Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly

Aloysius Anthony Kelly |name="birth date" ), popularly known as Alvin "Shipwreck" Kelly, was an American pole sitter who achieved fame in the 1920s and 1930s, sitting for days at a time on elevated perches throughout the United States.

Early life Kelly was born in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood. His mother died during childbirth and his father died before he was born. He ran away and went to sea at the age of 13, and changed his name to Alvin. In his early years he worked as a steelworker, steeplejack, high diver, boxer and movie double. He was also a licensed pilot who performed aerial stunts.

Career According to one account, Kelly climbed his first pole at the age of seven, and at nine he performed a "human fly" trick, climbing up the side of a building. or as a publicity stunt to draw customers to a Philadelphia department store. In January of that year he sat on a pole for 13 hours and 13 minutes to publicize a movie. He would end up sitting atop the Newark pole for twelve days, and on a pole in Baltimore's Carlin's Park for 23 days in 1929.

At the height of his fame as a latter-day stylite, he toured 28 cities, charging admission to people who wanted to stand on roofs to see his performance stunts. He also earned an income from endorsements, personal appearances and books about his life. He called himself "the luckiest fool in the world." He once calculated that over two decades he spent 20,613 hours sitting on flagpoles, of which 210 were in sub-freezing weather and 1400 hours in the rain.

While pole sitting, Kelly was said to have subsisted mainly on coffee and cigarettes. He learned how to nap while sitting upright, and never was secured by more than a simple leg strap. He once claimed that he does not "take as many chances as a window cleaner." Journalist Jay Maeder wrote that "The newspapers were regularly full of pictures of Shipwreck Kelly, matter-of-factly brushing his teeth and shaving his face, hundreds of feet in the air." In the 1930s, there was less tolerance for such stunts, and police took a dim view of the disruption it caused. In 1935, he attempted to break his Atlantic City record by sitting on a pole in the Bronx, but was aloft for less than a day before he was arrested as a public nuisance. He only climbed down from the pole after police threatened to cut it down. However, by then that kind of work had pretty much dried up. He served in the United States Merchant Marine during World War II. He is also said to have gained the nickname as a boxer,

Kelly's last flagpole-sitting appearance was at an Orange, Texas event sponsored by the Lions Club on October 4, 1952, one week before his death. Two heart attacks forced him to come down from the 65-foot pole, and the club refused to let him go back up. He retired as a result of the heart attacks, saying "This is it. I'm through."

Personal life Kelly married an elevator operator, Frances Vivian Steele of Dallas, Texas,

Death At the time of his death in October 1952, Kelly had become a "grizzled old man" – penniless and all but forgotten. He was by then a widower who had been on home relief for six months, and his son was in the U.S. Army overseas. He had been suffering from an asthmatic heart and hardening of the arteries. For a time his body was unclaimed at the morgue, but he was buried at Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale, New York.

Belongings found in Kelly's room included a duffel bag still packed with ropes and flagpole-sitting gear, "in case any fresh jobs came along." At the time of Kelly's death a scrapbook of his exploits was under his arm. He had titled the scrapbook "The Luckiest Fool on Earth."