"Bill Keating"
Who hasn't wondered about Bill Keating over the last fifty years? I don't think there's been a reunion, barbecue, or any SCU get-together when Bill's name hasn't come up. It felt like he just disappeared one day after Santa Clara U., and leaving the rest of us rearview mirror. Doesn't he know we just don't do that?
So indeed, whatever happened to Bill Keating?"
*******
Please allow me to digress a moment...
Bill and I were not close friends. Forgive me for saying so, but we weren't. This sounds way more onerous than it actually was. In truth though, it was just college life. That being said, Bill and I were "well enough aquatinted" back in the day. The truth too is that Bill was one of the good guys. Me, I was just a weirdo who showed up at the same parties he did, or did things like hit the same bong with our mutual folks in common. Maybe because of this it feels strange to be writing these things down now, or even to have a need to say so. Writing things down like "well enough acquainted" or "one of the good guys" feels like writing about some "lost chapter" of our lives, or a "chapter in between."
In the end, maybe that's all any of us are. But then again, I digress.
One thing Bill and I did have in common was a keen and mutual affection for the automobile business. For Bill, there was absolutely no other car than a fricken Ford. He was especially loyal to "Henry" himself, and Ford Motor Company as his father (a man of the same name) was an big time executive there. As my own con artist father was a "Mopar Guy," a Dodge Dealer with corny TV commercials broadcasting all the way to Sanfilippo Hall, I was, of course, by utter necessity loyal only to Chrysler's brands.
All this made for a good and friendly rivalry between Bill and me. (Who would have thought such a discussion could in the end prove so relevant?) Largely however, we just grimaced at each other from our respective corners of Club 66 and stood our ground about which car or brand was in a word, superior. (Wouldn't Bill laugh to know that in my "grown-up years" I spent nearly twenty years affiliated with Ford Motor Company myself.)
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/163278849/william_joseph_keating
I think the best discussion Bill and I ever had about our "rival automobile manufacturers" came one day off campus when someone asked, "What sort of car was President Kennedy assassinated in?" (Nothing like the spark of a good disagreement over a morose subject) Bill of course quite naturally argued that Kennedy had been shot in the back of a Lincoln Town Car. I immediately argued that he'd been assassinated in, what else, but a Chrysler Imperial.
Bill, you were so right. I lost that bet.
Anyway, I don't think anyone needs to look for Bill Keating anymore. I don't have a lot of details, but Bill appears to have died in 2016 there in Omaha. I base this on the information in the obituary above, but more so, that this is "the correct Bill Keating" we've all wondered about for fifty years or so as he is very likely confirmed by the information contained in the obituary for his father below:
As a lot of you know, digging in this age of the internet it's sometimes too easy to find what you're looking for. It saddens me to be the guy who gets to tell everybody that Bill has been dead for several years now. Why the Hell couldn't I have found him through his father's Ford connections in the late 1990s? I'd certainly rather be telling you that he's retired on some private island in the Florida Keys and has invited us all down to party on the Ford Yacht. I'd rather be telling you that he's working on the next generation of electrified Mark VIIIs.
Sure wish I could.
Come to think of it I may just go with that "island in the Florida Keys" theory anyway ...
It's ironic to me that "the discussion" Bill and I always maintained, that about "Ford versus Chrysler" would be the one tool I would have to identify him by - even all these years later and even in death.
Please, I'd like it now if someone would tell me that I'm wrong about Bill - and that indeed Bill's ok.
But for now I just gotta say, "Rest in peace, Mr. Keating."
The Lincoln Town Car I owe you is on the way.
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