Fred Keith:
CLASS OF 1954
Murphy High SchoolClass of 1954
Atlanta, GA
Kirkwood Elementary SchoolClass of 1949
Atlanta, GA
Fred's Story
Graduated from Georgia Tech in 1959 with a degree in mechanical engineering. Spent 6 months in Army Corps of Engineers at Ft. Benning, GA to satisfy ROTC obligation. Korean War had ended, and Army did not need more second lieutenants - hence the short term. Thought about a military career, but my brother (MHS '52, GT 57') was starting a business in Atlanta and decided to join him.
Meanwhile married Margaret Rudisill (MHS 1955, Tift College '59) June 6, 1958, and had a son Fred Jr. September 4, 1959. A daughter, Anna, followed 18 months later on March 29, 1961.
In 1968 left business with brother and entered Columbia Theological Seminary. In 1971 received MDiv. degree and was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church. In 1990 finally finished my doctoral dissertation and received my DMin., so I was officially The Rev. Dr. Fred Keith. From 1971 until 2003 served churches in Northport, AL; Birmingham, AL; Mt. Pleasant, SC, and Lynn Haven, FL. Retired 12/31/2003.
Went through lots of hobbies/activities: raised and showed English Bulldogs; built classical guitars; ran 10k and 15k races; hang gliding in the mountains of TN, SC, AL, and Hawaii (the most exhilarating was a flight from the 10,000' Haleakala on Maui); windsurfing, scuba diving, and sailing in Florida.
In 2004, I became "The Reverend Doctor Captain Fred Keith" - kinda rolls off the tongue, doesn't it - when I launched my home built 42' sailboat "Sanctuary" (named by my church secretary, so if I was home working on the boat instead at the church, she could truthfully tell people I was in the sanctuary).
Margaret and I have sailed her about 12,000 miles in the past 8 years including one trip to Isla Mujeres, Mexico, and a number of trips down to the Florida Keys. Sadly, the boat is now for sale on my website (sailboatsanctuary.com) in case you have a few $'s you want to spend.
I supply preach occasionally and do boat repair, mostly interior and exterior teak wood work, to generate what I call "found money", and since I "found" it I can blow it on anything that strikes my fancy which mostly means a new machine or tool for my woodshop. I am also slowly refurbishing our house - one bedroom and two baths to go.
Margaret and I are sensing ourselves at a crossroad. The kids and our 2 grandchildren, all in Birmingham, AL, want us to move closer, but when I suggested we move in with them, they began to waffle. Actually I kinda' like it the way it is. We are close enough (4 1/2 hours) to stay in the loop of their lives, but not close enough that we have to worry every time one of them gets the sniffles. Time will tell, and it is beginning to tell on Margaret and me.
In 2013 Margaret and I will celebrate the 55th anniversary of our wedding. That would be a long time if either of us was the same person we were 55 years ago. But we have had far more good times than bad, and hopefully done more good than bad along the way.
My beloved boat "Sanctuary" is sold now and on her way to Green Bay, Wisconsin. The new owners left here on June 26, 2013 to follow the river system north from Mobile, Alabama. During most of this past year while Sanctuary was on the market, I thought that selling her meant the end of my sailboat cruising life. I grieved over that until my son and I started out on a "last sail" on Sanctuary. Half way to our destination I realized it was not fun anymore, so we turned around and came back home. Selling Sanctuary was not the end of my sailing life. The fingers of Mother Nature and Father Time are the villains that struck the "period" key to end that life. Sailboat cruising is a marvelous life, but spending 24/7 in a habitat that is constantly in motion is taxing on the body - especially on an old body. I was just 64 when I began construction of Sanctuary, 68 when she was launched, but 77 when she was sold. The only thing I regret about my Sanctuary experience, is that it did not begin ten years sooner.
What's next? I don't know. I still work repairing boats, but it may not be the same as when I was "The Reverend Doctor, Captain Fred Keith." "Captain" is gone with the sale of Sanctuary, and since I rarely preach anymore "Rev. Dr." is pretty much gone. I guess all that is left is "The". Perhaps as long as that does not become "The late Fred Keith," I will be okay.
