Remembering Tarrytown's Legendary John Keels

When John Keels passed a few weeks ago, his granddaughter worried what becomes of heroes when they’re gone. Do people remember only a resumé, and not the man – or worse, do they forgot altogether.

Tiana Keels, for one, will not forget. In her lifetime, this man figures prominently as not only a great man for his community but a beloved grandfather.

Tiana, 27, grew up in Peekskill but she has many Tarrytown memories, where her grandfather spent his entire life – save for college in North Carolina – most of which were housed in the Tarrytown Community Opportunity Center that he founded.

"'Oh, you're John Keels' granddaughter,'" people would say to her when she came to visit. "It's nice to be known for what he's done."

Before the center came to be, his efforts actually started in his own home. He was practically a newlywed when he and his wife Bertie, not yet with their own children, started entertaining neighborhood kids in their own Franklin Court apartment. It was 1960 and they would have kids come over to watch movies or get help with their homework.

Not satisfied with this, “he was very pushy,” said Tiana. “It started with a softball team,” she said, and then he managed to win a grant to build a community center.

There was a trailer on site they operated out of while the center was getting built, and once there was a building they had no furniture. “But the community, the mayor, helped out,” Tiana said. John and his wife would often have to pay the staff through fundraising efforts like dances, but skip paying themselves. “A lot of their time was just spent volunteering.”

By 1965, the building was fully operational, and all its services free: kids feeding seniors, Bertie teaching after-school programs, an African-American social club, a baby clinic. “It was a home away from home for kids who didn’ t have a good home," Tiana said. "It was a day camp. A sports center.”

Sports was a particular passion of her grandfather, who played many – he boasts numerous trophies from what was then Washington Irving High School for track, basketball, baseball – but he focused on basketball in college. In fact, he apparently turned down a spot on the Harlem Globetrotters in order to focus on raising a family.

As a family they always went camping and fishing. He had three kids (one daughter predeceased him 11 years ago), two grandchildren, and one grandchild. His wife still lives at Sleepy Hollow Gardens. “He went to every softball game I played,” Tiana said.

Which is the same involved approach he took with this second family of his, the center. “He wasn’t one to just sit in his office and do paperwork,” Tiana said.

John wasn’t thrilled when it was time for him to retire. “He wasn’t ready; he felt it could have gone further, his work wasn’t complete,” Tiana said. Times of course had changed and a new generation was coming up that he felt he could have reached out to. “It was tough on him to have to let that go.”

He had just turned 78 when he died from a heart attack. This followed a stroke he suffered in October that landed him a nursing home, but his spirits there were high and the heart attack was “unexpected," Tiana said.

“He was in very good spirits,” Tiana said. “Suprisingly himself...joking.” She said she had only seen him mad maybe once in her lifetime. She holds the memory of him laughing, right up until the end of his life.

Her grandfather's funeral at Coffey Funeral Home “couldn’t have been more packed” – over 200 signed the book. And it seems Tiana’s worries are unfounded. “People who are kind of leaders get kind of lost when they pass. Those stories, his legacy, must live on.”

This lifelong Tarrytowner, will also get to rest here eternally, as the family found a spot for him in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

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