LOS ANGELES — In 2020, an anonymous donor wrote a sizable check to charities being run by Dean Kennedy.

Kennedy and his younger brother Chip learned to help others from a young age. Growing up in Scituate, Massachusetts, a suburb 29 miles south of Boston, they wrapped Christmas gifts for homeless people as part of the family culture built by their father, Jake.

“My parents were phenomenal people, and I was blessed from that standpoint,” UCLA’s first-year offensive coordinator said. “I started sharing the love for the game of football from my father growing up. He loved college football, and so we had that connection.”

Jake Kennedy, a longtime physical therapist, started Christmas in the City long before being diagnosed with ALS. He was considered to be a man who had lived a healthy and active lifestyle and ran in 37 marathons across his lifetime. Jake died in 2020 after starting the Jake Kennedy ALS Fund in 2019 to fund research for the fatal disease that kills half of those afflicted within 30 months of their first symptoms.

A domino effect that benefited the men, women, and children who relied on Christmas In The City and the Jake Kennedy ALS Fund was started from a habit ingrained into Kennedy in 2019 as a graduate offensive assistant at Florida.

Longtime Scituate High School science electives teacher Stephen Maguire had known the Kennedys and taught Dean during his senior year. In a town of less than 20,000 residents, Jake had taken Maguire and his wife under his wing to train them for their first Boston Marathon.

“Dean is a total reflection of his father,” Maguire said. “I just remembered kids constantly wanted to be around him. He just resonated positivity. Kids gravitated towards the personality he brought and he is such a hard worker. It’s no surprise that he’s having the success he’s having at UCLA.”

Kennedy learned that talking, texting and leaving voice mails was one thing. But to truly connect? He learned that writing thank-you notes and sending letters was a token of appreciation that could have a lasting impact.

Later in 2019, Kennedy wrote 290 letters to college head football coaches across America. The notes inscribed by Kennedy contained words of appreciation while also asking for advice on how to become a better coach.

Holy Cross head coach Bob Chesney was one of two coaches who responded.

Back then, Chesney did his homework on Kennedy and discovered the charity. He became that anonymous donor and eventually a future colleague.

More than a year after his anonymous donation, Chesney took a chance on Kennedy, hiring him to be his quarterbacks coach at Holy Cross. One year later, Kennedy was given offensive coordinator duties. Another year later, Kennedy followed Chesney to James Madison, where they spent two years constructing one of the top offenses in the country.

Last year, the Dukes were 11th in scoring at 37.1 points per game. The Sun Belt Conference champs advanced as the 12th and final seed in the College Football Playoff and drew fifth-seeded Oregon, long known for lighting up the scoreboard.

The Ducks took a 34-6 halftime lead in a Dec. 20 game that had all the makings of a laugher. James Madison lost by 17 but wound up finishing with 34 points and 509 yards of offense, both the most surrendered by the Ducks all season.

Roughly a week later, Chesney was hired as UCLA’s head coach and brought Kennedy, and several other assistants, with him to Westwood.

“I think that the assemblance of a staff is the most important part,” Chesney said on the Bruin Insider Show – UCLA Athletics’ radio show and podcast – during the week of his hiring.

“There’s people that I have to be loyal to that have been loyal to me. I did not get here by myself, and I won’t pretend I did.”

On Saturday, the ninth-ranked UCLA Bruins (6-0 overall, 4-0 Big Ten) will face Michigan State (2-5, 0-4) at the Rose Bowl. The offense has continued to flourish under Kennedy. The Bruins, seeking their first 7-0 start since 2005, lead the Big Ten with 231.0 rushing yards per game and 21 rushing touchdowns.

Even when returning starting quarterback Nico Iamaleava went down before halftime with a season-ending knee injury during the Bruins’ 17-15 upset of Oregon on Oct. 10 in Eugene, UCLA has kept rolling. Backup Ty Dieffenbach, in his first start for UCLA, completed 22 of 33 passes for 264 yards and engineered three scoring drives of 90 yards or more in a 17-7 victory over Wisconsin.

“You know, he was walking into an undefeated team starting his first game, and just the confidence that he had. You know, at the same point in time, we also said that we still have to be ourselves,” Kennedy told reporters Tuesday of the Cal Poly transfer. “And for him to be able to do that, you know, he had a really good game. He had a really, really good game. You’re talking about his first game too, right? Playing at this level.

“It was very, very efficient, and that’s what it’s got to be, right? Just because in every position at this point for us, we’ve had an injury here or there, right? So this is no different, right? We talk about it all the time. Next-man-up mentality, and he stepped up.”

Scituate High School basketball coach Matt Poirier remembered meeting Kennedy in the second grade and coached him throughout his youth. Kennedy was also a student of Poirier’s in the sixth grade where he had taught history classes on Ancient Greece and Rome. Poirier watched as Kennedy starred as a three-sport athlete in football, basketball and lacrosse before playing basketball and football, as a two-year starter at quarterback, at the University of Rochester in New York.

“He ended up being the guy who covered the best player on his opponent’s team,” Poirier said. “He was tough as nails. You can tell his journey as a coach, why people gravitate to him, because he will do anything. He’ll ask a lot of someone because he has done the work himself. It’s organic and real. You read it between the lines in how he carries himself.”

Kennedy carries a piece of the lessons Poirier taught him in his initial season with the Bruins.

“No shortcuts were allowed and he coached everybody so hard, but he loved everyone so much,” Kennedy said. “He was willing to pick anybody up. At any point, we had a lot of kids from our high school that came from the inner city of Boston and he’d pick them up in his car.

“You coach people really hard, and you love them really hard. And a lot of that stuff was starting to generate through my soul through seeing it as a young guy. I was lucky enough to be coached.”

From wrapping Christmas presents to constructing practice plans at Florida and now leading UCLA’s offense, Kennedy – with his authenticity and approach to relationships – helped his career grow.

“This profession is about connections,” Kennedy said. “A mentor told me to write notes to a million different people so you can start creating connections. I was a graduate assistant trying to move on and create my own niche in this profession.”

The time and relationships he spent cultivating had the indirect benefit of helping the people of Boston. And in the end, led him to success in Westwood.