Ed Kiely started out with the Steelers in 1950, handling the team's public relations, and stayed until 1989, retiring a year after Art Rooney died. In the last six or seven years' Kiely was a constant companion of the Steelers' owner, accompanying him on most of his travels.

Kiely, at 83, worked out daily to stay in shape, and remained an ardent reader of many newspapers and magazines. His late wife, Pat Kiely, was a popular TV news anchorwoman in Pittsburgh for years. Their children, Kathy, Timmy and Kevin, were all in the media business, with newspapers in Kathy's case, and television with the boys. I had a luncheon interview with Kiely and former Pittsburgh Press sports editor Pat Livingston on April 6, 2001 at Poll's Restaurant in Squirrel Hill.

Kiely's comments follow:
I was with Art quite a bit. You were on the road and I was like a ravelling secretary. He wouldn't like the room we had so we would move. I would take care of stuff like that, just trying to make it easier for him.

No matter where we went people would be falling over one another to greet and meet him. A lot of big people made a fuss over him. He knew everybody. In the latter years, we were more friends than anything else. He was still the boss, but we had grown really close. I felt like part of his family; I had gotten so close to everybody. His kids said I ended up being a part of the family. It became a friendship more than just a job.

He got to think I knew everything he knew. "You know what I'm talking about!" he'd rail from time to time. But I wasn't always on the same page. One time we were having dinner in Luchow's, a famous German restaurant - one of the best - in New York. He got into a conversation with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. They were married and one of the great husband-and-wife teams on Broadway. They were in movies, too. Art was related somehow to Anne Jackson, an actress who was married to the actor Eli Wallach, so they talked about that.

Art had once decked a guy in that same restaurant. The guy apparently had been loud and abusive, out of control, giving everybody a bad time. He said something smart to the Chief. Art cold-cocked the guy with one punch. He said that was the last fight he ever was in. After his wife died, I really spent a lot of time with him. I accompanied him most of the time when he went somewhere. I just made sure everything was the way it ought to be. We went to a lot of things. Sometimes he balked at things. Some of that stuff became a pain.

Everyone could learn a lot about charity and humility from Art Rooney. There were really no bad guys, as far as he was concerned. Everyone got a fresh start with Art Rooney.

He got along well with Al Davis, for instance, because he understood Davis. He told Davis he had to get in line, and that he couldn't be fighting the other owners all the time. But Art is gone and Davis is still challenging the league at every turn. Art liked Charles 0. Finley, another controversial sports figure. He thought he had a lot of good ideas. He had some imaginative ideas. Those guys would listen to Art because of his reputation. They'd pay attention to what he had to say.

We went to Chicago for the last College All-Star Game. There was thunder and lightning, and a terrible storm and they had to call it off, sometime in the third quarter, I think. We got a call from Mayor Daley's office the next day. I got a message that Mayor Daley wanted to give Art Rooney a key to the city. So we went to his office the next morning to get the key to the city.

They had a media office and we went by it to a room nearby. Mayor Daley and Art were talking about politics. Mayor Daley told him he would present the key to him in front of all those newspaper guys. After awhile, Art said to Mayor Daley, "Listen, Mayor, those newspaper guys are probably waiting for you." And the Mayor smiled and said, "Let the bastards wait."

I know that didn't sit well with Art. I don't know anyone who had more respect for the press than he did. He treated the littlest guy from the littlest newspaper like the guy was from The New York Times or The Washington Post.

And Art made friends with a lot of good guys in the business. I know he and Dick Schaap hit it off. Dick couldn't get over how he was. I told Dick to go down to his office and just go in, but he wasn't comfortable with that, so I took him to see Art. After that, they got to be good friends. After that, Dick felt comfortable calling on Art on his own.

Another thing that comes to mind is when Art Carney came to town. They were doing a made-for-TV movie based on Rocky Bleier's book, "Fighting Back." Carney was going to play the part of Art Rooney. One day, Carney asks me, "What fingers does he use to hold his cigar?" I told him I would be damned if I knew, but that we could go visit with Art and he could see for himself.

I was impressed that he wanted to know details like that so he could properly depict him in a movie. Carney is a frightfully shy guy; it's hard to believe the guy was so funny on TV in those Jackie Gleason shows.

After he visited with Art for quite a while, he was about to leave when he asked me, "Do you think you could get him to sign some photos of himself for me?" I told him he could ask Art, but he didn't want to do that. Art signed some photos for him, and then he asked Art Carney, "Say, Art, do you have any pictures with you? You ought to be autographing photos for me."

"The father was very firm."

Art Rooney was more a politician than any politician you'd ever meet. Once he met you he wouldn't forget you. I met Jim Parley, the old Postmaster General, through him. They both did the same things. They were natural politicians. They had a way with people.

Art made people feel important. He was a people person. You had to be a real goofball to mess up with him. That's the way the politicians operated. They treated everyone like they were special. If you were just an everyday bloke and you got a hand-written postcard from Art Rooney it made you feel special.

