From California to Nebraska: How an old car is connecting a family

■ Editor’s note: Lisa Bradley grew up in Wauneta with her adoptive parents, Bob and Helen (O’Neil) Bradley, Pat Kelly’s former coworker was June O’Neil who also lived in Imperial.

Lisa Bradley saw a photograph of her biological mother for the first time when she was 57.
The picture showed her mother, Pat Kelly, standing in front of her most prized possession — a yellow and orange 1960 Lotus 7 sports car..
Although Pat Kelly died before Bradley had the chance to meet her, Bradley, now 62, is seeing the car for the first time this week.
Her half-sister, Katie Kelly, who now owns the car, towed it from California for the 50th anniversary of the Tire Rack Sports Car Club of America Solo National Championships, which is being held at Lincoln Air Park through Friday.
Denver to California: 1961
Pat Kelly was pregnant with Bradley during a rather unforgiving time for single women to be pregnant.
After losing her job as a teacher in Denver because she was pregnant out of wedlock, Pat Kelly moved in with a former coworker, whose relatives in Nebraska were hoping to adopt.
Pat Kelly told Bradley’s biological father of her plan to put the baby up for adoption, and then told him he would never hear from her again.
After giving birth in May that year, Pat Kelly dropped the baby off with her coworker’s relatives—Bradley’s new adoptive parents.
“She dropped me off in an MG—a little British sports car, turned back and drove to California,” Bradley said.
Days after giving birth, Pat Kelly arrived at Stanford to see her sister, who knew nothing about the pregnancy.
“She was slim. You would have never known she had just given birth,” Bradley said. “She didn’t tell her sister. She told no one.”
Pat Kelly stayed in California and went on to marry an autocross lover. The couple had two children together.
Katie Kelly, now 53 and the oldest of the two, said autocross consumed the family, and they spent much of their time going to different races and events.
“I joke that we were raised in a parking lot,” Katie Kelly said. “It was a personality type. People were a little eccentric, or creative, and that was my parents. That’s how my parents met, and that was their social life.”
In 1965, Pat Kelly bought a 1960 White Lotus 7, despite the seller telling her the engine was likely too powerful for a lady.
“It was definitely her kind of declaration of independence,” Katie Kelly said. “She was just out there doing what she wanted to do, and no one could tell her what she could or couldn’t do.”
Katie Kelly won her first national race in her mother’s car when she was 17. She and her parents won many national races in the beloved White Lotus, which the family referred to as “Lil Stroker.”
However, as Katie Kelly got older, she began pursuing other sports, and her mom eventually sold the car in 2011.
“I really thought I’d never see it again,” Katie Kelly said.
Connections and reunions
In 2017, Bradley submitted her DNA on Ancestry.com.
The next year, Bradley made contact with her mother’s sister, Mary, who told her she had two half-sisters.
Around the same time, Mary called Katie Kelly.
“She said, ‘Katie, I hope you’re sitting down. … How would you feel if you knew you had an older sister?” Katie Kelly said. “And I said, ‘I would feel great, actually.’ And she said, ‘Well good, because you have one.’”
At this point, Katie Kelly said it finally clicked for her why her mother always maintained such a tough exterior.
“My mom was inexplicably, ferociously maternal and protective,” Katie Kelly said. “But she was so tough that she wasn’t going to tell anybody, but she was probably so broken inside.”
Although her aunt Mary suggested she wait a few weeks to absorb the new information before reaching out, Katie Kelly emailed Bradley two hours later.
“I’ve never written an email like this before,” Katie Kelly wrote in the email. “Maybe you’ve never gotten one like this before.”
A few hours later, the two sisters had already planned a time to talk over the phone.
As the sisters have connected, they’ve been able to piece together their mother’s history. At the same time, Katie Kelly began to realize how much she missed her mother’s old car.
Eventually, she was able to track down its new owner on Facebook, and finally convinced him to sell it to her in 2019. The car hadn’t been driven since the early 2000s, but Katie Kelly decided to sign up for this year’s SCCA nationals anyway.
In January, Katie Kelly’s husband started working on the car every weekend, determined to get it to start in time for nationals. They tried starting it for the first time just two weeks ago.
“It was a lot of pressure,” Katie Kelly said. “And I’ll be darned, it just started on the first try.”
Back to Lincoln
Katie Kelly and her husband arrived in Lincoln earlier this week for the races, although she said everything that could have gone wrong with the car during routine checks when they first arrived did.
But thanks to a lot of hard work, Katie Kelly drove it during the Heritage Classics races on Tuesday and will fire it up again on Wednesday.
After the races finish on Friday, the sisters are planning to drive to Colorado so Katie Kelly can meet Bradley’s biological father for the first time.
“My heart is so full,” Bradley said. “It’s just impossible to put into words.”