The fact that he is a chiropractor today was never in doubt for the son of a man who was in the profession for 40 years. It was not only his father, however, that influenced Todd Kelleher.
“I knew from the time I was young that I really just wanted to be a chiropractor,” Kelleher shared recently. “All the chiropractors I knew growing up through my father, they were always happy with what they did and enjoyed helping people. A lot of them worked till they were 80 something years old, still happy with what they were doing.”
Kelleher grew up in Macon and met his future wife, Deanna Cantrell, while in high school.
“She was friends with my neighbor. They used to wash their cars across the street, just to get me over there to talk to them,” he recalled with a chuckle.
Todd and Deanna married in 1991, and they have three sons and a daughter. Mitchell will be 32 this year, Logan 30, Dean 26, and Ali Kate 24.
Kelleher, who celebrated his 58th birthday Feb. 21, attended Middle Georgia College and Georgia College but didn’t earnhis degree in Georgia.
“I was a fewhoursshy of finishing at Georgia College and finished up at a college in Iowa,” he said. Kelleher was going to Iowa to attend Palmer College of Chiropractic and completed his undergraduate work at a nearby school.
Kelleher obtained his Doctor of Chiropractic in 1996, and by then he and Deanna had two children.
“We kind of laugh about that as being parents now, and you worry about your kids,” he commented. “We came out of college, neither one of us had a job, and we had $25,000 in the bank and two kids. We didn’t know where we were going to live, where we were going.”
His family, though, ultimately — and unknowingly — helped the Kellehers decide where they would land. Kelleher was the youngest of five children, and his two brothers and one of his sisters were living in Jones County when he got his degree.
“When we moved back from Iowa, we started going to church with my sister at Gray Methodist. We weren’t even planning on picking Gray. We were looking at Augusta or Macon, or different places, but we’re like, ‘What about Gray?’ We just love it here. We love the church. We love the people, and my family was here.”
Three different offices
The chiropractor remembers his first office in Gray, formerly used by Dr. H.B. Jones.
“You know the two doors on the front of that building, the White side and the Black side. When we switched it around, it took everybody a little while to get used to coming in the back door.”
But they did, and Kelleher’s practice was successful.
“We were very well received … the community has been great to us,” he said. “We’ve been very blessed by this community.”
Kelleher soon outgrew that office and built a new facility in Clinton on the four-lane highway. That plan did not work out as expected, however. Due to circumstances out of Kelleher’s control and through no fault of his, he had to vacate that building in 2009.
“The 2008 bank crash forced us to move,” he acknowledged. “That was a trying time for sure. We literally had a week to get out of that building.”
Margie Greene owned an office building across the highway, and Kelleher received word she was about to put it up for rent. “I called her and came over and looked at it. It was just unreal because it was perfect.
“I look back on that so much as far as, things in your life … when God’s ready and it just falls into place. And, that’s how it happened.”
Kelleher considers his office a family practice.
“This type of practice, it’s all about just general health and trying to treat any age. I may have a baby that’s coming in with colic or earache problems, or the next one may be somebody that’s 66 years old getting hurt on the pickleball court. And then, the next one’s a football player from the high school or whatever. We treat a broad range of patients here.
“We have whole families that come in together and all get treated just for staying healthy, not because they’re necessarily having a pain or a problem,” he continued. “And then I treat a lot of sports injuries and then the typical things people think of as far as chiropractors: back pain, neck pain, headaches, leg pain, all that kind of stuff, but we treat the whole body. It’s just we try not to use any pills, powders, or potions.”
Now in his 30th year, the chiropractor is appreciative of all who have been part of his practice.
“I have been blessed with wonderful office staff members and patients over the years.”
Numerous hobbies, passions
Off the job, Kelleher is as well-known for his involvement in soccer as he is in his professional mode. A year after moving to Jones County, he and two other dads started a soccer league.
“They moved away after the first year, so they left me running it,” he recalled. “So I’ve been running that for, this is 29 years. We run 350 something kids. That’s kind of always been what I consider my ministry to the community … the soccer league. People might not even know I am a chiropractor, but they know who runs the soccer because, oh yeah, it’s the soccer guy.”
Kelleher has always coached as well.
“I am still coaching. I usually coach two or three teams. And,” he shared, “my daughter has been helping me coach the little four- and five-year-olds probably 11 or 12 years.”
The experiences of the program have meant a lot to the long-time volunteer.
“One of the most rewarding things about running the soccer program all these years is seeing kids I coached that are coming back as adults to coach and give back to the community.”
Soccer has not been Kelleher’s only passion.
He is musically inclined and grew up playing the drums.
“We played in Gray Methodist for 11 years, around 2001-11,” he stated, adding that he played outside the church environment a good bit when he was younger. “Two other guys and I started a band when I was a senior in high school. And, the three of us still get together three times a year or so and play.
“Years ago when we first started, we were the Catatonics; the name seemed to fit the times. I was a freshman in college when we were playing a lot, bars and other places in Athens at the time. Then we all had to get serious about school.”
Bees are another activity that attracted Kelleher.
“I’ve been beekeeping for about 10 years,” he said. “I’ve always been interested but never tookthe time to do it. I keep about 30 hives out there. We get about 10 five-gallon buckets of honey a year off them.”
It is a year-long endeavor, with preparation for the Spring approaching.
“The number of bees is expanding. The queen’s laying about 1,200 eggs a day, so the number of bees is growing,” he explained. “If you don’t give them plenty of space, then the queen will leave and take half the bees with her. And that’s when you see them blobbed on a branch somewhere; they’re looking for a new home.”
Honey is pulled off in May and June, Kelleher noted, “then in the summer the queen is reducing how many eggs she’s laying. And so then you start taking boxes off, and in the wintertime you are down to one or two boxes.”
At times, he may spend two to four hours two or three days a week tending to the hives.
“It’s kind of like gardening. It’s a lot of work, but if you enjoy it, then it’s relaxing.”
Kelleher also likes to restore old cars. One took four years to complete, and he is ready to start on another. He has also made a table from wood that came from a barn on property they bought in the late 2000s.
While it would seem there are not enough hours in the day for all of Kelleher’s activities, one thing the couple — primarily Deanna — found the time to do was homeschool their children.
“We just wanted to not put our kids in daycare, and we wanted to be able to raise our own kids, to educate them as a family,” Kelleher emphasized. “We wanted to teach them as much of a Christian atmosphere as we could.”
They started with a school in Macon, but that was not practical. They decided homeschooling was the way to go, and Deanna gave up her position at the office.
“All four of the children were homeschooled at least until they got to high school,” Kelleher pointed out. “All three boys graduated from GMC. Ali Kate homeschooled all the way through because she was barrel racing, and she and Deanna were traveling all over the country.”
The four have now gone their separate ways, though Ali Kate lives on the same property as her parents. She and her mother raise and sell horses and Australian Shepherd dogs.
Kelleher, meanwhile, is still working and thinking longrange about his retirement, as in 22 years from now.
“I have always said I plan on semi-retiring at 80 years old. I’m 58 today,” he reiterated this past Saturday.
