A great day for the Fighting Irish as Coach Kelly honored

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Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly

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Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly will be rubbing elbows with NYPD top cop Ray Kelly and the rest of New York's Kelly Gang Inc. at their charity fundraiser staged at media hot spot Michael's Restaurant on Wednesday, March 13.

They'll be raising money for the Kelly Cares Foundation which was a started by Brian Kelly and his wife Paqui, a two time survivor of breast cancer. The Foundation raises money to support initiatives and programs that closely align with their goals and values in three main pillars:  health, educational and community.

"Remember, you don;t have to be a Kelly or even Irish to support this very worthy charity," said Kelly Gang president Ed Kelly, whose day job is CEO of American Express Publishing.

The NYPD Emerald Society Pipe and Drums will be peforming as will the folk group Paddy on the Railway. Bill O'Reilly, bestselling author of Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln and host of The O'Reilly Factor is expected to be among the guests as is John Kelly, author of The Graves Are Walking, about the mid-19th century potato blight that devastated Ireland.

The Kelly Gang was formed in the late 1990s as an informal gathering of media types with the surname Kelly. It was tagged with the name Kelly Gang when NY Post columnist Steve Dunleavy happened to catch one of their early St. Patrick;s Day luncheons at Langan's Restaurant and marveled that in his native Australia the Kelly Gang was led by a Robin Hood type outlaw named Ned Kelly but in New York the modern Kelly Gang counted the city's top cop as one of its leaders. The Kelly Gang named stuck.

Tragedy struck on April 3, 2003 with the death of former Atlantic Monthly/New Republic editor Michael Kelly in Iraq, where he was the first American journalist killed in the Iraq War. The following year on what would have been his 47th birthday, the Kelly Gang gathered to raise money for his two young sons to benefit the Tom and Jack Kelly Education Fund.

Every year since then, the Gang, which is now an official 501(3) charity, has gathered to support another worthy cause and has raised about $500,000 for a wide variety of causes. including The Wounded Warrior Project, the Annie Moore Memorial Project, City Harvest, Catholic Charities in haiti, Catholic Charities in New Orleans, Tuesday's Children, (family membrs of victms from the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack), and Hunter's Hope Foundation (established by NFL Hall of Fame QB Jim Kelly and his wife Jill who lost a son Hunter to Krabbe leukodystrophy), the D.O.E. Fund and the Evan B. Davidson Adoption Institute.

Admission is $150 in advance and $200 at the door. Guests will also get a screening of the official Notre Dame highlight film of the 2012-13 season in which the team went undefeated before losing to Alabama in the national championship game.

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