When Michael S. Kelly was a student at Oak Park and River Forest High School, he picked some kids who’d never been in a play to star in “Bleacher Bums.”

The 16-year-old director knew they’d make the characters come to life.

“It’s a play about rebels and oddballs,” said his mother Karen Kelly. “He cast people who had never been in a show, and they could embody these characters so well. It was an absolutely brilliant show.

“He was always a kid that people would talk to or tell their troubles to,” she said. “So I wasn’t surprised when he decided to be a social worker.”

Mr. Kelly worked for 14 years as a school social worker at Indian Trail Middle School in Addison and at Oak Park’s Mann and Lincoln elementary schools.

“He was drawn to people who other folks had given up on, whether it was kids who refused to come to school or teachers who everyone else said, ‘Don’t even bother,’ ” said Kate Phillippo, an associate professor at Loyola University Chicago.

Mr. Kelly went on to be a professor in the School of Social Work at Loyola University. He helped write and edit five books, including “Christianity and Social Work” and “School Social Work: Practice, Policy and Research.”

He was a member of the Oxford Symposium in School-Based Family Counseling, an international group of scholars who meet at the University of Oxford to improve treatment through schools and families working together.

“He was the foremost scholar and practitioner of school-based family counseling in the social work field,” said Brian Gerrard, director of the symposium.

Mr. Kelly, 52, of Oak Park, died by suicide Sept. 2.

“He was seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist and exercising every day and taking his meds,” said his wife, Dr. Lucy Fox.

But he lost his struggle with depression and took his life, Fox said.

“I keep trying to frame it that I had 31 years with him, and 30 of them were really great,” she said. “I feel like I could talk about him for 31 more. He was an amazing man.”

Michael S. Kelly and his wife, Dr. Lucy Fox.Provided

During the civil rights movement, his father Richard traveled to Mississippi to teach at a Freedom School established to improve education for Black children. His mother admired Kwame Ture, the activist formerly known as Stokely Carmichael who was a leader in the 1960s Black Power movement.

They named their son, who was born in 1968, Michael Stokely Kelly.

His mother took him to the haunting film “Grave of the Fireflies.” Young Michael also loved Hayao Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away” and “Princess Mononoke.”

Michael S. Kelly with his sons Benjamin, Isaac and Alfred.Provided

Later, he shared his love of anime with his sons Benjamin, Isaac and Alfred.

“He made sure his boys saw all of those things,” his mother said.

While at Oak Park and River Forest High School, he made money by answering phones at the Oak Park Library and working at Russell’s Barbecue.

His mother said he was 13 when he told her, “Let’s go to Ireland,” where he’d listen to the wit and wisdom in its pubs. “He immediately started conversations,” she said.

It led to a lifelong love of Ireland and frequent trips. For a few summers, he helped lead Rick Steves’ tours of Ireland.

He met his future wife at the University of Michigan.

“He was so cute, so interesting and smart and political,” she said.

He became her Scrabble buddy, but when they played, “I was so distracted,” she said. She kept wondering: “Are we going to kiss tonight?”

Later, he got his master’s and doctoral degrees in social work at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

“He had a knack for letting young people know that his office was a safe space and haven for them to unload their burdens,” said Kila Bell-Bey, an Oak Park Elementary School District 97 social worker.

Goutham M. Menon, dean of the School of Social Work at Loyola, said, “He was a consummate professional. Thoughtful, serious, funny, quirky, he brought to life his passion for school social work in so many ways for our students.”

Tom Tebbe, executive director of the Illinois Association of School Social Workers, said Mr. Kelly “really encouraged social workers with the ideas they had the abilities to do the job and to do it well.”

Mr. Kelly ran 18 marathons. He loved the music of Van Morrison, U2, Alejandro Escovedo and Amy Ray. And he was a youth minister at St. Giles Catholic Church in Oak Park.

An October memorial is being planned at Loyola’s Madonna della Strada chapel.

Contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline any time at (800) 273-8255. The Crisis Text Line can be reached for free, 24/7 mental health support by texting HOME to 741741.

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A woman was killed and a man and infant were seriously injured when a car crashed into a building Tuesday afternoon in Gresham on the South Side.

