Sam Kellerman Recalled as ‘Family Glue’
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Handsome. Hilarious. An original.
These were some of the adjectives used at a crowded and emotional Upper West Side memorial service yesterday to describe Sam Kellerman, the 29-year-old sportswriter, actor, and brother of energetic Fox Sports anchor Max Kellerman who was found dead in his Hollywood, Calif., apartment last Sunday night.
“He was the ultimate do-the-right-thing kind of guy,” said brother Jack Kellerman, noting that “sacrificial Sam’s” selfless acts of benevolence may have ultimately led to his death.
In late September, Sam offered to share his apartment with a friend he met as a teenager, James Butler, a light heavyweight boxer with the moniker the “Harlem Hammer,” whose career had been plagued by bipolar disorder and a four-month prison stint in Rikers Island for sucker-punching an opponent after the bell.
Last week, Butler was arrested and charged with Kellerman’s murder. The fighter, who pleaded not guilty, is believed by authorities to have struck Kellerman in the back of the head with an object, causing “massive blunt force trauma,” according to autopsy results.
At yesterday’s funeral service, a crowd of nearly 300 – including friends of Kellerman’s from Stuyvesant High School and later at Columbia University, his brothers, Harry, Jack, and Max, his father, Dr. Henry Kellerman, and mother, Linda, along with boxing trainers, fighters, and sportswriters – filed into the Riverside Memorial Church, filling the main sanctuary, a nearby room with a video monitor, another waiting room, and eventually spilling out onto Amsterdam Avenue.
Dr. Kellerman, a Manhattan psychoanalyst, characterized his second son as “the glue” of their family, someone who bridged the gaps between old and modern worlds by co-authoring a book with his grandfather, and a talented orator who scored a perfect 800 on the verbal portion of his SAT exams (without always attending class).
Max Kellerman, host of the FSN television show “I, Max,” told of a recent time when he and Sam attended a funeral of a friend. In a brotherly jest, Max said he playfully snapped at his younger brother, “You know, I’m gonna have more people at my funeral than you are.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Max said Sam replied, “but mine is gonna be a lot sadder.”