Edward Joseph Stewart Kelly, Rehoboth legend

Edward Joseph Stewart Kelly, 62, died of cancer Friday, Sept. 30, 2016, at his Canal Point home in Rehoboth Beach. 
Mr. Kelly, known as Eddie, arrived in Rehoboth Beach as a 1-year-old in the summer of 1955 when his family rented a home on Virginia Avenue. He enthusiastically returned every summer.

Immediately after the March 1962 storm, he visited the wreckage of his family's rental apartment, the old Sussex, at Olive Avenue and the Boardwalk. A few years later he took a basket of ripe tomatoes given by a family friend and sold them on the Boardwalk the way other children set up lemonade stands. He offered tomatoes to mid-day strollers and handed them a salt shaker too, all for 5 cents. A good salesman, he sold out within an hour.

Mr. Kelly began working summers full time about 1968. He befriended the Simpler family, and got a job in the kitchen of their Avenue Restaurant on Rehoboth Avenue. The next summer he worked with the housekeeping staff of the old Hotel Henlopen in 1970, and was a weekend manager of the hotel's Boardwalk coffee shop. He was a devoted fan on the old Sammy Ferro Orchestra, the Henlopen's house dance orchestra.

He later worked for the Boardwalk Five and Ten Cent stores, and managed its Beach Shop on Rehoboth Avenue. He resided for many summers at a third-floor apartment he called The Attic, at 8 Wilmington Avenue in a building owned by the late Grace S. Cooper, mother of Rehoboth's mayor.

Mr. Kelly was born in Baltimore and raised on Guilford Avenue in Charles Village. He was the son of Joseph B. Kelly, a thoroughbred racing writer at the old Washington Evening Star and M. Stewart Monaghan Kelly, a social worker.

He was a graduate of the Baltimore Academy of the Visitation, Baltimore City College and the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he earned a bachelor of arts. Beginning in 1976 he restored a family home in Baltimore's Federal Hill neighborhood.

He joined Baltimore's Hochschild Kohn department stores in 1975 and later became men's designer collections buyer for the old Hutzler's department store. He made annual buying trips to woolen mills in Milan and attended the annual menswear designer show in Paris. He was also a trained gemologist, and managed a MelArt jewelry store in Laurel, Md. He had also managed the Value City department store at Westview in Baltimore.

From 2008 until the present he was a staff trainer with Encore, a Landover, Md., marketing firm. He made trips to the British Isles and India to train call center staffs. In recent years, after moving to Canal Point from Salt Pond in Bethany, he was a sales associate at Sea Finds, the Penny Lane shop in Rehoboth. He last worked at the shop in the late spring.

Mr. Kelly lent historical objects to the Rehoboth Beach Historical Society. He worked on the society's post card show and had earlier contributed to its women in Rehoboth exhibition. He was also a member of the Rehoboth Art League, and collected the works of Delaware artists, including Laura Hickman and Howard Schroeder, among many others. He was a volunteer at Epworth Methodist Church's kitchen. He and his husband are well known in the gay community where they established an amazing number of friends.

Survivors include his husband, Robert P. Hughes, his life partner of 38 years. They married in 2014 in Rehoboth. Survivors also include a brother, Jacques Kelly of Baltimore; four sisters, Ellen Cora Kelly, Mary Stewart Kelly, both of Baltimore, Ann Rose Stewart Whaley of Ocean View, and Josephine O'Rourke, also of Baltimore.

A Mass will be held at 10 a.m., Monday, Oct. 3, at St. Edmond Roman Catholic Church, 409 King Charles Avenue, in Rehoboth Beach.