Inducted in 2015
Founding Bishop, Rockville Centre Diocese

Walter Philip Kellenberg was born in the Bronx in 1901 on June 3rd, the Feast of Our Lady of the Stone — an appropriate birthdate for a man who had an extraordinary devotion to the Blessed Mother and who would oversee the laying of so many cornerstones during his episcopacy. He was the son of Conrad Kellenberg, Sr., who worked in the business office of a clothing manufacturer, and Elizabeth Kern Kellenberg, a homemaker. 

Walter grew up in the Morrisania section of the borough with his four brothers and sisters: Conrad, Jr., Edward, Elizabeth and Marie. Among the Kellenberg brothers, Conrad would go on to be a banker and Edward, like Walter, would join the priesthood. As for their sisters, both would devote their lives to education, with Elizabeth spending part of her career teaching Latin just up the hill from Fordham at Mount Saint Ursula. The family’s East 166th Street home was on the same block as St. Anthony of Padua Church, where young Walter and the other Kellenberg children attended grammar school in the original parish building that housed the church on the first level, and classrooms and a convent on the floors above.

After Walt’s time at St. Anthony’s, he made the trip north up Southern Boulevard to enroll in the Second Division of St. John’s College — in Kellenberg’s day, already better known by what was then just its nickname: Fordham Prep. His brother Conrad also attended the Prep and, although as was common enough in the early 20th century, he would leave after only two years to begin his working life. Their other brother and sisters would also have their own Fordham careers, attending various schools at the University later in life. 

During their Prep years, the Kellenberg boys were honor students, earning awards in German — not surprising considering their father was bilingual. There is also a school tradition which connects the future bishop to the founding of Ramkin — not the yearbook of today, but rather a short-lived student newspaper that was the first Prep publication distinct from the University. 

Graduating Fordham Prep in 1919, Kellenberg went to Cathedral College in Queens, Columbia University for some graduate work in real estate, and then to St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie in Yonkers, New York. He was ordained in St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Cardinal Hayes on June 2, 1928. After ordination, Fr. Kellenberg served as a parish priest for a number of years at St. Mary’s, in Rosebank on Staten Island, and then at St. Paul’s in East Harlem. 

By 1939, Father was serving as vice chancellor of the New York Archdiocese, becoming the secretary to Cardinal Hayes in 1942. Granted the honorary title of papal chamberlain in 1943, Msgr. Kellenberg assumed the office of chancellor in 1947.

Pope Pius XII named the onetime Prepster auxiliary bishop of New York in August 1953, and he was consecrated to the episcopacy a few weeks later on October 5th in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Early the next year on January 19th, the Holy Father appointed Bishop Kellenberg to the Diocese of Ogdensburg in northern New York. His official installation took place on the Feast of the Annunciation. Only a few months later, Bishop Kellenberg was back in New York City for a short visit to receive an honorary degree at Fordham’s commencement. 

His Excellency spent three years at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Ogdensburg, expanding the diocese’s Office of Education, increasing the number of parochial schools, providing catechism classes for the public school children, seeing to the creation of youth ministries and, given his personal devotion to Our Lady, promoting Marian rallies and processions in the parishes of his see.

In 1957, Pius XII announced the formation of the Dioecesis Petropolitana in Insula Longa, the Rockville Centre Diocese, comprising Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island. The Most Reverend Walter Kellenberg was installed by Cardinal Spellman as Rockville Centre’s founding bishop, and would remain at St. Agnes Cathedral until his retirement in 1976. Over the course of nearly two decades, he grew Rockville Centre from a loose scattering of Catholic farming families on the fringe of the Diocese of Brooklyn, to a thriving community of hundreds of thousands. As it had been in Ogdensburg, education of the youth was a great priority for Kellenberg — three colleges, eighteen high schools and scores of parish schools were established during his time on Long Island. 

The world of Bishop Kellenberg’s later life was very different from the world he knew as a young boy in the South Bronx. Along the way, he had been more than just a witness to change — he had been a part of it, addressing many of the social issues of the day from his pulpit and attending all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council. In fact, a stained glass window in St. Boniface Church in Elmont, New York depicts St. John XXIII welcoming Bishop Kellenberg to the Council. His Excellency found his way onto another bit of stained glass window, as well — one on the Rose Hill Campus. Set into the windows of the formal lounge in Queen’s Court are the coats of arms of bishops, past and present, in one way or another affiliated with Fordham. Kellenberg’s is among them, displayed with the year of his Prep graduation.

In addition to his many major accomplishments, one of Bishop Kellenberg’s less-remembered endeavors is also honored here at the Prep — and in an unlikely little corner of the community: the Aviation Club. On April 12, 1959, at Mitchel Air Force Base— named for another Hall of Honor inductee, Mayor John Puroy Mitchel — Kellenberg dedicated the medal of Our Lady of Loreto, a title under which the Blessed Mother has come to be invoked by air travelers. The medal, designed by a TWA pilot from Long Island, bears an image of Mary on one side, and an image of a passenger jet over the Mediterranean on the other. For the occasion, Kellenberg also composed what has become the official prayer asking Mary’s intercession for a safe flight. On account of his attention to the spiritual needs of pilots and passengers alike, the members of the Aviation Club have inducted their brother alumnus from a century ago as an honorary member and keep a copy of the medal among their artifacts. 

Walter Kellenberg, Class of 1919, Bishop Emeritus of Rockville Center, passed away on January 11, 1986 at the age of 84. A year later, Kellenberg Memorial High School opened its doors in Uniondale, Long Island under the direction of the Marianists. There could be no more fitting tribute for a man who lived his life in service of God and His people, in devotion to the Blessed Mother, and in support of Catholic education for the young men and women of New York.