Stephen M. O’Keefe
Stephen M. O’Keefe
STEPHEN M. O’KEEFE had a fifty-seven year career in journalism, entirely with the Courier-Post. During the last five years of his career he wrote a weekly column called “Crossroads in History,” which you can find below.
Stephen O’Keefe’s last work as a journalist was published a year after his retirement, a seven part History of the Courier-Post, as part of the newspaper’s one-hundredth anniversary issue.
Stephen M. O’Keefe passed away on January 31, 1984.
August Pfleiderer Retirement Banquet
Camden Courier-Post —
On April 3, 1954 a banquet was held at Kenney’s restaurant on Market Street in honor of retiring Camden Police Department detective August Pfleiderer. Joseph Mardino chaired the committee which put the banquet together. Other members of the committee include Clifford Carr, Harry Tracy, George Ellis, Nathaniel Jones, James Mulligan, Russell Maurer, Samuel E. Johnson, Edward C. Garrity, Frank H. Ryan, James M. O’Neill, Stephen M. O’Keefe, Edward J. Quinlan and Joseph Webster.
Stephen O’Keefe Dies, Worked 57 Years at Courier-Post
Camden Courier-Post —
By TONY MULDOON
Of the Courier-Post
Journalist Stephen M. O’Keefe, who devoted 57 years of his life to the Courier-Post as it went from steam-powered linotype machines to the dawn of modern electronics, died yesterday. He was 80.
Mr. O’Keefe was best known to readers of the newspaper for his weekly column, “Crossroads in History,” and his histories of Camden County and of the Courier-Post.
He had been in poor health and confined to a wheelchair at the Bishop Nursing Home in Media, Pa., since suffering a stroke last May 12.
“The Lord did him a favor, really,” his wife, Ann, said yesterday morning. “He hated that wheelchair.”
A Mass of Christian Burial will be 10 a.m. Saturday at St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church in Merchantville. Burial will be in Calvary Cemetery, Cherry Hill. Friends may call at the Inglesby and Sons Funeral Home in Pennsauken at 9 a.m. Saturday.
Mr. O’Keefe’s death was not unexpected, and he had little fear of it. He once related a conversation he had had with his good friend, the Most Rev. Bartholomew J. Eustace, Bishop of Camden, who was dying. “At least I won’t have to stick around as long as you will,” said the bishop to the newsman. Eustace died in 1958.
It was “a good way to look at it,” Mr. O’Keefe had said. “But I never really feared dying because we all practice it every night. When we go to sleep, it’s just like dying. We’re just optimistic we’ll wake up. But one time when we go to sleep we’re going to be over optimistic and never wake up again.”
Mr. O’Keefe was born in Conception Harbor, Newfoundland, Canada, where his birth was recorded on the side of a paper bag.
He worked at the Courier-Post, and its ancestors, the Camden Morning Post and the Evening Courier, from 1917 to 1974.
He was one of the most beloved people in the 109-year history of the newspaper.
Publisher Robert T. Collins, who began his career as a Courier-Post copy person and worked under Mr. O’Keefe as a reporter, described him as “an outstanding newsperson.”
“He eagerly shared his knowledge of the business and the area with young people in the newsroom. A lot of us in the business today were helped and guided by Steve O’Keefe.”
By the time Mr. O’Keefe retired he knew just about everybody around Camden County and was an invaluable source for anyone researching the history of the past 60 years. For a number of those years he was a trustee of the Camden County Historical Society.
“He was great with elaborate and intricate details and was a great snooper,” said Margaret Weatherly, director of the society.
“He was not academically a historian and didn’t have a lot of degrees after his name, but he knew how historical events affected peoples’ lives and human suffering,” Weatherly added.
“Anybody who wanted to know how Camden County politics were run and what journalism was in the area for the past 60 years has lost a valuable source,” said Carl A. Winter, editor of the Courier-Post’s Forum section, who also edited the colorful history of the newspaper that Mr. O’Keefe wrote for its centennial in 1975.
“He knew people whose names are now on street signs throughout the area. Baird Boulevard in Camden is named for somebody Steve called ‘Boss Baird.’ (David Baird, a former U.S. Senator and lumber dealer, died in 1927.)
Steve O’Keefe was a fatherly man who was known for the sartorial elegance he brought to the newsroom, where he never appeared without the traditional editor’s green eyeshade, a crisp white shirt and a tie.
He was also a romantic who married a ballerina. In 1936, Mr. O’Keefe eloped with Gertrude M. Heenan, prima ballerina with the La Scala Opera Company of Milan, Italy, and the Pennsylvania Opera Company.
