St. Margaret's O'Keefe Still His Father's Son

Monsignor John O'Keefe, Pastor at St. Margaret Church in Pearl River, saw his life change forever when he was 17.

That was the day his father, firefighter John J. O'Keefe, died in the line of duty.

"I am my father's son. Anyone who knew him says that all the time," O'Keefe said when asked if the impact of that day is still with him as a 66-year-old leader of one of Pearl River's two Catholic Churches.

O'Keefe was working at a camp in New Paltz when he got the news. His mother insisted that no decisions would be made until he got home.

"The fire department calls and I get the news," O'Keefe said. "I take the bus from New Paltz to the Port Authority. I get to Queens, where we were living. The next day, I, by myself, went and identified the body. I went to he funeral home to arrange the funeral. To me, that was natural. That was the role."

O'Keefe was by far the eldest child. He said it took some time before others even commented on how he took charge for his family.

"One of the evaluations that I had in the seminary is that he will always take charge. Always," O'Keefe said.

That is what he did during 25 years in Catholic high school education, first at Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx for 14 years, then at Archbishop Stepinac in White Plains for 10.

O'Keefe had chosen early on to work with people from different cultures than his own, something he learned at that camp in New Paltz.

"You get the feeling that you want to serve," O'Keefe said. "Then for four years, I worked at a Catholic Charity Camp for poor, inner-city kid. These are the people I wanted to serve."

He spent time in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic while he studied for the priesthood. O'Keefe has a degree from St. John's in counseling, a degree in school administration from Fordham and a Master's Degree in Religion from the Seminary.

Cardinal Hayes and Stepinac both offered the opportunity to work with a wide variety of cultures.

"I met Ronald Reagan (during his presidency) at a reception," O'Keefe said. "He asked me what I did. When I said I was a high school teacher at an all-boys inner-city high school, he said, 'I think you have the tougher job."

Memories of 9/11

O'Keefe was in charge at Stepinac the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which also happened to be the first day of a teacher's strike at the school.

He still does not know when the teachers found out what was happening, but by the time the head of the union called to ask if he wanted them to come in and help, most of the students had gone home, so he said thank you, but it was not necessary.

"i got a call from the  head of the union, who was not a nice man," O'Keefe said. "He said, 'If you want, I'll tell my people to come back in. By then, it was about 11:30. Most of the work had been done. I had been told to be nice to the guy. I said thank you very much. Everything is under control, but I appreciate it."

If O'Keefe maintains any bitterness over what happened next, it does not show at all in his telling of the story.

"This is the greatest national tragedy in the history of the country and on the second page of the Journal News it said, 'O'Keefe Refuses Help From Teachers," O'Keefe said. "They weren't even there, but this guy had an in with the Journal News. Whenever there was a strike, the church came across poorly."

He said that one of the teachers reminded the rest of the union members that O'Keefe's father was a firefighter who lost his life in the line of duty and did not expect him to ever forgive the teachers for how they handled that day.

O'Keefe said he still loves Stepinac and would have loved to stay, but he was transferred to Pearl River in 2003. He found a culture and community very different from where he had been.

"It's a single culture, more or less, where it had been multicultural in the other two," O'Keefe said. "At a high school, no kid is going to know everybody. Here, it is a very tight-knit community."

That meant a new challenge coming from the outside and becoming part of that community. One of the things that stands out to him about Pearl River is the way the people pull together when they have to.

"You see that (closeness) in the support they give one another, especially if there is any kind of need or tragedy," O'Keefe said. "If something negative happens, the community comes together to support the family in every way."

One powerful example he gave was the reaction to the disappearance of 12-year-old Chance Cosgrove in 2009. At first, the people of Pearl River just knew he was missing, then eventually found out that he had drowned off the Outer Banks in North Carolina.

"The people in the community came immediately to the church," O'Keefe said. "At that point, he was lost. They had not said definitively that he had drowned. I said come back in an hour and we will have a prayer service. An hour later, 300 people are in the church."

He talked about the two occasions that a wake had to be moved to St. Margaret School because the funeral homes were too small -- once for Pearl River High School student Justin Rogers and more recently for Pearl River resident Peter Fitzpatrick, who was killed in a motorcycle accident this past April.

"There were over 1,000 people at that wake," O'Keefe said of the one held for Rogers. "Sure, the church is looked at as a place for worship and gathering, but it is also a place you can turn to should you have any kind of issue in your life."

O'Keefe said he often has to ask people he finds using a room in the church or the school what they are doing. So much goes on, even he loses track on occasion. It is a reminder of his own youth going to church.

"When I look at my own childhood in the city of New York, the parish was the center of everything," O'Keefe said. "It had the gym. It had the meeting halls. It had the recreational facilities. The one place you knew you would mee tpeople and talk with people was when you went to church on Sunday.

"One of the things we are doing in the renovation of the church is to make a plaza (in front). We are moving all the shrubbery. There is a need for people who want to stay and talk after church, but there is no place to do it."

Why This Life?

That desire to help people find what they need leads into a question O'Keefe has answered many times -- why is he a priest? He will celebrate his 40th year in the priesthood next year and has seen dramatic changes, from fewer priests in general to having to take on more and more administrative duties.

"Every once in a while, I get the question why I became a priest," O'Keefe said. "I think the better question is, 'Why do I stay?' The world is different from when I entered the church in the late '60s. Now we are in 2011 and all sorts of stuff has happened in the meantime, including in the church, and some of it is very negative.

"The answer is I happen to be in a job that every night of my life I can go to sleep and say somebody is better off because I'm on the job. Sometimes it is dramatically better. Sometimes it is just a kid who needed somebody to notice him."

Some of the evidence is a mug collection that O'Keefe has, one that began at Cardinal Hayes.

"I have upstairs in the living room about 120 college mugs," O'Keefe said. "It started when a kid brought home a mug from Boston College and I displayed it. Then it grew and became too big for the office. And it continues here. The thing that amazes me is there is no duplication."

It comes down to playing a variety of roles that are asked of him, something he learned from his father.

"He was the union representative," O'Keefe said. "He was the organizer of their social functions. He was the representative to this, that and the other thing."

O'Keefe simply smiles as he suggests the similarities. All of these years later, he still enjoys being his father's son.