Our house was flooded on July 4, 2013 when our area experienced 17 inches of rain. We had only about one inch on the floors, but since we had five house-guests, no toilets working, and the only entrance to our neighborhood blocked by 3 feet of water, it was a little gruesome. Though not in a flood plain, we carry flood insurance. (Worrying about not having something as cheap as flood insurance is senseless!) I thought about hiring a contractor to fix the house, but since I do not have a personal boat to work on anymore, and since I could plead a hardship case and get out of the boat job I did have, I decided to do the work on my house. After more than 300 hours labor, everything is finished now except the two bathrooms - which I was going to refurbish anyway. Master bathroom is gutted, and I am ready to begin the electrical/plumbing/tile work . My knees are beginning to show their age as much of this work is a hands-and-knees job. Anyway, wife says, "Back to work". It is her bathroom that is torn up!
On February 13, 2014 I put the finishing touches on the guest bathroom, and that completes the refurbishing of our entire house. The next day we had a realtor in to begin the process of selling another of my babies - first the boat, and now the house, both within a year of each other. But without the boat there is nothing keeping us on the Gulf coast of Florida, and Margaret and I both feel like it is time to rejoin the children we moved away from in 1985. If the process of selling and buying a house goes smoothly, we should celebrate our 56th wedding anniversary in Birmingham, Alabama with our family there. But it is not easy. Selling the boat after 14 years was hard, and selling the house after 21 years is also hard. This house is, in every way, our home. We did not raise our children here, in fact we raised them in 5 different houses, but we have kinda' grown old here, and memories seem more valuable now than when we were young. Memories seem to attach themselves more securely to places now. I guess I am something of a spiritual sentimentalist. I believe that part of a person's spirit comes to inhabit things intimately associated with that person.
Now, it seems the first step in the moving process is deciding and separating what you are going to take, and what you are going to leave. We may just move everything, and let our kids one day wonder what in the hell we were thinking!
Well, that thinking process did not last long. We signed a contract to sell our house here in Lynn Haven, FL the first week it was on the market. That weekend we signed a contract to buy a house in Birmingham, AL that had been on the market for four days - after looking at hundreds online and 52 houses in person - a brutal process!
We bought a house in an old area near downtown Birmingham called Crestwood that is being "gentrified" by an influx of medical and college types associated with the University of Alabama Birmingham and the University medical complex - two entities that have become the heart and soul of Birmingham since the steel mills closed in the 1980's,
The house we are buying was built in 1954 - the year I graduated from dear ol' Murphy High. It has been meticulously maintained, but never refurbished. The neighborhood is similar to the one where Margaret and I grew up - Kirkwood and East Lake.
We are saddened to leave our house here, our friends, and a community we thoroughly enjoy - our home for the past 21 years. However, we are excited about our new location and new prospects for happiness, but we are most excited about being near our children and grandchildren for the first time since we moved away from them in 1985.
Well, things did not go smoothly, of course. Over a period of almost four months, we actually sold our house in Lynn Haven three times - or at least signed three contracts. Two failed to secure financing, but the third one was the charm. It has been a trial, but we have no regrets about our decision to move to Birmingham.
When we moved away from our children in 1985, we were so engrossed in the life of the churches we were to serve that the absence of our children from our lives was muffled. But living near them now has made us aware of how much we missed. We have always maintained occasional visits and close telephone contact with our children and grandchildren, but having one of them drop by, going to get a hamburger together, and sharing in their life experiences is altogether a different thing. We are thoroughly enjoying ourselves, and having bought an old house gives me an agenda that satisfies my need to make things over in my own image.
Nearly Christmas 2014 now. I have worked seven days a week since we moved getting the house like we wanted it. Brought in a new electrical service and rewired the basement for my wood shop plus added some new machines I wanted. One thing I have learned in life is the difference between "wants" and "needs". At a superficial level, "wants" are more important, and far more rewarding to satisfy than "needs", but at the profound level, "needs" and their satisfaction actually define a life.
