Woodbridge, Va. -- Calgary Downtown Rotary Club, Dallas-Fort Worth School of Law, National Postal Forum . . .
Retired Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Kelly is rattling off some of his upcoming speaking gigs scribbled in his appointment book.
Guardians of the Jewish Homes for the Aging, Mississippi Agricultural Network, Notre Dame ROTC . . .
And to think just a year ago his family worried that he'd be hanging around the house, depressed, with nothing to do, driving his wife crazy when he retired.
American Automobile Association, Merrill Lynch, Chapman College . . .
And there goes the phone again. (Or is it the fax this time?)
Sure, he's telling the caller, he'll ring the Liberty Bell as a thank-you to the troops. Does that include a speech? No problem. He'll even do it for free because it's a patriotic thing to do and he's so darn fond of that old bell. Just make sure you run it by his New York agent so they don't book him for something else that day. Don's the guy to talk to.
Speeches, faxes, fees, Don. Such is the postwar life of soldier-turned-folk hero Tom Kelly, the three-star Army general whose ruddy face and ready quips became known to millions of TVviewers as he conducted the daily Pentagon press briefings during the Persian Gulf war.
Chief of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff until his retirement just over a week ago, the engaging, bearish 58-year-old -- the man who added the verb "to attrit" to our lexicon -- has emerged from "34 years, three months and 27 days" in the military to a whole new life.
There's the new house in the Virginia suburbs that General Kelly and his wife, Dorothy, have just moved into, a large brick Colonial with an American flag and his three-star general's flag in the foyer, inexpensive paintings from Italy (where he served at the NATO command in Naples from 1979 to 1982) on the walls, Neapolitan mastiff Scruffy (also acquired in Italy) to sloppily greet visitors at the door and so much still in boxes that a Department of Defense phone directory must suffice as a coaster for now.
There's the new civilian lingo -- to which he's obviously not yet adjusted. You may think your interview is scheduled for 4 o'clock. He plans to see you at "1600 hours."
But mostly, there's the new fame. Fan mail in bulk, autograph seekers wherever he goes (they mobbed him at a recent Wayne Newton concert) and requests for signed glossies (which the Pentagon has had made) for this unlikely celebrity.
"It seems that when I go places, people know who I am," says the general, wearing a presidential seal tie clip (a gift from President Bush) and a brass Operation Desert Storm watch (from the Kuwaiti ambassador) to spruce up his civilian attire. "People walk up to me and say, 'We feel like we know you. We watched you every day.' Even Johnny Carson watched every day."
Ah, yes. There has even been an appearance on the "Tonight" show. "Never traveled first class in my life till I went to the Carson show 'cause Uncle Sam doesn't do that," he says.
But now, he's getting used to first class. That's the way his agent flies him all over the country to the public appearances for which he's booked through February 1992.
"We've been in business 46 years and I don't think I've seen anybody this much in demand so quickly," says the general's agent Don Walker of the Harry Walker Agency in New York. "And we've only just begun. I wish I could clone him."
Already, General Kelly's folksy manner, his witty one-liners (his wife calls him an Irish Rodney Dangerfield) and his gleaming patriotism have landed him 70-plus speaking engagements. Although some, such as today's ringing of the Liberty Bell in his hometown of Philadelphia, are done for free, his average fee is $20,000 to $25,000 a pop.
Even his former boss, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin L. Powell, joked at the general's recent retirement ceremony, "We weren't sure that he would be able to fit us in, but he did. And . . . we got the government rate. It's only going to cost us $10,000."
The new civilian concedes that between his annual Army pension of $67,400, his lucrative speaking engagements, his recently signed contract with NBC News as a military consultant and his new adjunct professorship in the engineering department of George Washington University, he'll be raking in sums "far beyond what I've ever been able to experience or thought that I'd experience."
"I'll be comfortable; I can pay off this house," he admits, adding that he has no plans to indulge in a more extravagant lifestyle, but instead to save or invest so he'll have a hefty "legacy" to leave to his three children -- Vincent, 31, a vice president of Metro Call, a beeper company; Frank, 30, a financial analyst for MCI; and Elizabeth, 19, an English major at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.
He's enjoying this new celebrity -- calls it "strange," but "sorta fun" -- especially since it gives him a chance to talk about the country's leadership, the military and the American people with regard to the gulf war -- the themes of his speeches.
"The American people are happy and proud of themselves at long last," says the former tanker, who did two tours as an operations officer in Vietnam. "I think that's something that's pretty decent . . . and anyway I can push it, I'm going to. I think this is a great country and we oughta take off the hair shirt and get busy and take on our competitors with vigor along with
rigor."
