Local ties, regional success for PR man Kevin Feeley

by Gabe Donio, Gazette Staff Writer

PHILADELPHIA—Kevin Feeley, 51, is the owner and president of Bellevue Communications Group, a 10-person communications firm based in The Bellevue building on Broad Street in Philadelphia. He served as the Deputy Mayor for Communications for the City of Philadelphia from 1992 to 2000, the entire term of former Philadelphia Mayor and current Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell. During that time, Feeley introduced President Bill Clinton at an event in the courtyard at Philadelphia City Hall. His career has been diverse, with stops in journalism, law, politics, government and communications. All of these accomplishments say a lot about this former Hammontonian, who grew up on Central Avenue.
What may say more about Feeley, however, is where he has his hair cut.
“I still go to Hammonton to get my hair cut every month. I go to Billy Clements. It’s the best haircut in the Delaware Valley, and you can’t get a better haircut for five times the price,” Feeley said.
Since 1972, through youth, adulthood, career changes and life events that took him through three different states, Feeley has faithfully gone monthly to Bill’s Barber Shop on 12th Street in downtown Hammonton.
“No one else has cut my hair,” Feeley said.
Loyalty like that is considered rare in most places, but Feeley said he has remained connected to the town where he was raised. It’s the place where his earliest memories were made, where his mother and relatives all lived, where Sunday dinners were a ritual and loyalty still means something. The town is the place he said helped teach him about how people and the world worked.
“Hammonton’s home. Now matter where I go, or who I deal with in my life, Hammonton is always home,” Feeley said.
Feeley was the subject of a major profile in The Philadelphia Inquirer in February, primarily because Bellevue Communications Group provides a full range of communications services to more than 50 public and private sector clients. Those clients are high-profile, and include Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania, Temple University Health System, Comcast-Spectacor, Community Education Partners, the University of Pennsylvania, Mount Airy Casino Resort, the National Constitution Center and Campbell Soup Company. The firm specializes in public relations, crisis communications and community relations.
‘The prettiest little town’
To understand how Feeley came to where he is today, one has to go back to before he was born, to his parents. His father, Donald Feeley Sr. was from New England. His mother, Jeanette LaRosa, was born and raised in Hammonton. Her father Charles LaRosa was from Sicily, and had connections to the Capellas, one of the many families who came to Hammonton from Gesso, Sicily. Feeley’s great-grandfather Antonio LaRosa lived on 13th Street, and Feeley said he often drives by the place when he is in town, to remember.
Feeley’s mother Jeanette Feeley is 90 years old now, and lives in an assisted living center near Philadelphia. In the 1940s, she and another Hammontonian, Margaret Jacobs, were in Virginia teaching during World War II. It was there that Feeley’s parents met.
“They met during the war. He had survived Pearl Harbor,” Feeley said.
When Donald Feeley Sr. – most people called him Don — arrived in Hammonton, he felt a connection to the place immediately.
“He called it the prettiest little town he had ever seen,” Feeley said.
Tragedy and family
The Feeleys had four sons: Don, Paul, David and Kevin. The oldest two graduated from Hammonton High School, but tragedy would change the plans for the younger two, and the entire family. Don Feeley Sr. died of a heart attack in 1961 at the age of 47.
David and Kevin went away to Girard College in Philadelphia, and came back to Hammonton during the summers. Feeley remembers the families of the Central Avenue neighborhood and the Hammonton Swim Club from that era well, and ticks off those names — people he remains connected to today – with ease. Included are some longstanding Hammonton family names: Ordille, Gaimari, Howell, Continisio, Liberto, Menno and Wagner.
“We were involved with the Hammonton Swim Club, and met people through that and the neighborhood. It was like an army of children on that end of Central Avenue. We made lifelong friendships,” Feeley said.
Feeley met his wife, the former Lisa Baldi, at the swim club when they were young children. They lost touch and reconnected later in life. Lisa recalled that Feeley sent her a letter, like the ones he had sent during the times he had sent her when he was away at Girard College years ago. One year later, they were married.