He retired from the newspaper in 1974, but continued to write its history, which was published in the Courier-Post’s centennial issue the following year.
Mr. O’Keefe later became a trustee of the Camden County Historical Society and a member of the board of directors of the Gloucester branch of the Third National Bank of New Jersey.
He also served for many years as a trustee of St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church in Merchantville and was a leader in church activities.
It’s ‘30’ for Steve as a Newsman
Camden Courier-Post —
O’Keefe Retires From Courier-Post After Career of 57 Years
HE CONSISTENTLY declined an active role in politics until 1972 when he accepted the post of vice-chairman of the Heritage and Cultural Commission of Camden County, a post he resigned so he could devote more time to writing the newspaper’s history.
He is now serving his second term as a trustee of the Camden County Historical Society. Until last year, he also served on the board of the Gloucester Branch of the Third National Bank of New Jersey.
In the most romantic interlude in his life, O’Keefe eloped with Gertrude M. Heenan, prima ballerina with the La Scala Opera Co. and the Pennsylvania Opera Co., in 1936. Mrs. O’Keefe died in 1966. The O’Keefes’ son, Stephen A., 38, now lives in Huntingdon Beach, Calif.
O’KEEFE IS fond of telling how that son operates a sky derrick with such dexterity that fellow workmen have given him the nickname, “Silky.” The younger O’Keefe, says his father, raised every piece of steel in the 63-story United California Bank building in Los Angeles—the tallest building west of the Mississippi.
O’Keefe also has a grandson, Stephen M., 17, of Willingboro.
With a characteristic turn of phrase, O’Keefe terms his 57 years of newspaper employment as his “57 years of enjoyment.”
“If I had a choice of starting all over again I couldn’t wish for any better career or life than I had,” says O’Keefe as he writes that final “30.”
Comradeship Abounded in Camden’s Many Clubs in Early 1900’s
Camden Courier-Post —
Stephen M. O’Keefe’s “Crossroads in History” column
By STEPHEN M. O’KEEFE
Courier-Post Staff Writer
The contributing clubs to the social and community life of old Camden included the Citizens Club, the YMCA, German Maennerchor, St. John’s Club, the Lyceum Catholic Club, the Emerson Club, the Emerson Park Association, St. Anthony Club, the Whitman Park Improvement Association, Twelfth Ward A.A. and the Whelan Club, all of which contributed, with others that may escape memory, to the social and community life of old Camden.
THIS rendezvous with recollections flowed from a chat with one of the oldtimers, Walter J. Roth, late of 351 Morse Street, who moved recently to 1666 Holly Park Way, Williamstown Junction. Roth, now a few months past the 84 mark, is a 52-year member of the Plumbers and Steamfitters Union, enrolled nearly 50 years in the Elks and is a 1913 member of the Artisans Order of Mutual Protection.
Roth was conversant with the social club environment and holds a fondness for the old Camden and for the way it was here in that distant decade. The Emerson Athletic Association went down to 1606 Broadway.
The Emersons had a three-story frame club house adjoining the property with a parlor, reading room, kitchen, gymnasium annexed to the backyard, a room upstairs where card tables were set up, and a poolroom on the third floor where candy, soda, water and other treats were sold. Booze and gambling were banned. It was strictly a men’s club, but some of its women members sold refreshments at various anniversary banquets in the basement.
THE members had a rigid rule against intoxicants, putting a $1 fine on anyone who appeared drunk or tipsy in the club even if the tipsy member was outside on the club sidewalk opposite the club he escaped the fine and the stigma.
There seldom was an argument in a card game. The stakes for pinochle winners was usually treats, a bottle of soda, candy bar or smokes. Some card games were lively and a few disputes arose but tolerance and coolheadedness prevailed. When a rare fight developed the penalties were invoked and any repeater was quickly relieved of membership by the club executive committee.
The club’s major social event was the Emerson Ball at Turner’s Hall, 5th and Pine Streets. All members hustled to build up the ad book, a profitable program for the event. Beer was the main beverage at the ball, with dancers consuming 10 to 15 halves during the night.
The sturdy steamfitter laments the passing of olden days that lie buried under countless changes, steadily successive but not all of them successes. He was witness to those shifts, war, prohibition, radio, bootleg liquor, fast cars, wild speculation, the terrible depression and vast unemployement, gangdom’s depredations, more wars, divorces, inflations, faster cars, cocktail bars, campus capers, racial bitterness, moral declines, vandals, car crooks, muggers and smut.
