Joseph Kellman, 1920-2010: Owned Globe Glass & Mirror repair company and started Better Boys Foundation

Joseph Kellman grew up in Chicago's North Lawndale neighborhood when it was a bustling Jewish enclave, and went on to build the company started by his father into a dominant national auto-glass retailer.

He never turned his back on his old neighborhood though, and in the mid-1960s started the Better Boys Foundation, which continues to provide classes, services and activities for hundreds of children from the impoverished community every year.

A boxing promoter and thoroughbred owner, Mr. Kellman, 90, died Thursday, Jan. 7, at his home in Egypt, Texas, said his wife, Lou Anne. He had Parkinson's disease.

No distant benefactor, Mr. Kellman was a regular visitor to the Better Boys Foundation, formerly in an old factory but since 2008 in a new 30,000-square-foot facility at 1512 S. Pulaski Road. He led excursions to the Drake Hotel for high tea and spent time talking with youngsters who surrounded him whenever he stopped by.

"Whatever they said they wanted to do, he provided," said Belvon Walker, an assistant executive vice president at BBF. "Mr. Kellman believed that the children in this community could be anything they wanted to be if they were exposed to the better things in life."

Mr. Kellman grew up not far from the BBF site in North Lawndale, where his parents settled after coming from Bialystock, now part of Poland. His father had a glaziers shop, and Mr. Kellman worked there from a young age, dropping out of Harrison High School in ninth grade.

He and his brother Morrie took over the business when his father died and had two retail shops and a small manufacturing plant when they split it up in 1950, Mr. Kellman retaining the retail portion.

A couple of factors allowed his business, Globe Glass & Mirror (later the Globe Group), to prosper, according to his son Jack. One was his decision to provide mobile servicemen so repairs could be made at customers' homes. Another was the advent of the one-piece, curved windshield, which greatly increased the price of repairs.

Later, a toll-free number allowed customers almost anywhere in the U.S. to call the office in Chicago and have service dispatched from one of 5,000 shops nationwide.

Mr. Kellman sold the business in 1999.

His outside interests included, comedy, boxing and horse racing. He was the friend of many comics, and Buddy Hackett was instrumental in helping him start the Better Boys Foundation. The BBF was an outgrowth of the Archie Moore Gym, which Mr. Kellman started in 1961.

As a boxing promoter, he was involved in the ownership group of the Chicago Clippers, which was part of a short-lived league that tried to introduce team boxing to the U.S. in 1969 and 1970.

As a youthful math whiz, he had handicapped races for his father. He later became a nationally prominent thoroughbred owner whose horse Shecky Greene, named after another of his comedian pals, was the North American champion sprinter in 1973.

Shecky Greene finished sixth in that year's Kentucky Derby, won by the legendary Secretariat, after setting the pace for the opening three-quarters of a mile.

In the late 1980s, Mr. Kellman helped start the Corporate Community School in North Lawndale, an effort to provide kids in the neighborhood with a better education.

He blamed the chronic troubles facing the area on systemic problems like racism, never the individuals living there, his wife said.

"It was tough when he was (a kid in North Lawndale), but there was an exit rate," said his wife. "He realized African-Americans couldn't move on like that. He could identify with their plight, but he could also see that their plight was worse."

Mr. Kellman was divorced from his first wife, who preceded him in death.

He is also survived by another son, Richard; two stepsons, Bill and Bruce Suggs; nine grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren.

Visitation is set for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday in the Better Boys Foundation, 1512 S. Pulaski Road, Chicago.