Necrology

Terrance Keenan '70

Aug. 8, 1947-May. 24, 2024

Terrance Keenan ’70 died on May 24, 2024, in Bantry, Ireland. Born on Aug. 8, 1947, at the Henry Kaserne Army Facility in Munich, Germany, he and his family returned to the United States thereafter. Terry’s secondary education was unusual: He spent one year at Piscataway (N.J.) High School, two years at St. Lawrence College in Kent, England, one semester at the University of La Laguna in Tenerife, Canary Islands, and his final semester at Princeton (N.J.) High School. During those high school years, Terry’s father managed several supermarkets, first in Liberia while Terry was at St. Lawrence and then in Tenerife while he attended the University of La Laguna. The family returned to New Jersey to ensure that Terry and his sisters could complete their schooling in America before applying for college.

Preparing for a career as an English teacher, Terry majored in English on the Hill. He wrote poetry, an avocation he had taken up in earnest in high school, co-edited The Continental, and performed with The Charlatans. He was on the staff of The Spectator, and his work led to his admission to Pi Delta Epsilon, the collegiate honor fraternity for journalism. He immersed himself in what was then termed “hippie culture,” as he was drawn to beat poetry, the Beatles, and Transcendental Meditation. He also had fond memories of reading The Lord of the Rings in Root Glen and sledding down the Hill and through the halfway house, often courting disaster as he did.

For a time, Terry was a member of a band known as The Sea of Trees, whose style was heavily influenced by that of The Incredible String Band. Being a poet, Terry created lyrics for this band and also sang some backup vocals and learned to play bass guitar. They made a demo tape, but the group’s leader left for California and the band broke up.

It was during a Charlatans production that Terry met Jane Elizabeth McLeod who had grown up in Clinton and had returned home after graduating a semester early from Lynchburg College where, like Terry, she had majored in English. Wanting to stay connected with contemporaries while working in Utica, she auditioned for a play and was cast opposite Terry as his wife. They gradually got acquainted when she drove him to his dorm after rehearsals. 

At some point, she invited him to her house for tea and a game of chess. She beat him for what would be the first and only time. Thereafter, Terry always asserted that he lost because he was too distracted by her beauty to pay close attention to the game. 

One day while they were walking in Root Glen, Terry proposed, and Jane accepted. They were married on May 10, 1969, in Clinton, and for the duration of his studies lived in an apartment on College Hill Road. They had a daughter and a son.

Jane and Terry decided after he graduated to return to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, residing in Tegueste while he taught American literature at the University of Laguna, and she tutored local high school students in English. They returned to Clinton in 1972, and he opened Keenan’s Bookstore, the only full-service bookstore in the town, while Jane worked for General Electric in Utica. In 1977, their daughter Bryna was born. 

Closing his business in 1979, Terry became an adjunct faculty member teaching continuing education classes at Mohawk Valley Community College. That same year, he published Cambios: Daily Readings in The I Ching, the first of what would ultimately be nine books, and he also continued to write poetry as well as paint. In 1983, Jane, who worked in human resources for G.E., was transferred to the aerospace division in Syracuse; the family relocated there. For a year, Terry was a stay-at-home father and volunteered with the United Way. 

He then chose to pursue a master’s degree in library science at Syracuse University and after completing that program joined the Special Collections Office at the university’s library. His thesis focused on the collected papers of Betsy Knapp, the last descendant of one of the founding families of Fayetteville, N.Y., near Syracuse. That work culminated in an exhibit in fall 1986 at the Onondaga History Museum, “From Wilderness to Suburbia: Six Generations on the Land.” On display were the household goods, paintings, family mementos, arts, and crafts of three families who first settled in that community in 1817.

Subsequently, he curated a large compilation of industrial design materials as well as the adult education collections. He also provided reference services, taught, and did some advising.

Terry had practiced transcendental meditation periodically since Hamilton, but beginning in 1988 he wanted to deepen his engagement with it. Discovering the Zen Center in Syracuse, presided over by the Venerable Shinge Roshi Sherry Chayat, a practitioner of Rinzai Zen Buddhism, a Buddhist denomination founded in Japan in the 12th century, Terry found the type of meditation she taught rewarding. He became her student in 1989 and was ordained in 1993. 

Thereafter, he regularly retreated to the Dai Bosatsu Zendo monastery in Livingston Manor in the Catskill Mountains. He also remained deeply involved with the Zen Center in Syracuse and was instrumental in relocating it from the home of his teacher to a carriage house restored by the organization. The center performed community outreach and served students at the university.

In addition to being a student of Buddhism, Terry continued to produce poetry, publish essays in journals, and create works of art, one of which went on permanent display at the Zen Center, all the while working at the Syracuse University library. Jane continued her work for G.E. In 2000, following the merger of G.E.’s aerospace division with Martin Marietta and Lockheed, she accepted promotion to be head of human resources for Lockheed Martin’s offices in Baltimore. 

For eight months, she lived in a company condominium in Baltimore while Terry stayed in Syracuse and visited her every weekend if possible while they house hunted. In December of 2000, Terry was diagnosed with Graves Disease and an enlarged heart. He retired from the library and joined Jane. A somewhat tentative job search yielded nothing, and he permanently turned his attention to painting and writing as well as volunteering as a Buddhist chaplain at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. 

In the summer of 2001, they bought a house in Monkton, Md. Jane had become an avid gardener and for a time was president of the local garden club. Their attention turned to assisting in the care of Jane’s parents who lived in Charlottesville, Va., responsibilities that continued after her retirement in 2006. 

In 2011, they decided to move to Ireland. Terry’s mother was a native of Dublin, his paternal grandfather had been born in Belfast, and he and Jane had visited Ireland frequently. In the early 1990s, one of Terry’s uncles moved to County Cork. Because they were familiar with that part of the country and had family there, they decided to make it their home. They found a house in the village of Durrus on the Sheepshead Peninsula near Bantry and took up permanent residence. Jane continued gardening, taking advantage of Ireland’s long growing season, and Terry continued to write and paint.

Their health permitting, from time to time they travelled in Europe and, on one occasion, to India. They also visited their two children, who at different times resided in Chile, Japan, and in the United Kingdom. Sadly, at the end of May 2019, Jane died after a long illness. Terry continued to live in their home, but his life became progressively more constrained due to his declining health and the COVID pandemic.

Terrence Keenan is survived by his children. 

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