Encounters with the Elders: Joe Keever Talks about Life and Sport

Reprinted from Turns and Distances, a publication of the Officials Committee of the Pacific Associaton USA Track & Field, with permission of Official Joe Keever.

09.15.2014 T&D Conversation With Joe Keever
Encounters with the Elders: Joe Keever Talks about Life and Sport
By Bruce Colman
Joe Keever has the distinction of being second-oldest still-working official in Pacific Association.
At virtually any meet held at Stanford, UC Berkeley, College of San Mateo, DeAnza College—or at Cal Poly-SLO’s annual two-day meet—look for Joe at the throwing venues, often working with colleagues he has recruited or organized to help with the meet.
Over cheese and crackers at his newly re-built home in the Dos Palos neighborhood of Los Altos—xeriscaping out front; vegetable garden and fruit trees in the back yard--he talked with Turns and Distances about his athletic career, his volunteer work, and his officiating practices.
BC: You took an unusual route into officiating. Tell us about it.
JK: One day I was driving around Stanford and saw all these athletes around the track, and thought, what’s going on?
I parked the car and walked over to the hammer cage. John Luppes, was working the hammer and I said, “What’s going on here?” He told me a little bit about it. I said “How do I get involved?” So that was it. He introduced me right then to Rich Zulaica the certification chairman. We talked on the phone. He sent me the rule book and test. I got certified in 1999. I haven’t been around that long compared to some of you folks, you gray beards.
BC: Growing up, did you compete in athletics?
JK: I’ve always been involved in athletics, even back in Ohio.
BC: Ohio? So you’re not from around here. Where did you actually grow up?
JK: We moved from the inner city of Cleveland to a suburb, Bay Village, A small town situated right on Lake Erie, a beautiful place to grow up. That’s where I went to high school.
BC: Okay, back to sports.
JK: In high school, I threw the discus, the shot and played football and basketball. We had a relatively small school. My claim to fame in football is that I made All County, so I was recruited by some well-known coaches, including Woody Hayes, Wes Fesler, you probably never heard of him, he was the Ohio State coach at the time, and also Bernie Biermann at Minnesota.
We ran a single wing, and I was the end. I cleared the way, and did fairly well.
I chose to go to Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, because my coach, Jack Llewellyn, was an all-Ohio fullback there and in fact, Woody Hayes recruited me to Miami, he was the varsity coach and I was on the freshman team. The next year he went to Ohio State and Ara Parseghian became my coach, my second year.
Well, I got hurt and I saw I wasn’t going to go anywhere, so I quit.
But I stayed on the track team and threw the discus.
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BC: What was your PR?
JK: I’d be embarrassed to tell you, because any ninth grade girl could beat it now. But my claim to fame is we were going over to Ball State for a meet, which was right across from Miami, in Indiana, and Coach Rider stood up on the bus and said, “Anyone ever throw the javelin?”
I said, I did, because one of my coaches in Ohio, gave me one of his javelins from college. It was wooden and broken, but I fixed it and used it to practice. Anyway, I was entered in the javelin and I won, because the rest of them were worse than I was.
But in the discus in high school, I made the state finals and I came either eighth or ninth in the state of Ohio, but I was the only left-hander who made the finals. So I say that at the time I was the best left-hander throwing the discus in the state.
BC: You carry something unusual in your bag—beyond the usual rule books, clip boards, pencils, jackets and such.
JK: One thing I carry is plastic ties because at some of the schools, I need to repair the netting. Where there’s an opening, I’ll twist-tie it together. As an example, at Cal Poly, theirs is a disaster. I’ve put up quite a few twist ties there to repair the cage and make it safe. The first thing that I do when I go to a venue is walk around the cage and see what kind of shape this thing is in and see if it needs a little repair.
BC: Then we have observed you doing a special ritual with athletes.
JK: I like to pick an imaginary line and line the throwers up according to the throwing order. Then I ask them, look to your right and that’s the handsome dude you’re going to follow. During the competition, they then know who they’re going to follow and can get ready so there’s no time lag. That’s the reason I do it.
BC: Do you line them up again before finals?
JK: I have, but usually not.
BC: What is the A Team?
