{"id":528298,"date":"2010-04-15T07:00:35","date_gmt":"2010-04-15T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=43112"},"modified":"2010-04-15T07:00:35","modified_gmt":"2010-04-15T11:00:35","slug":"the-gym-unlocker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/528298","title":{"rendered":"The gym unlocker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed Kelley doesn\u2019t have your typical desk job. He\u2019s got a computer, yes, though he readily admits he doesn\u2019t much care for it. And he has a window, though it\u2019s not for glimpsing the incoming spring, but rather the thousands of visitors to the Malkin Athletic Complex<\/a> (MAC) or Hemenway Gym<\/a>, where Kelley is dually employed. Those fitness seekers aren\u2019t just strangers passing by. They\u2019re his friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou call this a job?\u201d says Kelley, who swipes IDs, makes sure the towels are folded and stacked, and opens the gyms most mornings at daybreak. \u201cMy main job is to tease everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he does. \u201cI just want to warn you,\u201d Kelley tells an incoming swimmer, \u201cthe water is wet.\u201d Someone asks for a Band-Aid. \u201cFifty cents,\u201d he says seriously, and then quips, \u201cHarvard needs the money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelley, who turned 78 on April 12, has a mind that\u2019s sharp as a whip \u2014 \u201clike a computer,\u201d he says of his memory. \u201cYou remember all the good things and let the bad things fade away.\u201d<\/p>\n

He greets everyone, remembers their names, jobs, and concentrations; he asks about newborn babies, family members. Gym-goers sometimes bring their children in to meet him.<\/p>\n

Kelley has worked at Harvard since 1959, where he started out running linotype machines on a job that was supposed to last just 90 days. But Kelley, it seems, was meant for Harvard. He quickly became full time, and then the computer came along.<\/p>\n

That milestone, according to Kelley, happened in 1982, when he was given the choice to leave or pursue something else. He became a foreman, overseeing Harvard\u2019s grounds. That was a pivotal point in Kelley\u2019s life. \u201cDoing linotype, I didn\u2019t see or talk to people,\u201d he recalls. \u201cWhen I came out on the grounds, it was a different world.\u201d Kelley met students, faculty, and community members, and enjoyed talking to them until he retired in 1999.<\/p>\n

But then he got bored. \u201cReal bored,\u201d he says. And he couldn\u2019t stay away from campus. One chance day strolling through Hemenway, Kelley was offered a job opening the gyms in the morning. He couldn\u2019t refuse.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, it\u2019s not a job, it\u2019s an education. I talk to different people from all over the world every day. We have a saying over at the Hemenway Gym: When the kids come in the morning, we have to get a smile out of them to get them going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around the five o\u2019clock hour each morning, you can find Kelley walking to work. \u201cA mile and a half to the MAC\u201d from his home in Somerville, he points out, \u201cbut it\u2019s a mile and a quarter to Hemenway.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI walk in the snow, rain \u2014 doesn\u2019t matter to me,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen you get to be my age and these eyes open up in the morning, it\u2019s a good day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelley says all his earnings from his gym gigs go to spoiling his eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He has been married to the same woman for 55 years, a fact he proudly proclaims. Each summer the pair travel to Maine, and come September they jet away to Aruba, where they own a timeshare.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy wife always tells me to be quiet,\u201d he laughs. \u201cBut no matter where I go, I talk to everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed Kelley doesn\u2019t have your typical desk job. He\u2019s got a computer, yes, though he readily admits he doesn\u2019t much care for it. And he has a window, though it\u2019s not for glimpsing the incoming spring, but rather the thousands of visitors to the Malkin Athletic Complex (MAC) or Hemenway Gym, where Kelley is dually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-528298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}