Ryland Kelley spent his career building and developing properties in California, including the tallest high-rise office complex in Palo Alto and the 600-home beach resort community Pajaro Dunes, near Monterey, Calif., but in his later years he turned to writing, harking back to his years as a student of celebrated Stanford English professor Wallace Stegner. Known to friends and family as "Rye," he wrote seven plays and published three books of poetry.
Kelley, '49, died of liver cancer in Woodside on August 30. He was 88.
A Palo Alto native, Kelley enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1944 and became a radio operator. Returning to Stanford in September 1946, he joined the JV football team, where he met Joe Pickering, '48, MBA '50, a fellow veteran. "We shared similar values and became good friends," said Pickering.
After graduation, Kelley joined his father and his brother, Bill, '47, at their real estate firm, Hare, Brewer and Kelley. Palo Alto Weekly publisher Bill Johnson said some of Kelley's ideas were "brilliant." The firm's developments included the 15-story Palo Alto Office Center, still the tallest in the city; Ladera, a project of more than 525 homes, and the Ladera Shopping Center, both in Portola Valley; La Tour in Palo Alto, one of the first five-star restaurants on the Peninsula; and Mayfield Mall, one of the country's first indoor malls, built in 1966, in Mountain View.
In addition to his development projects, Kelley supported his longtime friend Pete McCloskey, a Republican presidential candidate in 1972 who ran on an antiwar platform but ultimately lost the nomination to incumbent Richard Nixon. Kelley and his wife were ardent supporters of the arts at Stanford and in Palo Alto. His play Lyndon, about former president Lyndon Johnson, debuted at the Mountain View Center for the Arts in 2006, and shortly before his death from inoperable cancer, Kelley staged a poetry reading and informal memorial service—a "retirement party," in his words—for more than 100 close friends.
Kelley is survived by his wife, Shirley (Sneath, '47); sons, Richard, '75, MBA '89, Tom and Bruce; and four grandchildren.
