Was Jason Kelce’s grandfather a Russian spy?
“Was grandpa actually charged with treason?” the veteran Eagles center asked his mother on a recent episode of his podcast. The Inquirer has answers.
The historic Super Bowl rivalry between Jason Kelce and his brother, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, may be dominating the headlines going into Sunday.
But in the run-up to the big game, the veteran Eagles center has also had another, more provocative piece of Kelce family lore on his mind:
“Was grandpa actually charged with treason?” he asked his mother, Donna Kelce, on a recent episode of his podcast New Heights. He jokingly concluded that Kelce family paterfamilias had “help[ed] out the Russians.”
He also referenced the colorful chapter in his family’s history in an interview with the Washington Post last month. And yet, when asked about it Wednesday by an Inquirer reporter in Arizona, Kelce said he still didn’t really know the full story.
“He was charged with something,” Kelce said, adding: “I don’t know if he was actually helping out Russia or what the full level of that was. It was definitely shady.”
Well, Mr. Kelce, The Inquirer is here to help:
Who was the Kelces’ grandfather?
“A narcissist,” according to his daughter.
Donald Roy Blalock was the kind of guy who named both of his children after himself, Don and Donna. He was married to five women, “Mama Kelce” said during her appearance Monday on the New Heights episode. And she scoffed at the notion that he was faithful to those spouses.
Blalock spent most of his life in Ohio and worked in various positions in manufacturing. His work included “10 years in the Soviet Union while on business assignment,” according to his obituary.
Was Jason Kelce’s grandfather a Russian spy?
The short answer is “not exactly.” But he was charged in the early ‘80s in an industrial espionage case involving allegations of underhanded business dealings with a Soviet truck manufacturer.
Local media accounts and court records lay out the story: At the time, Blalock was working as the director of contract management for C-E Cast Equipment Co., a machine tool part manufacturer based in Cleveland — a job he’d landed after 20 years of service to the company, including four as its salesman in a Soviet city near the base of the Ural Mountains, according to a report in the Cleveland Plain Dealer now housed in the CIA’s digital archives.
But in 1981 — a year after he returned to the States — Blalock abruptly left the company and went to work for a competitor, Western Reserve Group Inc., with one of his former C-E Cast colleagues, Lester W. Smith.
C-E Cast executives noticed sales for their replacement parts in the U.S.S.R. had dropped precipitously after Blalock’s departure, and after hiring a private investigator, discovered that their primary customer there had found a new source for the pricey parts they sold.
In December 1981, authorities in Ohio searched a condo and home Blalock owned in the Cleveland suburbs, according to a story in the Akron Beacon Journal.
And months later, officials accused Blalock, Smith, and two other former C-E Cast employees of stealing proprietary blueprints from the company, using them to manufacture similar complex machine tool parts at Western Reserve Group, and then undercutting their former employer on the price.
What did the investigation uncover?
Prosecutors in Ohio alleged that Blalock, operating under the alias Bob Steele, had contracted with two local machinery companies to manufacture parts based on the stolen C-E blueprints, according to the Plain Dealer.
In all, they said, Blalock sold more than $500,000 in counterfeit parts — most of them to one of his former C-E Cast clients, a Soviet heavy truck manufacturer.
Was Kelce’s grandfather charged with treason?
No. Court records in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, show Blalock was charged on counts including conversion of trade secrets, receiving stolen property, and possessing criminal tools.
He ultimately pleaded guilty in 1984 to a lesser, misdemeanor offense of receiving stolen property valued at less than $150.
Dockets show he received a suspended sentence of one year of probation on the condition he pay $10,000 in restitution.
What does the Kelce family have to say about the case?
Donna Kelce, Blalock’s daughter, addressed the charges with the verbal equivalent of a shrug in her appearance on her son’s podcast this week.
“He was stealing plans that they had already thrown in the trash,” she said, adding: “He wasn’t selling secrets to the CIA or Russia. ... The worst thing that happened was that he had his pension taken away. That was about it.”
In 2007, the family filed a motion to have Blalock’s Ohio conviction expunged, court records show.
After his conviction, Blalock bounced from jobs in Ohio and South Dakota before eventually finishing out his career working as a greeter and in the electronics department at a Houston Walmart, according to his obituary.
How does Jason Kelce talk about his grandfather now?
On his podcast, Kelce asked his mother bluntly: “Was grandpa a good person?”
Despite describing him as narcissistic and questioning his fidelity to his wives earlier in the show, Donna Kelce said she also remembers her father, for all his faults, as generous and supportive.
He also played a role in launching Kelce’s football career, at one point giving him a card with a quote that encouraged him to “press on!”
That quote, along with the support of his parents, Kelce has said, motivated him to play at the highest level.
“He wasn’t a great grandpa but he was a great grandpa in the right moment,” Kelce said.
Staff writer Jason Nark contributed to this article.