Elizabeth Conley / the Detroit News

Dan & Rosemary Kelly

Parents make a home for their son and hundreds like him

First came the Thanksgiving psychosis, then the years-long aftermath.

John Kelly, son of Daniel and Rosemary Kelly of Bloomfield Hills, "just went psychotic" during the Thanksgiving holiday of 1986, says his mother. "It just came out of the blue. We didn't know doctors. We didn't know psychiatrists. … It became a lifetime nightmare for us."

Essentially, the Kellys were in the dark, along with their only son, who, at 25, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

Thus began a family journey that would include the Kellys' three daughters and now nine grandchildren, family friends, business associates, corporations, foundations and more. John would be in and out of mental health care facilities in Royal Oak, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York's Berkshire Mountains -- Gould Farm, specifically -- for more than six years.

Meanwhile, his parents worked to take his long-term care under their wings by creating Rose Hill Center, located on 372 rolling acres in Holly. The Kellys are not only its founders, but Daniel serves as its chairman and chief executive officer; Rosemary its vice chairwoman.

It is a legendary story: Daniel Kelly, now a retired national vice chairman and group managing partner of the Deloitte & Touche accounting firm, gathered a few friends in his living room and implored, "We rehabilitate people with broken legs. Why don't we do the same for broken minds?"

Thus, over the years, the Kellys have raised more than $9 million to create what many psychiatric professionals say they believe is the finest facility for seriously mentally ill adults in the United States, if not the world. Most of its residents suffer from schizophrenia, clinical depression, bipolar disorder or manic depression and other biologically based brain disorders -- all of which make for the second-leading cause of disability in the United States.

Since its opening in 1992, nearly 700 people have graduated from Rose Hill's three-stage program and this "safe haven," says Rosemary Kelly, where people can learn the life skills and receive the treatment that will allow them to return to the community -- and lead productive, meaningful and independent lives. Along with appropriate therapies, Rose Hill offers its residents a working farm, gardening and horticulture, cooking and other work therapy programs to help them on their way. John Kelly, who is a resident at Rose Hill, works primarily in gardening and horticulture.

As testimony to Rose Hill's unique approach -- incorporating the biological, psychological and sociological -- it was awarded the prestigious Arnold L. van Ameringen Award for Psychiatric Rehabilitation in 2003.

Daniel and Rosemary Kelly, who grew up on Detroit's west side, will be married 50 years in August. They are members of the Order of Malta (American Association), an organization dedicated to providing service to the sick and the poor; Daniel is its president.

"Because of John's illness, Rose Hill Center came about," Daniel says. "Something good came out of a tragedy."

Jane Rayburn