William Kelly; Temporary Jobs Pioneer
William Russell Kelly, chairman of Kelly Services Inc. and a pioneer in the temporary help industry, died Saturday of cancer at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 92.
Kelly, correctly anticipating a post-World War II business boom, founded Russell Kelly Office Service in 1946 to assist businesses unable to keep up with their paperwork.
Kelly initially worked with other businesses’ overflow paperwork in his own offices. But in late 1946 he began sending his employees out to other offices in the Detroit area to fill in for vacationing or sick employees, or to supplement short-handed office staffs.
Virtually all his temporary employees were female secretaries, bookkeepers or office assistants. They began identifying themselves as “Kelly girls,” and the name became a trademark recognized around the world.
The industry mushroomed. Today a large number of different temporary agencies employ lawyers, physicians, engineers and other highly skilled workers in addition to clerical workers. Kelly Services itself operates in 50 states and 16 countries.
“Russ will be remembered as he would have wished, as a pioneer and business innovator,” said his son, Terence E. Adderley, president and chief executive officer of Kelly Services. “My family and I will remember him with great fondness. We will miss him very much.”
Since 1985, Forbes magazine has listed Kelly as one of America’s 400 wealthiest men, with his net worth estimated at $540 million in the most recent list.
Kelly was born Nov. 21, 1905, in the Canadian village of Koksilah, Victoria, British Columbia, the fifth of seven children of Mary Agnes Bickel Kelly and James Watson Kelly.
Upon graduation from Gulfcoast Military Academy in Gulfport, Miss. in 1922, Kelly, then 16, began attending Vanderbilt University and then the University of Pittsburgh.
Before the war, Kelly worked as an automobile salesman in Pittsburgh and as an auditor for the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., a large food chain.
During the war, he worked as a civilian fiscal management analyst for the Army’s Quartermaster Corps.
Kelly is survived by his wife, Margaret Adderley Kelly, his adopted son, Terence E. Adderley, his daughter-in-law, Mary Beth, six grandchildren, Carol M. Adderley-Cone, Ellen K. Oltmanns, Mary L. Adderley, Laura A. Adderley, Elizabeth M. Adderley, Terence E. Adderley Jr., and three great-grandchildren.