JK: We have a very close group of throws officials, plus Baird Lloyd, who’s a horizontals jumps specialist, and so for some reason years ago I would put out a plea for help for an upcoming meet, at whatever school we were going officiate. And all of a sudden, we named it the A Team, just to make sure that we’re the best.
So I would put out a notice that, okay, guys, we’re going to Cal a week from Friday, who’s available? That evolved to where I would put out a monthly calendar. I narrowed it down to the local meets. Some of us have played golf together. The last few years, Deanna Bower, has hosted a potluck at her house for the A team. Deanna is a long-time throws official. We have a great group and enjoy working together.
BC: How can people join the A Team? Or can they?
JK: I recruit qualified throws officials.
BC: Tell us about your military service.
JK: I actually washed out of the Air Force with high blood pressure, but I was allowed to go back to school, to finish. I had a semester to go, then I was drafted. This was ’53 or ’54. Nineteen, not eighteen, thank you very much.
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I went to basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and was shipped to the Signal Corps at Camp Gordon, Georgia. Eventually I became a platoon sergeant, in charge of about 90 soldiers. My job was to teach them communications. Unfortunately, those men, many of them, were sent to Korea. That was near the end of the Korean War.
The Army wanted to find out, in times of conflict, if they could effectively teach soldiers all over the country over television. They chose what I was teaching as ideal for the experiment. This is to show you how you luck into things. Private Downey--I remember his name--and I tried out for the position. He had such a deep southern drawl, they couldn’t understand him, so I got the job by default. Every Monday and Tuesday, I would teach over television and my face and voice went to Army classrooms and movie theaters all over the east coast.
We did that for about a year. Interestingly, I was the only non-New York-network person in the studio, and it was my program. Everyone else was from NBC, ABC and I think CBS. So I was the rookie in the studio.
In fact, I would have stayed in if the program continued, but the Army brass found out what they wanted to know and the program was discontinued. So I was discharged and joined the reserves for about 8 years. But a very interesting thing to do in the Army. I was very lucky. Oh, another interesting Army experience. In 1955 a bunch of us were recruited to be marshals at the Masters in Augusta Ga. Dr. Middlecolf won that year.
BC: Then from the Army you went to…
JK: I started out as an IBM salesman. Funny, I was not a good student in college, in fact I graduated near the bottom of my class. IBM was the most difficult company to get in at the time. My transcript came in before I was hired and my manager, Dick Surface, said, “What’s this?, you graduated near the bottom of your class.” But I told him that I’m in the top 2% of all males in the country and I graduated, so he hired me. And I made the 100% Club my first year, so I did well with IBM for five years. Then I went with Merrill Lynch for about five years and later EF Hutton. I was in the investment business for 42 years.
BC: Did that bring you to California?
JK: I had a chance to move my business from Cleveland in 1983 and open an office in Danville with Prudential Securities. And then after about 10 years we moved down here to Los Altos.
BC: Now you and Mrs. Keever have had a lot of drama in this house.
JK: November 8, 2011, right after midnight, the smoke alarm went off. Shirley woke up first then woke me. Down the hallway, we could see, the entire other end was ablaze. We could see the smoke coming at us. There was a short in the fish tank and that’s what started it. The fireman said, in two minutes, you would not have made it out. Interestingly enough, Shirley had bought a new cell phone that day. In the house, the electricity was out. So that was her first call, to 911.
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Within a few minutes, the fire department came and also News Channel 5. They evacuated the houses on either side of us as a precaution. No one was hurt.
We were treated relatively well by the insurance company. We hired an outside company to represent us with State Farm. We could not have done it by ourselves and for that we paid a fee. We are very pleased with how the house turned out. It took almost two years. It shouldn’t have taken that long but as we would make changes that added to the time.
Anyway, we got all the upgrades, including a ceiling sprinkler system, which is now code in our town. Overall, we’re very pleased with the outcome. We had two different places that we lived in that two years. A house around the corner here, and then finally an apartment in Sunnyvale. But here we are.
Oh, and we had no furniture. It all burned up. So we not only have a new house, but new furniture. Also I had about 20 pairs of pants that hung in the closet. We were paid on all 20, at a reduced price, but only two fit anyhow, so it didn’t make any difference.
BC: You do quite a bit of volunteer work in the community, we understand.
