Once you met Charles W. “Chuck” Kelly, you never forgot him.

He was one of those rare, larger than life individuals, who always made an impression on those around him.

On June 5, Ogdensburg will remember its favorite son with the dedication of the recently completed Charles W. Kelly Memorial, located in Kelly Park, across from St. Mary’s Cathedral.

The park and memorial were developed to insure that Kelly and his life of service to his hometown (1935-2018) will be remembered by future generations.

Kelly spent his career as a newspaper reporter, editor and publisher, fighting on behalf of Ogdensburg and Northern New York, standing up for the little guy and his hometown over a 56-year journalistic career.

Politicians from Northern New York to Albany and Washington, D.C. feared his front page newspaper column “Kelly’s Comments” published each Sunday in the Advance News where he set the North Country’s political agenda and provided his readers with insight into what was happening in their community, the state and nation.

One of 10 children, Kelly grew up understanding the struggles faced by families, a viewpoint that guided his career as both a journalist and community leader. For 17 years, he led a community program called Heart to Heart that provided Christmas presents to hundreds of families across St. Lawrence County.

A graduate of St. Mary’s Academy, Kelly served for three years in the U.S. Army in Germany and France, before returning to his hometown of Ogdensburg in 1958 where he joined the staff of the Ogdensburg Journal and Advance News as a sportswriter and general assignment news reporter.

Over the next six decades, Kelly used his position as a reporter, editor and eventually as publisher to build relationships with a wide range of state and national figures that included Democrats like U.S. Senators Robert F. Kennedy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Charles Schumer, Governors Hugh Carey, Mario Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Kelly also understood the value of working across the political aisle by developing friendships with Republicans like U.S. Senator Alfonse D’Amato, Congressmen Robert C. McEwen, David O’B. Martin and Secretary of the Army John McHugh, to name a few.

He used his contacts and personal relationships to help families in trouble, his hometown and Northern New York.

In the 1970s, when the State of New York began closing psychiatric centers, Kelly led a community group to save the state hospital. In the 1980s, when state officials found themselves facing mobs in New York City and Long Island when they attempted to build prisons downstate, he convinced the Ogdensburg community to accept a state prison. At the time, the notion of a community accepting a prison without protest was so rare the New York Times dispatched a reporter to Ogdensburg to find someone who opposed it with no success.

Several years later, Kelly used his friendship with then Governor Mario Cuomo to locate a second prison in Ogdensburg, providing more long-term jobs in a region that had suffered for years with one of the highest unemployment rates and lowest per capita incomes in the state.

In 2010, when New York Governor David Paterson proposed closing Ogdensburg Correctional Facility, Kelly led a bi-partisan community-wide campaign to convince state leaders to keep the prison open.

In 2013, when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed closing the St. Lawrence Psychiatric Center, Kelly again led a campaign to convince the governor to reverse his decision.

Kelly often described himself as the North Country’s largest “paper boy” because he began his career delivering newspapers and often personally brought copies of the paper to the homes of upset subscribers who had been missed by their delivery person. As publisher, Kelly oversaw the business operations of the Ogdensburg Journal, Sunday Advance News, St. Lawrence Plaindealer (Canton), Courier-Observer (Massena-Potsdam), Rural News and Malone Telegram, but viewed himself first and foremost as a reporter and editor, constantly monitoring a police scanner and chasing sirens even in the middle of the night. His tenacity as a reporter and editor earned him numerous awards, which included a 1967 award for best column and two investigative journalism awards from the New York State Associated Press.

Kelly married Marie Therese Normile on Feb. 11, 1961. Together, they started a family with three children, eventually purchasing their home, overlooking what is today Charles W. (Chuck) Kelly Park, formerly known as Hamilton Park.

When he retired, the New York Times described it as the “end of an era” of community journalism seldom seen in a time of cookie cutter newspapers. Within 10 years of his retirement the Ogdensburg Journal and the St. Lawrence Plaindealer. The Advance News was merged into the Watertown Times Sunday newspaper.