Coach Kelly wants to be remembered

Photo provided Kelly Reynolds spent more than 15 seasons coaching Pop Warner football in Manatee County.
By ROGER MOONEY
rmooney@bradenton.com


Kelly Reynolds loves Pop Warner football and children and chocolate and his family and friends. Even now, even as Kelly nears the end of his fight with Lou Gehrig's disease, his wife, Michelle, sneaks him a hot fudge sundae from McDonald's.

"With extra fudge," Michelle said. "He loves chocolate."

They had been married only three months when Kelly's test result came back: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. Doctors gave Kelly nine months to live.

"I told them no," Michelle said. "I wasn't ready to say goodbye."

Neither was her husband.

Kelly stretched those nine months into 3½ years.

But the ending is inevitable. This disease is undefeated.

And now Kelly is ready.

He asked to be removed from the ventilator this Friday. He scheduled his funeral for 1 p.m. Saturday at West Bradenton Baptist Church.

Those are two incredibly tough sentences to read, and they are shocking, but this is how Kelly wants this fight to end, and how he and Michelle want the news to reach the community.

"It is so horrible to see him the way he is now," said Donnaree Santangelo, who has known Kelly for more than 13 years and last visited him Sunday.

Kelly is 42, and will leave behind a widow, his daughter Sabrina, 23, and her husband, Mark, his twin sons Kobie and Kelbie, 17, his stepson Brandon, 15, and his stepdaughter Caitlyn, 10.

And, at last count, a couple hundred friends - and that is a very conservative estimate.

Everyone knows Kelly Reynolds as Coach Kelly, and everybody has been asking about Coach Kelly, and Coach Kelly wants everyone to know this: If you can make it to Kindred Hospital at 4555 South Manhattan Ave., in Tampa by Thursday he'd love to see you.

He's not much for goodbyes of any kind. In fact he never says the words goodbye.

"He always says, 'See ya later,' " said Traci Griffith, Michelle's closest friend.

So don't view the coming days as an end of a life. He would rather you make it a celebration of a life well-lived, but cut way too short.

He's Coach Kelly because he spent more than 15 seasons coaching Pop Warner football in Manatee County, first with the Manatee Wildcats, then with the North Manatee Storm, an organization he helped start after he and Michelle married and moved to east Palmetto in search of a house that could hold their suddenly large family.

"There was one problem when he moved out east: no football," Michelle said. "That's a big problem when you're a youth football coach."

The new football league started in August 2004 and soon had more than 300 kids spread across the football and cheer teams. Coach Kelly was proud of that, because it meant 300 less kids wandering around, looking for something to do.

"His passion is football," Michelle said. "Kids and football."

The two met on the football field at G.T. Bray Park. It took three months for Coach Kelly to ask Michelle on a date.

"You want to go to SweetBerries and get an Utterly Reese's?" he asked Michelle.

Coach Kelly helped Michelle finish her Utterly Reese's.

Besides chocolate fudge sundaes and Utterly Reese's from SweetBerries, Coach Kelly loves chocolate milkshakes and chocolate cheesecake.



And Doublestuff Oreo Cookies.

He played running back and linebacker at Willard High in Willard, Ohio. He is an Ohio State Buckeye from head right on down to the OSU slippers that cover his toes.

He's been known to wear Buckeyes underwear.

He loves taking the kids to Busch Gardens and Adventure Island, though Michelle always suspected the kids were just an excuse for Coach Kelly to go down a waterslide and ride the roller coasters.

The yearly barbecues in the Reynolds' backyard were the stuff of legend.

"He just enjoyed sharing his life with others," Santangelo said.

Kelly wanted the funeral for Saturday, because Saturday is the 26th, and that was important. He wore No. 26 in high school. Michelle's birthday is March 26.

Michelle and Kelly met on a football field, where Kelly met most of his friends, the kids and their parents.

And those friends will help Michelle and the kids celebrate Kelly's life Saturday.

Afterward, they will enjoy chocolate milkshakes and Utterly Reese's.

Visitation for Kelly Reynolds

When: Today-Thursday. Where: Kindred Healthcare Hospital, 4555 South Manhattan Ave.,Tampa, 33611. Phone: (813) 839-6341

Funeral

When: Saturday. Where: West Bradenton Baptist Church, 1305 43rd St. W., Bradenton, 34209. Time: 1 p.m.

In lieu of flowers please make donations to: Kelly B. Reynolds Benefit Fund c/o Bank of America 4311 Manatee Ave. W. Bradenton, FL 34209





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