Sally Ann Kelso

Family-Placed Obituary

Sally Ann Kelso Sally Ann Kelso, who let her husband, Statesman columnist John Kelso, steal some of her funniest lines from her, died Tuesday at Seton Hospital after a long battle with cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She was 58. She was the kind of person who could brighten up a gathering by just walking into the room, smiling and talking. And she was good with a one-liner. When getting anxious in June to hit the road for a vacation to the Gulf Coast, she told her friends, "Let's get this show on the road. It's like John Wayne said, 'We're burnin' daylight.' " Born Sally Ann Richards, after graduating from high school in Honolulu she moved to California to pursue an acting career. She landed a speaking part in a made-for-TV movie called The Movie Murderers, starring Warren Oates and it introduced Tom Selleck. Playing a hippie chick, one of her lines was, "Don't hurt me, man. I'm a dropout." She also appeared in several "I Dream of Jeannie" TV episodes and in "The Courtship of Eddie's Father." She moved to Austin, in the early '70s and became the kitchen manager at the Texas Chili Parlor on Lavaca Street. She was an excellent cook and could make a great Frito pie. A lover of comedy and a movie buff, she enjoyed Mel Brooks' films and the movie "Airplane," which she must have seen about 1,000 times and could quote by heart. She met John Kelso in 1980 on a Friday afternoon while seated at the bar at the old Raw Deal restaurant on West Sixth Street. The next day they had their first date - at Eeyore's Birthday Party in Pease Park. They were married a few months later. There were two different services, the second one done over the telephone on Super Bowl Sunday, since family friend Patrick Conway, who got a chaplain's license in the mail, couldn't make it to the house because he had relatives coming in from out of town all the way from Elgin. Sally Ann Kelso was also excellent with animals and came up with some great names for her "critters" - like Harry, a particularly hairy little dog, and Oreo, a black and white cat. She is survived by her sisters, Catherine Richards of Honolulu and Nan Jordan, of San Diego, and her daughter by a previous marriage, Kaiulani Thelen. Friends who wish to pay their respects to Sally Ann Kelso are urged to attend a gathering from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, at Threadgill's World Headquarters in South Austin. Instead of flowers, people are asked to make donations to the Humane Society.