Kevin P. Keefe, we will miss you at Trains

March 18, 2016 marks a big change for our Vice-President of Editorial, Kevin P. Keefe. Kevin will retire after 28 years at Kalmbach Publishing. During that time he worked as an advertising copywriter, associate editor, and served as editor of Trains for eight years, 1992-2000. It is a reluctant farewell for me: You see, Kevin is not only my boss, but he’s also a friend who I can go to and talk about steam power, favorite railroads, and personalities in the railroad business, as well as the ranks of authors and photographers. For the first time in the 11 years I’ve been at Trains, Kevin will no longer be there to offer suggestions, critique our layouts and copy, and be a friend to this publication in the corporate halls of our company. We are surely going to miss him, but I hope the path he has put us on will serve the staff and you, our readers, for years to come.

I had an opportunity to meet Kevin on my first Southern Railway steam excursion in 1975. I should underscore the word had because we didn’t actually meet. I was 14, and Kevin was a young buck of 24. We were both riding the National Railway Historical Society convention trip from Knoxville, Tenn., to Jellico, Tenn., and back. I was giddy because two of my boyhood heroes, SR President W. Graham Claytor Jr., and legendary Trains Editor David P. Morgan were on board, and I got to meet both. Kevin, as it turns out, was in the photo line with his long-time pal John B. Corns at Elk Valley and took a memorable photo of riders vying for a good shot of 2-8-2 No. 4501. Morgan used Kevin’s image in his editorial soon after. After seeing it, I realized just how close I had been. We must have been standing no more than 15 feet apart because I got a similar shot with my parents’ Kodak 110 pocket camera.

We did meet, however, in a most auspicious manner, on board a steam train. This time the year was 1987, and my friend Bill Schafer (now retired from strategic planning at Norfolk Southern), and I joined Kevin and John B. Corns, in an open window car behind Norfolk  & Western Class J No. 611. The occasion was the famous side-by-side trip from Roanoke to Radford in which No. 611 pulled a passenger consist and big sister Class A No. 1218 pulled a hopper train. We rolled off mile after mile up Christiansburg grade, seesawing back and forth between the A and the J in a classic recreation of what the N&W must have been like in the 1950s. The four of us drank in the sights and sounds of a face-full of Class A every few minutes and savored the delightful runbys with these two legends from another time. We were spellbound at the gift of this day, and it created a new friendship that would lead me to write often as a freelancer for Kevin during his tenure as editor.

In 2000, I found myself sitting across a desk from Kevin, who was now in the role of potential employer. Kevin asked good questions (What story ideas did I have? (railroad mergers, the value of six-coupled steam in today’s preservation world) What writers do I admire? (Frailey, Stephens, Hankey, and Hansen) What was my favorite DPM story (how much time do we have?)) and I hope I gave good answers. At the end, Kevin turned the tables and asked if I had questions. Yes, I said, why world anyone leave the best job in the entire world to go into upper management? Kevin’s answer was convincing: He was raising a family and the greater responsibility and more earnings power would better enable him to put his kids through college. In 2000, the time was not right for me personally to work at Trains, but it was four years later, and, I tease Kevin about this often: One of his kids, Katy, got a full sports scholarship. He didn’t need that big management job after all.

Though Kevin moved up, he never forgot where he came from, and always was there to support and promote Trains. He was a good, understanding boss when times were bad, and his wit and humor made the days go by as the torrent of work continued one issue after another, one special project to the next.

Watch Jim Wrinn’s video interview with Kevin P. Keefe about his career, influences, and a new book project at http://trn.trains.com/photos-videos/videos/2016/03/kevin-keefe-interview