By Julie Godfrey Miller
Catholic Herald

New staff writer joins the Catholic Herald

SUPERIOR -- Ann Marie Kelley had never thought she could be a journalist, but while attending the University of Michigan-Flint, she was asked to become editor of the defunct college newspaper. She took the job and resurrected the paper.

"It all came together somehow," she said, "and it was a decent-looking campus paper."

As of Nov. 1, Kelley is putting her journalism skills to work as the new staff writer at the Superior Catholic Herald.

Kelley is the daughter of Leona and C.B. Kelley, who live in Flint. She has three brothers, who also live in Flint, and a sister who lives in Albuquerque, N.M.

Kelley spent most of her school years at Holy Rosary Grade and High School in Flint. When she was 13 she entered the aspirancy of the Dominican order for two years, but decided that she was not called to the religious life. She returned to Holy Rosary and graduated in 1968.

After graduation she attended Michigan State University in East Lansing, but after her small parochial school, could not adjust the university with its 40,000 students, so she dropped out after a semester and a half.

Kelley had a daughter, Zoe, at age 19, and lived in Washington State for the next 18 years, where she raised her daughter and worked for the state of Washington in social and health services.

When her daughter was 18, Kelley returned to Michigan. She settled her daughter, who is mentally retarded, into a group home, and enrolled at The University of Michigan-Flint. She graduated in 1992, with a B.A. in communications.

In 1993 she moved to Marquette, Mich., where she earned an M.A. in English-writing from Northern Michigan University.

A few months after graduation Kelley set off to teach English as a Second Language at a university in Poznan, Poland.

She said, "I always wanted to learn a language and live in another culture and that seemed like the time to do it."

Kelley said she loved it there. "I don't know if I would have come back if it weren't for my daughter. It was very hard for her. I think in her mind it was like I left her."

Kelley said she loved the simplicity of life in Poland and loved the Polish people. She was also impressed by the fact that Poles put their families, not their work, first in their lives.

When she returned to the Upper Peninsula, Kelley was offered a job as a staff writer for The Mining Journal, a daily newspaper in Marquette. She said she was a bit hesitant, but took the job and loved it. She was there for four years.

Kelley said she had difficulty finding the services her daughter needed in the U.P., so she gave up the job and moved to Duluth, Minn., where she worked as a receptionist at the YMCA until she began her job at the Catholic Herald.

Kelley said her first assignment, an interview with Sr. Jovita Winkel which also appears in this issue of the Catholic Herald, provides a good example of why she wanted to work for the Catholic press.

She said as she was writing the story she was thinking that if she had done this story for a secular paper, her editor would have told her it was inappropriate to include spiritual matters and what her subject was thinking and feeling. She said she was really impressed with how different this job is from working for a secular paper and is finding it a gentler environment.

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© Superior Catholic Herald, 2005