Biography: John Kelin

[John Kelin]

Born in Rockford, Illinois, John Kelin grew up mostly in Michigan. He worked for several years in public radio at WEMU-FM in Ypsilanti, then moved to the news department at WXYZ-TV in Detroit. In 1991, Kelin began working as a technical writer at Sun Microsystems in San Francisco. Shortly thereafter, Kelin and his family moved to Colorado, where they remain.

John Kelin was seven years old when President Kennedy was assassinated, and that event remains his earliest clear memory in life. His interest in the assassination and the first-generation critics dates to 1976 when he attended a lecture by Mark Lane, now one of the subjects of Praise from a Future Generation.

Kelin co-founded Fair Play magazine in 1994 on the then-fledgling World Wide Web. Fair Play was the first of what by now are many JFK-oriented sites. As the magazine's publisher and editor, he presented the work of many Kennedy assassination researchers and writers, including Christopher Sharrett, James W. Douglass, and Joan Mellen, as well as his 1999 interview with Kerry McCarthy, a cousin of John F. Kennedy. Here he also debuted his important article, "#5 Man." Kelin's assassination writing has also appeared in The Kennedy Assassination Chronicles.

In 1998 Kelin met Vince Salandria at a conference in Dallas. Salandria gave Kelin complete access to his assassination-related correspondence from the 1960s. This began almost ten years of full-time research, leading to the publication of Praise from a Future Generation.

In 1999, Kelin was a recipient of JFK Lancer's "New Frontier" award. He has been listed in several editions of the Master Researcher Directory.