I am dead.
So begins the final goodbye from Cornelius “Cork” Kelly, a resident of Sublette County for more than 50 years.
Not, as one might expect, with a solemn announcement from a funeral home or a carefully worded notice from family members.
Kelly wrote it himself.
The 90-year-old Pinedale man, longtime teacher, poet, father of 10, political maverick and senior swimming champion died Aug. 14 from multiple health complications.
Then, in a town where news is still often exchanged between dashes to the mailbox, bank and grocery store, his words appeared on the doors of the Pinedale Post Office.
and regardless of the manner
of my dying
at least I am on the road again.
It was a very Cork Kelly way to leave.
“Remarkable,” said Paul Ulrich, pausing to consider the obituary his friend had written for himself. “I don't know what else I'd say.”
Dan Abernathy was more emotional.
“I was very, very moved by the whole thing,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “It was the Cork that I knew.”
A Difficult Beginning
Kelly was born Jan. 16, 1936, and grew up in the Detroit area.
His parents were deaf, said his son John, the second-oldest of Kelly's 10 children. Kelly's grandparents were Nebraska farmers, but his father moved to Detroit to work in the Ford auto plants.
Communication at home was difficult, John said, and his father's childhood carried wounds that followed him into adulthood.
But in the obituary-poem he left behind, Kelly looked backward with the same searching curiosity that defined much of his life.
The first thing I did was look back,
and I saw that all of you
were trying to give meaning to your lives
through your choices,
through your actions,
through your dreams.
Kelly himself spent much of his life doing exactly that.
He served about four years in the Air Force. Later, he and his family came to Sublette County, living in Daniel from 1971 to 1977 before building a house on Orcutt Hill in Pinedale.
John was about 13 when the family built the home, much of it during a single summer.
His father became deeply attached to the place. Nearly five decades later, it was still home. Kelly spent the final week of his life there.
‘A Full, Loving Father’
Kelly's obituary did not attempt to make him a saint.
It strove to tell the poetic truth.
To survive, you must establish a personal integrity.
I attempted to do this as I dealt with
guilt for regrettable actions,
frustrations from formidable failures,
anger from complex conflicts,
intoxication from alcoholism,
but now I am free.
John said he believes the reference to alcoholism was more metaphor than literal confession. But the larger message reflected something his father had done in his later years – look back.
“He looked back and reflected in ways on his own trauma,” John said. “He longed to be a full, loving father.”
Relationships and communication could be difficult at times, John said. The trauma of Kelly's own childhood followed him into fatherhood.
But so did the desire to understand.
And perhaps that was one of the traits that made Cork so memorable to those around him.
He was not especially interested in pretending to be perfect.
He was interested in being present with people, however it looked.
“He had a very inquisitive mind,” said Jill Straley, who came to know Kelly later in his life like a father.
When you talked with him, she said, he was present. He listened. And then, he might toss in a joke that sent the conversation in an entirely different direction.
“He had such a quirky sense of humor,” she said. “What I loved about him is that you could just sit down and talk to him about anything. He would come out of left field from somewhere with a joke, and then we would just laugh about it.”
The Teacher Outside The Window
Kelly and his family moved to Pinedale in 1971 for a job teaching English and Spanish at Pinedale High School.
He was there for two decades.
Former students remembered the lessons – and the lighter moments.
Elaine Hilliard Winchell, a former student of Kelly’s, recalled a time when he had locked himself out of his classroom, which was full of students inside. He taught the lesson standing outside the open window.
“I’m not sure why none of us got up and opened the door for him,” Winchell wrote in the guest book provided by Covill Funeral Home.
Heath Harrower, another former student, shared that he loved Kelly’s antics, “and he had a lot of them.”
That’s how Straley first came to know Kelly. Her husband, Latner, had Kelly for both Spanish and English in high school.
Straley would often see Kelly riding his bike in the mornings on the path between Pinedale and Fremont Lake while she was out watering her flowers.
“We would wave and we would talk and we got to know each other that way,” she told Cowboy State Daily.
Straley eventually met Kelly’s daughter, Annie, and they became best friends.
It wasn’t long before the Kellys thought of Straley as family.
“They called me their sixth daughter,” she said.
To Abernathy, Cork never really stopped teaching.
The two men shared a love of poetry, and Abernathy said Kelly encouraged him to keep writing in his own voice.
“You always left with the encouragement of keeping your voice going,” Abernathy said. “Cork was a teacher. He liked my words and he always gave me the encouragement to move on.”
Poet Laureate Of The Block
Kelly was a word connoisseur, both in the spoken and written forms. Kelly began writing poetry as a boy.
According to a brief biography on the Daily Poem website, where Kelly’s poems often appeared, Kelly wrote his first poem at age 12, when he had fallen in love with the girl across the street. He wrote a poem and put it in her mailbox.
The girl showed the poem to all her neighbors, and Kelly became the unofficial poet laureate of his block.
His early poetic influence came from poet Edgar Guest.