They had important friends. Tim, for instance, was close to Teddy Kennedy. Several of the Kennedys came to the Super Bowl when we were in it. Ethel was there. Timmy could have been something in politics, too. He had that flare. He was a product of his father, a born politician. The father was very firm with those boys. He made sure all five of them went to school and that they stayed out of trouble. Art told them never to act like they were rich. They never drank around their dad. He drank alcohol in his early years, but not the last 30 years of his life.

When his eyes went bad, I used to read articles in the newspaper to him, or call certain stories to his attention. I knew what would be of interest to him. I'd cut out editorials from the Wall Street Journal for him, for instance, and out-of-town newspapers. He had wide interests. When he died, I received a note from (NFL Commissioner) Pete Rozelle in which he wrote, "I hope you'll take as good care of Dan as you did his father."

When Dan took over running the team, his father took a back-seat to him. Art might come into the room in the middle of an owners' meeting, and they'd see him moving across the back of the room, looking for a place to sit, and they clapped their hands to acknowledge his presence. He was as respected as anybody. He did more public relations for the league than any public relations guy. He had a feel for people and things that are hard to replace.

When I would ride with him on an airplane, people would come up to me when I'd be walking down the aisle to go to the bathroom, and they'd say, "Can I get an autograph?' And I'd tell them just to go up and see him. When they did I'd see him talking to them. He'd be wonderful with them. He had a touch.

I remember going to funeral homes with him. We'd go to see one person and there might be a funeral home full of bodies. He'd go see them all. People would be so surprised to see him and taken aback by him walking in. He might be introduced to the widow, and he'd say, "There are going to be tough times for you. You'll have to be strong. Can you do that?" He'd comfort them and lecture them at the same time. I remember when he did this sort of thing when they were always running that United Way commercial featuring him. That made him even more recognisable. We'd come out of the funeral home and he'd say to me, "How did they know me?" That always cracked me up.

His evolution must have been something to see. When he was a young man, he was a tough guy, quite the ballplayer, a boxer, quite the competitor. Then he became an influential politician. He was a ward leader on the North Side. Jimmy Coyne was the boss and Art was one of his lieutenants. There were no Roosevelt programs for the poor then. Guys like Coyne and Rooney got food for everybody who needed it in the neighbourhood for Thanksgiving and Christmas. He was always loyal to Jimmy Coyne. So he remained a Republican. No one could get him to become a Democrat, not even his good friend David Lawrence.

He was a religious guy, but he hated it when they wrote about it. He didn't want people to make a big deal about it.

"He saw a lot of fun in life."

Everybody was his friend. You could go with him to the racetrack, and everybody would fuss over him. He'd drive up in his car, and the valet parking people would all come over to greet him. He knew every one of them by name. It was the same with the people who worked in the dining room. He'd say, "Mary, how are you? How are the kids?" He knew the kids' names. It was that way with everyone in the dining room. How could he do that? That's an art.

He loved baseball and the baseball people loved him. I remember some baseball managers, guys like Joe Torre and Whitey Herzog, would come in to see him when their teams were in town. He'd sit in their dugouts during workouts on the day of the game. He really enjoyed that. He and Torre would talk about cigars and they'd smoke them together. He liked loafing with those guys. He was really close to baseball.

If you screwed up, he'd let you know. He might have been the nicest guy, but he'd get on you from time to time.

At the same time, he had a tremendous sense of hammer. He saw a lot of fun in life. As serious as life was, he found the fun in it. If you're in a town with competition, like we had, you had to work the local media to get your share of attention. When I got started with the Steelers, the Pirates were the biggest thing in town. Baseball was the biggest sport in the country.

People don't know what our business used to be like. When I was working as the Steelers' public relations guy, I used to drive down to Monongahela or Uniontown, places like that, and spend the day with the sportswriters there. I used to drive everywhere. You went into the city of the opposing team before road games, and you'd take photos and handouts and set up telephone interviews. There were seven daily newspapers in New York at one period and you had to visit all of them.

Television made football a big deal and a big business. Art knew that, but he was never comfortable with it. He always worried about what would happen if TV pulled out of football, and left us with a TV- driven economy. I remember him saying to Terry Bradshaw, "Big boy, when they turn that red light off on TV someday, could you play for $10,000 a year?" And Bradshaw would say, "What else could I do?"

He liked Bradshaw and he liked Lambert and Mel Blount. He liked guys he thought would have fit in and played tough like the guys he knew in the old days. When he came into the locker room everyone felt they were special to him. He'd say, "How are ya? Howya doing? Where ya from?" And they loved him. When guys got traded, they hated to leave him. He'd continue to write to them wherever they went. He was unreal like that. To him, they were always Steelers.

This article is reprinted by permission from Jim O'Brien's "The Chief."
The book is available by sending $28.95 plus $3.50 for handling
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