The crash happened just before 10 a.m. in the 8100 block of South Racine Avenue, police said.

A 23-year-old man driving a Chevy Impala on 81st Street was passing through the intersection when a Chrysler 300 traveling on Racine ran a red light and struck his car, Chicago police said.

The Chrysler spun out and struck a woman on the sidewalk before crashing into a business, according to police and Chicago fire officials. The woman was transported to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead, police said.

The man driving the Chevy suffered a broken arm and was taken to the hospital for treatment, police said. An infant riding inside the car was also hospitalized in serious condition, fire officials said.

The woman who was killed has not yet been identified by the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

The driver of the Chrysler — a 26-year-old man — was not injured, police said. Charges were pending, according to police.

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Bears quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo had the same role on the 2014 Raiders when they drafted quarterback Derek Carr in the second round and made him the Week 1 starter.

After four straight losses, the Raiders fired head coach Dennis Allen. His replacement, Tony Sparano, actually held a funeral for a football during the Week 5 bye, burying it and inviting his players to shovel dirt into a pit. The Raiders went 0-10 to start the season, won their last three of their last six games and then hired a new coaching staff for 2015.

It’s the worst-case scenario for the Bears and head coach Matt Nagy this year.

It was bad for Carr, but just at first — he started all 16 games as a rookie and reached Pro Bowls in his second, third and fourth seasons.

Justin Fields, the Bears’ rookie, needs to keep playing, too.

Nagy wouldn’t name a starter Monday but figures to Wednesday. The coach picking anyone but Fields to face the Lions at Soldier Field would be compounding an unacceptable showing in Cleveland with another mistake — and failing the future of the franchise.

Even if Nagy wouldn’t say it last week, it was clear from the moment Andy Dalton suffered a bone bruise in his left knee six quarters into the season that Fields could remain the starter so long as he didn’t prove to be a disaster. The Bears offense was exactly that against the Bengals, though, gaining 1.1 yards per play in a 26-6 loss.

It was enough of a mess that Nagy simply can’t let Fields spend the next month — Two? Three? The rest of the season? — wallowing in one of the worst offensive performances in the history of the oldest franchise in the sport. Nagy needs to start Fields Sunday and actually try to build an offense around his skills this time — whether Dalton’s “week-to-week” knee injury has recovered or not.

“I hate to use the old coaching saying this is a marathon not a sprint, but it’s the truth — it really is,” DeFilippo said Monday. “Derek Carr’s rookie season, I think we all would say Derek has had a pretty good career. We started the season 0-10. You know? So I mean it’s a long way to go for these guys.

“Derek, if you went and talked to him, he would say he made some bonehead plays and this and that. You didn’t see Justin throwing the ball into double coverage [Sunday]. You didn’t see him putting the ball on the ground. To me, those are good things. There were no sack fumbles. I didn’t think he put the ball in harm’s way very often …

“Part of the deal is it’s a learning curve.”

That curve stops the moment Fields stops starting games. The Bears can’t afford that.

The most disturbing part of Sunday’s game was the spectacular level of the Bears’ offensive failure — not that Fields struggled. He’s expected to. Rookie quarterbacks all do.

Five rookie quarterbacks — the Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence, the Jets’ Zach Wilson, the Patriots’ Mac Jones, the Texans’ Davis Webb and Fields — have started 11 games this season. They’ve gone a combined 1-10 — with the only win coming when Jones beat a fellow rookie, Wilson. They’re 1-10 against the point spread during that time, too, meaning their teams have done worse than expected all but once.

All those teams play their rookie quarterbacks anyway, knowing it will spur development. The Bears need to, too — and run an offense that gives him a fighting chance. All the Bears could learn about Fields on Sunday was his mental and physical toughness after getting sacked nine times and hurting his throwing hand. He didn’t break it, though the team will monitor his hand for swelling this week.

“First and foremost, [Fields] is a competitor,” receiver Allen Robinson said Tuesday. “Obviously he has the talent — we see the talent. Again, it’s about him just continuing to grow. …

“I’m sure he’ll play ? have games, many other games — where he’ll play better. It’s one game. I don’t think it’s anything for him to lose sleep over. He’s very young in his career.”