Kelly went on to publish eight chapbooks, eventually compiled into a single collection of about 350 pages.
A copy is kept in a special collection at the Pinedale Library.
John helped his father compile the chapbooks and read all of the poems.
His father wrote about nearly everything, including his children.
“He would think about each child and write a poem about them,” John said.
Often, those poems would arrive later by email.
And Kelly kept writing almost until the end.
Sometimes, he wrote tankas, the short Japanese-style poems, for Straley and gave them to her on her birthday.
She returned the favor, sending him poems for his.
And when Cork died, she wrote another.
Political Maverick
In 1984, Kelly ran as a Democrat for state representative against Republican Dan Budd. He lost, then ran against Budd again six years later.
The second time, he lost by just 66 votes in a county that had only 372 registered Democrats.
“What was sort of remarkable about it is Cork ran as a Democrat, which nobody did back then,” recalled Ric Samulski, who worked as managing editor of the Pinedale Roundup from 1975-1990.
He was known for handing out dollar coins, Straley said.
When she went to his house to visit him, she often beelined toward the candy dish, where there were always chocolates.
“He would give me a dollar, and we would talk politics,” Straley said.
Finding The Water
When Ulrich thinks of Cork Kelly, he thinks of medals.
Lots of them.
Kelly did not become a serious swimmer until later in life. The Pinedale Aquatics Center opened in 2008, and Kelly was 76 when he first dove into its pool.
By then, Pinedale had waited a long time for a place to swim.
When the Kelly family moved there in 1971, Pinedale had no pool. John learned to swim at Sandy Beach on Fremont Lake, where the American Red Cross offered lessons.
“Everybody learned to swim at Sandy Beach,” John said.
The first pool was built in 1979, and Kelly became the coach of the first Pinedale High School girls swim team.
Samulski said Kelly he became iconically associated with the Pinedale Aquatics Center in his later years.
“He’d go down there most days of the week to swim,” Samulski said.
That’s where Ulrich met Kelly, as he put it, “like everyone who goes to the Pinedale Aquatic Center does.”
Both were competitive swimmers.
Kelly competed in the National Senior Games in Albuquerque in 2019. In 2025, at age 89, he competed in the Wyoming Senior Olympics. He and Ulrich both qualified for the national senior Olympics but, as Ulrich said, “Life got in the way.”
Neither went.
I am sorry to disappoint you
because I know you expected more.
Do not be disappointed
because there is more.
Kelly, however, kept training.
For Ulrich, Kelly’s medals represent grit and determination seldom seen.
“Cork was a remarkably determined gentleman who seemed to be relentlessly training,” Ulrich said.
Straley said Kelly liked to give his medals away. After she and Annie returned from a backpacking trip in the Wind River Range, Kelly gave one to each of them.
For a man who found competitive swimming in his 70s, the water seemed to become another kind of poetry.
The water's embrace is a world so wide,
Each stroke I take, I feel alive,
The world above may rush and race,
But in the pool, I find my space.
The West Wind, The Coffee Pot And Scrabble
Cork remained interested in the ordinary pleasures of life.
In April, he posted on Facebook about the snow in Pinedale, the white ground and the 33-degree temperature — and about dressing warmly before heading out to the front deck to smoke a cigar.
Another day, he celebrated the usefulness of his grapefruit spoon.
“I am so fortunate to have my own grapefruit spoon with its pointed tip and serrated edges,” he wrote. “It makes eating the Texas reds a delight.”
He enjoyed a good cigar and a glass of whiskey.
From time to time
you will sense my presence
when the west wind blows,
when the coffee pot perks,
when your Scrabble letters form strange words,
when your mind floats in dream.
According to Straley, Kelly and his wife, Agnes, played Scrabble together after lunch for the past 55 years. They played on their original board, which Straley said is probably about 60 years old.
“His wife would beat him 90% of the time,” she said.
From time to time
I may nudge you when you're reticent
or dissuade you when you're eager,
but always gently
lest you come to believe
that I have not really left.
“It blew me away,” Abernathy said of Kelly’s poetic obituary. “To say goodbye that way, to invite everyone to fight for themselves.”
The last dollar coin Kelly gave to Straley had a picture of Sacagawea on it. Kelly knew Straley was related to Sacagawea's husband, Toussaint Charbonneau.
“I will never spend it,” she said.
‘I Wasn't Ready’
Straley, a Reiki practitioner, performed it on Kelly before he died.
“He was really funny about death,” Straley said. “He told me he wasn’t afraid to die, but that he wasn’t ready.”
Ultimately, she said, his body was tired.
No memorial service is planned.
Instead, Cork left behind his own farewell.
And perhaps instructions for those still here.
Grieve for the sake of grieving,
rejoice for the sake of rejoicing,
love for the sake of loving.
“Everybody liked Cork,” Samulski said. “He became kind of an idol for his age.”
Kate Meadows can be reached at kate@cowboystatedaily.com.
