Dedication

Courtesy of Jim Dennis Photography, Oakland, California.

DEDICATION/IN MEMORIAM FOR DR. A. PAUL KELLY

The second edition of Taylor and Kelly's Dermatology for Skin of Color is dedicated to co-editor A. Paul Kelly, who died in May of 2014 in Muscat, the Sultanate of Oman, from complications of Parkinson disease. Dr. Kelly was a pioneer in dermatology, an institution builder, scholar, researcher, educator, lecturer, and author. His lifelong dream of publishing a textbook specifically about skin diseases affecting people of color was realized with the first edition of Dermatology for Skin of Color.

Born in 1938, in Asheville, North Carolina, he was the son and grandson of physicians and graduated from Brown University and Howard University's College of Medicine. He was Chief of Dermatology for 35 years at King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he developed a world-class residency program that trained more than a hundred dermatology residents and medical students.

Dr. Kelly was editor-in-chief of the Journal of the National Medical Association from 1997 to 2004. He was the second African American member of the American Dermatological Association and later its president. He was the first African American president of the Association of Professors of Dermatology, and of the Pacific Dermatologic Association. He was also elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society and received the Outstanding Professor Award from the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science's academic senate.

Throughout his career, Dr. Kelly researched skin diseases in people of color, particularly keloidal scarring. After retirement, he became a Fulbright Regional Research Scholar and brought his keloid research project to Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. There he assembled an extraordinary team of dermatologists and geneticists from many countries to carry out an ongoing epidemiologic and genetic study on familial keloids.

Paul is survived by his wife of 48 years, Beverly Baker-Kelly, PhD, EdD, Esq, who was also a Fulbright Scholar in Oman, thus making them the first African American couple in history to both be Fulbright Scholars. They have two daughters, Traci and Kara, two son-in-laws, Brian and Rahsaan, and two granddaughters, Keiley and Hayden Kelly-Thompson.

It was through Dr. Kelly's extraordinary efforts and dedication to excellence that the second edition of Taylor and Kelly's Dermatology for Skin of Color was completed while he lived in Muscat, Oman. This is a part of his enduring legacy.