and just fantastic person.''
Any doubts Hagler wasn’t indeed Marvelous were erased on a spring night in 1985. He and Hearns met in one of the era’s big middleweight clashes outdoors at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and when the opening bell rang they traded punches for three minutes in an opening round many consider the best in boxing history.
Hagler would go on to stop Hearns in the third round, crumpling him to the canvas with a barrage of punches even as blood poured out of a large gash on his forehead that nearly caused the referee to stop the fight earlier in the round.
“When they stopped the fight to look at the cut, I realized they might be playing games and I wasn’t going to let them take the title away,″ Hagler said later. “It was a scary feeling. I thought, ‘Why are they stopping this fight?’ I didn’t realize I was bleeding. It wasn’t in my eyes. Then I knew I had to destroy this guy.’’
Arum said Hagler simply willed himself to victory over Hearns, whose big right hand was feared in the division but couldn’t keep Hagler at bay.
``That was an unbelievable fight,’’ Arum said. ``Probably the greatest fight ever.’’
Hearns said Saturday he was thinking about Hagler and their historic fight. Hagler wore a baseball cap with the word ``War’’ while promoting it while on a 23-city tour with Hearns that Arum said made the fighters despise each other before they even entered the ring.
``I can’t take anything away from him,’’ Hearns told The Associated Press. ``His awkwardness messed me up but I can’t take anything away from him. He fought his heart out and we put on a great show for all time.’’
Hagler would fight only two more times, stopping John Mugabi a year later and then meeting Leonard, who was coming off a three-year layoff from a detached retina, in his final fight in 1987. Hagler was favored going into the fight and many thought he would destroy Leonard — but Leonard had other plans.
While Hagler pursued him around the ring, Leonard fought backing up, flicking out his left jab and throwing combinations that didn’t hurt Hagler but won him points on the ringside scorecards. Still, when the bell rang at the end of the 12th round, many thought Hagler had pulled out the fight — only to lose a controversial split decision.
Hagler, who was paid $19 million, left the ring in disgust and never fought again. He moved to Italy to act, and never really looked back.
“I feel fortunate to get out of the ring with my faculties and my health,” he said a year later.
Hagler took the long route to greatness, fighting mostly in the Boston area before finally getting his chance at the 160-pound title in 1979 against Antuofermo as a co-main event with Leonard fighting Wilfredo Benitez on the same card. Hagler bloodied Antuofermo and seemed to win the fight, but when the scorecards were tallied he was denied the belt with a draw.
Hagler would travel to London the next year to stop Alan Minter to win the title, and he held it for the next seven years before his disputed loss to Leonard.
Arum remembered being at a black tie event honoring top fighters a year later that was attended by both Hagler and Leonard, among others. He said Leonard came up to him and pointed to Hagler across the room and suggested he go talk to him about a rematch that would have earned both fighters unbelievable purses.
``I went over to Marvin and said Ray is talking about a rematch,’’ Arum said. ``He glared at me as only Marvin could and said, `Tell Ray to get a life.’’’
Hagler was born in Newark, New Jersey, and moved with his family to Brockton in the late 1960s. He was discovered as an amateur by the Petronelli brothers, Goody and Pat, who ran a gym in Brockton and would go on to train Hagler for his entire pro career.
He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame and World Boxing Hall of Fame in 1983.
