Post by petrolino on Nov 9, 2019 20:47:09 GMT
DeForest Kelley
"I met the Kelleys on May 4, 1968. I had heard De was going to be in the Wenatchee Washington Apple Festival Parade and drove with a classmate to meet him. As luck (fate, God) would have it, I ended up parking the car on the same block where the Kelleys hotel room was. I spotted the white car with his name and STAR TREK on it and figured if we loitered shamelessly, maybe we’d actually have a chance to meet him and not have to settle for just watching him pass by.
So we did that. I was very hesitant to approach him at first; I’d met other actors and frankly hadn’t been terribly impressed by the way they treated their fans, so I just stood back and watched for several minutes. As soon as I recognized how appreciative and genuine De was, I decided to go ahead and greet him.
The brief interaction was just amazing—his nature was so warm, friendly, and genuine—so I went home and wrote an essay for my English class called The REAL McCoy about what happened on that glorious day.
My English teacher read the essay, loved it, and said I should send it to Mr. Kelley. I balked mightily! I wasn’t in the habit of writing to TV stars! But the teacher insisted, so I did. De and Carolyn liked the article so much that they had Teresa Victor, Leonard Nimoy’s Girl Friday, submit it to TV STAR PARADE, and that publication wanted to use it as a special holiday story that December. So De wrote to tell me this. I tell ya, my parents had to peel me off the ceiling for weeks! Little did I know that this event was just the opening curtain on a thirty-plus year association with the Kelleys that would have me serving as his personal assistant and caregiver 31 years later!"
So we did that. I was very hesitant to approach him at first; I’d met other actors and frankly hadn’t been terribly impressed by the way they treated their fans, so I just stood back and watched for several minutes. As soon as I recognized how appreciative and genuine De was, I decided to go ahead and greet him.
The brief interaction was just amazing—his nature was so warm, friendly, and genuine—so I went home and wrote an essay for my English class called The REAL McCoy about what happened on that glorious day.
My English teacher read the essay, loved it, and said I should send it to Mr. Kelley. I balked mightily! I wasn’t in the habit of writing to TV stars! But the teacher insisted, so I did. De and Carolyn liked the article so much that they had Teresa Victor, Leonard Nimoy’s Girl Friday, submit it to TV STAR PARADE, and that publication wanted to use it as a special holiday story that December. So De wrote to tell me this. I tell ya, my parents had to peel me off the ceiling for weeks! Little did I know that this event was just the opening curtain on a thirty-plus year association with the Kelleys that would have me serving as his personal assistant and caregiver 31 years later!"
- Kristine M. Smith
"Dee was the kindest, sweetest, most genuine man. He could make you feel important, just by listening."
- Katy Covington, 'Tales Of The Trek'
"Over the next two decades, the bond between Kristine Smith and the Kelleys strengthened, even visiting each other’s homes. Off-camera, Smith says, Kelley was rather shy around people initially.
"Even when he got to know you, he was reserved and soft-spoken. You had to almost lean forward to hear him speak sometimes.”
She also remembers Kelley’s encouraging sense of humor, which was never mean-spirited.
“If he ever corrected you, you felt blessed rather than criticized,” she said. “At a ‘Star Trek’ convention once, someone asked if William Shatner was hard to get along with. De said he absolutely loved Bill but had to straighten his ass out a time or two!”
After a diagnosis of stomach cancer in the mid-1990s, Kelley never lost his endearing qualities, which included sparing others from the severity of his illness.
“My own mother was dying from brain cancer, so he didn’t reveal how sick he was to spare me the additional worry,” said Smith. “He only told me it was terminal after he ended up in intensive care in March 1999. Unfortunately, Carolyn fell and broke her leg a year before that and it never did heal.”
She also remembers Kelley’s encouraging sense of humor, which was never mean-spirited.
“If he ever corrected you, you felt blessed rather than criticized,” she said. “At a ‘Star Trek’ convention once, someone asked if William Shatner was hard to get along with. De said he absolutely loved Bill but had to straighten his ass out a time or two!”
After a diagnosis of stomach cancer in the mid-1990s, Kelley never lost his endearing qualities, which included sparing others from the severity of his illness.
“My own mother was dying from brain cancer, so he didn’t reveal how sick he was to spare me the additional worry,” said Smith. “He only told me it was terminal after he ended up in intensive care in March 1999. Unfortunately, Carolyn fell and broke her leg a year before that and it never did heal.”
- Nick Thomas, Beaver County Times
"DeForest Kelley loved cats!"
- The Horror Cats, Twitter
- The Horror Cats, Twitter
"You see, I was the son of a baptist minister."
- DeForest Kelley
