Managing Editor
Former Long Beach mayor Ernie Kell succumbed to cancer on Saturday, April 29 at 88.
Part of Kell’s legacy is the fact that he was the city’s first directly elected mayor. According to the City of Long Beach’s website, in 1986, a charter measure under Proposition R passed to create a full-time, citywide elected mayor. Theretofore, city councilmembers decided who would serve as mayor from amongst themselves. In 1988, the first citywide mayoral election took place, and Kell won in a run-off against fellow Councilmember Jan Hall.
Kell’s first term was an interim one of two years, and the next election was in 1990. (From that point on, the term has been four years.) In 1990, Kell ran against Councilmember Tom Clark for mayor and again won. In the 1994 election for mayor, however, Kell lost to Beverly O’Neill.
Kell was first elected to the city council in 1975, representing the 5th District, and was chosen by his fellow councilmembers as mayor in 1984.
This week, current Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia’s office released a statement heralding Kell’s achievements during his decade-long tenure, including convening the City’s first Homeless Task Force in 1987, the expansion of the Long Convention Center and the start of a Seamless Education Partnership, which grew into the Long Beach College Promise.
“Mayor Kell and his love for Long Beach will be greatly missed,” Garcia said. “He leaves a great legacy of leadership and progress for our city. My thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Jackie, and the Kell Family.”
In July 2009, Kell was the focus of the Historical Society of Long Beach’s third installment of the Mayors Oral History Series, on which the Signal Tribune reported.
During the interview, which former councilmember Evan Braude moderated, Kell recounted the death threat he received on his second day in office. He said someone had called his secretary and asked who the mayor was because they wanted to shoot him. When Kell was asked how to respond to the caller, he said, “Tell them Tom Clark is still mayor.”
Hailing from North Dakota, where he claimed he attended the smallest school (only four kids), Kell assumed various roles, including sailor, soldier, real-estate agent, politician and aviator, managing a couple of coast-to-coast flights.
After moving to California with his family in the early 1940s, Kell worked a variety of jobs. During the week, he worked part-time in a grocery store by day and in a bowling alley, setting pins, at night. During the weekends, he said, he would work an eight-hour day in the market and four hours in the bowling alley.
In the ’50s, Kell served as a sergeant in the Korean War. After being discharged from the Army, he returned to Long Beach and worked full time while going to college four nights a week with 12 units each semester.
In his free time, he began racing cars as a hobby.
“It’s a very exhilarating sport. It is really an adrenaline rush,” Kell said during the 2009 interview. “In my opinion, there is nothing more of an adrenaline rush than racing cars as fast as they can go before rolling them over.”
When Braude asked the former mayor what situations he wished he had handled differently, Kell mentioned losing revenue from car dealership sales and the Rodney King riots, which occurred 25 years ago this week.
“We probably could have done a better job involving the riots, although we were not as damaged as much as the other cities like Compton,” he said.
On one of the nights of the riots, Kell surveyed the destruction from a police helicopter.
“You could see all the way to Los Angeles, and the bad fires were in Los Angeles,” Kell said.
In terms of accomplishments, Kell cited the beach bike path.
“I was one of the leaders of that, getting it before the city council,” Kell said of the path, for which $600,000 in state funding was attained. The car enthusiast was also serving in office when the Grand Prix was presented to the city council.
Together, Kell and his wife, Jackie, who survived him and also served on the city council, contributed 27 years to Long Beach government.
Former Long Beach councilmember and current Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell this week also said Kell will be missed.
“He left his mark on Long Beach and the world,” O’Donnell said. “He was an accomplished family man, a pilot, a motorcycle rider and a successful entrepreneur in the construction industry. He knew that the success of a public servant was measured not by headlines, but by the number of potholes that were fixed, the trees that were trimmed and the ball fields that were maintained. He stuck to the basics, and it served this city well. My heart goes to Jackie and his entire family. May they be comforted in knowing that he lived a great life and left a great and positive impact on this city.”
