User:Óhaodha04/sandbox

Early life and career
Deirdre Kelly was born on May 15th, 1938, in Dublin. She was the eldest child to her parents Molly Kelly and Thomas McMahon. Her father Thomas was a bus driver. She grew up on Upper Leeson Street with her family. As a young child, she attended primary school in Scoil Bride, and later moved to Holy Faith Convent in Haddington Road. Deirdre had a keen interest in environmental and community campaigns. She joined the College of Commerce in Rathmines and proceeded to further her education by joining the National College of Art soon after. She had a keen interest in history, later opting to study archaeology at University College Dublin. While studying at the School of Architecture on Bolton Street, she met her future husband Aidan Kelly in McDaid's Pub on Harry Street. Kelly spent most of her childhood and adolescence in the historic core of Dublin’s south city area. Soon after the economic development that proceeded 1960, Kelly publicly condemned the community deracination and disintegration that was facing community residents.

In her early career, she applied for a job at the National Museum of Ireland doing pen-and-ink drawings of archaeological objects. In the early 1970’s, she married Aidan Kelly. Together, they went on honeymoon hitchhiking through Europe to Greece and Yugoslavia. Upon returning to Dublin, they both moved into a cramped basement flat on Fitzwilliam Street. This became incredibly small and cramped with the arrival of their four children; Maeve, Diarmuid, Mahon, and Hughie. She spent a considerable amount of time living, working, and campaigning in the area of Dublin’s south city.

It was from this flat on Fitzwilliam Street that Kelly organised the Living City Group campaign that fought against the depopulation of the inner city. In 1979, she and her family moved to Old Mountpleasant in Ranelagh.

She died aged 61 on February 16th, 2000.

She is remembered today in Ranelagh with a fitting plaque that reminds everyone who passes it to think about the streets that we are walking down as living streets.