JK: Every Tuesday, I’m at the Ronald McDonald House, been there almost nine years. I volunteer with the families, tending to their needs and so on.
Prior to that I taught aeronautics to school kids at NASA for about eight years. I had a run-in with the head of the department over there and I lost. So that’s when I started at the Ronald McDonald House.
I’m also at the Veterans Administration once a week, been there about 9 years, except in the summer, because the high school kids take over. I work with Bill Hawkes there, another track and field official.
We volunteer in the patient escort office. We escort the patients in wheelchairs or gurneys to their appointments. They’re all soldiers or veterans.
Joe teamed with Bill Hawkes to mark the hammer.
And I do it to help and it’s close by, it’s good exercise, and I feel like I’m contributing.
I do a lot of mystery shopping. I shop car dealers, apartments, banks, and stock brokers. This is checking on customer service, making sure the people are following the company guidelines. Shirley and also have “shopped” restaurants.
During the school year, I’m a Red Coat at Stanford. Technically, that’s Guests Services. We do anything to make visiting teams, our teams, visiting parents, coaches--anything to make them feel welcome.
I have worked most of the sports over there. Stanford has 35 NCAA sports, eighteen women and seventeen men, and I probably have worked most of them. It’s paid. You get to know some of the athletes, a lot of the parents and coaches.
Every Christmas morning, I’m at the VA, and I sing, with a group, in the wards to the soldiers and veterans that are in the hospital.
BC: Are you trained as a singer?
JK (laughing): No.
JK: When not officiating, I like to play golf. During the off season for track and field, I usually play once a week and with the same guys for many years.
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BC: What do you think are the qualities, attitudes, knowledge and skills a Pacific Association official should bring to the field of play?
JK: First of all, you have to have the time and a commitment. You can’t do a meet a month, I don’t think. If you’re going to do it, let’s do it. So you have to have the time, probably retired or semi-retired, and be willing to work, sometimes, in the hot sun.
I think it’s one of our obligations to look for people who we think are potential good recruits and bring them in. Talk to the people leaning over the fence that you see there every week, and parents, and every once in a while you’ll get somebody who will make a good official.
I think all officials should take it on their shoulder to talk to other people whom you think would make a good official. They don’t come to us, we have to go to them.
BC: Finally, one of our colleagues asked that you tell the Wild Boar Story.
JK: I was the manager of the Cleveland branch of EF Hutton for about 10 years and sponsored a family picnic for all employees every year. Games, gifts, and a cookout.
One year I decided to have a wild pig roast at one of these outings. One of my brokers belonged to a hunting preserve in southern Ohio. We decided if he would go down--200 miles or so---shoot a pig and I would arrange to fly down and bring it back.
I was a private pilot and part owner of a Cessna 172. John drove to southern Ohio and went hunting and did indeed shoot a wild pig. He had it frozen since it wouldn't fit in his car. We both flew down a few weeks later--just before the family picnic--to pick it up.
So here was the problem. It was frozen with the legs extended. We had a real chore getting the pig into the airplane plus the two of us. Well, we managed with some help from the manager of the preserve to finally get the pig into the plane.
We flew back to Burke Lakefront Airport in downtown Cleveland without any problem. The tower directed me to a location since I told him we had some things to unload. He allowed my friend to bring his truck to the plane.
Now here's the interesting part. We had trouble getting the pig out of the plane. The tower thought we had a human body since it was wrapped in canvas--and he summoned the police. Two cars came with their lights flashing--one car on either side of the plane and guns drawn. Yep. We were frightened.
Once they saw it was not a human body, but a frozen pig, they helped us get it out of the plane and into my friend’s truck. Quite a short term frightening experience for us--with a happy ending.
Oh--the pig roast was a success
BC: How long will you keep officiating, do you think?
JK: I’d like to do it as long as I can. I can always do something. I don’t work in the field anymore. I haven’t done that in a number of years. But I can run the board. That is, call them up, call fouls, run the event.
I think it’s great working with these young folks. Some come in and some haven’t the foggiest idea what they’re doing. It’s fun to watch them progress and great to get to know them on a personal level.
I admire excellence.
BC would like to thank Don Collins, Shirley Connors, Sonny Maynard and (of course) Margaret Sheehan for their help with this interview.