Watching a young quarterback struggle isn’t in Robinson’s best interest — he’s set to hit the free-agent market in March and needs counting stats to court massive contracts.

It’s not good for Nagy, either, who is in a different camp than his peers coaching rookie quarterbacks. The Jaguars, Jets and Texans have first-year head coaches, while the Patriots boast Bill Belichick, the most unimpeachable coach in the NFL. None have to worry about their job this year. Nagy does.

That doesn’t change the fact that playing Fields is the right thing to do.

We saw what Fields did against the Browns.

Now we need to see what he can do.

“That’s part of the maturation process in this thing, is being able to not let Cleveland beat you two times,” DeFilippo said. “That’s going to be our deal this week, is, moving on and flushing that out and moving on to the Lions. It’s a big game for us.”

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Two Black women whose work was influenced by their time in Chicago are among this year’s MacArthur Fellows.

Historian and author Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Jacqueline Stewart, who studies the history of cinema, both focus their work on the Black experience and uplifting Black voices. They are among 25 recipients of the no-strings-attached $625,000 fellowships, unofficially dubbed the “genius grants,” announced Tuesday.

Taylor has lived in Chicago for more than a decade. Stewart was born and raised in Hyde Park. And while they work in different academic areas, both women said their experiences with Chicago’s Black neighborhoods played a pivotal role in their intellectual development.

“Chicago is uniquely racist,” said Taylor, who researches anti-Black racism in the United States and the reasons it persists.

“I came to the city in a U-Haul and the first thing that struck me was the segregation. You are driving for miles where it is wall-to-wall Black people, and you don’t see any white people until crossing through the Loop or going north on Lake Shore Drive,” said Taylor, who graduated from Northeastern Illinois University in 2007 and holds a master’s degree and a doctorate from Northwestern. “That’s how you know that government was involved, that banks were involved, that real estate was involved, because you could not achieve that degree of racial isolation just from the kind of personal mores of white or Black people.”

Taylor moved to Chicago from New York City to join activist movements focused on ending the death penalty and exonerating Black men on Illinois’s death row. She also organized for Chicago tenants’ rights on anti-eviction campaigns in the wake of the 2008 housing crisis. Taylor is the author of “Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership,” a book she says was influenced by her time living in Chicago and noticing the city’s stark segregation. She now lives in Philadelphia and teaches history at Princeton University.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor in 2004, protesting in Chicago for marriage rights for same-sex couples.Sun-Times file

Stewart, a professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Chicago, also says her work on the history of African American filmmaking was influenced by her Chicago upbringing.

“Growing up on the South Side of Chicago, I always felt very immersed in a dynamic, historically rich Black community,” Stewart said. “A lot of my research has looked at the great migration of African Americans from the South to Chicago, and Chicago was significant to me because it was seen as this site of freedom and possibility. Even when people got here, they found that there were still struggles and they developed ways to continue to achieve all of their aspirations.”

Stewart also directs the South Side Home Movie Project, an archival initiative that preserves amateur films shot by Chicago residents, and serves as chief artistic and programming officer at The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, set to open Thursday.

Jacqueline Stewart speaks at the Opening Press Conference at Academy Museum of Motion Pictures last week. She will help oversee the museum.Rich Fury, Getty

The Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has granted billions of dollars to “creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks” since its founding in 1970. The MacArthur Fellowship is awarded annually to “extraordinarily talented individuals” each year. In keeping with the organization’s commitment to allow recipients to exercise their own creative instincts, winners are free to use the grant money however they choose.

You can’t apply for a MacArthur Fellowship. Instead, recipients are selected by a team of anonymous nominators. The process is confidential, and recipients usually don’t know they’ve been picked until the congratulatory phone call.

Stewart said she got the call while waiting for an Uber with her son and ex-husband. When she heard the news, Stewart put her head down and started crying.

“My ex-husband turned to my son and said, ‘Your mom’s a MacArthur genius,'” Stewart said. “He had been saying for years, ‘Oh, you know you’re gonna get that.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, sure,’ I never really thought that was going to happen. I have to admit, he was right.”

Taylor said she had already been growing wary of spam calls from 773 phone numbers when she got the call. She said she was taken aback when the unknown voice on the other end of the phone wasn’t asking about her car’s extended warranty, but instead was awarding her with one of the most prestigious honors in academia.

