U.S. District 1 Rep. Trent Kelly, R-Miss, returned to his hometown and high school on Monday morning to impart some advice to Union students at a special assembly in the high school gym.
In his speech, Kelly talked about his memories of walking the halls of Union High School, his time serving in the Mississippi Army National Guard and his first two years as a U.S. Congressman. After the speech, Kelly conducted a Q&A session with the students who asked him more than two dozen questions which varied from how it felt to meet with Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, to how to succeed in life, to how he got his high school nickname, “T-Bone.”
Kelly said the Union community’s commitment to education and supporting the school district is what helped steer him on a path to the U.S. Capitol.
“The teachers are vested in the outcome of the kids so I think that has a lot to do with it,” Kelly said. “The community also supports the school. Many communities do that but it’s usually about the athletics or the band. But in Union, they embrace all of that with the academics also.”
In his speech, Kelly spoke about getting his first job at The Union Appeal at the age of 14, playing varsity sports with current UPSD Athletic Director Brad Breland and learning to use his failures to build toward success.
“I’ve failed more than I’ve succeeded,” Kelly told the students. “Don’t quit, and never give up, and if you want something be willing to sacrifice everything to get it.”
Kelly graduated from UHS in 1984 and attended East Central Community College before graduating from Ole Miss.
He earned his bachelor’s degree from Ole Miss and his law degree from the Ole Miss School of Law. In 2010, he received his master’s degree in Strategic Studies from the U. S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.
Kelly, a colonel in the Mississippi Army National guard, is a combat veteran who served 32 years in the military and has been awarded two Bronze Stars and a Combat Action Badge, among other commendations. He saw active duty in Desert Storm in 1990 and deployments to Iraq in 2005 and 2009-2010 and once commanded 670 soldiers in Iraq.
Kelly has maintained a private law practice in Saltillo, and served as Tupelo City Prosecutor and Forfeiture Attorney for North Mississippi Narcotics Unit. Prior to being elected to Congress, he served as a district attorney for the First Circuit Judicial District (Lee, Pontotoc, Alcorn, Monroe, Itawamba, Prentiss and Tishomingo) managing all felony cases.
He defeated 12 other candidates in a special election in June 2015 after former U.S. District 1 Rep. Alan Nunlee passed away from brain cancer. Kelly was reelected in December for a second term after a landslide win over Democrat Jacob Owens.
Kelly said his military training served him well in June when a gunman opened fire on a group of Republican members of Congress, including himself, and other staff as they practiced for the annual Congressional Baseball charity game in Washington D.C.
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the majority whip who was playing second base, was shot and injured in the incident.
The gunman, 66-year-old James Hodgkinson of Belleville, Ill., who was an anti-Republican activist who volunteered for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, was shot and killed by Capitol Police officers.
Scalise is still recovering from the shooting, but the annual baseball game went on as planned.
Kelly said that incidents like the D.C. shooting and the violent clash between white supremacists and counter protestors in Charlottesville, Va., in August that left a woman dead, have been spurred by increasingly partisan media outlets on television and the internet.
“People don’t go get news anymore on a national level. They either go to Fox to the get the right’s opinion or they go to MSNBC to get the left’s opinion but they no longer to get news, they go to get propaganda,” he said. “And it really inflames people on both sides, and the media has a responsibility on the national level not to inflame the population to violence, and I feel right now we’ve got a lot of that going on.”
Kelly said that the media on both sides have also not correctly reported on the success of the House and the Senate during President Trump’s first eight months in office.
“The House and Senate have passed more legislation that has been signed into law than in the last 30 years. Fox doesn’t tell you that nor does MSNBC because that doesn’t fit into their narrative,” Kelly said.
However, he said there is still an uphill climb for the House on issues like health care and tax reform.
“We’ve still got work to do. It’s just a constant grind,” Kelly said. “But you only fail when you quit trying.”
When not on Capitol Hill, Kelly lives in Saltillo with his wife of 27 years, Sheila, and their three children John Forrest, Morgan, and Jackson.