Over the years, as I have become more introspective, I have come to recognize the power of my need for, and search for, a PLACE. In fact, that need and the search to satisfy it, actually defines my life. I had often castigated myself for lacking a life plan, or even a career plan. There seemed no intentionality in my decisions, and I decried that omission.
However, while working on my doctorate at Columbia Theological Seminary, a beginning task I was given was to discover and analyze a model that described my ministry. What I di...Expand for more
scovered was that while my ministry encompassed the usual variety of ministerial activities, the post that held up the umbrella under which all those activities occurred was my need for, and search for a PLACE. Beyond that, I also discovered the same model applied to my personal life as well. There was the intentionality I thought was lacking in my life. It actually made sense of my life, and revealed the rationality behind the decisions and choices that guided my seemingly random, and meandering path.
I'm sorry folks. If you have read this far you must be aware that this autobiography is becoming a book that is growing in the wrong place. I will end this after having told you far more than you want to know.
Well, I guess I am adding another chapter - a chapter I would never choose to write, and never seriously contemplated.The beginning of 2016 brought with it my first major illness, and the death of my brother, Richard. Colon cancer was the illness, and it has been successfully removed. Lab results indicate I need no further treatment. However, still in the hospital, I was celebrating that good news, and making plans to do what the doctor said I could do - put the cancer behind me and get on with my life - I was told that my brother had died.
It will be a while before I can put that behind me and get on with my life. There is a great hole in my heart and in my life. Though Richard was two years older, we were more like twins than simply brothers. The circumstances of our youth bound us together. We played the same games, shared many of the same friends, went to the same schools, simultaneously had our first employment - paper carriers for the Atlanta Journal. But perhaps more important to building the bonds between us were the summers spent on our grandparents farm in Tennessee. Every summer from grade school until high school, Richard and I spent three months together, two kids in a household of adults. We were free to roam the 800 acres of fields and mountains, free to devise our own pastimes, free to explore and build forts in the hay loft, free to dare each other to enter the cave where water for the farms animals originated. It was a time of curiosity and adventure and play. It was a time that created bonds between Richard and I that were never loosened.
Since Richard died, I have thought a lot about why we meant so much to each other. One reason was we shared a philosophy of life that many people might find alien. "You cannot claim something as an accomplishment, when someone else built it, and you just bought it."
Richard and I spent a lifetime building things, and sharing our accomplishments with each other. We each understood the skill, patience, and knowledge that was required to create something of value and beauty. And we celebrated that in one another. Whether it was some job Richard did in his engraving business, or something he built in his basement wood shop for a child, grandchild or friend, he showed it to me and told me about it. And I did the same. We spent a lifetime showing our report cards to each other.
And it was never a competition. It was simply sharing a gift we both had received - the gift of deriving great, personal satisfaction from making things, taking a piece of metal or stack of wood and creating something of lasting value, perhaps even an heirloom to be passed from generation to generation. Sure, you can go and buy a cradle, or a rocking horse, or a toy chest, or even a boat, but Richard and I would both ask, "Where is the satisfaction in that?"
As I related earlier, Richard and I spent our lives making things, and sharing the joy and sense of accomplishment with each other. I have committed to make a final project to share with Richard - an urn in which to bury his ashes.
On every visit with us in Florida we went to the boatyard where I sometimes worked, and Richard just soaked in the atmosphere of boats. Richard loved boats, and over the years owned probably a dozen.
And there is nothing more intimately associated with boats than Teak. For a number of years, I have been keeping a beautiful Teak board, waiting for a special project, and now I have that project. I will use it for Richard's urn.
Making this urn will not bring closure for me. Perhaps time will do that, but for now, making the urn will be therapy. It will be the goodbye I was not able to say to Richard before he died.
We buried my brother, Richard, this past Saturday, May 14, 2016. I am thankful I was able to lead the memorial service and make the urn in which Richard's ashes were buried. Both were my tribute to him.