“I felt like I had known him my whole life, so there’s not as much mystery or fear of the unknown when you know someone that long,” Lisa Feeley said.
Both shared common bonds: they were both from Hammonton, and had each lost their father at a young age.
“We met at the very end of the summer, and that was the first time I saw him. We pretty much grew up together in the summertime. When he was away at Girard, he would write to me and I would write back. We always felt some kind of a connection, because he had lost his dad, and I had lost mine. At that time, very few people grew up in a single-family household. Maybe we understood some things that some of our friends didn’t know about. It doesn’t seem so different on the outside, but it feels different on the inside. When you can find someone who shares those feelings, it kind of creates a bond,” Lisa Feeley said.
Today, the Feeleys have been married for 19 years, and have three children: Charles, 17, Bridget, 16 and Kevin Jr., 11. Like many people who grew up in Hammonton, family and children are the top priorities.
“They’re the light of our lives,” Feeley said.
The family lives in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia now, but when Feeley was growing up in Hammonton, the family was still the center of everything. Feeley had “get-togethers” with members of the extended family. He remembers “there was always laughter.”
“Hammonton was always fun for me growing up as a kid,” Feeley said.
Steak, not sizzle
The town has had a major influence on Feeley throughout his career and life, he said, including his adoption of what he called “The Hammonton View of the World” in his everyday life.
“My mom always said, ‘You are who you were. You are where you came from.’ Hammonton people that I know were salt of the earth. They were farmers or related to farmers. You had to work for it a little bit to get them to trust you and open up to you.
In Hammonton, people want the real story, Feeley said.
“You can’t be anything but real in Hammonton. That’s how things are . . . Hammonton isn’t interested in the sizzle. They’re only interested in the steak,” Feeley said.
Feeley graduated from Girard College in 1973. Four years later, he graduated with honors from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in political science. His next stop was an attempt at starting a career in journalism, which was met by an initial roadblock.
“I called up The Hammonton News and said I wanted a job. They said they had a reporter. The next day, they called me back and said the reporter had quit,” Feeley said, laughing at the memory.
Reporting on people from his own community often meant Feeley would know what would happen – before it happened.
“I would hear the stories, and then I would cover them,” Feeley said.
After a year with the Atlantic County Weeklies, including The Hammonton News, The Atlantic County Record and The Egg Harbor News, Feeley moved on to The Philadelphia Journal, which is now defunct. From 1982 to 1984, he was a reporter with The News-Journal in Wilmington, Del.
Then it was time for a career change: Feeley went to law school, receiving his law degree with honors in December of 1987. From 1988 to 1992, he was an attorney engaged in litigation practice, first with Clark, Ladner, Fortenbaugh & Young, then with Drinker, Biddle & Reath. His emphasis was on commercial, environmental insurance and First Amendment matters.
Mr. Mayor, Mr. President
In 1991, Feeley decided to volunteer for Edward Rendell’s bid for mayor of Philadelphia. He was on the issues staff. When Rendell won, Feeley said the new administration recalled his background in journalism. Would he like to be the Deputy Mayor for Communications for the City of Philadelphia?
The answer was yes. Feeley would work closely with Rendell for eight years, serving as the face of the administration to the media. His name and face would appear when any major story broke during Rendell’s tenure. Feeley said with Rendell, there was no line between the public version and the private version.
“He’s an amazing man. Certainly the best public official I’ve ever known. What he is, is what you see – he’s a very energetic, very funny man. He’s a taskmaster. If you don’t deliver, he’s all over you. If you do deliver, you’re fine,” Feeley said.
Feeley recalled Rendell’s ability to assimilate information quickly. He would be briefed about something on one side of the door before a press conference, “and then 10 seconds later, it would seem like he knew about it for years,” Feeley said.
