Joan M. Kellett, longtime French teacher and first female Upper Merion supervisor, has died at 94
“I’d like to do something for the teenagers,” she said after her first election in 1971. “I think they need more recreation.”
Joan M. Kellett, 94, of King of Prussia, the first female Upper Merion Township supervisor, former Upper Merion Area School District board member, longtime French schoolteacher, adjunct professor at Chestnut Hill College, writer, actor, and volunteer, died Saturday, July 19, of a cardiac event at Phoenixville Hospital.
Mrs. Kellett swept into Upper Merion government in 1972 when she became the first woman elected to the township board of supervisors. She won two six-year terms, from 1972 to 1984, and served as board chair and vice chair. She told The Inquirer after her election victory in 1971: “I’d like to do something for the teenagers. I think they need more recreation.”
She weighed in on zoning, development, traffic safety, professional ethics, municipal budgets, and other issues in Upper Merion, and helped shape the township’s 17-square-mile landscape. She was interested in biosafety and the environment, and helped found the McKaig Nature Center in Wayne and improved Heuser Park in King of Prussia.
She also spoke of the misogyny she had to endure and overcome in the 1970s and ’80s. Other officials, she told her family, mistook her for the board’s secretary at meetings, and her official mail was often mistakenly addressed to John Kellett.
She served two terms, from 2009 to 2017, on the Upper Merion Area School Board and fought for increased school funding and expanded curriculum. In the classroom, she taught French in several township schools from 1966 to her retirement in 2006.
She was assigned to the high school in 1971, became chair of the foreign language department, and established the French Club and Foreign Language Honor Society. Because of her, a former student said in a tribute, “I became a Francophile myself.”
She organized exchange student programs and study trips to Europe, Canada, and Africa. She spent the 1991-92 term in Senegal as a Fulbright exchange teacher, was an adjunct professor at Chestnut Hill College for years, and held memberships in the Delta Kappa Gamma Society and other state and national education associations.
“Joan was a champion for the students,” a friend said in a tribute. Former students called her “a remarkable person” and noted “the amazing things she accomplished.” One said: “Madame Kellett was a wonderful and inspiring woman on so many levels.”
She produced and hosted the Vikings Come Home local TV show in which she interviewed interesting Upper Merion graduates. She went onstage with the King of Prussia Players, produced and directed holiday shows at elementary schools, taught youth drama classes, and cofounded the Upper Merion Cultural Center.
She was president of the Upper Merion and Lafayette Park Civic Associations, and active with the King of Prussia Historical Society. She was quoted often in The Inquirer about township issues.
“She left a legacy of service that permeates Upper Merion Township,” her family said in a tribute.
Mrs. Kellett called her self-published memoirs I Don’t Have Time to Die and added as a postscript: “… unless I complete the last item on my bucket list, which is to get a hole in one, because I probably will drop dead happily from shock.”
Joan Maria Silva was born March 16, 1931, in Bayonne, N.J. She was inspired by her father to excel, she told her family, and performed onstage in college, wrote for the school newspaper, and considered a career in medicine.
She earned a bachelor’s degree with honors in biology at Mount St. Scholastica College in Kansas and her teaching credentials at West Chester University. In 1981, she earned a master’s degree in secondary education at Villanova University.
She met Lee Kellett at a dance in college, and they married in 1952 and had daughters Erin, Shannon, and Patricia, and sons Lee, Michael, and Daniel. They lived in Kansas and Missouri before moving to King of Prussia in 1960.
After a divorce, she married Carl Schultheis Jr., and they moved to Florida in 2015. Her husband, former husband, and son Daniel died earlier.
Mrs. Kellett was a member of Mother of Divine Providence Parish and the first president of its parent-teacher association. She supported local youth athletics, played golf and bridge, and organized a storytelling club with friends in Florida.
She enjoyed sunny summers in Sea Isle City, N.J., stepped foot on every continent, and made the family dinner table a special place to reconnect. She liked impressionist art and went to appreciation night classes at the Barnes Foundation.
To honor her son, she created the Daniel T. Kellett Memorial Skate Park in Upper Merion, placed a memorial bench in Sea Isle City, and established an annual award for the outstanding senior on the high school football team. “She is the most resilient person I ever knew,” said her daughter Patricia.
Her daughter Shannon said: “Teaching was her calling, and her loyalty was to her family.” Her daughter Erin said: “She left a legacy of a pioneer.”
In addition to her children, Mrs. Kellett is survived by 14 grandchildren, 19 great-grandchildren, two brothers, and other relatives. A grandson and a brother died earlier.
Services are to be held at 9:50 a.m. Friday, Aug. 22, at Mother of Divine Providence Church, 333 Allendale Rd., King of Prussia, Pa.
Donations in her name may be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, 501 St. Jude Place, Memphis, Tenn. 38105; and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Box 781352, Philadelphia, Pa. 19178.