No Slow-Down for High School Sports Legend Skippy Keefer

If a selection committee had to pick just one female coach as the consummate leader, the obvious choice would be John Burroughs’ long-time coach/athletic director/bus driver, do it all Suzanne Keefer.

Now that would turns some heads. Who’s Suzanne Keefer anyway? Those who operate in and around the world of sports know Skippy Keefer would be the more recognizable and accepted name.

Skippy Keefer has lived her dream of surrounding herself with athletes her entire adult life. At age 75, this evervescent grandmother of six is showing absolutely no signs of slowing down. She’s on her treadmill nearly every morning, or walking laps around Ray Moss Field at Webster Groves.

There is a track meet named in her honor and a college scholarship in her good name too. She presides each April over the Skippy Keefer Relays at John Burroughs. In February, the Metro Women’s Athletic Association (Burroughs is a member) bestows a $1,000 scholarship in her honor.

Keefer is married to the love of her life, Lee, for 53 years. They are products of the Webster Groves school system, and both matriculated at the University of Missouri—another passion in their lives. Lee was a baseball player, in Skippy’s own words “who spent a lot more time on the diamond than in the class room.”

Still very active even now, Keefer is director of the John Burroughs Health Club and runs Burroughs’ summer camp Burr Oak. Her energy level hasn’t diminished one bit.

She does devote copious amounts of time to her six grandchildren, two presently at Burroughs, two at Community School and two at Villa Duchesne. The March is devoted to grandkid duties. She and Lee rent a house in the Naples, FL, area and host the kids and parents over spring break.

Life has not been without personal challenges. Lee is now a 30 year survivor of brain cancer, thanks to the skills of his surgeon Dr. George Mendelsohn.

Lee started out selling insurance, as was well known in sports circles, running Keefer’s Sporting Foot store in the heart of Old Webster Groves for 17 years. When Lee was sidelined with cancer, lifetime friend from Webster retired coach Ray Moss ran the store in his absence.

It was at Mizzou where both Skippy and Lee shaped their future careers. Lee was a Sigma Chi and Skippy was president of her sorority Kappa Alpha Theta.

They married in 1958, and Lee served in the Army on active duty for two years, never leaving Fort Leonard Wood during the Korean conflict.

After giving birth to two children (Bo, 50, now selling insurance, and Nancy, 47, PE teacher at Community and coach at Burroughs), she became a do-everything employee at the old Sacred Heart Academy in St. Charles.

“We had nothing. No track, just a worn out dusty field. I marked out a make-believe track with chalk and our girls dominated the Catholic School Relays,” she fondly recalled. When Sacred Heart shut down in 1971, she taught one year at Blackberry School in University City.

She answered a call from Burroughs to work one year, and stayed 29. She coached field hockey, volleyball, gymnastics and track and was athletic director for girls sports. Jim Lemen, retired, handled men’s teams. Eventually, she became sole AD for the private school.

Keefer was even principal of the school one year. ”I hated every minute of that,” eschewing the riggers of job behind a desk. In 2001, she retired from active coaching and administrative duties.

“I’ve had the greatest jobs in the world. I get to watch young people go out and play and I get paid for that,” she beamed with pride.

She hired half the coaches who work at Burroughs today, firing off names like Steve Wilcutt (basketball), Meredith Thorpe (field hockey), Jane Ellen Kuenzle (basketball coach at Villa Duchesne); golf coach Ellen Port, Lesley Kehr (swim coach) and baseball coach Andy Katzman.

Skipper Keefer looks at the whole picture this way: “I guess I’ve had the best life in the whole world and I don’t feel old at all.” No one who really knows Skippy Keefer would quarrel with that.