During recent hearings over proposed budget cuts at San Francisco City Hall, a diminutive 84-year old woman dressed as Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz” — wearing a wig with pigtails, a print dress, and red shoes and socks — conspicuously lobbied elected officials, in particular to protect services for elderly and disabled people.
The octogenarian advocate, who was accompanied by compatriots costumed as Dorothy’s companions the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Lion, is well known in The City’s corridors of power as Hene Kelly, a former teacher who has been a local union and Democratic Party activist for more than 50 years.
Her troupe urged city officials to use their hearts, brains and courage — each of which Dorothy’s fellow travelers hoped to receive from the mythical Wizard of Oz.
“Sometimes that kind of fun gets people to vote your way, and that is exactly what I try to do,” Kelly said of the theatrics.
The “Wizard of Oz” conceit is one of several involving costumes that Kelly and friends have used at demonstrations in the past, she said.
Jokes aside, Kelly is “a feisty and outspoken advocate,” said Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, who said he has known Kelly for about 20 years.
“Hene is someone you want to have on your side,” he said. “You don’t want to have her against you.”
Mandelman said Kelly “does a pretty good job of being collegial,” even when she disagrees with people.
“I’ve enjoyed her very much,” he said. “She is funny.”
Anya Worley-Ziegmann, coalition coordinator at the People’s Budget Coalition — which organized recent budget demonstrations that included Kelly — said Kelly went to all 11 supervisors’ offices and gave tailored pitches at each stop.
“She’s an utter inspiration,” said Worley-Ziegmann, whose coalition claims more than 150 member organizations, including nonprofits, community groups and labor unions.
“As Dorothy, she wasn’t just reciting a script — she walked to each of the supervisors’ offices and gave them each an individual speech based on what that office needed to hear,” Worley-Ziegmann said. “It was just amazing, and I’ve been so honored to work alongside a San Francisco icon like her.”
A mother of two adult children and grandmother of triplets, the sometimes salty-tongued Kelly said in an interview at a cafe near her Richmond-district home that she has been outspoken since she was a youth.
Supervisor Connie Chan speaks at her reelection victory celebration at City Hall in November 2024, flanked by Hene Kelly (right) and Kelly’s daughter in-law Wendy Aragon.
Craig Lee/The Examiner
She wore a button supporting Supervisor Connie Chan’s run for Congress and another showing her own bruised face — injuries she suffered when she accidentally fell down — above the words “Hene Kelly Fights for You.”
Kelly was born in San Antonio, but she also spent time growing up in Chicago and Birmingham, Ala. She credited her father, an Orthodox rabbi, with setting an example for her through actions such as giving Black parishioners a place to worship when their Birmingham church burned down, even though members of his own congregation were not pleased. He left that position after the temple bought out his contract, she said.
Kelly said her father urged her to never cross a picket line — join it instead, he said — and vote Democratic.
In high school in Birmingham, Kelly said, she clashed with a civics teacher who used racist language in class concerning a Black woman.
“I said, ‘You are prejudiced. This is wrong,’” she said.
Kelly said the teacher ordered her to leave the room, and she replied, “I will get out of this room — I never want to have the stench of your bigotry anywhere near me,” and walked out.
Kelly said she went around town putting makeshift “out of order” signs at facilities such as water fountains that at the time were reserved for white people only.
In order for Kelly to graduate high school, her parents sent her on a plane to Santa Clara, where she lived with an aunt and attended a local public school. For college, she went back to the Windy City, where she attended the University of Chicago.
There, Kelly became increasingly politically active. At the age of 18, she went campaign door-knocking for the first time to support John F. Kennedy when he was running for president in 1960.
Kelly said she became friends with and briefly dated Bernie Sanders, now a progressive independent U.S. senator representing Vermont. She said she supported Sanders and others when they occupied the university’s administrative offices in 1962 to demand desegregation of some off-campus housing owned by the university.
Kelly said she didn’t stay overnight with the protesters because she worried that she might lose her place in her dormitory, which had a curfew. Instead, she baked challah to sell to get money to buy food for the protesters.
Challenged by a party official about how to replace the money that would be lost by excluding such companies, Kelly replied that she would sell challahs to raise funds, and for a time she did, sometimes for hundreds of dollars a loaf.
Former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said that Kelly has the stomach when others don’t to stand up and “call bulls—.”
