Joe Kelly was more than the father of a Hall of Fame NFL quarterback.

He was a man of action, one who earned respect while commanding it at the same time.

The former East Brady and Center Township resident — and father of longtime Buffalo Bills quarterback Jim Kelly — died Monday while in hospice care in Dunedin, Fla. He was 88.

All six of his sons — Pat, Ray, Ed, Jim, Dan and Kevin — were at his bedside when he died.

“They all got on their knees and said a prayer for their father after he took his last breath,” longtime family friend Terry Henry said. “It was all very peaceful.

“Those boys were there for their dad at the end just like he was always there for them.”

A World War II veteran, Kelly and his wife Alice — who died in 1996 — raised their sons through modest means. Kelly was an orphan when he was young and wound up working as a machinist at Daman Industries.

“All fathers were like Joe,” Henry said. “He wanted a better life for his kids than what he had. He didn't make a whole lot of money, but he provided his boys with what they needed.

“His wife worked in the school cafeteria. They put food on the table. They did what they had to do.”

All six of Kelly's sons played football at East Brady. Henry said Joe Kelly made Jim throw a certain number of footballs through a tire before coming in for lunch each day.

“Jimmy had a gift that none of the others had and I didn't want him to waste it,” Joe Kelly was once quoted. “And he loved football. He had a passion for the game.”

Art Vasbinder grew up as a good friend of Pat and Ed Kelly. He said their father “gave 100 percent to all of those boys and demanded effort in return.

“If you started something, you gave it all or you didn't participate,” Vasbinder said. “That was his philosophy. When the Kellys started something, they always finished it.”

Michael Vasbinder was good friends with the Kelly twins, Dan and Kevin. He said Joe Kelly cared deeply for all kids in the East Brady area.

He was founder of the East Brady Quarterback Club and began Little League and Midget Football in the community.

“Their dad built the dugouts at the Little League field,” Michael Vasbinder said. “He got all of those organizations up and running, made sure others were going to keep it going, then he'd move on to something else.

“He was very caring and giving. And even though one of his sons became an NFL star, he never treated any of them any differently.”

Michael Vasbinder said Joe Kelly “built his sons a Nautilus machine through pipes and tools from work.”

“He built it himself so his boys could get started on weights,” he said.

Longtime Karns City coach and former East Brady quarterback Dave Kerschbaumer described Joe Kelly as “a strict man who was big on discipline, but who was fair about it.

“If you goofed up something, he'd let you know about it. But he did so in a way his kids would learn from it,” Kerschbaumer said.

When his sons would get into a squabble — “and with six boys growing up together, there were going to be squabbles,” Kerschbaumer said — Kelly had them settle it in an old-fashioned way.

“Mr. Kelly was into boxing and he had boxing gloves. He'd send the guys back behind the garage, give them the gloves and had them settle their own differences,” Kerschbaumer said. “And he'd always want to know how it turned out.”

As his sons grew up, married and developed families of their own, Joe Kelly never stopped giving. For six years, he worked with Dan McKnight on a charity golf tournament at Conley's Resort benefitting the Hunter's Hope Foundation. That's the non-profit organization formed by the Jim Kelly family to fight Krabbe Disease, which took the life of Jim Kelly's son, Hunter.

“We raised $120,000 for Hunter's Hope over those six years,” McKnight said. “Joe was a great guy. He was the father everybody wanted to have. He was all about caring in a sensitive way, yet you didn't want to cross him.

“As a friend, he had your back the whole way.”

Once Jim Kelly signed his multi-million dollar contract with the Buffalo Bills, he “retired” his father and helped his brothers financially as well.

“For Jimmy, it was pay-back,” Art Vasbinder said. “He wanted to do for his dad what his dad did for him.”

At least one Sunday each year Jim Kelly played in Buffalo, Joe Kelly would load up his mobile home and take a dozen friends of the family up to a game. Jim Kelly put everybody up in a hotel for the weekend.

“That's just the way those guys were,” Art Vasbinder said.

Friends and family of Joe Kelly will be received from 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday at the Buechele Funeral Home at 707 Kellys Way in East Brady. The funeral mass will be Monday morning.

“All of the Kelly family will be coming in this weekend,” Henry said. “I'll be putting some of them up. Other friends in town will be putting others up. This will be a homecoming, a celebration of Joe's life.

“A lot of former Bills players, others connected to the NFL ... Plenty of folks from all over the place will be coming in here to pay their respects to Joe Kelly. It should be something to see.”

The reason for the anticipated overflow crowd is obvious in Kerschbaumer's mind.

“He was just a good man .... a good, good man,” Kerschbaumer said.