The old way of life is not entirely dead. Some lodges survive, some clubs have cropped up and the oldtime country fire companies still abound. The fancy trimmings and trappings of today, the plush booths, swimming pools, musical bars, costly carpeting, subdued lighting and expensive organs that supplant the old player piano.
There’s still some of the other things remaining, such as the oldtime neighborly atmosphere … and warm memories.
ROTH’S family records date back to June 1804, when John J. Roth, with wife and four children, migrated to Philadelphia from Hamburg on the Fortuna, which had figured earlier in Revolutionary War naval action in the Great Egg Harbor Bay area.
Emerson Athletic Association Membership Roster
The Emerson A.A. roster includes: Anthony Beals, James Beals, Ernst Ballheimer, Joseph Bicker, H.G. Burke, John Boyle, Joseph Cline, Edward Carmany, Frank Christen, Alfred Christen, Charles Cliver, Harold Costello, Ray Farnham, Harold Deuter, Sam Friedenberg, Alex Friedenberg, Hubert Farrell, Joseph Flannery, Adam Grimming, David Harrigan, August Haverkamp, Alonza Heward, William C. Hansel, Ellis Johnston, William J. Kelly, Charles Krown, William Keane, James Keane, Claude Krown, Harry Knipe, Victor Lotier, Samuel Lippman, Frank McCormick, James McGrath, Frank McLaughlin, Daniel McLaughlin, William McLaughlin, John Mahney, Thomas Mahney, William Mazur, William McDermott, William Miles, Joseph Norkus, John Norkus, Thomas Naughton, William Prucella, Walter Reynoldo, Walter Roth, Charles Ricco, Frank Singer, John J. Singer, George Singer, William J. Schmuckle, Edward Shropshire, Benjamin Thomas, Irving Varley, James Woods, Albert Williams, John Welch, Robert Wilson, Robert Williams.
Veterans Boxing Association Ring 6
11th Annual Banquet —
Joey Powell’s Well-Wishers — ALSO EXTEND BEST WISHES TO Sergeant Ray Smith
Joseph Grochowski, Al Bunker, Ed Kaszycki, Andy Friday, John Skiba, John Dombrowski, Walter Szalanski, Nick Pawlak, Wm. O’Brien, Bill Neil, Wm. Schultz, Tom Scarduzio, Peter Paull, Barney Tracey, Dave Hainsworth, Walter Zimolong, Edward Shapiro, Thomas McLaughlin, John Opfer, Vallie Francesconi, Tom Ryan, Leon Lucas, Jesse Urban, Bobby Zimmerman, Joe (Kid) Murphy, Pee Wee Wilson, Jackie Gleason, Joe Vitarelli, Al Daley, Frankie Youker, Joe McEvoy, Frank Valenti, Jim McFadden, Charles Bauer, George Ballantine, James O’Neill, Dorothy Dougherty, Agnes McHenry, Vicky Dangler, Francis Souders, Loretta and Reds, Bart, Roger Cotton, Leon McCarthy, Kenneth Geitz, Joe Daubman, Norman Jacobson, Nick Colofrancisco, Chris Rago, Charles Myers, Ray Cohand, Paul Harduk, Charles Wells, Carl Stolinski, Walter Wilson, Steve Straub, Charley Kmiec, Jimmy Tyler, Joe Dorfy, William Vogel, John Campbell, Steve O’Keefe, Sam Laird, Ed Rickter, Don Cragin, John Odorisio, Michael Przywara, Walter Paleszewski, Watson Burdalski, Stanley Snajkowski, Frank Drabik, John P. Kawczak, Frank Kulesa, Steve Kirby, James R. Asher, Polack Tony, Stephen Yakopczyna, Helen and Chick, Don Wilson, James Monaghan, George Carr, Bill Jentsch, John Greenan, Charles Galasso, Don’s Barber Shop, Joe Shaw, Ben Gutowski, Tom Bristow, Joseph Stelmach, Leon Hood, George Saunders, Mike Borman, Anthony Cirelli, Bob Hardy, Frank Hardy, Benny DePalma, Frank Padulla, Mike Yack, Stanley Powell, George Kroecker, A Friend, The Fox, Tom Fish.
Veterans Boxing Association Ring 6
Camden Courier-Post —
Tom Ryan, Martin Segal, Sgt. Ray Smith, Joe Spearing, Joe “Kid” Murphy, Lew Skymer, Roxie Allen, Tom Kenney Sr., Battling Mack, Eddie Prince, Anthony Georgette, Stephen O’Keefe.