But more significant to me was that we honored Richard's three wishes concerning his burial. First, that he be buried "up home" which is what all of us call Huntland, Tennessee - our ancestral home for 130 years. Second, that he be buried next to our mother. And third, that his old dog "Duffy" be buried with him. Actually, Richard's and Duffy's ashes were both placed in the urn.
I do not think there is any such thing as "closure", for I will miss Richard all my days, but something did happen to me at his burial. I came home with a sense of satisfaction, a sense of restoration of my spirit, which had been at a low ebb since his death. I think this renewed spark in my life has to do with the fact that we fulfilled the three wishes Richard expressed about his burial. It was a sense, not of closure, but of completion.
Had my one-year-after-cancer-surgery checkup procedure yesterday, January, 2017. All clear! Could not ask for better than that. Next checkup in two years. Time now to start my next remodeling project - guest bathroom tear-out and re-do.
Have pretty much finished remodeling our house here in Birmingham. I guess I should feel elated, but I do not. I feel a little bit lost. Nothing driving me to get up early and work until late. My daughter once commented that I measure myself every day by what I have accomplished that day. Sounds a little pathological, but I recognize myself there. As I get older I also recognize that it is more and more difficult to accomplish things I consider significant.
Since I finished re-doing the guest bathroom in April, 2017, have been working in the yard. It had been neglected for many years, and was more jungle than lawn, However, it is not nearly as satisfying as re-doing the house interior. Mother Nature is not nearly as compliant with my wishes as are walls and floors and doors. If fact, she can be downright contrary - sometimes, I think, even hostile. Somehow I never felt that way about a wall, even if it was in the wrong place. I could just move it, My yard slopes significantly, and since Mother Nature has decreed that water flows downhill, I have laid about 400 bricks to form barriers and terraces to control and channel the water. It is coming along, but it is just work, and a compromise with the way I really want it.
It is now November 2017, and as I have mentioned earlier, the older I get the more introspective I become. It sometimes seems as pointless as navel gazing, but even there you might find an interesting piece of lint. I have started looking at the decisions I have made over the years, and have discovered that there are actually few real, analyzed, thoughtful decisions. Until I was 32 years old, I pretty much lived in the box. Going to Georgia Tech and becoming a mechanical engineer was not really a decision. It was more accurately simply walking on the path before me, a path that had been there since I was a young child. I did not choose it; I unquestioningly followed it.
Marriage, children, entering business with my brother, none involved an analytical decision making process. Margaret and I had been exclusively dating for five years, and marriage was the next step on that path. We never decided to have children; we simply welcomed them as the normal consequence of being married. Entering business with my brother, instead of going to the job I had accepted at graduation with Collins Radio in Dallas, Texas, did not immerse me in deep considerations of the enormous effect it would have on our lives. It was just the next, natural step on the path laid out by the overarching intentionality in my life - an intentionality driven by my need for a "place." I had my place - my family, my home, my business, my church - all stepping stones on a path that seemed to naturally unfold before me, and bid me to follow. But a storm was brewing, and I was totally unequipped to weather it.
I loved working with my brother every day, and I enjoyed making things, which is what we did in our business, The customer would send us a drawing and we would take a piece of metal and turn it into the object, or 10 or 100 or a 1,000 objects, described by the drawing. Over time, as we added more employees, Richard and I did less"making", and more supervising others and managing a business. Inevitably, the focus shifted from making things to making money. I do not mean to sound like an anti-capitalist for I am not. But for me, it was not the same. Something essential was eroding.
"Classmates" has just informed me that my story has filled all space allowed for it. so I will simply tell you the conclusion at which I have arrived: Success is when you have found your place in life, embraced it, and lived it to the fullest. I have found my place in a number of different settings - in business, in ministry, in retirement. I loved them all, and poured myself into them. I made where ever I was "my place". Yes, I have sometimes wondered what my life would have been had I chosen different paths as they presented themselves. But I know that you can no more truly envision a past that did not happen, than you can truly envision a future that has not happened. Were I to die tomorrow, I could not feel cheated by life. Perhaps I was simply skillful at choosing the right situations, or perhaps I was simply living the life God set before me. Grateful. is the response.
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