A roof odyssey for 2001 Co.

Waterbury Republican American

BY MARC SILVESTRINI

WATERBURY — Thomas L. Kelly learned about the roofing business the hard way.

As the son of Tom Kelly, a Chicago-area native who founded Kelly Roofing & Construction Co. at 325 Fairlawn Ave. in 1948, he spent a large chunk of his early teens carrying heavy bundles of shingles up 40-foot ladders or coating the large flat roofs of commercial buildings with liquid tar on hot summer afternoons.

"It was the family business, so climbing up a ladder and helping my dad shingle a roof was just a natural part of growing up to me," he said.

Today, five decades later, Kelly is an engineer who has been issued 26 patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. But he is still in the roofing business, though it's probably been a while since he's toted shingles up a 40-foot ladder.

Kelly owns 2001 Co. Inc., a Thomaston Avenue roof design and manufacturing company that has installed its patented wind-vented, negative pressure roofing system on more than 20,000 commercial and industrial buildings from Florida to Alaska since the mid-1980s.