Decades before he became UCLA’s innovative offensive coordinator, Dean Kennedy eagerly waited at mile marker 24 in Boston.
Dean stood alongside dozens of members of a large Irish Catholic family every Patriots’ Day.
And while it was a time of celebration for everyone running the Boston Marathon, it was a national holiday for the Kennedy family — especially Dean’s father, Jake Kennedy, who was an avid marathoner.
“There was the Super Bowl, and then there was the Boston Marathon,” said Zack Kennedy, Dean’s older brother. “Our whole family, from as early as I could remember, would gather up. We’d find a meeting spot on Beacon Street, two miles out from the finish line, and our cousins were there, and we would all wait for my dad.”
When he was 10, Dean got to experience the marathon in a new way. Sporting a Chicago Cubs Nomar Garciaparra jersey, Dean watched his dad do what he always did — find his group of supporters, hug his family and kiss his wife.
Before departing for the marathon’s homestretch, Jake picked up Dean, brought him onto the running path and told him, “Let’s finish this together.”
The father and son ran the final 2.2 miles of the race together, continuing one of Jake’s long-standing traditions of selecting a family member to finish the race with him each year.
“It was the coolest thing and that definitely inspired me to be a runner,” Zack said.
In 2023, Dean crossed the Boston Marathon finish line again.
But this time, he did it without Jake.
Instead, Dean ran alongside his two brothers, in honor of his father, who died in 2020 after a battle with ALS — a disease that also took the lives of Jake’s brother and father.
Jake, who led a Boston-based physical therapy practice, not only helped athletes prepare for the race, but also competed alongside them, running 37 consecutive Boston Marathons with the hope of setting the record for most consecutive runs.
After Jake’s death, the Kennedy brothers made a pact that at least one of them would run the marathon, passing the torch and keeping their father’s streak alive.
“After he passed away after COVID, we created the Jake Kennedy ALS fund to raise money and then we got marathon bibs and we were able to run it in his honor,” Dean said. “… To actually cross that mile marker to cross the finish line, it was something that I can’t even explain. It was very surreal to be in that moment of something my dad loved to do to raise money for this disease, but at the same point in time being there and feeling him and feeling his spirit.”
The brothers say their dad inspired the family’s commitment to helping others.
Whether it was working 18 hours at his physical therapy practice to treat everyone that needed him, family dinners that included house guests who needed a helping hand, or wrestling a gun away from two people in a fight, Jake would take the shirt off his back and give it to anyone.
Jake’s generous spirit inspired the launch of “Christmas in the City,” a charity he started alongside his wife that gave a Christmas experience to thousands of people in inner city Boston.
The charity was formed in 1989 when Jake realized his kids had too many gifts and needed to understand the true meaning of Christmas. Today the charity is run by Zack and Chip, the youngest of the four Kennedy children, and supported by Dean and Jake’s eldest child, Alyse.
After Jake was diagnosed with a form of ALS that took his voice first, Dean asked his dad if they could skip the “Christmas in the City” event and celebrate privately as a family — knowing that it would probably be one of the last holidays they would spend together.
“His voice, he could barely speak, and he looked at me, and he said, ‘Our job is to help people who need it the most,’” Dean said. “That was how I grew up, that piece of that there’s always people that are in a worse-off situation, and you can always find the positive things in life, and that’s how he lived his life.”
Jake’s lifelong commitment to helping others lives on in the way that Dean mentors his UCLA players. And it fits in naturally with head coach Bob Chesney’s belief that success begins by serving others.
While Dean coaches his players hard and demands a lot, he said his main focus is showing the Bruins that he is there for them. He stresses that everyone goes through adversity, and that football is a microcosm of life.
“That’s what coaching is all about,” Dean said. “It’s about giving back and being there for these 18- to 23-year-olds in … their most transformative years. And that’s what I learned from my dad … the ability to give back and always attack every day with a positive attitude.”
Six months after his ALS diagnosis, Jake implored his son to run the Disney World half marathon with him. But after years of long nights coaching, Dean was a worn-out member of the University of Florida staff and felt like he was the most out of shape he had ever been.
“The doctors told him that he shouldn’t run, and he kind of looked at them and gave them the middle finger,” Dean said. “He looked at me, and I’d probably gone six months without working out at that point, and I said, ‘I’m not going to run.’ He said, ‘If I have ALS and I’m going to run, you’re going to run.’ And he smiled, but he forced me to run the half marathon with him.”
Dean and his brothers now try to live up to their father’s high standards.
“Our dad had this incredible, insatiable ambition to help the world with the tools he had, and for my siblings, we live the same way,” Chip said. “We found these passions and the ways that we’re going to help the world. The way that Dean’s making football the best possible sport, he can see it.”
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