The Plain Dealer
October 4, 2003

Lawyer couple give again to Gilmour
Angela D. Chatman

Lawyers Michael V. Kelley and Lynn Arko Kelley have donated an additional $1.5 million to Gilmour Academy, the Gates Mills Catholic school. That brings to $2.5 million the couple’s contribution to the school in the last two years. The husband and wife are principals in the Cleveland law firm of Kelley & Ferraro LLP. Michael Kelley is the firm’s managing partner. Lynn practices family law and is a former Cleveland Heights Municipal Court judge.

The academy will dedicate its new Lynn and Michael Kelley Middle School on Oct. 25 in honor of the couple who contributed to the academy’s Faith in the Future campaign.

“This is an extraordinary commitment by a family that is exceedingly generous,” Brother Robert Lavelle, the academy’s headmaster, said in a statement. He said the Kelleys are committed to giving back to Catholic educational institutions that have served them.
“Each of us who is privileged to have a quality education has a responsibility to return something to those institutions,” Michael Kelley said. “It is an absolute obligation.”

Lynn Kelley is a 1973 graduate of Glen Oak School, which shared a common campus and later merged with Gilmour. She is the first female graduate of Glen Oak/Gilmour to make such a large donation to the academy. The academy named her Alumna of the Year for 2002-2003. Michael Kelley is a 1969 graduate of St. Ignatius High School, where he established the Michael V. Kelley Distinguished Speakers Series.

The Kelleys also have contributed to scholarship funds at the colleges they attended, including the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. The Kellys have two sons enrolled at Gilmour, including an eighth-grader who attends classes in the middle school named for his parents. “Gilmour Academy not only has provided our two sons with an excellent education, but with a reliable moral compass as well,” Lynn Kelley said.

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