“She is a unique, outspoken, and wonderful character,” said Peskin, who said he’s known Kelly for about 25 years through Democratic Party politics and having served with her on the local party central committee together at various times.
“She’s kind of a cross between a loving Jewish mother and a military commander, and is hilarious and fearless,” Peskin said.
Kelly is “at the stage of life where people should be taking care of her, but instead she’s taking care of everybody else, and she’s just been a relentless fighter for working people and the little guy all her life,” Peskin said.
Kelly said that while she was in college, her mother died at age 50 from an embolism. She said her father told her it was her mother’s dream that she be a teacher.
Kelly harbored her own dreams of becoming a comedian, she said. After graduating from college, she worked for a time at the Second City comedy venue, which offered occasional moments on stage. But she did become a teacher, and she taught in Chicago public schools for three years.
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She also remained politically active. After Martin Luther King Jr. and his family moved into a Chicago slum in 1966, Kelly said, she walked with the civil-rights leader to confront discrimination. She spoke of people throwing things at her, spitting on her and insulting her.
In February 1968, the Chicago weather convinced Kelly that it was time to leave.
“There was a horrendous snowstorm, and I just said I can’t take it anymore,” Kelly said. “Summers are too damn hot, winters are too damn cold.”
She moved to San Francisco, and she was teaching in city schools not long after.
While taking a class to get her teaching credential, Kelly said, she met her husband-to-be, Dennis Kelly, who was also studying to be a teacher. He took her to the San Francisco Symphony for their first date. Seiji Osawa was conducting a program that included Hector Berlioz.
Dennis Kelly converted to Orthodox Judaism in order to marry her. To this day, she has season tickets to the symphony.
“It was a wonderful marriage,” Hene Kelly said.
Dennis Kelly, who became a celebrated teacher and union leader, died in 2024.
Hene Kelly taught English, family life and Holocaust classes to high-school students and was a building representative for her union, she said.
She recalled with a twinkle how she used to teach sex-education classes using cucumbers to demonstrate the proper use of condoms, but she said earnestly that the effort resulted in fewer high-school pregnancies.
“You can’t use bananas,” Kelly said — they don’t hold up through five classes in a day.
She and her husband were very active in labor-union affairs. Dennis Kelly was elected president of the Union of Educators of San Francisco in 2003 and held the position for 12 years.
Hene Kelly was one of the speakers at a May 15 rally outside City Hall in support of Chan’s congressional bid and Proposition D, an unsuccessful union-backed June ballot measure that sought to raise San Francisco’s Overpaid Executive Tax, which is imposed on companies at which executives are paid 100 times or more than the median earned by employees in The City.
Chan paid tribute to Dennis Kelly as a “labor giant” and called Hene Kelly his “better half.”
Kelly went to the lectern and made some remarks before launching into a version of an old call-and-response union song, thumping her chest as the crowd repeated after her:
Kelly retired in 2004 from the San Francisco Unified School District after nearly 35 years of teaching. She has held multiple long-running positions with political, advocacy and union organizations since then.
She is the elected Region 7 director for the California Democratic Party, a role in which she is a conduit for information between the state party and local entities in San Mateo, Santa Clara and San Francisco counties. She said she’s not planning to run again for the position.
“I’m gonna get a young woman or young man that is as stupid as I am to do that,” she said.
Among other positions, Kelly has also been longtime chair of the legislative leadership team for the California Alliance for Retired Americans, advocating for seniors and people with disabilities.
She said she is giving up the position because it is too demanding given her age, though she plans to remain a member of the organization’s legislative committee.
She has also repeatedly served on the SF Democratic County Central Committee. She ran for another term in March of 2024 but lost when a relatively moderate slate of candidates won a majority.
“I always said San Francisco cannot be bought,” she said. “It’s been bought.”
Kelly has been an adept organizer, said Mike Casey, president of the San Francisco Labor Council and former president of Unite Here Local 2, the union that represents hospitality workers such as those in hotels and restaurants.
“Whether it’s calling people up or making sure that they’re comfortable on the bus, or making sure that the bus driver gets in the right place at the right time, she crosses all those lines,” Casey said. “She’s done it for decades, literally decades.”
Kelly said that this fall, she’s planning to travel to Georgia to campaign for Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, as she previously did in that state for Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock.
“It’ll be my last walk,” Kelly said.
But she said she plans to stay politically active as long as she can.
“I might not walk, I might not call — but I will be there yelling, and I will be there at everything I can, and training people how to do it,” Kelly said.