“It feels so random and unexpected,” Taylor said. “If you’re an academic you obviously know what the MacArthur Foundation is, but I don’t think anyone ever expects to get one of these things. It’s shocking and it’s surprising and it doesn’t make sense.”

Taylor said the no-strings-attached stipend will be used toward a new book she’s writing that will try to “understand what happened to the promise of civil rights.” She also will use the money for a “multimedia exploration” she is working on with former New York Times editor Jennifer Parker. The project will focus on racial discrimination and the ways it is challenged.

“I feel grateful and appreciative that whomever was involved in that process recognized the value in the work that I do,” Taylor said. “That this is not just activism and it’s not just advocacy, but that my work has made an important intellectual contribution.”

The rest of the 2021 MacArthur Fellows are:

Hanif Abdurraqib, Columbus, Ohio; music critic, essayist, poet
Daniel Alarcon, New York, N.Y.; writer, radio producer
Marcella Alsan, Cambridge, Mass.; physician, economist
Trevor Bedford, Seattle; computational virologist
Reginald Dwayne Betts, New Haven, Conn.; poet, lawyer
Jordan Casteel, New York, N.Y.; painter
Don Mee Choi, Seattle; poet, translator
Ibrahim Cisse, Pasadena, Calif.; cellular biophysicist
Nicole Fleetwood, New York, N.Y.; art historian and curator
Cristina Ibarra, Pasadena, Calif.; documentary filmmaker
Ibram X. Kendi, Boston; American historian and cultural critic
Daniel Lind-Ramos, Loiza, Puerto Rico; sculptor, painter
Monica Munoz Martinez, Austin, Texas; public historian
Desmond Meade, Orlando, Fla.; civil rights activist
Joshua Miele, Berkeley, Calif.; adaptive technology designer
Michelle Monje, Palo Alto, Calif.; neurologist and neuro-oncologist
Safiya Noble, Los Angeles; digital media scholar
J. Taylor Perron, Cambridge, Mass.; geomorphologist
Alex Rivera, Pasadena, Calif.; filmmaker and media artist
Lisa Schulte Moore, Ames, Iowa; landscape ecologist
Jesse Shapiro, Providence, R.I.; applied microeconomist
Victor J. Torres, New York, N.Y.; microbiologist
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Tallahassee, Fla.; choreographer and dance entrepreneur
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“Love Actually? The Unauthorized Musical Parody” will arrive in Chicago for the 2021 holiday season, it was announced Tuesday.

The off-Broadway hit — a holiday sendup of the 2003 rom-com starring Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson and Liam Neeson — will begin performances on Nov. 17 at the Apollo Theater, 2540 N. Lincoln Ave.

The stage production follows nine “quirky, questionable couples looking for love across the pond,” Tuesday’s announcement said. The musical, presented by Right Angle Entertainment, is written by Bob and Tobly McSmith, the duo behind “The Office! A Musical Parody,” “Bayside! The Saved by the Bell Musical” and “Friends! The Musical Parody.” The show is directed by Tim Drucker, with choreography by Brooke Engen.

Tickets for the production, scheduled to run through Jan. 2, 2022, start at $29, and are on sale via Ticketmaster.com, by calling (773) 935-6100, or by visiting the theater box office.

The all-Chicago cast will be announced at a later date.

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An 8-year-old boy playing in front of his home in Markham was shot and killed when someone stepped out of a car and fired, apparently aiming at his older brother, police said.

Someone on the street fired back and Demetrius Stevenson was struck in the head around 5 p.m. Monday near 157th and Homan streets in the south suburb, police said.

The boy’s brother, 18, was believed to be the target and was taken into custody on a separate warrant, according to city administrator Derrick Champion.

The gunman in the car had come from Chicago looking for the teen, Champion said, adding that the shooting appeared to be gang-related.

“There was a car that pulled up, there was some unfortunate crossfire,” he told reporters at the scene. “There was an intended target, which was the older brother to the victim.”

Demetrius was in the third grade and was looking forward to the new school year, his family told Champion.

“The school year just started and now classmates have to mourn,” he said.

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