The engineer also worked to erase race barriers in the Navy, California housing and even on the newspaper comics pages. As a Black resident in Los Angeles, his efforts to buy residences in largely white neighborhoods had been repeatedly rebuffed. Kelly was battling Parkinson’s disease when he died Feb. 27, his son Ron Kelly said. His early work at Hughes Aircraft helped create guided missile systems and the ground satellites that tracked the Apollo space missions, he said in an oral history recorded by his family. Advertisement“I think I’m a crazy optimist,” Kelly said in his oral history.

Source: Los Angeles Times March 15, 2021 22:07 UTC