One of the highlights of Feeley’s tenure in the Rendell Administration was announcing President Bill Clinton before an event at the courtyard at Philadelphia City Hall. Feeley was able to have a glimpse of the human side of the leader of the free world.
“Right before the introduction, I must have glanced over at him and had this moment of clarity where I realized I was standing next to the President of the United States. He must have noticed it, and he leaned in and said in my ear, ‘Don’t screw up.’ We both laughed, and I said ‘Good tip.’ And then I introduced him. I remember thinking: I wish my dad had seen it, and I wish my grandfather had seen it,” Feeley said.
Another prominent memory of Feeley’s time in the Rendell Administration came when he asked his mother if she wanted a tour of the mayor’s office. Feeley said Rendell wanted to give the tour personally, and showed Feeley’s mother through his larger ceremonial office, as well as his smaller office, an inner sanctum that included a number of framed photographs of Rendell with celebrities and dignitaries. Feeley said his mother looked at the wall for a while, and then spoke.
“You know, I read a lot of mysteries,” she said, prompting Feeley to wonder silently where this was headed, as his boss looked on, smiling quietly.
“One of the books I’m reading now referred to something called an ‘ego wall.’ And I never knew what that was,” she said.
Pause.
“Until now,” she concluded.
Feeley said the tour ended quickly after that, and no mention was made about it until a week later, following a meeting between Rendell and Feeley in his office.
“By the way, tell your mother that I could have put the photos in the bigger office. At least I didn’t do that,” Feeley said Rendell said.
“Stuck with you the whole week, huh?” Feeley replied.
The story is indicative of both “The Hammonton View of the World” and Feeley’s mother, who raised him and his three brothers after losing her husband to sudden tragedy.
“My mother is a force of nature. She kept the whole family together. There’s not a whole lot of pretense about her . . . My mother is my hero,” Feeley said.
Rendell still keeps in touch with Feeley, who said he has contributed to speeches, including subsequent inaugural or budget addresses for the current governor.
“He calls me, and says he needs his ‘Deputy Mayor for Comedy.’ For all he’s given me, I owe him a lot,” Feeley said.
Separate the real from the fake
A move to Harrisburg and a continuation of his government service would have meant a move from Philadelphia. Feeley decided to go into the private sector, opening Bellevue Communications Group in 2000 after Rendell’s second term. He said he enjoys the challenge of having to respond quickly to a situation for a client.
“When something jumps off or a crisis arises, and newspapers and T.V. are calling fast and furious, you have to think and walk through that minefield. I really enjoy that,” Feeley said.
In his very public role as the spokesperson for major companies and organizations, Feeley said the lessons learned in Hammonton continue to serve him well.
“We have to separate the wheat from the chaff. We have to separate the real from the fake,” Feeley said.
What Feeley will not do is take on work from clients he doesn’t believe in personally.
“I won’t take it, because I don’t believe in what they’re doing or saying . . . If I take the job, people won’t believe me. It’s important for me to be able to sleep at night, and it’s bad for business. If you take those clients, you won’t have any clients,” Feeley said.
As this onetime Hammontonian – who still feels the place is home, and a great place for a haircut – looks to the future, he said he hopes to continue to “grow the business and pay the tuition” and enjoy life with his wife Lisa, who is a third grade teacher at Our Lady of Consolation in Philadelphia.
“She has been the rock in all of this. I follow the path she sets. She always manages to keep me from making too big a fool of myself,” Feeley said, laughing.
With so much happening, Lisa Feeley said she was happy to be the rock, as happy as she was having a husband who makes life interesting.
“I think we complement each other in that. He likes to have a lot of stuff going on. He’s always thinking of something fun to do. He’s the energy in our team. If I’m the rock, he’s the excitement in our household,” Feeley said.
She added one other point – one that echoed a comment by her husband.
“Every time we go to Hammonton, he says he feels like he’s home. No matter what, that is home. One of the great things about getting back together was going back to Hammonton,” Lisa Feeley said.