The ROTC-trained soldier also plans to discuss American youth, a group he believes "gets a bum rap" but proved itself in Operation Desert Storm, as well as another topic close to his heart -- the press.
Although he says he received thousands of letters critical of the media during the war, he has nothing but praise for the reporters with whom he held his daily sparring matches, and in fact, made a point of saluting them during his final briefing.
General Kelly, who earned a degree in journalism at Temple University after 12 years of Catholic school, says he believes the sometimes caustic "hurly-burly give-and-take," as he calls it, between the press and the government is vital.
"There is always going to be the demand on the fourth estate to get all the information. They are consumed with that desire," says the military man, whose fourth-grade-educated mother worked as a proofreader, and high-school-educated father as a Linotype operator, at the Philadelphia Inquirer. "There's going to be a requirement on the part of the government to withhold certain information because of security reasons. That causes conflict and it causes friction right at the point where the government and the press meet. I think that's a very healthy thing for a democracy."
"[Journalism] is more than just his college major," says Richard Dowling, public information officer at the U.S. Army Training Center at Fort Dix, N.J., where General Kelly was commanding general in the mid-'80s. "It was a deep part of the way he operated here. He seemed to feel that the public deserved to know as much as possible about what we were doing and why."
But his role as the Pentagon's top briefer during the war accounted for only "5 percent" of his days, General Kelly says. Most of his time was spent presiding over the Pentagon's National Military Command Center (NMCC), the war room, with its display consoles, intelligence gadgetry and a direct line to the theater of conflict.
After late-night dinners at home (at the time at the Fort Myer army base near the Pentagon) and as much sleep as he could fit in, the general began his days at around 7 a.m. in the NMCC. He would brief Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and General Powell, return to the war room to iron out problems, grab a bowl of popcorn for lunch ("No salt, no butter") and then assemble his experts to prepare for the 3 p.m. press briefing.
His daily performance in front of the cameras was marked by military quips and truisms ("When a bullet comes out of a gun, it doesn't have any friends"); plain, if not always perfectly grammatical, English; and amusing retorts.
"I think there must be an Irish leprechaun hidden inside him somewhere," says his son Vincent. "It comes out when he's supposed to be behaving himself."
When asked, for example, whether or not Saddam Hussein had executed two top generals, General Kelly replied that he wasn't sure, but did know that the Iraqi president had a "dynamic zero-defects program" in place.
"He had enough self-confidence and stature to ad lib," says CNN Pentagon reporter Wolf Blitzer. "I thought he was first class. Reporters can quickly see through spokesmen who are hedging and dodging. He came across as someone credible and honest."
For this man with a basement full of plaques and honors, a chestful of decorations and badges -- the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal, his latest -- trading in his active service ID card for one marked "retired" was not easy. In fact, he says, it was "traumatic."
He had planned to retire last January, but stayed on through the gulf war to preside over operations for the Joint Chiefs as he had during the 1989 invasion of Panama.
"It's a funny feeling," he says of the end of his military career. "I don't think it's really come home yet. I leave with a lot of sorrow because it's what I've always done. I leave with some trepidation because the world is out there and it's something new. But I also leave with a feeling of excitement that there are other things to do, that I've had my turn and that it's time to turn it over to younger men, and yet I'm not so old that I can't go out and do something else."
In his case, a lot else. Aside from jetting off to the lecture circuit, teaching and consulting, he has recently joined the board of directors of Enron Corp., a Houston natural gas company.
"I really lucked out," he says. "I'm going out on a high note and with a lot of opportunities to do other things -- so it's not like I was going to go out knocking on doors starting Monday morning looking for a job."
And when the clamor for him dies down, as he believes it will in about a year, he may step up his teaching or work as a journalist. Either way, he plans to spend more time on the family's cabin cruiser.
As sweet as it all sounds, the general repeats that he leaves the Pentagon behind with a great deal of sadness. He admits, "There's nothing else in the world I want to be except a soldier."
THE KELLY FILE
Born: Nov. 16, 1932; Philadelphia.
Education: B.S. degree, journalism, Temple University, Philadelphia.
Military education: ROTC, Temple University; Armor School; Infantry School; U.S. Army Command and General Staff College; U.S. Army War College.
Family: Married to Dorothy Kelly. Children: Vincent, 31; Frank, 30; Elizabeth, 19.
His feeling about the timing of the war's end: "They are extremely difficult decisions to make -- when to start the air war, ,, when to start the land war and when to end it. They are decisions that only the president can make. I did not disagree with one."