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St. Petersburg loses a gadfly in angel wings

By Andrew Meacham, Times Staff Writer
In print: Tuesday, September 16, 2008

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ST. PETERSBURG — For years, Kelly Brandon tripped to the City Council microphone like a winged white fairy and read her prepared statements.

In an angel outfit she had made — white from the hat and veil to the snowy ankle boots — she proclaimed that she was a child of God and called herself Princess of King Yahweh.

Sometimes carrying signs, she urged the council to do more to stop child abuse, pornography and prostitution. She also railed against the Tampa Bay Rays' proposed waterfront stadium and the use of the word "devil" in their former name.

"She always had a theme that we were godless, that we didn't have God in our decisions," said council member James Bennett.

"It was her own little religion."

For many years, you couldn't go to a City Council meeting and not find Ms. Brandon. She sat through endless meetings, waiting for her allotted three minutes to speak.

In messages many found hard to understand, she threaded local headlines with world news, global fears and City Council business, often jumping from topic to topic.

"She used that as her forum," said Rene Flowers, who came to the council in 1999, when Ms. Brandon was already a fixture. If Ms. Brandon wasn't in the audience at meetings, council members knew something was wrong.

Ms. Brandon was found dead on Sept. 8 in her apartment. Her family suspects she committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. She was 50.

Ms. Brandon grew up in New York City. She came to the University of South Florida on a scholarship, hoping to become a medical assistant. Her family doesn't know if she finished. She got married and had children, but the marriage didn't last.

In the 1990s, her interest in local politics intensified. Mayor David Fischer in 1995 appointed her to a task force on downtown redevelopment. When Sunken Gardens closed in 1999, she circulated petitions to have the city buy the property. "She was a street politician, in a sense," said Carlos Rios, 51, Ms. Brandon's brother.

Over time, however, her behavior started to strike some as bizarre. "Sometimes she would use the overhead and have a map of downtown," Bennett recalled. "She would link City Hall, the Pier, BayWalk, and connect all the dots in the shape of a key. That key opened the gate to heaven."

In the predawn hours, she left rambling phone messages in her sing-song voice on Times reporters' voice mails. She came to the newspaper's lobby, handing out black balloons and dolls representing aborted fetuses.

But not all her actions could be dismissed. Ms. Brandon complained that it was unfair to make citizens wait all day to speak for three minutes at the public forum at the end of the meeting. The council agreed, and created another forum before lunch.

"It was really because of her we started having a second forum," Flowers said.

Still, the city more than once issued her trespass warnings. In 2007, Ms. Brandon cheerfully told a Times reporter that she had been banished from City Hall for threatening to shoot Mayor Rick Baker. As a result, his staff beefed up the mayor's security.

"She went overboard at times," her brother conceded. "She needed counseling, no doubt about it."

Ms. Brandon moved to Largo a few years ago to live with her mother, then returned to St. Petersburg. In recent years, she often could be seen walking on Fourth Street N in her angel outfit, carrying a sign bearing Yahweh's name.

On Sunday, in keeping with her wishes, her family took Ms. Brandon's ashes to the beach, and scattered them at the water's edge.

Andrew Meacham can be reached at amecham@sptimes.com or (813) 661-2431.