Part of our "Multi-Generation 716 Families" series — stories about the families who built Buffalo, one generation at a time.

Seventy Dollars and a Dream

Before there was a store, there was a fair circuit. Walter and Grace Kelly spent their days selling penny candy at festivals across the region — setting up at 8 in the morning, working until 10 at night, doing the books until the small hours, then packing up and driving to the next town to do it all again. Their first big day on the circuit, selling candy at a penny a piece, they made seventy dollars. They thought they were millionaires.

People loved what the Kellys were doing. Festival goers kept asking where their store was. The trouble was, there wasn't one. So in 1962, Walter and Grace made a decision that would change their family's life for the next six decades and counting — they traded their Buffalo home and a payment of one dollar for a tiny 20-by-20 building on Grand Island Boulevard. That was the first Kelly's Country Store.

A Barn, a Cupola, and a White Oak

Walt Kelly wasn't just building a candy store. He was building a piece of Grand Island. When he found an old barn on the island that was about to be torn down, he and his son Mike took it apart and rebuilt it on the property. That barn became the signature look of Kelly's Country Store — the red barn that every islander recognizes today.

But Walt had a bigger vision. He saved the historic cupola from the old Grand Island Town Hall — a structure built over a hundred years ago as a schoolhouse and demolished in 1968. That cupola had served as a World War II lookout tower, where island residents like Mabel Long Krieger, Julia B. Long, and Marion Long Young volunteered to sit and scan the skies for enemy aircraft. Fortunately, no planes were ever sighted. Walt moved it to his property to preserve it.

He also relocated a one-room schoolhouse — Old School No. 5, built in the 1870s — onto the grounds and restored it so children could see how their grandparents went to school. He collected old desks, blackboards, photos, and a heating stove. And he planted a white oak tree, because Grand Island was once covered in white oaks. They made the masts for clipper ships and the barrels for molasses and rum. Walt wanted people to remember that.

His dream was to build a whole little historic village on the property. It never fully came to fruition, but the spirit of it lives on in every festival and event the family hosts on those grounds. In 2019, the Town Board gave the cupola and the schoolhouse official historic landmark status — Grand Island's first local landmarks. And in late 2021, Kevin Kelly gifted the cupola back to the town. It was moved to the Highway Department garage, restored by town employee Steve Dickenson, and is planned to be placed in front of the current Town Hall on Baseline Road — right where it originally stood — with storyboards and lights.

Three Months on the Road, Pregnant

Walt's son Mike and his wife Deanna carried on the family work ethic. They worked the fair circuit together — three months in the summer, three months in the winter, sometimes in tiny shows in the hills of Pennsylvania, staying in rustic cabins. Deanna was pregnant with Kevin on one of those runs.

"We left here in August and we never came back till October," Deanna recalled. It was a grind, but the fair families all knew each other and took care of each other. That's how the Kellys made the money to keep the store going and growing. They also ran two stands at the famous Broadway Market in Buffalo for more than thirty years — and more than fifty percent of their holiday sales came from those stands alone.

From Box Maker to Boss

Kevin Kelly's career at the store started with a title only a family business could give you: child box maker. From there he was promoted to weighing jelly beans. Along the way he scraped chocolate off the cement floor of the family's chocolate factory. His brother Sean grew up the same way. Together, they took over the business as the third generation.

Today, Kelly's Country Store is run by Kevin, his sister Maureen Knight, and Kevin's son Adam — the fourth generation. Adam is the store manager, and the family still makes everything by hand. Over 300 different Easter chocolate shapes. Fresh fudge. Buffalo's famous sponge candy. The Christmas room with a live Santa. The Easter Bunny every spring.

"It's an honor for Sean and I to keep this business going," Kevin has said. "We can still be a part of the families that have been here and look forward to coming here, and we take it like everybody who comes here is family to us. There are a lot of driveways to pull in, and I am so thankful that they choose ours."

Sixty-Three Years on the Boulevard

Grand Island doesn't have a lot of surviving historic structures. Most things either burned down, were torn down, or were destroyed. But Kelly's Country Store is still standing on Grand Island Boulevard — the same red barn Walt built by hand, the same one-room schoolhouse he restored, the same white oak he planted over fifty years ago. Four generations of Kellys have made candy, told stories, scared customers through the intercom on the front porch, and given free merry-go-round rides to kids in the backyard.

Some things on this island don't change. Kelly's is one of them.