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Larry Kelm '87 November 25, 2014 8:56 AM

From blog.chron.com/sportsupdate 

R.C. Slocum on the late Larry Kelm: ‘He was a joy to coach’

Posted on November 24, 2014 | By Brent Zwerneman

COLLEGE STATION – R.C. Slocum, who spent 14 seasons as Texas A&M’s coach and had first been hired as an A&M assistant in 1972, spoke as highly of Larry Kelm on Monday as he has of any player he’s coached.

“He was a special guy and just of great character,” Slocum said Monday of Kelm, who died in an apparent accident on a South Texas hunting trip on Saturday. “He was on a team with some great players, so he didn’t get as much recognition as he deserved. I don’t remember ever having to get on Larry about anything, he was so smart and always asking a lot of questions.

“He was just a joy to coach.”

Slocum said Monday that Kelm was near Laredo on a hunting lease with some family members and friends when he apparently fell from a windmill he was using as a deer blind. Kelm was by himself at the time, Slocum said he was told.

Kelm, a sturdy linebacker for the Aggies from 1983-86 and one of the original members of the famed “Wrecking Crew” defense, died just a week shy of his 50th birthday. Kelm was best known in Aggieland for helping stuff Auburn running back Bo Jackson on a goal-line stand in the 1986 Cotton Bowl.

Kelm, a Corpus Christi native, played from 1987 to 1993 in the NFL, primarily with the Los Angeles Rams. Slocum said he recalled receiving a call from then-Rams coach John Robinson, whom he’d worked for one season while both were at Southern California, early in the 1987 NFL draft.

“Tell me about this Kelm kid,” Slocum recalled Robinson asking.

“John, he’s even better than what you see on tape,” Slocum replied, in counting off all the intangibles that made Kelm a standout Aggie.

Robinson selected Kelm in the fourth round, and he wound up playing in 88 NFL games with 49 starts. Following his successful NFL career, Kelm had been in business in the Houston area, and partnered with former standout A&M quarterback Bucky Richardson. Kelm lived in The Woodlands and has a wife and two children who are young adults and both Aggies.

Services for Kelm are 11 a.m. Monday (Dec. 1) at The Woodlands Church, One Fellowship Drive, The Woodlands, in the main campus auditorium.

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