Bob Keefe 1938 – 2026
Loomis Village resident Robert (Bob) Keefe, known for his acerbic wit and evocative writing, died on September 29, 2026 at Baystate Medical Center following a period of declining health. His wife Jan was at his side.
Bob was born in Natick MA into a colorful, hardscrabble family he called chaotic and ultimately dysfunctional. Neither his mother, grandmother or older brother went beyond the 8th grade, and his father was absent, but Bob taught himself to read by age four. He was an early patron of the Cochituate town library but learned only what and when he wanted at Wayland High School. There he held the dubious distinction of most school days skipped by any student in both his junior and senior year. He preferred to educate himself at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and The Gardiner Museum.
Because his working-class family relied on public assistance, Bob held several jobs while in high school, including caddy, farmhand, grocery store clerk and restaurant worker. His dream job then was to become a short-order cook. Upon graduating in 1956, Bob enlisted in the Air Force on a whim because his best friend had.
There his gift for languages was immediately apparent. He was selected to study Russian at an Air Force language school at Syracuse University and was valedictorian of his class. He then became an airborne Russian “intercept operator”—an airborne spy. Stationed in Frankfurt, Germany, his unit flew as a target along the border of the Soviet Union, listening to Russian pilots’ chitchat and enticing them to give chase and thus reveal holes in the Soviet defense network.
It was dangerous work. In 1961, a plane with 13 members of Bob’s unit, including his best friend, was shot down by the Russians over Soviet Armenia. The loss shaped Bob’s life. He suffered from survivor’s guilt and PTSD, often speaking and writing about it, notably in an article entitled “Ashes of my Friends”and a book, The Price of Vigilance.
After five years in the Air Force, Bob was awarded full scholarships to Brandeis and Princeton Universities, completing both his BA and PhD in English Literature in a record-setting seven years while working full time as a night watchman. He joined the English Department at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst to teach the English Novel and Victorian Literature. In his more than 40 years there, Bob also served as Director of the Honors College and Director of Graduate Studies, a position that he especially enjoyed. He published two scholarly books: Charlotte Bronte’s World of Death and Walter Pater and the Gods of Disorder, co-authored with his wife Jan.
In four of those years, Bob’s favorites, he was an exchange professor at Freiburg, Germany, and was also a two- time director of the UMass-Freiburg Exchange Program. Jan and Bob visited virtually every European country, Jan as trip planner and Bob as driver/translator. Always a lover of languages, Bob taught himself French, Italian and Spanish, in addition to the Russian and German he’d learned in the Air Force, and he could also make himself understood in Dutch, Danish and Portuguese.
Bob loved music, both classical and jazz; he played lead trumpet in his high school band and bugle in the Air Force Drum and Bugle Corps, mostly to escape the rigors of Basic Training. He passed his talent and love of music to daughter Erin Keefe, now an internationally-known violinist. From the time she was eight, Bob drove her several times a week to a program for gifted child musicians at the Hartt School of Music in West Hartford. He also took up the violin to practice with Erin, but said she had surpassed him by the age of nine.
Bob and Jan moved from their longtime home in Northampton to Loomis Village in South Hadley in 2018. He will be remembered for his inspired teaching and writing, his irreverent humor, love of the Boston Celtics, and resilience during a series of health issues in his later years. He is survived by his wife Jan, daughters Erin Keefe and Heather Keefe Shields andson Joel Keefe.
Bob requested that he be cremated and that there be no funeral. A memorial concert featuring Erin will be heldOctober 29th at 7:30PM in the Auditorium
In lieu of flowers, please consider a contribution in Bob’s name to Doctors Without Borders or a musical organization of your choice
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