Bro. Joseph Keckeissen, SDB

Bro. Joseph Keckeissen, SDB
(1925-2011)

Most of this obituary was composed by Fr. Sergio Checchi, the secretary of the SDB Central American Province. Your humble blogger has contributed to it with resources available to him, including the photo.

 

Bro. Joseph Edward Keckeissen, a one-time member of the New Rochelle Province, died at Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, on the evening of April 3, 2011. He was 86 years old and had been professed as a clerical Salesian brother in the New Rochelle Province for 6 years and as a coadjutor brother in the Central American Province for 20 years. But the SDBs of Central America, where he was known as “Don Joe,” testify that he was a Salesian in his heart for his whole life. “Don Joe” was born in Brooklyn on Jan. 14, 1925. His parents were George Wilfred Keckeissen and Rita Grace McNally. When he was 12, they decided to send him to study at St. Michael’s School, a Salesian boarding school in Goshen, N.Y., 70 miles from home, for the 1937-1938 school year. There he first got to know an SDB coadjutor, Bro. Nicholas Pierro, with whom he formed a warm friendship and of whom he always kept a happy memory. He also got to know Fr. Ambrose Rossi, the SDB provincial in the U.S. at that time, who years later would bring him to Central America.

Joe spent just his eighth grade year at Goshen. He entered the Salesian high school seminary at Don Bosco College in Newton, N.J., where he spent what he called “seven happy years” (1938-1945). After graduating from high school in 1942, he entered the novitiate, also in Newton, and there made his profession as a clerical SDB brother on Sept. 8, 1943. He earned a B.A. in philosophy and then was sent out for practical training in the SDB houses of Marrero, La. (1945-1946), Tampa (1946-1947), and New Rochelle (1947-1949). 

At the end of the period of his temporary vows (Sept. 8, 1949), he decided, because of health problems and other reasons, not to continue with this vocation, and he left the Congregation. Shortly after, he went into the Army and served in the Korean War between 1950 and 1953 as a paratrooper with the rank of colonel. He remained in the Army Reserves from 1953 to 1985.

On his return to the States he sought to complete his education and enrolled in the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University (1954-1955), where he earned an MBA. He went to work for the Humble Oil and Refining Company as an accountant, auditor, and programmer in the new section for information (1955-1962). Meanwhile, he started a doctoral program in the Stern School of Business at New York University, where he obtained a PhD in economics.

During this period he had the happy idea of writing to Fr. Rossi, who was working in San Salvador, El Salvador. To him he proposed to return to the SDBs. There were letters, dialog, reflection. And on Dec. 27, 1962, he went to San Salvador and placed himself at the disposition of Fr. Segundo DeBernardi, the Central American provincial. The following year he entered the novitiate at Ayagualo, El Salvador, but he had to quit on account of his health and return to the U.S. for medical attention—which gave him the chance to complete his doctoral studies (the degree was awarded in 1976).
Recovered, he was invited in 1971 to come back to Central America and work with the province treasurer, but without thought of becoming an SDB. In a short while he was sent to Guatemala to teach economics in Francisco Marroquin University (UFM), which was starting up, and he was made chairman of the economics department from 1973 on. He continued this role with loving dedication until very recently and was appreciated very much by his students. In his teaching he was a strong advocate of the philosophy of freedom. In New York he had studied under Ludwig von Mises, who encouraged him to apply Catholic social teaching to the free market system in order to humanize it. He wrote many articles and gave many conferences along such lines. 

In 2001 he told The Beacon, the newspaper of the Paterson, N.J., diocese that it’s not enough for the Church to have a “preferential option for the poor”; the Church must find practical ways to solve the problems that keep people poor in countries like Guatemala. He said. “The Holy Father wants practical solutions, not just pious concerns. For that, he believes, we must follow the sound principles of economic science.”*

 

As an example, he cited farming and marketing methods common in Guatemala: “The technology is medieval, the process erodes the land and the poor campesinos break their backs, without truck transportation, to get the sacks of corn to the market. If we don’t find a way to overhaul this obsolete system, we will never be able to get them out of the poverty cycle.”

Don Joe was a professor at UFM from 1972 to 1993 and again from 1995 to 2010. In 1994 he taught at Don Bosco University in Soyapango, El Salvador. In 1989 UFM awarded him an honorary doctorate in social sciences. 

Without doubt there remained hidden in Don Joe his old love for Don Bosco. He admitted one day: “I always kept within me the desire of being a Salesian. I tried to live out Don Bosco’s spirit and to collaborate in a thousand ways with the Salesian work. Therefore during a retreat in 1986, I got the idea of trying to return to the Congregation. My old master of novices supported me; so did many other Salesians.” 

The Rector Major allowed his readmission to the novitiate in Central America in 1989. “And so,” Bro. Joe continues, “on Sept. 8, 1990, I had the joy of being admitted to religious vows a second time after so many years of exile.” He made his perpetual profession on Sept. 25, 1993.

From then on, living in various SDB works in Guatemala—the last 15 years at Quetzaltenango—he was a model of what an SDB coadjutor brother should be, dedicated to his academic responsibilities. 

In October 2010 he suffered a serious “vascular incident” in his brain, which caused fear for his life. For a while he seemed to be recovering slowly. But then a new series of hemorrhages caused his death—or, more properly, brought him to his meeting with the Risen Christ.

 

* Interview with Maura Rossi, The Beacon, Aug. 30, 2001.