The following is the speech I gave at my dad’s retirement party given at Annunciation Orthodox School in Houston, TX on April 21, 2018.

Good evening. For those of you I don’t know, I’m Lauren Kelly, Mark Kelly’s daughter and also an alumna of the AOS Class of 2002.

Let me start off by saying I am so proud of my dad’s accomplishments and I’m so grateful for the wonderful 22 years he has spent as head of school for AOS. My dad is a natural leader, and I always thought his job suited him well. He leads by example, he’s calm when there are difficult things to deal with, and with his experience comes wisdom that he builds on and leads the school with each year.

Everyone here knows my dad in different ways: as head of school, teacher, boss, friend, brother, uncle, husband, or if you are me: Dad. Before I go on, I’d like to say that I’m not only speaking for myself, but on behalf of my older brother, Adam, who passed on last summer.

I’ll start off with this: my dad is awesome. He is one of my favorite people on the planet.

My dad was always a very involved parent. My mom stayed at home with us and so she was slightly more involved, but I barely have a childhood memory that doesn’t involve my dad. As a parent, my dad was always loving, kind, funny, a great listener, an incredible friend, and a wise giver-of-advice. Of my childhood memories, I think the best illustration of my dad as “Dad” is the one weekend a year that my brother and I got him all to ourselves.

My dad always had a few weekends or weeks every year when he would go to a conference or go on one of the out-of-town trips with the middle schoolers, but once a year, my mom would take a long 4-day weekend to go to a special church conference in Boston. My sweet dad was always willing to let her go and take care of me and my brother all by himself. I’m pretty sure this was pretty easy because I always handled it with such maturity. Usually each of these weekends would begin the same way: Mom would back out of the driveway and I would immediately burst into tears.

I remember one year, as we were waving goodbye to my mom at 5:30 in the morning, my dad got up the courage and asked me, “Do you get this upset when I leave town for a few days?” Without skipping a beat, I blubbered, “No.” Dad sighed and I think found my blunt honesty incredibly amusing. He didn’t take it personally, he just let me have my moment of missing my mother while he lovingly calmed me down and reminded me that we would still have fun even though it was just the three of us.

Dad is creative and instead of trying to perfectly fill Mom’s shoes, he had different things that we would do and different traditions that would take place when my mom was gone. Dad would do whatever sounded fun. Usually we’d build giant forts in the living room, go on walks, have a picnic, go to the playground, watch movies, go to the zoo, or play ball out in the driveway.

Now although Dad was creative, there were parts of our daily routines that Dad couldn’t mess with and he had to take on my mom’s usual role. This involved things like making our lunches, getting out our outfits and getting us dressed, and making sure we were ready on time for our school mornings. When I was really little, this also meant he had to do my hair.

When Mom was in charge, and it was time to deal with my tangle of curls, she would come into my bathroom, quickly brush my hair, throw it into some artistic hairstyle, and secure it with a giant bow. This usually took her about 2 minutes and my hair was so well secured that a tornado could have run over my head and my hair would have stayed intact.

Dad was a different story. After attempting to brush out my tangled curly hair, he would try to gather all of my hair into one ponytail, and simultaneously strain to get his giant fingers into one of my tiny pony elastics to secure my hair into a ponytail. Usually, this process took so long and was still so poorly done, I could forget about the bow and or getting to school on time. I would also offer up constructive criticism: “that’s not how Mommy does it.” Thankfully for me, instead of getting defeated or upset, Dad usually had a funny, sarcastic comment, or he would just tickle me until I was laughing so hard, I forgot all about my hair.

Honestly, though, those weekends were filled with so much love, joy, and humor, and my brother and I are so grateful that my dad was willing to take on Mom’s role, not only for her sake, but for the incredible memories he has given us.

As I got older, and especially when I was in middle school, I noticed that my dad was actually cool. At the time, I wouldn’t necessarily have admitted this, because when you are 13, the sheer existence of your parents is embarrassing. However, when I was in sixth grade at AOS, there was a group of 8th grade boys who loved my dad so much, that I was cool by association and they all used to call me Miss Kelly. Even though I thought they were deeply mistaken about how cool my dad actually was, I felt so cool and it felt so good to be recognized by cute 8th grade boys. Plus, it got me cool points with my own grade and made plenty of girls incredibly jealous. It was one of the few perks to being daughter of the head of school…at least when the headmaster is Mark Kelly.

As I got even older and when I entered college, I usually called Dad when I needed advice on something. Sometimes it was small, like, “could I just have you look at my paper?” And then there were bigger ones, like when I was convinced I was in love and wanted to know what he thought. Now, when I began seriously dating, he gave me the best dating advice I’ve ever gotten: Pay attention to what he does, not what he says. Unfortunately, it took me years to really listen to this advice. I almost always fell for the kind of guy who would say, “I’ll call you right back,” and then I wouldn’t hear from him for 3 days. Well, that was the tip of the iceberg as far as the worst that these guys would do.

I would call Dad who would remind me of his original advice: “Pay attention to what he does not what he says.”  He would quietly listen to me, but wouldn’t get involved. And when I really hadn’t listened to his advice and I got my heart broken, Dad would help me pick up the pieces without saying, “I told you so.” He’s pretty awesome that way. He would always give me and my brother his advice and guidance, but if we needed to fail, he would let us and then just help us back up when we would inevitably ask for it in our own ways.

I really could keep going on about how much I love my dad and how many times he has proved how wonderful he is by what he does, but I know you all have moments like this. That is why I would like to end my time up here to thank my dad for always being such an incredible father; for always being there for all of us, for being the quiet backbone of our family, and for seeing us through everything in our lives – both good and bad, and I am so thankful that you are mine.