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FeedSurgery Is Not Funny
… That is, unless you’re in the OR with Dr. John D. Kelly.
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Editor's Note: This story won first place in the 2009 Delaware Press Association Communications Contest.
It’s a toss-up as to where Dr. John D. Kelly is more at home: at a Wildwood, N.J., comedy club or in the operating room. On stage, he’s polished, professional and funny. And in the OR, he’s polished, professional— and funny.
The Newtown Square resident is in his 19th year as an orthopedic surgeon, having spent 18 years at Temple University Hospital before joining the University of Pennsylvania in September as an associate professor of orthopedics and director of undergraduate orthopedic education. His comedy career officially began a couple of years ago, but really, he’s been doing standup for most of his life. It’s a part of his DNA.
Kelly’s father, the late John D. III, was the longtime owner of Kelly’s Logan House in Wilmington, Del., where his Friday and Saturday night standup routines were legendary. The jokes didn’t stop when John D. left the bar. “Every dinner at our house was a performance,” says Kelly, 52, who has a twin brother and a younger sister. “But it was never profane in any way. And it was like that at the Logan House, too. He wouldn’t stand for any loud profanity or impropriety. There were a lot of fights there, but my dad was a professional boxer and a Marine Corps champion, and he won them all.”
That’s another skill Kelly and his brother, Michael (a Wilmington attorney), learned from their father—how to use their fists. The first birthday present he can remember was boxing gloves. “My dad took Michael and me into the back yard, put the gloves on us, and we boxed,” he says.
Later, the elder Kelly would take the twins to a local gym and have them spar with inner city kids. “We were a couple of fun-loving, peace-loving kids, and we really didn’t want to,” recalls Kelly. “But we did it.”
Gifted athletes, the twins acquired what Kelly calls “a quiet confidence.” Should the occasion arise, they could defend themselves or their families. Kelly remains connected to the sweet science through boxing legend Joe Frazier, who is among his patients. A fitness fanatic, Kelly used to spar a little and work out on the heavy bag until the pounding started to affect his hands. Comparing himself to one of the “great white hopes” of the 1980s, he says, “I’m Gerry Cooney on the heavy bag.”
But he knows his limitations. Once, feeling full of himself, he asked Frazier’s son, Marvis, to get into the ring with him. “I’ll have to ask my father,” Marvis replied.
“Thank God!” Kelly says, looking back on it now.
Kelly’s deeply devout Irish Catholic family imbued him with a sense of service, and as a pre-teen he even briefly considered the priesthood. “Then I saw my first short skirt,” he says, “and that was the end of that.”
The next best thing, he concluded, was to be a doctor.
After graduating from Columbia University, where he and Michael were three-year starters on the football team, he entered the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, where his comedic talents blossomed. He did impressions of his teachers for classmates, served as emcee at the annual talent show, won the Robert Swain Award for “transforming the drudgery of medical school into an enjoyable experience for one’s classmates” and the Ciba Award for “excellence in relating to patients,” and was the graduation speaker in 1984.
