Family remembers Lansing native who died in New York City

Kious Kelly, an emergency room nurse at Mount Sinai West Hospital in New York who grew up in Lansing, became a nationally known figure when The New York Times reported that he may have been the first nurse in New York to die of COVID-19.

Kelly died on March 24, about a week after he was put on a ventilator.

The last time Kelly talked with his sister, Marya Patrice Sherron of Indianapolis, he said, “Can’t breathe — I love you.”

Sherron did not want her brother to be remembered as a victim.

“He served with love,” she wrote in a Facebook post March 27. “If you needed care, you would get it. He ran toward the oncoming enemy determined to bring survivors back with him. That’s who he was.”

Kelly was born in Chicago in 1971, grew up in Lansing and graduated from Everett High School in 1989. Before changing his name to Kious Kelly, he went by his family name, Marion James Smith IV.

He was a popular, outgoing student with a passion for theater and dance, and he appeared in several plays at Everett, including “Peter Pan,” “Oliver” and “Dark of the Moon,” in which he played a witch-boy.

“He was very good at what he did and was hysterical at improv,” said Tom Ferris, his drama teacher at Everett and past president of Riverwalk Theatre.

In 1993, Kelly got a bachelor’s degree in performing arts at Butler University in Indianapolis and went to New York City to pursue a dancing career. When that didn’t work out, he switched gears and went to nursing school.

He graduated from the nursing program at New York University in 2012.

Kelly’s performing arts skills — his empathy for others and gregarious personality — made him a uniquely effective nurse. Sherron said that after her brother’s death was announced, she received hundreds of emails and texts from his friends and colleagues. His Facebook page is overflowing with tributes from former patients and their family, praising his kindness, empathy and skill.

Kelly’s obituary in The New York Times reported that he was singled out in the hospital’s blog in early January by a relative of a patient Kelly had helped care for.

The entry read: “Assistant Nurse Manager Kious Jordan Kelly, RN, showed my mom and us empathy and compassion that helped us get through the weekend and what was to come. He went above and beyond.”

Sherron said people have asked her how she would like him to be remembered. “I don’t have to write it,” she said. “he wrote it with his life.”

Sherron spent the last week fielding questions from major media outlets across the country and took the opportunity to speak out about the dire shortage of personal protective equipment for health care employees.

She said she is appalled by hospital policies that threaten to fire workers who speak to the media.

“He didn’t run from his commitment,” Sherron said. “He was the first to run toward trouble. I’ve asked myself, ‘What if he was the second nurse to die?’ No one would remember his name, but this is the way it happened and people will see what a wonderful person he was.”

She said her brother had been tested for the virus, but while awaiting results he was back working for four days without quarantining.

A family photograph taken last Christmas, seen on many news programs last week, showed Kelly, Sherron, their parents and family friends Maxine and Eugene Cain.

“We were inseparable,” Sherron said. “I only know of one family photo of himself alone. I’m in all the others.”

The Christmas photo evoked happy memories for Sherron. Kelly surprised his parents with a visit, but did not tell his sister about it.

“When I pulled in the driveway — there he is,” Sherron said. “We had such a wonderful time together. We had time,” she said. It was the last time they saw each other.